Nizar F. Hermes, in History Today, Volume 76 Issue 2 February 2026
The early modern Islamic world was embroiled in a bitter controversy over coffee. Much ink was spilt by poets on both sides.
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Ottoman coffeehouse scene, c.1620. Chester Beatty Library Dublin. Public Domain.
No premodern poet praised coffee with greater passion than the North African jurist-poet Abu al-Fath al-Tunisi (d.1576). As he wrote in one of his ‘coffee poems’: ‘The status of the precious coffee of the pot has ascended,/as the full moon of her cup unveils in the darkness./How beautiful she is – resembling molten jet.’






Miliani Henri Sansoni (1849-1907) married Alice Rosalind Aldons


