Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 144

its effect facilitated the performance of
their religious ceremonies. They there-
fore considered this as its original “des-
tination” ( mawū alī ) and found that it
incited to good and hastened on the mys-
tical raptures ( fat ). The pious intention
with which it was taken made the drink-
ing of coffee a good work ( āa ). It received
a ceremonial character, being accompa-
nied by the recitation of a so-called rātib.
This rātib consisted in the repetition 116
times of the invocation yā awī . This usage
is based—apart from the similarity in
sound between ahwa and awī —on the
fact that the numerical value of hwh , i.e. ,
116, is the same as that of wy, i.e., awī ,
“strong”, one of the most beautiful names
of Allāh. According to ay b. Abd
Allāh al-Aydarūs, the recitation of the
fātia should precede it. ay b. Ismāīl
Bā Alawī of al-ir, however, pre-
scribed the fourfold repetition of the Sūra
Yā-Sīn (Sūra XXXVI) with a hundred-
fold taliya on the Prophet as rātib . Thus
when taken with a righteous intention
and devotion and genuine religious con-
viction, coffee-drinking leads to the enjoy-
ment of the ahwa manawiyya , the “ideal
ahwa ”, also called ahwat al-ūfiyya , which
is explained as “the enjoyment which the
people of God ( Ahl Allāh ) feel in behold-
ing the hidden mysteries and attaining the
wonderful disclosures ( mukāafāt ) and the
great revelations ( futūāt )”. Alī b. Umar
al-āilī is reported to have said that
coffee, like the water of Zamzam, serves
the purpose for which it is drunk, and the
saying has been handed down of Amad
b. Alawī Bā adab (d. 973/1565-66),
who in his last years is said to have lived
on nothing but coffee:—“He who dies
with some ahwa in his body enters not
into hell-fire”.
Coffee was probably not known as
a beverage in South Arabia much ear-
lier than the turn of the 8th/14th cen-

tury. Whether the tree was introduced
long before this is doubtful. Ibn aar
al-Haytamī speaks of a beverage which
appeared (viz. in Mecca) shortly before
the 10th/16th century and was prepared
from the husk of the bunn , a tree intro-
duced from the region of Zayla, and
called ahwa . Among the jurists who gave
an opinion in favour of coffee, the oldest
is amāl al-Dīn Muammad b. Saīd
b. Alī b. Muammad Kabbin al-Adanī
(died in Aden 842/1438).
An urūza of araf Dīn al-Amrīī
gives the year 817/1414-5 as the date
at which coffee became domesticated in
Mecca. According to the Umdat al-afwa ,
however, the drinking of a decoction of
coffee husks first appeared towards the
end of the 9th/15th century, while pre-
viously only the eating of the fruit as a
delicacy ( nal ) was known. The drinking of
coffee dropped out of use again for a time,
but it finally established itself and soon
people drank coffee even in the sacred
mosque and regarded it as a welcome
tonic at ikr and mawlid . Coffee-houses
( buyūt al-ahwa ) were soon opened, where
men and women met to listen to music or
where they played chess or a similar game
for a stake. This and the custom of hand-
ing round the coffee in the manner of
wine naturally aroused the indignation of
the ultra-pious, many of whom had from
the first set their faces against the bever-
age as an objectionable innovation. They
found a champion in āir Bey, who was
appointed chief of the police in Mecca in
917/1511 by ānū al-awrī. He car-
ried through the proclamation of coffee as
forbidden ( arām ) in the same year, in an
assembly of jurists of the different schools
in which the unfavourable judgment
of two well-known physicians and the
evidence of a number of coffeedrinkers
regarding its intoxicating and dangerous
effects ultimately decided the issue. The