How do you know your coffee?
December 5th is celebrated as the day of Turkish coffee, so there will be a lot of events and tastings across countries, sometimes arranged by the embassies and consulates of Türkiye. Earlier, in 2013, “Turkish Coffee Culture and Tradition” was the first beverage to be included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list. It is a known fact that the whole world learned about coffee from the hands of the Turks. But in every country coffee went to, the way it was brewed and consumed, and of course, its taste has altered. Turkish-style coffee brewing known as Turkish coffee, is a unique form of coffee, from the way it is cooked to the way it is presented, from the laid-back idle way of consuming it to the fortunetelling that comes along. It is a strong tradition that still prevails, but it has also changed in the course of the centuries gone by. So, what has changed in Turkish coffee from the past to the present?
Turkish coffee is a completely different type of coffee than all other coffee cooking techniques in the world. That’s why it is called Turkish coffee all over the world to distinguish this technique. However, until quite recently we did not call it Turkish coffee. The distinctions were made only by differentiating the plain, medium, and sugary choices, the enthusiast would go a little further and say it should order with a thick froth. Only when instant coffees appeared in the market, then we started called it Turkish coffee. Of course, neighboring Greece’s insistence on giving up the Turkish coffee discourse and calling it Greek coffee was also effective in this, but only in touristic places. Over time, coffee varieties have increased with examples such as filter coffee, coffee brewed in special machines such as espresso. However, for us, there was only one type of coffee that we knew in history, and that is what we call Turkish coffee today. But was Turkish coffee always as we know it today? What has changed over the centuries? What is the correct history?
On coffee trail
First of all, let’s take a quick journey through the pages of history, and take a look at the coffee chronology. We learned about coffee when Yemen and Egypt became part of the Ottoman lands after the Ridaniye war in 1517. In other words, we learned about coffee from the Arabs. Its origin is Ethiopia, or as we used to call “Habeşistan.” In other words, the first coffee we tasted is the Arabica variety, grown in Ethiopia in Africa, and not the Brazilian-origin coffee that we use most of the time today.
If we look at the coffee apparatus of that time and the way they were depicted in the engravings, we see that it was presented in quite large coffee pitchers with lids. This reminds us of the “mırra” coffee, which is still found in the Middle East and Arab countries, and still lives partly in our Mardin region. In other words, it is a type of coffee without the grounds and froth, made with a long boiling process to concentrate the brew. Did it go in this form when it was first spread to the world by the Ottomans or was it in its frothy form made in small coffee pots like today? We cannot be really sure about the first phase of its spread. Perhaps it is best to search for Venetian sources.
Correcting mistakes!
Why we should go all the way to check the Venetian sources? At this point, let’s open a parenthesis to correct a much-repeated grave mistake. Coffee went to the city of Venice for the first time outside of the Ottoman lands, (Attention! Venice, not Vienna!) and from there to other European countries, such as Marseille, Paris, Oxford, London and Hamburg, respectively. It reached as far as Boston in America, and even plantations were established in faraway lands. Vienna learned about coffee way after all these countries. The fake history goes by saying that it was in the second siege of Vienna when Turks failed to capture the city and left the battlegrounds, including sacks of coffee behind. But we know from the Viennese records that Vienna knew coffee before 1683, which is the date of the siege. In 1665, Evliya Çelebi, the celebrated Ottoman traveler, wrote that the Ottoman ambassador to Austria, Mehmed Pasha, was given coffee among many provisions by the Austrian emperor for his daily needs in Vienna. Furthermore, the first coffeehouse was opened in Vienna in 1675. However, according to the tale, or better to say fakelore, which is insistently repeated especially by tourist guides for some reason, the Ottoman army left coffee sacks behind after the siege of Vienna, and the Austrians, who saw the black coffee beans in the sacks while the war booty was being collected, first thought that came into mind was, that it was camel fodder. At this point, I need to ask, how can an Ottoman, in its sane mind, can roast the coffee, and put it back into sacks? We all know that Ottomans were fussy about their coffee, and roasted their beans freshly. All the coffee paraphernalia from roasting to cooling of the beans, and the home grinders are all about the freshness obsession. It is ridiculous to insist on tales like the sacks left at the gates of Vienna, at a point when trying to promote Turkish coffee. Let’s close the parenthesis and continue with the coffee trail.
What is original Turkish coffee?
In 1582, the Venetian ambassador Francesco Morosini, who was stationed in Istanbul, wrote that the Turks constantly gathered together and drank black hot water poured into small cups and had heated arguments, and he defined this black drink as “Acqua Nera,” that is, “Black Water.” It is possible that the coffee did not take its form with the grounds and the froth it is today. Probably, what Morosini observed was pretty much like Arabic coffee, which the coffee maker pours from a large pitcher, and refreshes the cup of the finished one. My personal hypothesis is that, only after the reception of coffee at the palace, it became a ritual and took a delicate presentation form. However, it took a while for it to be accepted in the palace because at first it was thought to be not acceptable by religion, as it was burned food. As a matter of fact, the first coffee prohibition was put into action between 1566-74 by Sultan II. Selim. However, in 1582, during the reign of Sultan III. Murad, at the circumcision wedding festivities held for Mehmed, the son of the Sultan, we see coffee makers in the procession. A coffee shop on wheels was depicted in the miniatures of the Surname-i Hümâyun, proving that it is now accepted by the palace as well.
In the meantime, as coffee spread to the world, Dutch traders realized the value of coffee, they smuggled coffee seedlings from the port of Mocha/Mokha, or Muha, in Yemen in 1616, cultivated them in greenhouses in Amsterdam, and then established the first plantations as of 1658 in distant geographies such as Sri Lanka, Java and Sumatra. The French did not lag behind either. In 1727, the first coffee plantations were established in Brazil. The Ottomans, who lost the coffee trade, quickly surrendered to Brazilian coffee. Brazilian coffee, grown in the colonies of the Netherlands and France, reached Erzurum, an eastern Anatolian city, as early as 1739, in other words, showing that its international trade dominated the market as well as the palate. In summary, the world recognized coffee from our own hands, but we quickly lost both the trade and the taste of Turkish coffee of original African origin.
