Coffee Went on Trial in Mecca Over Whether Muslims Could Drink It

In 1511, in the holy city of Mecca, a religious court convened to judge not a person but a beverage.

The drink was coffee, roasted and ground into a strong, dark drink. Crowds were meeting to share it in lodgings and in public spaces near houses of worship, seeking comfort and company, and officials had started to worry about its effect on them.

The issue for the judges was whether the stimulation was harmless or akin to drunkenness. They also had to decide whether those who followed Islam could continue to consume it.

That a cup of coffee could require a legal ruling sounds strange now, but the drink was new, spreading fast, and hard to classify. The scholars at last judged it allowed. Coffeehouses followed the ruling in Damascus, Istanbul, and farther on, where patrons could take coffee, smoke, and watch performances.

Coffee had reached the Middle East along trade routes from Ethiopia, where people had learned to prepare its cherries as a stimulating brew. Its wider popularity began in the 1450s, when a Sufi leader, a teacher in the mystical branch of Islam, returned from a visit to Ethiopia and urged the faithful in Yemen to take coffee to stay alert through songs and movement in worship.

The recommendation caught on. Many met in lodgings and in open areas by mosques to share it.

By the late 1500s, growers in Yemen were cultivating the crop and sending it abroad through Al-Makha, a harbor that outsiders called Mocha. From there, the beans were carried, at times secretly, to India, and soon spread to Java and farther places.