Chapter 2 of 8 · 1554-today

The coffeehouse: home of the hookah

From Tahtakale in Istanbul, through Bentbaša and Khan el-Khalili, to American lounge bars. The hookah lives where people sit and talk.

2 min read13 sources

  1. 1554/55The first coffeehouses in Istanbul1
  2. 1633Murad IV closes the coffeehouses34
  3. 1797El Fishawy in Cairo78
  4. 1999-2004A wave of hookah bars in the US11

Istanbul: the coffeehouse before the hookah

According to the Ottoman historian İbrahim Peçevi, two merchants, Hakam of Aleppo and Shams of Damascus, opened the first coffeehouses in Istanbul, in the Tahtakale district. Sources give 1554 or 1555.1

Coffee came first. Tobacco only reaches Istanbul around 1600, and then the coffeehouses quickly fill with smoke.2

In 1633, after a great fire, Sultan Murad IV closes the coffeehouses and introduces the death penalty for smoking in public.34

An Ottoman coffeehouse in a miniature from Istanbul, c. 1620: coffee, conversation, books and backgammon.
An Ottoman coffeehouse in a miniature from Istanbul, c. 1620: coffee, conversation, books and backgammon. Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (T 439.9)

Sarajevo: the coffeehouse at Bentbaša

Sarajevo's tourist board writes that the city's first coffeehouse was Hajji Šaban's coffeehouse at Bentbaša, opened in the middle of the 16th century. It worked until 1942, when it was demolished.5

More in the chapter: The hookah in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Cairo: Lane and El Fishawy

In 1836 the Englishman Edward Lane records that wealthier Egyptians smoke a narghile with a coconut vessel, and call the version with a glass vessel shisha.6

El Fishawy café in the Khan el-Khalili bazaar opened in 1771 or 1797, depending on the source. The same family runs it, and the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz was a regular.78

Beirut and Tripoli

Research from the American University of Beirut describes the Beirut café of the 1950s to the 1980s as a place where the city's cultural life was made.9

In Tripoli, Café Fahim still serves older men who smoke argileh the old way: soaked tobacco with the coal placed right on it.10

From coffeehouse to lounge bar

Between 1999 and 2004, 200 to 300 new hookah cafés opened in the US, mostly in university towns.11

Germany has no official count: ZDF wrote of more than 6,000 shisha bars in 2020, and the manufacturers' association estimated about 5,000 in 2024.1213

On the journey through 14 stations

How we know

  1. 1Wikipedia, "Ottoman coffeehouse" (Peçevi)
  2. 2Hürriyet Daily News, "Hitting a high the Ottoman way with tobacco"
  3. 3Daily Sabah, "Mighty sovereigns of Ottoman throne: Sultan Murad IV"
  4. 4Atlas Obscura, "In Istanbul, Drinking Coffee in Public Was Once Punishable by Death"
  5. 5Visit Sarajevo, "Days and nights"
  6. 6Edward W. Lane, "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians" (1836)
  7. 7Cairo Governorate, "Cairo's Famous Coffeehouses"
  8. 8History Hit, "5 Historic Cafés to Visit in Cairo"
  9. 9AUB ScholarWorks, "The Beirut Coffeehouse and Café"
  10. 10The National, "Coffee houses of the Middle East"
  11. 11Primack i sar. / et al. (2008), Annals of Behavioral Medicine (PMC3004534)
  12. 12ZDF (2020), "Shisha: Das gefährliche Geschäft mit dem kalten Rauch"
  13. 13Berliner Zeitung / dpa (2024), "Shisha-Branche befürchtet Pleitewelle"

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