sia.

The wife of Shah Abbas, observing that great numbers of people were wont
to gather and to talk politics in the leading coffee house of Ispahan,
appointed a mollah--an ecclesiastical teacher and expounder of the
law--to sit there daily to entertain the frequenters of the place with
nicely turned points of history, law, and poetry. Being a man of wisdom
and great tact, he avoided controversial questions of state; and so
politics were kept in the background. He proved a welcome visitor, and
was made much of by the guests. This example was generally followed, and
as a result disturbances were rare in the coffee houses of Ispahan.

Adam Olearius[38] (1599-1671), who was secretary to the German Embassy
that traveled in Turkey in 1633-36, tells of the great diversions made
in Persian coffee houses "by their poets and historians, who are seated
in a high chair from whence they make speeches and tell satirical
stories, playing in the meantime with a little stick and using the same
gestures as our jugglers and legerdemain men do in England."

At court conferences conspicuous among the shah's retinue were always to
be seen the "kahvedjibachi," or "coffee-pourers."

_Early Coffee Manners and Customs_

Karstens Niebuhr[39] (1733-1815), the Hanoverian traveler, furnishes the
following description of the early Arabian, Syrian, and Egyptian coffee
houses:

They are commonly large halls, having their floors spread with
mats, and illuminated at night by a multitude of lamps. Being the
only theaters for the exercise of profane eloquence, poor scholars
attend here to amuse the people. Select portions are read, _e.g._
the adventures of Rustan Sal, a Persian hero. Some aspire to the
praise of invention, and compose tales and fables. They walk up and
down as they recite, or assuming oratorial consequence, harangue
upon subjects chosen by themselves.

In one coffee house at Damascus an orator was regularly hired to
tell his stories at a fixed hour; in other cases he was more
directly dependant upon the taste of his hearers, as at the
conclusion of his discourse, whether it had consisted of literary
topics or of loose and idle tales, he looked to the audience for a
voluntary contribution.

At Aleppo, again, there was a man with a soul above the common,
who, being a person of distinction, and one that studied merely for
his own pleasure, had yet