Sufis and Coffee Consumption

From the tenth/sixteenth century, coffee consumption spread from Yemen northwards, mainly via the Sufis and their disciples, who claimed that drinking coffee helped their ritual activity. This caused an extended debate among the ulama of different schools, who viewed the Sufis’ coffee drinking as a negative innovation opposed to the sharīʿa. The controversy first focused on whether coffee was permitted, or rather forbidden, like wine. However, as coffee became widespread, the lack of religious proofs for its prohibition and the religious and political authorities’ inability to forbid it moved the debate to the moral aspects. The supporters of forbidding coffee drinking were mainly ulama in official positions such as judges. These ulama needed the help of rulers to enforce the prohibition. Due to Sufis, by the eleventh–twelfth/seventeenth–eighteenth centuries, coffee consumption became a social phenomenon both in homes and in public spheres, as coffeehouses.