The Jurisprudence of the Prohibition and Permission of Coffee and its Social Phenomenon
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31436/ijfus.v9i2.371Keywords:
Jurisprudence of permissibility and prohibition, Coffee, Coffeehouses, Social Phenomenon, Community jurisprudenceAbstract
The history of coffee consumption and the spread of coffee beans were the target of many studies. However, few of them addressed the phenomenon as an integrated social phenomenon. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, coffee entered the corridors of jurists and was the subject of great controversy regarding prohibition and permissibility. Nonetheless, there are only a few studies on how jurists dealt with this new beverage and the social phenomenon that arose from it. This paper employs the inductive method in tracing the early history of coffee to analyse its elements. Furthermore, it uses the analytical method to understand how it transformed from a special drink of certain Sufi sects, initially popularized as an intoxicant, to an elite drink and then a social drink that spread among all segments of society before becoming a social phenomenon. The paper also takes into account the historical approach in tracing attempts to ban coffee or close its establishments from the beginning of the 16th century onwards in Makkah, Cairo, and the rest of the Islamic world, and the beginnings of jurists' engagement with coffee as a beverage and a social phenomenon until the end of the 18th century. The paper continues by comparing the jurisprudential reasons used by jurists in determining its legal ruling, as well as the social phenomena associated with it over three centuries. The paper concludes with the flexibility and diversity of legislative tools used by scholars, including the experimental approach and what some call it as "community jurisprudence" in the present time, and the relationship of this to the place and time in which it occurred. The work concluded that coffee took more than two centuries to evolve into a multifaceted social phenomenon that varied in time, place, and customs. During this period, numerous fatwas were issued, prohibiting or permitting it. The jurisprudential causes for prohibition varied between prohibited in itself, for others, or as a blocking means (dharāʾiʿ-pretexts). The paper also denies that the old meaning of the word coffee, “wine,” has anything to do with the naming of the new beverage made from coffee beans, nor does it have anything to do with the reasons of prohibition.
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