The Last Wish of Hurrem Sultan
What did Hurrem Sultan dream about when she was dying?
Fans of the TV series “The Magnificent Century” will answer this question without fail. Once a concubine and then the wife of Sultan Suleiman, on her deathbed she asked for a cup of her favorite coffee - and in order to fulfill her last wish, a faithful servant even violated the ban on the tart drink that was in effect in the Ottoman Empire at that time. Sultan Suleiman himself forgave his wife for this little weakness.
Coffee subsequently became one of the symbols of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, although at one time members of the ruling dynasty saw in it nothing less than a state threat.
For reference, coffee came to the Ottomans from Syria in 1554. Turkish courtiers admired the exotic drink and presented the recipe to the court along with the beans. Coffee was highly appreciated by both the ruler and his family, and soon many establishments appeared on the streets of Istanbul where the drink was brewed in small copper cezves and served in tiny cups with Turkish delight and other sweets. However, the widespread distribution of coffee houses played a cruel joke on them. One of the closest advisers of Sultan Suleiman, Ebusuud-Efendi, issued a fatwa (religious decree) prohibiting the consumption of the tart drink and coffee houses were effectively equated with drinking establishments and ordered to be closed.
However, it seemed that the fatwa was necessary only as a religious argument, and the real reasons for the ban were more prosaic.
Firstly, the Sultan’s subjects began to spend too much time in coffee houses: the already leisurely Turks turned the process of preparing and drinking the popular drink into a beautiful ritual and began to neglect work more and more often.
Secondly (and more importantly), coffee houses gradually turned from places for relaxation into discussion platforms, where people discussed politics and increasingly criticized the government. In order to reduce the risks of destabilisation and maintain public order, it was decided to nip such hotbeds of dissent in the bud.
Be that as it may, the first coffee houses in the world opened in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1554. Outside the Ottoman Empire, such establishments began to appear in the 17th century: first in Venice and London, a little later - in Boston, Paris and Vienna. By the way, the Austrians got sacks of coffee beans from the Turks, who abandoned them after an unsuccessful attack on Vienna.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the first coffee houses opened in Berlin and Warsaw (on the territory of the then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). In Russia, the fashion for the bitter drink penetrated simultaneously from the West and the East. It is believed that coffee as such was brought to the country by the English doctor Samuel Collins, who was at the Russian court as the personal physician of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. He offered the ruler in 1665 “... Boiled coffee, known to the Persians and Turks and usual after dinner...”
The European coffee tradition in Russia was developed by a fan of everything Western, Emperor Peter I, who became acquainted with this drink in Holland during the Great Embassy of 1697. Already at the beginning of the 18th century, noble balls (assemblies) could not do without coffee. At the same time, by decree of Peter I, taverns for foreigners began to open in the capital, the menu of which included this drink. The first coffee shop appeared in St. Petersburg in 1740.
People from European countries kept coffee houses, where the drink was brewed in copper or tin coffee pots in the Western style, filtered and drunk either without additives (in German) or with honey, chocolate or sugar, garnished with whipped cream (in Viennese).
To be continued…
