In Ottoman cities the coffeehouse was less a shop that sold a drink than a shared space where people gathered to talk, hear the news and pass the time. Coffee had been consumed for centuries as a remedy for health and vigor; it was the coffeehouses that turned it into a custom of gathering. In a city like Amasya, which lived for a long period as a sanjak seat and housed every layer of the Ottoman order in its market, mosques, madrasas and mansions, it is only natural that the coffeehouse became a lasting part of neighborhood life. The founding date or first proprietor of none of the city's coffeehouses is known. Yet when biographical and endowment records are read alongside memoirs that describe early twentieth-century Amasya street by street, it becomes possible to trace coffeehouses whose names, locations, owners and regulars are known from the seventeenth century onward: the Yüksek Kahve (the High Coffeehouse) at Meydan Köprü, where saz poets recited epics, the Çardaklı Kahve (the Arbor Coffeehouse), endowed to pay for repairing the books of a library, and the dim coffeehouses built over the stream at Selağzı are among them.

The Rise of the Coffeehouse

The first coffeehouse-type venues appear in Mecca, Cairo and Damascus in the early sixteenth century. Toward the middle of the century similar places opened in Istanbul. The chronicler Âlî Mustafa Efendi writes that the coffeehouses, long familiar in the Arab lands, appeared in Istanbul in 1553. The seventeenth-century historian Peçuylu İbrahim reports instead that the first ones were opened in Tahtakale in 962 (1554-1555) by a merchant from Aleppo named Hakem and a man from Damascus named Şems. The two accounts differ slightly in the year, but read together they place the event in the first half of the 1550s. Coffee had at first been brought by merchants to cities such as Istanbul, Bursa and Edirne and was a drink of the upper classes. After Egypt joined the Ottoman realm in 1517, the coffee trade expanded and the habit of drinking it spread to wider groups.

The new venue multiplied quickly. In the last years of Süleyman the Magnificent's reign, about fifty coffeehouses are recorded in Istanbul. In registers compiled in 1792 the number appears as 1,631, and in 1821 as 2,076. In time the coffeehouse ceased to be a purely Istanbul phenomenon. In towns and villages, particularly beside the mosque, it became the basic place where men sat to talk and passed the hours with small games. In a sanjak city, the appearance of this venue around the neighborhood mosques and in the market was a result of the same general spread. In Amasya too, the places where coffeehouses are mentioned are mostly the approaches to a mosque, a tomb, a bathhouse or a bridge.

The Origin of the Name and the Place

The word kahve passed into Turkish from the Arabic qahwa, and its origin is thought to reach back to the Kaffa region in Ethiopia. The hane of kahvehane is of Persian origin. Coffee is said to have been grown in the Abyssinian highlands and first eaten as food, and in the late Middle Ages to have been carried to Yemen by wandering dervishes and made into a drink. It is also recorded that the first coffeehouses in Ottoman lands were the imaret coffeehouses, with social functions, opened beside mosques. People filled the gap between prayer times with conversation in these small hut-like places. This account explains why the coffeehouse is still found beside the mosque and in the neighborhood square in so many places.

Suspicion, Prohibition and Compromise

The coffeehouse was received at first as a great novelty and provoked debate. For officials it was worrying that people from different classes and levels of education could talk in a setting out of the state's sight. The rumors and criticism circulating there were called, in the language of the day, devlet sohbeti, "talk of state". Some of the clergy regarded coffeehouses as nests of sedition, and certain sources note that harsh labels such as "taverns without wine" were pinned on them. Toward the end of Süleyman's era, orders were sent to the judges of Eyüp, Galata and Istanbul to close coffeehouses and prevent their reopening. Some sources also record that in 1567, under Selim II, all the coffeehouses within the walls of Istanbul were shut. A similar order was repeated in 1583, but the bans could not stop coffeehouses from multiplying. Through a fatwa of the shaykh al-Islam Bostanzade Mehmed Efendi, coffee as a drink was removed from the dispute, yet the Kadızadeli movement spread the coffeehouses' bad name. In 1633 Murad IV ordered all coffeehouses in Istanbul closed and coffee drinking forbidden.

This was the last decision taken to close coffeehouses wholesale. Rather than try to abolish these venues, the state looked for ways to keep them under supervision, and closures stayed limited to places where impropriety was found. One reason for the change in policy was the economic value of coffee. From the second half of the seventeenth century coffee and tobacco had become major trade goods in Europe and Asia, and the tax on coffee became one of the treasury's regular revenues. Peçuylu İbrahim writes that grand viziers opened large coffeehouses as investments and earned substantial income. According to Kâtib Çelebi, in the seventeenth century there was a coffeehouse at almost every street corner. The presence of Janissaries among the coffee tradesmen was another factor that softened the state's view of these places. After the Janissary corps had decayed, some coffeehouses turned into gathering spots for its members, and after abolishing the corps in 1826, Mahmud II had the Janissary coffeehouses, especially those along the Bosphorus shore, torn down.

The Yüksek Kahve and Amasya's Saz Poets

The oldest coffeehouse in Amasya known by name is the "Yüksek Kahve" in the Meydan Köprü quarter. Hüsameddin mentions it in his biography of Celâlî Mehmed Ağa, son of Türedi Hüseyin Ağa of Tokat. Celâlî had gained influence as a sipahi cavalryman in his father's lifetime, fell from favor for a while after his father was killed in 1648, and then entered the household of Abaza Hasan Ağa. Because he followed Abaza Hasan Pasha, who rose against the grand vizierate of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, he was seized and executed in Cemaziyelahir of 1069 (1659). Hüsameddin describes him as a robust, brave sipahi and saz poet: his voice was full and stirring, and his stature and face were handsome enough to captivate women. At the Yüksek Kahve he played the saz and the bağlama superbly, recited epics and sang poems, gathering the whole crowd around him. He was also a fine horseman and fighter. This short record shows that by the middle of the seventeenth century the coffeehouse in Amasya was already used as a kind of stage, with a public that came to hear epics to the accompaniment of the saz.

Cavit Güzel's study of the minstrel-style epic tradition in Amasya counts Celâlî Mehmed Ağa as the city's first recorded epic minstrel and lists the saz poets who followed him in the same line. According to Güzel, the Janissary units stationed in Amasya because it was a princes' sanjak nourished this tradition, and the city's Alevi-Bektashi culture supported it as well. The minstrels, who took it upon themselves to raise the soldiers' morale, performed their art above all in coffeehouses. The researcher also notes plainly that no link beyond the similarity of the name can be established between a "high coffeehouse" mentioned by Olcay at Selağzı in the early twentieth century and the Yüksek Kahve of the seventeenth century; whether the two were the same place cannot be shown from the documents.

Among the epic singers of the eighteenth century, Âsafî Ahmed Bey of the Çırçırlıoğlu family stands out. According to Hüsameddin he belonged to a notable family descended from Hüseyin, the Prophet's grandson, held a zeamet fief in his youth and served as an alaybey. Because he deserted the Russian campaign to which he had been assigned in 1184 (1770-1771), he was dismissed, and he then turned to the dervish life. He played the bağlama beautifully and squandered the fortune left by his forebears on pleasure. Hüsameddin calls him a "coffee poet" and writes that he lived until 1210 (1795-1796) in the coffeehouse of Fethullah Ağa near the Tombs of the Princes. He was famous among the Janissaries and the Bekrîs and was also called "the Epic Singer" (Destancı). His date of death differs between the sources: Güzel's article gives 1770, while Hüsameddin's wording shows that he lived until 1795-1796.

Another representative of the same tradition is Âşık Mehmed Ağa, grandson of the Janissary Odabaşı Halil Ağa. He was himself one of the Janissary sergeants; he played the çöğür, a small long-necked lute, and sang epics. In Hüsameddin's words, because he was a fine folk poet he was of great use in wartime. He gathered his friends in the coffeehouse near the Garibler Mosque and Selağzı. He is described as an epic singer with a beautiful voice and melody, of middle height, handsome and masterly on the saz, and he died around 1220 (1805). He had a house in the İçerişehir near Kırkbedel, and his descendants were called the Âşıkoğulları. Celâlî's coffeehouse at Meydan Köprü, Âsafî's corner beside the Tombs of the Princes and Âşık Mehmed Ağa's coffeehouse at Selağzı are three fixed points showing where the sound of the saz was heard in the city over two centuries.

The Coffeehouse as Endowment Property

In the Amasya records the coffeehouse appears not only as a gathering place but also as income-bearing property, that is, as an endowment asset. Türedizâde el-Hâc Ali Ağa, a former deputy governor (mütesellim) of Amasya and one of the palace gatekeeper-chiefs, built in 1210 (1795-1796) a wooden madrasa in the Gökmedrese quarter near the endowed inn of Yörgüç Pasha and named it Hayriyye. To meet the costs of this building, popularly called the "Upper Bakacak Madrasa", he endowed to it three shops, two coffeehouses and a vineyard. Hüsameddin notes that in his own day the madrasa still stood but its endowments had been lost.

A similar example comes from the daughters of Keklikzâde el-Hâc Ali Ağa, one of the notables of the Hacı İlyas quarter. Zeyneb Hatun had a school built in her quarter, endowed to it three shops and a coffeehouse she owned, and had Ahmed Efendi, known as "Çatal Hâfız", appointed as its teacher; she died in 1205 (1790-1791). Her sister Hatice Hatun was married to Seyyid Mehmed Emin Efendi, a descendant of Çelebizâde İmam Abdüllatif Efendi. She endowed her coffeehouse, popularly known as the "Çardaklı Kahve", together with a shop, in 1235 (1819-1820) for the repair and binding of the books in the Abdüllatif Efendi Library, of which her husband was the trustee. The repair of a library's books from the income of a coffeehouse shows concretely how close conversation and reading stood to each other in the city.

The same arrangement continued at the beginning of the twentieth century. Olcay relates that beneath the Mehmed Bey Madrasa, built by Kurdoğlu Mehmed Bey, there was a bread oven, and that where the stairs came down to the street a coffeehouse and the two shops beside it had been built as income property for the madrasa. Hüsameddin, for his part, records that after the mansion and garden of Şefik Pasha were sold off and dispersed among the heirs, inns, shops and coffeehouses were built in their place. In these examples the coffeehouse appears as a solid source of income carrying the upkeep of a charitable foundation, a school or a madrasa.

The Economy of Coffee and Amasya Men at the Palace

In Amasya coffee was also part of the state's fiscal order. Several links in this order appear in Hüsameddin's biographies. Kurdzâde el-Hâc Hüseyin Bey, of the Amasya notables, served for years as collector of the coffee customs after returning from campaign in 1157 (1744). Gürcü Sührâb Mehmed Ağa, who came from service as sword-bearer to Hacı Kadirzâde Ali Pasha and settled in Amasya, took on in 1186 (1772-1773) the coffee tahmis tax farm of the sanjak of Amasya, that is, the farming of the duty levied on the roasting and grinding of coffee. In the account of the harsh collections of Caniklizâde Tayyar Mahmud Bey, who came to Amasya in 1214 (1799), it is written that a third of the harvest was taken instead of a tenth, and that the collectors' "coffee, bread and fodder money" was demanded on top. These small items loaded onto the peasant show that coffee had come to be counted an everyday necessity.

The rise of Amasya men in the coffee service of the palace is also striking. The post of chief coffee-maker (kahvecibaşı), head of the servants who prepared the coffee of the sultan or of great statesmen, required being close to one's master and was often a door to higher office. In the years of the Vienna campaign of 1683, Ali Ağa of Amasya, chief coffee-maker and one of the sultan's personal halberdiers, came to the city as trustee of the endowments of Sultan Bayezid. Abdülmümin Ağa was chief coffee-maker to Hacı Beşir Ağa, chief black eunuch of the harem; his descendants in Amasya were called the "Kahvecibaşızâdeler". Hindî Hasan Ağa, after serving as chief coffee-maker to the grand vizier Ragıb Mehmed Pasha, became superintendent of the tax farms of Amasya in 1176 (1763), and in a register of 1186 he was recorded as "Ragıb Pasha's coffee-maker".

The best known of these Amasya men is Sarı Hüsamzâde Hüsameddin Ağa, who became chief coffee-maker when Selim III came to the throne in 1203 (1789). Hüsameddin writes that he acquired influence equal to that of the sultan's sword-bearer, and that through the efforts of statesmen who feared he would rise to the grand vizierate he was removed from Istanbul in Muharrem 1207 (1792) by being sent as governor of Bosnia with the rank of vizier. A palace diary from the reign of Selim III, however, refers to the same man as "Gürcü Kahvecibaşı Hüsam", the Georgian chief coffee-maker; the discrepancy between this description and Hüsameddin's "of Amasya", based on the palace registers, has not been resolved. An inscribed target stone belonging to him, dated 1789 and carved in celi talik script, is today in the Military Museum at Harbiye in Istanbul. Another of the same sultan's chief coffee-makers was Yeniçerizâde Seyyid Hüseyin Pasha, who became superintendent of the tobacco customs in 1222 (1807). Gümüşoğlu İbrahim Ağa, removed from the post of chief coffee-maker to Mahmud II, was sent to Amasya in 1252 (1836-1837), and in the census of 1254 he was recorded in the Bağ-ı Helkis quarter at the age of forty-five. The return of these men, trained in the coffee service, to their city must have been one of the routes by which the manners of the palace reached the mansion and endowment life of Amasya.

A Square for Talk and News

In a society where written culture did not reach broad groups, the coffeehouse was one of the main places where oral culture was kept alive. In this place, where the trade of the market, news from the field or the road, and matters of the homeland were discussed, elders passed on their experience, the young learned manners, and newcomers to the city made their first acquaintances. Peçuylu İbrahim describes educated people who liked the good life gathering in groups of twenty or thirty in coffeehouses. Some read books of etiquette, some played backgammon or chess, and some argued over poems they had just written. The reading aloud of epic-style books such as the Muhammediyye, the Battalname and the Hamzaname had become an established custom there. Because of these educational functions, coffeehouses were called "school of knowledge" (mekteb-i irfan) and "madrasa of the scholars" (medresetü'l-ulema), as Kâtib Çelebi relates.

There is also a clear record showing that the coffeehouse in Amasya worked as a place of public opinion. At the beginning of 1217 (1802), when the conduct of the deputy governor Hasan Bey, newly raised in rank, changed and his behavior began to weigh on the notables and the people, the mufti Soruklu Hacı Ali Efendi, the acting governor Hafız Hasan Ağa and the city steward Zeyneloğlu Hacı Ömer Efendi became the talk of the town. According to Hüsameddin, disparaging them became the people's entertainment in gatherings and in coffeehouses, and bitter words and complaints spread unchecked. The "state talk" that the government had watched with unease for centuries can be seen here in full clarity in the daily life of a sanjak city.

The coffeehouse was also an assembly for the word that makes people laugh. Şefik Mehmed Efendi, born in 1267 (1850-1851) in the Hacı İlyas quarter, served as muezzin of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque for some sixty years and, for his quick wit and gift for mimicry, was called "the Sheikh"; in Hüsameddin's words he was regarded as "the Nasreddin Hodja of our age". One night, as he was telling jokes in the middle of a crowd in the coffeehouse of Hafız Şerif Efendi, imam of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, and making everyone laugh, Hafız İbrahim Efendi, known as "Kara Müezzin", came up and kissed his forehead. Şefik Efendi at once raised his hands and passed them over his face, saying "Elhamdülillah", praise be to God. To those who asked what he was thankful for, he said that as a child he had angered his mother, who had cursed him with "may dogs lick your face", and that he was grateful the curse had passed so lightly. Şefik Efendi died in 1348 (1929-1930). That a muezzin told jokes in a coffeehouse run by an imam also shows how naturally the closeness between the coffeehouse and the mosque community was accepted in Amasya.

Games, Music and Performance

Coffeehouses were also places of innocent amusement. Games such as backgammon, draughts, chess and cards were a way of passing time and of refreshing friendships. Because giving a banquet was expensive, many gatherings of friends moved to the coffeehouses, and in the early days it is said that sometimes no free seat could be found. The coffeehouse was also the main place where Karagöz shadow plays and meddah storytelling were presented and where minstrels displayed their talent. In the minstrel and meddah coffeehouses the performers entertained the regulars while passing on a store of culture to them. A coffeehouse where the saz was played, minstrels traded verses and tales were told stopped being an ordinary shop and became a small stage.

In the nineteenth century the coffeehouse diversified. Most of the coffeehouses in Istanbul, which numbered several thousand, stood in neighborhoods beside mosques. City people preferred the elite coffeehouses of Direklerarası and Beyazıt, the Western-style cafés of Galata and Pera, or the neighborhood coffeehouses. Tea began to spread in the same century. Russian and Balkan refugees who migrated to Istanbul after the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-1878 also contributed to the growth of tea drinking; teahouses appeared and tea became a drink competing with coffee in coffeehouses. The traditional low platform seats gave way to tables and chairs. A survey made in Istanbul by an American team in 1922 divided coffeehouses into seven classes: caravanserai coffeehouses, coffeehouses near mosques, reading houses, neighborhood coffeehouses, tradesmen's coffeehouses, restaurant coffeehouses and village coffeehouses.

After the closure of the Janissary coffeehouses, a new type appeared, run by the tulumbacı firemen and called semai coffeehouses because of the music played in them. In these places the heritage of the Janissary coffeehouses had fused with neighborhood toughness. In the second half of the nineteenth century, under Sultan Abdülaziz and Abdülhamid II, coffeehouses lived their golden age in both number and standing, and while restrictions were applied in many fields, the press above all, coffeehouses were kept outside them. In the first years of the twentieth century almost every part of society frequented coffeehouses. Among them were places known for improper purposes such as hashish and cockfighting; as the literate withdrew from them, coffeehouses in time came to be remembered as places of brawls and drink.

Olcay describes an example of a coffeehouse in Amasya that had become a club for enthusiasts. Between the Mustafa Bey Bathhouse and its furnace section there was a raised coffeehouse, and in the evenings Olcay would now and then go up there with his friends. Its regulars were mostly fanciers of Indian fowl and Indian fighting cocks, and hunters. Şirvanlı Balaş Efendi, Sakızcıoğlu Mehmed, Kestekoğlu Ahmed Ağa and Kalaycıoğlu Bekir were foremost among the cock fanciers, Şefik Paşazâde Rıza Bey and Yusuf Ağa, son of Attar Kerim, among the hunters. They gathered there every night, and on some nights brought their cocks and set them fighting against each other. Olcay's plain description shows that cockfighting, too, had its place in the city among the amusements of the coffeehouse.

Reading Houses

The naming of coffeehouses that served as reading venues as kıraathane, "reading house", dates to the period after the Tanzimat. Some coffeehouses, modeling themselves on European clubs and reading rooms, were turned into cultural venues that kept newspapers and journals and gave space to traditional performing arts. The first example is the Sarafim Reading House, opened on Divanyolu in 1857. Besides newspapers and journals, books were in time sold there too. On Ramadan nights the Sarafim Reading House became a hall of literary debate, and writers such as Namık Kemal, Ahmed Muhtar Pasha, Süleyman Pasha, and later Ahmed Râsim and Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil would discuss everything there, from literature to mathematics and from poetry to politics. To attract customers, owners of the coffeehouses where ordinary people spent their time tried to keep a newspaper and a small bookcase, and those aiming at a more select clientele took care to have kıraathane written on their signs.

After the First World War, in the years of occupation, many neighborhood coffeehouses became places where the country's situation was discussed and ways of deliverance were debated. It is noted that coffeehouses played an important part in carrying the reforms made after the War of Independence to the people, and some writers regard coffeehouses in this period as a kind of instrument of propaganda and persuasion. In the same years some Turkish intellectuals criticized coffeehouses as harmful institutions. The Amasya Circular, one of the first major decisions of the National Struggle, was issued in this city in 1919; however, there is no documented information on the role of the city's coffeehouses in those days.

The Coffeehouses of Selağzı

At the beginning of the twentieth century Amasya's coffee life was at its most intense at Selağzı, the head of the market before today's Yavuz Selim Square was opened. Listing the shops there one by one, Olcay relates that the stream carrying the floodwaters down from the Çakallar, Hamzadüzü, Kuba and Temenna quarters was covered with wooden and plank bridges, and that most of the shops over this stream were coffeehouses and barbershops. Because they were roofed over and saw no sun, this row was always dim and cool. The barbershops of Güzel Ahmed Ağa and Berber Ömer Ağa, the tea houses of Enis Efendi and Baba Muhsin, and the Şirket Gazinosu were, in Olcay's words, the busiest and finest places of Selağzı.

On the side of the Mahkeme Çarşısı there was a coffeehouse belonging to Helvacı Şeyhi Hakkı Efendi, which Baba Muhsin rented and ran; beside it stood the Eczane-i Osmanî pharmacy, and next to that a tobacconist selling tobacco and matches. There was another coffeehouse on the side of Berber Tokaç Ahmed Ağa's shop facing the government building. On the side of the Sinan Bathhouse stood a reading house belonging to the Miralayzâde family, overlooking the Yeşilırmak, and beside it the "high coffeehouse" of the bathhouse keeper Hacı Ali Hafız Ağa. The front balcony of the Şirket Gazinosu facing the river was also a meeting place for the city's genial company; Olcay relates that his teacher Kemerpaşazâde Hüsameddin Efendi sat there with friends drawn from the officers, officials and notables. Almost all of this row disappeared when the square was opened. In Olcay's words, not a trace of them remains, and Selağzı has become an open square.

Ramadan Nights

Coffeehouse culture took its liveliest form on Ramadan nights. After the iftar meal and the tarawih prayer, people flowed into the shops and coffeehouses and joined conversation and entertainment that lasted until the predawn meal. On these nights stories were told, Karagöz and meddah performances were given, and treats were shared. In the reading houses of Istanbul, Ramadan nights passed with Karagöz shows and musical sessions, and these venues served as literary gathering places. The coffee drunk after iftar was believed to aid digestion and to add flavor to conversation. Cafés and tea stands that stay open at the hour of the predawn meal are today's extension of this custom.

In Amasya, Ramadan nights are also known for a custom of their own. During Ramadan the municipal band climbs to Harşena Castle before iftar and before the predawn meal and plays a concert that can be heard from the city center. This practice, said to be more than a hundred and sixty years old, arose in the days before electricity became widespread, to tell the people that the time of iftar or the predawn meal was approaching, and the end of the appointed time was announced by a cannon shot. The band mostly plays marches, heroic folk songs and, on request from the public, popular pieces; today it climbs from the city center to the castle on an open-top bus. At the first iftar of Ramadan the Ramadan cannon, in use for a century and a half, is also fired; the first iftar cannon of Ramadan 2026 was fired by the governor from the castle by remote control. In the same year the bandmaster said that the band was Turkey's oldest Ramadan band and that its concerts had continued for 162 years. Because news reports add a year to the custom's age every year, it is hard to give a definite starting date.

The Coffeehouse as an Institution of Solidarity

The traditional coffeehouse often worked like an unseen institution of solidarity. A young man looking for work found his master there, someone newly arrived from his hometown made his first acquaintances there, a person with a job to fill looked there for an assistant, and a person in trouble shared his worry. The neighborhood's weddings, mourning and affairs circulated in this common hall. Besides being a tradesman, the coffeehouse keeper was often regarded as an elder of the neighborhood who knew everyone and whose word was heeded. Open from early morning to late at night, these places also offered a refuge to those left alone in the city.

In Amasya coffee-table talk also spilled out to the doorstep and the street. Olcay relates that Dubaracıoğlu Hacı Ali Hafız Ağa, the bathhouse keeper who ran the Sinan Bathhouse at Selağzı and the Mustafa Bey Bathhouse in front of the old hospital, would after supper go to the seat across from his street door, have chairs set out and come outside with his water pipe. Hearing that the Ağa had come out, the neighbors, among them Olcay's father, would arrive one by one, and a skilled man named Tahsin would serve everyone coffee. Nuri Bey, trustee of the Taş Han and of the inns near the Burmalı Minare Mosque, would on most mornings sit on the level ground at the corner of the Mehmed Bey Madrasa, on the side of the Mehmed Pasha Mosque overlooking the Yeşilırmak, drink his morning coffee with his water pipe, and offer coffee and tea to passers-by. These scenes show that the same order of conversation and hospitality continued outside the four walls of the coffeehouse as well.

The serving of coffee at home is an extension of the same outlook. In Amasya, the Hazeranlar Mansion on the bank of the Yeşilırmak was built in 1865 by the treasurer Hasan Talat Efendi. The reception room of its selamlık section was where male guests from outside were hosted before being received by the master of the house, and sherbet, ayran, tea, coffee and snacks were served there. The principal room, by contrast, was the corner where the master of the house entertained his most important guests and long conversations were held. The mansion's arrangement shows that serving coffee was an expression of respect and set-aside time for the guest at home as well. The coffeehouse can be considered this domestic custom spilling out into the street.

Today

The form of the coffeehouse has changed. Tables and chairs have replaced the low platform seats, television has replaced the meddah and Karagöz, and in many places cafés and tea stands have taken the lead. The coffeehouses over the stream at Selağzı, the Yüksek Kahve and the Çardaklı Kahve now live only in the records. Even so, the human need to gather around a table continues. Amasya's coffeehouse tradition represents the continuity of this old culture of meeting at the scale of the neighborhood. Serving coffee has remained an established sign of giving time to a guest, and the coffeehouse has been the social-scale counterpart of that custom of hospitality.

Chronology

1517: The coffee trade expands after the conquest of Egypt.

1553: According to Âlî Mustafa Efendi, coffeehouses appear in Istanbul.

1554-1555: According to Peçuylu İbrahim, Hakem of Aleppo and Şems of Damascus open the first coffeehouses in Tahtakale.

1583: An order banning coffeehouses is sent to the judge of Istanbul.

1633: Murad IV orders all coffeehouses in Istanbul closed and coffee drinking forbidden.

1659: Celâlî Mehmed Ağa, the saz poet of the Yüksek Kahve at Meydan Köprü, is executed.

1683: The chief coffee-maker Ali Ağa of Amasya comes to the city as trustee of the endowments of Sultan Bayezid.

1744: Kurdzâde Hüseyin Bey becomes collector of the coffee customs.

1772-1773: Sührâb Mehmed Ağa takes on the coffee tahmis tax farm of the sanjak of Amasya.

1789: Hüsameddin Ağa of Amasya becomes chief coffee-maker to Selim III; the inscribed target stone belonging to him bears this date.

1790-1791: Keklikzâde Zeyneb Hatun, who endowed a coffeehouse to her school, dies.

1792: The number of coffeehouses in Istanbul appears in the registers as 1,631.

1795-1796: Türedizâde Ali Ağa builds the Hayriyye Madrasa and endows two coffeehouses to it; the "coffee poet" Âsafî Ahmed Bey is living in the coffeehouse of Fethullah Ağa.

1802: The men of the deputy governor Hasan Bey become the talk of Amasya's coffeehouses.

1805: Âşık Mehmed Ağa, who sang epics in the coffeehouse at Selağzı, dies around this time.

1819-1820: Hatice Hatun endows the "Çardaklı Kahve" for the repair of the books of the Abdüllatif Efendi Library.

1821: The number of coffeehouses in Istanbul reaches 2,076.

1836-1837: Gümüşoğlu İbrahim Ağa, chief coffee-maker to Mahmud II, is sent to Amasya.

1857: The Sarafim Reading House opens on Divanyolu.

1877-1878: Migration after the Ottoman-Russian War spreads tea in coffeehouses.

1922: A survey by an American team divides Istanbul's coffeehouses into seven classes.

2026: The municipal band's Ramadan concerts at Harşena are marked as being in their 162nd year.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

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