Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East:

Ambivalence and Ambiguity

Rudi Matthee

Great is the difference between the Turks and the Persians, for the
Turks, being by law prohibited, abstain from wine yet drink it covertly, but the Persians, now, as of old, drink openly and with excess.
(Thomas Herbert, 1627)
This essay starts withand builds its main argument ona paradox.
Historically, most people, and certainly Muslims, inhabiting the world
where Islam spread and became the dominant faith, did not drink. This
was in accordance with Islams formal proscription of the consumption of
alcohol and the draconian punishment for violators of the baneighty
lashes; forty for women and slaves.1 Water has always been their main
beverage, women as a rule never drank, and fermented or distilled drinks
were generally not readily available, least of all in the respectable public
sphere. Throughout Islamic history, radical prohibition of drinking has
often followed the rise to power of puritanical regimesthe North African
Almoravids and Almohads in eleventh- and thirteenth-century Spain, respectively; the Wahhabis who haunted the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq in
the early nineteenth century; more recently the clerics of the Islamic
Republic of Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet alcohol has always
played a surprisingly important role in male elite circles in the Islamic
Middle East. The very word alcohol is Arabic in origin, deriving from
al-kohl, pulverized antimony used to darken the eye lines, and Muslim alchemists, most notably the Iranian Zakariya al-Razi (865925; better known
1

Felicitas Opwis, Shifting Legal Authority from the Ruler to the Ulama for Drinking
Wine during the Saljuq Period, Der Islam, 86 (2009), 667, 778.

Past and Present (2014), Supplement 9

 The Past and Present Society

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Wine (khamr) has flowed in my veins like blood

Learn to be dissolute; be kindthis is far better than
To be a beast that wont drink wine and cant become a man.
(Hafez of Shiraz (14th c.))

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 101

The Islamic proscription of alcohol was a gradual, almost reluctant process,

one that reveals itself as relative despite its apparent absoluteness, providing
loopholes, allowing for subterfuge, and leaving open the chance of having
ones guilt absolved. In the Abrahamic tradition the vine and wine have been
linked from the outset, and wine has been connected with drunkenness and
impudence as early as the story about Noah in the Book of Genesis 9, 2021.2
That the early Muslims knew about alcohol is clear from the references in
pre-Islamic poetry about the existence of a trade in wine, supplied by
Christian and Jewish merchants to the monasteries that dotted the Arabian
2

Francois Clement (ed.), Les vins dOrient. 4000 ans divresse (Nantes, 2008), introd., 8.

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under his Latin name Rhazes) are credited with the invention of the process of
distillation. Throughout history, Muslim rulers and their courtiers have consumed alcohol, often in huge quantities and sometimes in public view; the
examples of ordinary Muslims violating their religions ban on drinking are
too numerous to count; and, while alcohol is strictly forbidden in many
modern Muslim countries, quite a few, from Tunisia and Turkey to Syria,
Egyptexcept during Ramadanand Indonesia, allow for its (restricted)
sale and consumption.
The Islamic world is far too large and complex for generalizations to have
any validity, yet one is struck by the similarities throughout its history and
across the lands where it came to prevail, in the manifestations of drinking
and in the ambivalent approach to alcohol, most clearly expressed in attempts
to keep up the appearance of sobriety in the face of reality. The first part of this
essay will discuss some of these similarities, the customs and traditions that
transcend geography and time to form cultural patterns. The second part will
focus on the central lands where Islam became the dominant faith after its
great conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries. Within that zone I will
single out two early modern states, Safavid Iran and the Ottoman Empire,
with the aim of comparing and contrasting their respective drinking customs
in order to identify the extent to which these conformed to traditions carried
over from earlier times and to what extent these reveal new, early modern
consumption patterns. The third part, focusing on the nineteenth-century
Ottoman state and Qajar Iran, will explore the effects on alcohol consumption resulting from the intrusion of trade-based capitalism and the concomitant adoption of western-style modernization by these countries elites. The
essay concludes with a survey of the divergent trajectories with regard to
drinking taken by the two modern countries that emerged from these
states, Turkey and Iran.

102 Rudi Matthee

Kathryn Kueny, The Rhetoric of Sobriety: Wine in Early Islam (Albany, NY, 2001), 89ff.
Ibid., 66.
5
Devin J. Stewart, Islamic Legal Orthodoxy. Twelver Shiite Response to the Sunni Legal
System (Salt Lake City, 1998), 47.
6
Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, and Ancient Babylonia, etc. etc. during the
Years, 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820 (London, 18212), 3478.
7
Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Princeton,
2000), 4812.
4

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Peninsula.3 This familiarity is also reflected in the Koran, which is ambiguous

about alcohol, evincing a progressively negative sequence in a series of discreet, evocative statements, with regard to its properties and its consumption, clearly in response to a particular set of human circumstances.4 It
praises wine as Gods gift and recognizes it as a source of enjoyment, but
etherealizes it by giving it a place in paradise. Presumably reflecting the
problems Mohammad and the first few caliphs had with drunkenness
among their followers, Islams sacred text (5:901) ultimately condemns
grape wine (khamr) for its effect, intoxication, which interferes with the
clear-headedness needed for the proper execution of its religious commands.
There is also relief of a different kind for those who transgress. Most importantly, those who cannot resist drinking in contravention of the Holy Law
can find comfort in the Islamic notion that sin can be expiated through
repentance. Sin in Islam is the wilful act of turning ones back to God,
which means that the act can be reversed. Drinking alcohol thus is a transgression for which atonement or a specific punishment is prescribed.
Drinking is bad, but the act as such does not turn the actor into a heretic,
excluding him irrevocably from the community of believers. It is heretical,
rather, to consider it permissible to drink alcohol.5 It also helps if the alcohol
one consumes is manufactured by a non-Muslim, for this absolves the person
who drinks at least to some extent from the intentionality or the premeditated
nature of the offence.6
Shifting the focus from sin to shame, the imbiber is offered a place of refuge
of sorts in the form of the respect Islam has always evinced for the privacy of
the inner home, the sanctuary of the family and its honour. In an approach
that favours procedure over substance, a strong Islamic, prophetically underwritten injunction about the impermissibility of prying into peoples private
lives for hidden sinso as not to bring shame on themhas often provided
some kind of legal shelter against the intrusion of the state by way of a morality police.7 In other words, since social solidarity is an important virtue in
traditional Islamic culture, as long as drinking and other proscribed activities

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 103

Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, trans. Edward
Seymour Forster (Oxford, 1927), 910.
9
Reinhold Lubenau, Beschreibung der Reisen des Reinhold Lubenau, ed. W. Sahm, 2 vols.
(Konigsberg, 1914, repr. Frankfurt a/M, 1995), 1, 260.
10
Jean Chardin, Voyages du chevalier Chardin en Perse et en autres lieux de lOrient, ed. L.
Langle`s, 10 vols. and atlas (Paris, 181011), III, 218; IV, 6970.

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remained confined to the private sphere, the community tended to keep up

appearances by pretending that no infringement was taking place.
From the sixteenth century onward foreign observers have commented on
the tendency among Muslims to drink to excess, linking the formal ban on
drinking to heavy drinking. As the Flemish Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq,
Austrian envoy to Istanbul in the mid-sixteenth century, put it, the drinking
of wine is regarded by the Turks as a serious crime, especially by the older
men; the younger men can commit the sin with greater hope of pardon and
excuse. They think, however, that the punishment which they will suffer in
future life will be just as heavy whether they drink much or little, and so, if
they taste wine, they drink deep.8 Reinhold Lubenau, who in 1587 visited
Istanbul as a pharmacist attached to an Austrian mission, similarly reports
how Muslim Turks, invited to his house, would burst into loud shrieking
before putting the glass to their lips, in hopes that their soul might move
elsewhere while they engaged in drinking, so as not to become tainted by this
sin. He claimed that, since the transgression was thought to be punishable
regardless of the volume of the intake, people would keep drinking until they
collapsed on the floor.9 Jean Chardin, the most astute outside observer of
seventeenth-century Iran, insisted that to get drunk fast was the purpose of
drinking for Iranians, which is why they appreciated strong wines. Echoing
Lubenaus comments, he also recounts how Iranians would recoil while
drinking, treating alcohol like a medicine to be swallowed rather than
enjoyed.10
That quick inebriation was often the point of drinking relates to the fact
that alcohol in Islamic culture was not synonymous with sociability. Given its
status as a forbidden substance, alcohol in a Muslim environment could never
become fully integrated into the idea of good living. In the Greek symposium
tradition, alcohol might enliven court sessions, and it was taken for granted as
part of the lifestyle of the elite, but it remained a forbidden fruit, and thus
could not escape furtive embrace amid public disavowal. Unacknowledged,
alcohol in the Islamic world never became an accompaniment to food,
enhancing the convivial atmosphere of the meal, the way it did in
Mediterranean and Christian/European culture. As foreign visitors noted,
meals in the Islamic Middle East were typically taken in silence and rather

104 Rudi Matthee

II

In the Arabian Peninsula, where wine was hardly indigenous, Islams formal
ban on alcohol was of little consequence. Elsewhere, the spread of new faith
hardly interrupted a long tradition of alcohol consumption. This is certainly
true for two vast areas that were initially conquered and that were also among
11

12

See Hele`ne Desmet-Gregoire, Cuisine et modernite: A travers lexemple de la Turquie. La

migration des saisons (Istanbul, 2012), 1378.
Ralph Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses. The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval
Near East (Seattle, 1985), 78.

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quickly, to be concluded with a glass of water. Only afterwards would the

(male) host and his guests engage in discussionover coffee or tea and with
the enjoyment of the water pipe, and often in a different room.11
Class played a role as well in the consumption of alcohol. Those who drank
in the Middle East hailed predominantly from the high end of the social
spectrum. Piousness and with it, abstemiousness, was most prevalent
among the middling classes. The upper classes drank from a sense of entitlement, enjoying alcohol as a right, one of the privileges traditionally granted
to the elite, khass, in Islamic lands. Abstention was something for commoners, the avvam, unable to restrain themselves. The lower classes
tended to use other drugs, especially opiumwhich is not explicitly condemned in either the Koran or the Prophetic Traditionsto while away
boredom, to find oblivion from miserable lives and, above all, as a form of
self-medication. To the extent that commoners drank it was part of a subculture of subterfuge and furtiveness, with people sneaking off to taverns
located in back alleys in the non-Muslim quarters of town, run by Jews,
Armenians, or Greeks. Taverns in Islamic lands remained disreputable, associated with the seamy side of life, and the tavern owner occupied roughly the
same place on the social scale as the prostitute, the overt homosexual, and the
itinerant entertainer.12 In these conditions drinking remained hidden, invisible, even though it took place in full view. Drinking, after all, was
common in court circles and among the elite, and Muslims frequented taverns. But since alcohol was formally outlawed, it could not be linked to reality,
so that wine became a metaphor for the ardent feelings of the lover for the
beloved in the imaginary world of (mystical) poetry. Unlike coffee, religiously
controversial for being stimulating and distracting, alcohol could never
become the subject of a public discourse, just as the tavern, operating in
the shadows, could never become part of a quasi-public sphere, unlike the
often open and airy coffee house, a communal extension of the private
home and the basis for political action.

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 105

13

14

15

16

17
18

Patrick McGovern, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic
Beverages (Berkeley, 2009), 82.
Jean Bottero, Boisson, banquet, et vie sociale. In L. Milano (ed.), Drinking in Ancient
Societies: History and Culture in the Ancient Near East (Padua, 1994), 113.
Edgar Weber, Le vin dans la tradition arabo-musulmane, in Clement (ed.), Les vins
dOrient, 5483.
See P. A. Norrie, The History of Wine as a Medicine, in Merton Sandler and Roger
Pinder (eds), Wine. A Scientific Exploration (London and New York, 2003), 2155, esp.
356.
Ibid., 64.
Christiane Lange, Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination
(Cambridge, 2008), 56, 82, 185, 227.

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the worlds oldest wine-growing and wine-drinking culturesthe

Mediterranean basin and greater Iran, encompassing Mesopotamia, the
Iranian plateau, the Caucasus, as well as Central Asia as far as the Oxus
(Amu Darya) River. The Mediterranean tradition of viniculture is so well
known as not to need any elaboration, yet the worlds earliest wine culture,
going back some 9,000 years, has been located rather farther to the east, in the
eastern Taurus, the Caucasus, and the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran.13
Pre-Islamic Mesopotamia was the land of wine-soaked royal banquets, of
alcohol-induced divination, and of prophecy inspired by intoxicating
drinks.14 In Zoroastrianism, wine symbolized liquid gold and the flowing
fire of the radiant sun, and as such had a ritual function, being part of a
libation ritual, in which it substituted for blood. Ancient and late antique
Iranian elite history could be written as the history of razm va bazm (fighting
and feasting), with wine at the centre.
As a result, many (newly converted) Muslims continued to consume alcohol, and especially wine, with an alacrity barely dimmed by a guilty conscience. Pre-Islamic poets had drawn their inspiration from wine, and the
khamriyya, a form of Bacchic poetry, survived the Islamic proscription to
thrive in the eighth-century Omayyad state.15 Wine also retained the various
medical benefits ascribed to it by physicians in pre-Islamic times.16 Drinking
was ubiquitous at the secular-minded Abbasid court of Baghdad, to the point
where the caliph carousing with his boon companions came to represent a
topos.17 Then, as later, anti-alcohol measures tended to target public consumption, seeking to avoid public scandal in the form of disturbances and
brawls, rather than private drinking. The authorities typically tolerated semipublic drinking, and only curbed it when it overstepped its implicitly accepted boundaries of privacy and led to urban unrest. Violators were typically
fined or, rather rarely, flogged or paraded in public.18

106 Rudi Matthee

19

20
21

22

23

Francois Clement, Vignes et vins dans lEspagne musulmane, in Clement (ed.), Les vins
dOrient, 87.
Heine, Weinstudien, 127.
Hildebert Isnard, La vigne en Algerie. Etude geographique, 2 vols (Paris, 1947), I, 2612,
265.
Ehsan Yarshater, The Theme of Wine-Drinking and the Concept of the Beloved in Early
Persian Poetry, Studia Islamica 13 (1960), 43.
Dick Davis, Wine and Persian Poetry, in Najmieh Batmangelij, From Persia to Napa.
Wine at the Persian Table (Washington DC, 2006), 62.

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From Andalusia in the far west to Khorasan on the eastern marches of the
Islamic empire, wine drinking flourished in the classical age of Islam. Spain,
with a climate and soil that allow the grape to grow almost everywhere, had a
viticulture going back to the sixth century BCE.19 The Omayyad rulers of Spain,
including the most famous one, Abd Al-Rahman III (r. 91261), were known
for their fondness of wine. The eleventh-century king of Grenada, Badis,
remained in his palace, engaged in drinking, for such a long time that
people thought he had died. And the last of the so-called Party Kings of
Seville (in reference to their divisiveness, not their lifestyle) Muhammad
ibn Abbad al-Mutamid (r. 106991), ruler as well as poet, sought oblivion
in wine as the invading Almoravids stood at the gates of his city.20 In North
Africa Islam managed to erase virtually all traces of Christianity, yet proved
unable to eradicate a long-standing tradition of viniculture and viticulture.
Medieval Arab authors describing the region mention the production of wine
made of dates, of honey and dry raisins. As elsewhere, Jews were often the ones
who engaged in the trade of all kinds of fermented drinks.21
In the eastern half of the empire, encompassing modern Iran and
Afghanistan, matters were little different. The rulers of the Saffarid and
Samanid dynasties, the first to seek autonomy from their Abbasid overlords,
are known for the gusto with which they and their entourage indulged in
wine-drinking.22 Modern Persian poetry, which originated at the courts of
these rulers, is replete with vivid references to wine bibbing, its rituals and its
symbols. Mystical (Sufi) poetry, much of it written in Persian as well, is even
more drenched in wine. Its wine-related metaphors, most powerfully expressed by Hafez of Shiraz, include the handsome cupbearer as the object
of desire, the refraction of the ruby red wine in the goblet as a symbol of divine
radiance, the wine shop, meykhaneh, standing for the realm of angels, and
the libertine image of the free-spirited Sufi drunk who spills wine on the payer
mat to show his contempt for clerical bigotry and hypocrisy. It is not always
easy to distinguish between the metaphorical use of wine and references to the
real thing, yet often the literal meaning seems to be the only plausible one.23

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 107

III

The rulers of the dynasties that came to rule the Middle East from the tenth
century were either ethnic Turks or Mongols hailing from the steppes of
Central Asia. Both groups were known for their bibulousnessalbeit
mostly involving kumiss, fermented mares milk, in the case of the
Mongols.27 Their drinking patterns, combined with the Islamic tradition
already in place, were carried over into Safavid Iran, named after the dynasty,
the Safavids, which ruled the country between 1501 and 1722, and to a lesser
extent, the Ottoman Empire, which expanded from its fourteenth-century
western Anatolian origins to become the largest, most powerful and longestlasting Muslim state in the early modern period.
The early Safavids exemplify a type of pre-modern elite drinking combining ancient pre-Islamic traditions with the customs of the Central Asian
steppes and, following the introduction of numerous Georgians and
Armenians as slave soldiers and bureaucrats, the rites and rituals of
Christianity. The head of a wild tribal warrior band, revered by his followers
as an incarnation of the divine, and espousing a form of Twelve Shiism
suffused with pre-Islamic semi-pagan customs and rituals, the first Safavid
shah, Shah Ismail (r. 150124), drank copiously, in public, banquet-style,
24

25
26

27

See Nina Ergin, Rock Faces: Opium and Wine. Speculations on the Original Viewing
Context of Persian Manuscripts, Der Islam 90:1 (2013), 6599.
Davis, Wine and Persian Poetry, 59.
See Kay Kavus ibn Iskandar ibn Qabus, A Mirror for Princes. The Qabus nama, trans.
Reuben Levy (New York, 1951), 5760; and Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Government or
Rules for Kings. The Siyar al-Muluk or Siyasat-nama, trans. Hubert Darke (Richmond,
Surrey, 1960, repr. 2002), 119.
For Mongol drinking, see Antti Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols in the Middle of the
Thirteenth Century. Encountering the Other (Helsinki, 2001), 11029.

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The many hallucinatory images of swaying rocks and undulating landscapes

in Persian miniatures depicting Sufis certainly point in that direction.24 And
although some poets hint at a sense of unease endorsing a practice at variance
with the Islamic law, there is in fact little suggestion in any of their works that
wine is intrinsically sinful.25 The bon viveur image of the cultured courtier
included not just the actual quaffing of wine, but presupposed knowledge
about when and how to serve and consume it, and, of course, how to come to
terms with the fact that it is formally forbidden in Islam. All this is reflected in
the medieval Persianate Adab and Nasihat, Mirror for Princes literature,
which includes advice involving hospitality and etiquette with regard to
royal drinking parties in its guidelines for proper conduct.26

108 Rudi Matthee

28

29
30

31

For more on alcohol in the Safavid period and, in general, in Iranian history, see Rudi
Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure; Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 15001900
(Princeton, 2005), chs. 2, 3, and 6; and Rudi Matthee, The Ambiguities of Wine in
Iranian History: Between Excess and Abstention, in Florian Schwarz, Ralph Kauz, and
Bert Fragner (eds), Wine in Iranian History (Vienna, 2014), 130.
Pietro della Valle, Viaggi di Pietro della Valle, 2 vols, ed. Gancia (Brighton, 1845), I, 668.
Abul Mafakher b. Fazl Allah al-Hoseyni Savaneh-negar Tafreshi, Tarikh-e Shah Safi, ed.
Mohsen Bahramnezhad (Tehran, 1388/2010), 223; and Matthee, The Pursuit of
Pleasure, 523.
J.-B. Tavernier, Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier en Turquie, en Perse et en Indes
(Paris, 1678), 579; Fasai, Farsnameh-ye Naseri, 2 vols paginated as one (Tehran, 1367/
1988), 477.

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surrounded by his warriors, who feasted as hard as they foughtbefore and

after going into battle. Paradoxically, the shahs hard drinking did nothing to
detract from his aura, indeed augmented it. By drinking in public Ismail
projected the image of a ruler who inhabited his own moral universe, beyond
the strictures of religion, and drinking copiously marked him as a tribal chief,
a big man able to hold his liquor.28
The dynasty lost some of its divine aura with the terrible defeat Shah Ismail
suffered against the Ottomans on the battlefield of Chalderan in 1514.
Turning inward, his successor, Shah Tahmasb (r. 152476), sought salvation
through repentance, and abstained from intoxicating substances for life. Yet
most shahs who came after him drank again, and some drank in excess. With
the exception of Shah Ismail all Safavid shahs declared bans on drinking at
one point or another during their reign. At the same time, most continued to
tipple themselves, and several are known, or are likely, to have died from
overconsumption. Many high officials and even some high-ranking clerics
appear to have been heavy drinkers as well. Shah Abbas I (r. 15871629), the
greatest of the Safavid kings, was an exception for drinking in moderation,
surrounded by his courtiers and quite often foreign guests, who were allowed
to quaff from his own gold goblet. Shah Abbas was also heir to a long tradition of Iranian rulers, going all the way back to the Achaemenids, who used
alcohol to loosen lips among his courtiers.29
Shah Abbass grandson and successor, Safi I (r. 162942) declared a ban on
alcohol upon coming to power. Yet, advised by his physicians to treat a cold
that his opium use had caused with alcohol, he soon succumbed to hard
drinking, to die from dipsomania in 1642.30 His successor, Shah Abbas II,
proclaimed a ban on drinking when he acceded to the throne at the tender age
of nine in 1642.31 Seven years later, still in his teens, he took up the cup during
a triumphant return from a campaign that had gained him mastery over
Qandahar. The chronicler who narrates the events justifies the shahs

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 109

32

33
34
35

Mohammad-Yusof Valeh Esfahani, Khold-e barin. Iran dar zaman-e Shah Safi wa Shah
Abbas-devvom, ed. M. Naseri (Tehran, 1380/2001), 480.
Tavernier, Les six voyages, 544.
Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure, 8590.
Ibid., 924.

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change of heart by referring to an old adage also proffered in the Mirror of

Princes literature, according to which God and the law both permit happiness
and pleasure, especially in youth. In this reasoning, the shah in particular
enjoys the right to unbounded pleasure as long as he does not neglect his
realm and his subjects.32 Like his great grandfather, Shah Abbas I, Shah
Abbas II showed a remarkable bonhomie toward his foreign guests, inviting
them to his frequent drinking sessions.33 The relaxed mood was interrupted
when in 1653 the sheikh al-islam of Isfahan urged the shah to foreswear wine
as a way to prevent the Mughals from retaking Qandahar. In customary
fashion, the ban became moot within a year; life returned to its normal
state of ambiguity, and the shah resumed his previous lifestyle, drinking
lustily until his death in 1666.34
Exemplifying the shift the Safavid state had undergone in the century and a
half since its inceptionfrom tribal dispensation to agrarian-based urbancentred politythe last two shahs of the dynasty, Soleyman (r. 166694) and
Soltan Hoseyn (r. 16941722), no longer ruled as warrior kings, patrolling
their realm and engaged in endless campaigns. Instead, they reigned as stationary monarchs, ensconced in their palace, where they engaged in lust and
play, as the Persian sources call it. They, too, issued bans on the consumption
of alcohol. Indeed, the inauguration ceremony of the exceedingly pious
Soltan Hoseyn included a ban on frivolous pastimes such as kite-flying, on
the public appearance of women unaccompanied by male relatives, and on
the use of intoxicants. Six thousand bottles of wine were taken from the royal
cellar and demonstratively poured out on Isfahans main square. Yet, the
proscription lapsed less than two years after the shahs accession, removed
at the behest of his great-aunt who, herself addicted, persuaded the king to
take up the bottle.35
The Ottoman Empire was different. True to their semi-nomadic background, its early rulers were ambulant warriors, too. Yet with the conquest
of Constantinople in 1453, Ottoman rulers prematurely came to preside over
an urban-based stationary court. Henceforth the sultan reigned from the
privacy of the Topkap palace, and his drinking thus remained hidden
from view. Some sultans were notorious tipplers; others are known to have
been teetotallers. Suleyman the Magnificent (r. 152066), in Busbecqs words,
lived modestly and was never seduced by wine (or by pederasty, a common

110 Rudi Matthee

36
37

38

39
40

41

42

Busbecq, The Turkish Letters.

Franciscus de Billerberg, [Most Rare and Straunge Discourses, of Amurathe the Turkish
Emperor that now is with the Warres betweene Him and the Persians: The Turkish Triumph,
Lately Had at Constantinople.] (1584) (London?, 1584), unpag. (2).
Metin And, Istanbul in the 16th Century. The City. The Palace, Daily Life (Istanbul, 1994),
187.
De Billerberg, [Most Rare and Straunge Discourses], unpag. (2).
See James Grehan, Everyday Life and Consumer Culture in 18th-Century Damascus
(Seattle, 2007), 134.
Jelena Mrgic, Wine or RakiThe Interplay of Climate and Society in Early Modern
Ottoman Bosnia, Environment and History, 17 (2011), 633.
Busbecq, The Turkish Letters, 19.

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indulgence in the Ottoman Empire as much as in Iran).36 The German chaplain Franciscus de Billerberg (Franz Billerbeck), who spent time in Istanbul in
the 1580s, called Murad III (r. 157495) a teetotaller as well.37 He also contradicts Busbecq, who attributed the good order in the sultans military to an
absence of intoxicating drinks in the regular army.38 The troops of Murads
father, Selim II (r. 156674), De Billerberg insists, could not be compelled to
abstain from wine.39 Indeed, alcohol consumption seems to have been rife
among the Ottoman soldiery, most notably in the ranks of the notoriously
unruly Janissaries.40
Other than consumption by dervishes, about which we have limited information, and with the exception of conditions in the Balkans and Greece, the
use of alcohol in the Ottoman Empire among civilians was largely confined to
the cities. In the Balkans the old tradition of wine drinking continued with
little noticeable abatement, even in the countryside, with the interesting twist
that Muslims in Bosnia seem to have obeyed the wine prohibition prescribed
by the Sharia while considering raki, an anise-flavoured spirit distilled from
grapes, to be permitted by Islam. Sarajevo was home to twenty-one taverns in
the second half of the eighteenth century.41
But even in urban centres, the nature of drinking was determined by the
type of inhabitants. The Ottoman Empire was fundamentally different from
Iran in that a large percentage of its originally Christian population never
converted to Islam. This was particularly true in the Balkans and on Aegean
islands such as Naxos and Mytilini (Lesbos) and Chios, which supplied most
of the wine consumed in Ottoman lands, but also in the port cities such as
Istanbul and Izmir. Since dhimmis were officially exempt from liquor laws,
alcohol might be obtained wherever they dwelled. Hence taverns, meyhanehs,
watering holes tucked away in side alleys and run by indigenous Greeks,
Armenians, or Jews, were predominantly found in port cities and invariably
located in the Christian part of town.42 In 1829 all of the 554 taverns in

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 111

43

44

45

46

47
48

49

Francois Georgeon, Ottomans and Drinkers: The Consumption of Alcohol in Istanbul in

the Nineteenth Century, in Eugene Rogan (ed.), Outside In: On the Margins of the
Modern Middle East (London and New York, 2002), 12.
Edhem Eldem, Istanbul: From Imperial to Peripheralized Capital, in Edhem Eldem,
Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters (eds), The Ottoman City between East and West.
Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul (Cambridge, 1999), 150.
Daniel Goffman, Izmir: From Village to Colonial Port City, in Eldem, Goffman, and
Masters (eds), The Ottoman City, 94, quoting the French botanist Joseph Pitton de
Tournefort.
Grehan, Everyday Life and Consumer Culture, 134; and James Mather, Pashas. Traders
and Travellers in the Islamic World (New Haven and London, 2009), 78.
Jean-Jacques Luth, La vie quotidienne en Egypte au temps des Khedives (Paris, 1998), 180.
Edward Lane, The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (New York, 1908; repr.
1966), 96; Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, A Social History of Ottoman Istanbul (Cambridge,
2010), 189.
Laurent dArvieux, Memoires du Chevalier dArvieux, in Hussein I. El-Mudarris and
Oliver Salmon (eds), Le consulat de France a` Alep au XVIIe sie`cle (Damascus, 2009), 344.

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Istanbul were run by non-Muslims.43 The availability of wine and other

pleasures gave the citys Christian quarters across the Golden Horn, Galata
and, later, Pera, an image of otherness, eliciting a reaction part abhorrence
part envy from Ottoman commentators.44 In eighteenth-century Smyrna
(modern Izmir) the non-Muslim community kept its taverns open all
Hours, Day and Night.45 In Aleppo greater restrictions applied. There,
Ottoman officials and Janissaries were known tipplers, and drinking by
Sufis seeking ecstasy was generally tolerated, but, beyond private dwellings,
the consumption of alcohol was confined to the Han al-gumruk, the customs
hostel where (foreign) merchants were lodged.46 In nineteenth-century
Egypt, the Coptic population distilled arak from dates, while local Greeks
produced tafia, a sweet beverage of poor quality made with molasses and
sugar cane.47 Boza, a beer-like drink made of fermented millet and of low
alcoholic content, was consumed in Egypt, too, as it was elsewhere in the
Ottoman Empire, mostly by members of the lower classes whiling away time
in bozahanehs, establishments of a distinctly disreputable fame.48
Muslims would only frequent these establishments stealthily, fearful of the
punishment that awaited those who were caught. Meanwhile most people,
Muslims and the People of the Book alike, drank in the privacy of their
homes. In seventeenth-century Aleppo, people, Muslims as well as Jews and
Christians, would buy enormous amounts of grapes, to turn these into wine at
home.49 As in Iran, Ottoman authorities periodically issued bans on alcohol
consumption while turning a blind eye to Christian drinking, or indeed to the

112 Rudi Matthee

50
51

52

And, Istanbul in the 16th Century, 188; Boyar and Fleet, A Social History of Istanbul, 195.
zlem Kumrular, The Role of Wine in Ottoman Society. A Collective Vice: Restrictions
O
zlem Kumrular, The Ottoman World, Europe and the
and Disobedience to the Laws, in O
Mediterranean (Istanbul, 2012), 188; and Suraiya Faroqhi, Subjects of the Sultan: Culture
and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (London and New York, 2000), 215.
Madeline C. Zilfi, The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age
(16001800) (Minneapolis, 1988), 129ff.

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boozing of the Janissaries, taking bribes to allow the latter to indulge.50 Most
sultans proscribed alcohol and, with it, controversial consumables such as
coffee and tobacco at one point or another during their reign, whether upon
acceding to the throne, or in order to propitiate the heavens during natural
disaster or on the eve of a military campaign, motivated by religious fervour,
pressured by the ulama, mindful of the approach of old age and the reckoning
in the hereafter, or, simply seeking to maintain public order. Suleyman thus
forbade the public sale of wine in the 1540s, making it difficult even for nonMuslims to obtain any.51 Similar bans were issued by his successors, Selim II
(156674), Murad III (157495), Mehmed III (r. 15951603), Ahmed I
(r. 160317), and Murad IV (162340). The latter, an alcoholic himself,
was particularly severe in his reaction to public drinking, killing violators
encountered during incognito nocturnal outings with his own hand. The ban
on drinking issued during his reign was part of a larger offensive known as the
Kadzadeli movement. Named after Kadzade Mehmed (15821635), a
preacher from the provinces who in 1631 rose to become the highest religious
state official, the Kadzadeli movement long after its founders death continued to exert pressure on the state to act against improper practices associated
with its main target, Sufism, not just drinking but smoking and musicmaking as well. In 1662, following a terrible fire in Istanbul and an outbreak
of pestilence, disasters that the ulama blamed on unislamic practices, the sale
of wine was prohibited within the walls of Istanbul, comprising the Muslim
quarter of the city. Eight years later, the ban was tightened by being extended,
first to any neighbourhood that housed a mosque, and next to private use
even among non-Muslims.52 Naturally, such bans proved unenforceable, and
soon wine-drinking and selling resumed.
The frequency and sequential nature of these decrees indeed suggest that
they were largely incantatory. The ban Sultan Selim III (r. 17891808)
decreed upon his accession to power in 1789 foundered in the face of creative
circumventionwith Muslim males disguised as non-Muslim women
sneaking drinks into their homesbut failed above all for economic reasons.
The people of the Aegean islands, deprived of income, filed numerous petitions protesting their loss of livelihood. Most important was the loss in much

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 113

IV

Alcohol and the venues where it was consumed could never be agents of
change in the Islamic world. Taverns fundamentally differed from coffeehouses because wine was fundamentally different from coffee (and tobacco),
both of which conquered the world long after the emergence of Islam. When
they were first introduced, coffee and tobacco sparked lively debates about
their commensurability with religious norms and values, in Islam as much as
in Christianity. Eighteenth-century European coffeehouses (and taverns),
venues where commercial transactions took place and news was collected
and distributed, were incubators of capitalism and modern politics. Over
time, coffeehouses in the Middle East played a similar modernizing role
in the sense that they contributed to the creation of a cultural public
sphere separate from the mosque.54 Taverns, however, never assumed that
function, could not assume that function. They had no chance to nourish
their own distinct social life, for their raison detre, drinking, invited just
denial and repression, or at most connivance.55
53

54

55

Cengiz Kirli, The Struggle over Space: Coffeehouses of Ottoman Istanbul, 17801845
(Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton, 2000), 5862.
rs,
For the Ottoman case, see, besides Kirli, The Struggle over Space; Ilay O
Coffeehouses, Cosmopolitanism, and Pluralizing Modernity in Istanbul, Journal of
zkocak, Coffeehouses:
Mediterranean Studies, 12 (2002), 11945; Selam Akyazici O
Rethinking the Public and Private in Early Modern Istanbul, Journal of Urban History
33 (2007), 96586; and, arguing that the Ottoman coffeehouse was a heterotopic space
rather than a public venue conforming to Habermass model, Alan Mikhail, The Hearts
Desire: Gender, Urban Space, and the Ottoman Coffee House, in Dana Sajdi (ed.),
Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee. Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century
(London, 2007), 13370.
James Grehan, Smoking and Early Modern Sociability: The Great Tobacco Debate in
the Ottoman Middle East (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries), American Historical
Review, 111 (2006), 1375.

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needed state revenue. Spirits taxes were a problematic issue, for to impose
them was to acknowledge, indeed, encourage the use of alcohol, which is why
they were abolished soon after being introduced in the seventeenth century.
Drinking proved to be too lucrative a source of income for the state, though,
and by the late eighteenth century the (reinstated) tax on alcoholic beverages
was a major source of revenue for the Ottoman state. Pragmatism, in other
words, tended to prevail: people, and certainly dhimmis, were left alone in
their drinking as long the public order was not disturbed, and rulers often
effectively stimulated consumption for the tax revenue it yielded, even if they
would never advertise this inclination.53

114 Rudi Matthee

56

57

58

Robert Walsh, Residence at Constantinople during the Period including the

Commencement, Progress, and Termination of the Greek and Turkish Revolutions, 2 vols
(London, 1836), vol. 2, 2756.
Philip Mansel, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (New Haven and
London, 2011), 54, 168.
Ibid.; and Yavuz Kose, Westlicher Konsum am Bosporus: Warenhauser, Nestle & Co. im
spaten Osmanischen Reich (18551923) (Munich, 2010), 1645.

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This does not mean that the onset of the modern age in the form of a
creeping growth of European influence on the lifestyle of the elite classes did
not help change drinking practices in the nineteenth-century Ottoman
Empire and in Qajar Iran; it didalbeit in different ways.
As elsewhere in the Muslim world, in the Ottoman Empire water remained
the customary drink of the Anatolian heartland, and any changes that
occurred in consumption patterns left most parts of the empire, especially
Arabia, totally unaffected. The availability of alcohol in port cities such as
Istanbul, Alexandria, and Izmir increased with the growth of the expatriate
European population in the nineteenth century. Expanding trade relations
and the signing of commercial treaties with European powers brought in new
western drinks, such as rum and champagne, enabling non-Ottoman subjects
to open up taverns as well. The modernizing Sultan Mahmud II (r. 180839)
set the tone for more open elite consumption of alcoholic beverages. Robert
Walsh, Irish chaplain to the British embassy in Istanbul in 182027, observed
how under this ruler the former curtailing practices had become restrained,
and how the sultan himself, though formerly a very temperate man, [had]
adopted the use of wine as one of the European customs to which he has made
such approximations. He called Mahmud particularly fond of champagne,
adding that a bottle was set beside him every day at dinner, and noted that
Ottoman officials drank as freely as any of the company during receptions
given by European ambassadors, always preferring a large goblet and never
mixing their drinks with water.56 A preference for European spirits thus
became a marker of modernity for the upper classes taking their cue from
the palace. Mahmud IIs successor, Sultan Abdulmecid (r. 183961), a gentle
sybarite, would visit representatives of the Christian community of Izmir,
occasions where alcohol was served in a semi-public fashion, and was sometimes too drunk to stay on his horse.57 It was mostly French wines, especially
Bordeaux, which gained some popularity in the late nineteenth century, even
if its clientele was mostly limited to foreign residents and rich Ottoman citizenswho were said not to like French wine and only to put it on the tables to
show off their sophistication.58 Wine, meanwhile, never caught on in the
Turkish heartlanddespite the fact that at the turn of the twentieth century

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 115

59

60
61

62

63
64

Revue Commerciale du Levant. Bulletin Mensuel de la Chambre de Commerce Francaise de

Constantinople, 261, Vins et spiritueux (31 Dec. 1908), 807 and 3227, Vins et spiritueux (1914, first semester), 83.
Revue Commerciale du Levant, 261, Vins et spiritueux (31 Dec. 1908), 808.
Malte Furhman, Beer, the Drink of a Changing World. Beer Consumption and
Production on the Shores of the Aegean in the 19th Century, Turcica, 45 (2013, forthcoming 2014); quoting Anna Forneris, Schicksale und Erelebnisse einer Karntnerin wahrend ihrer Reisen in verschieden Landern (Laibach, 1849; repr. Klagenfurt, 1985), 5664.
Fuhrman, Beer, the Drink of a Changing World; and Revue Commerciale du Levant,
3227, Vins et spiritueux (1914, 1st semester), 96.
Revue Commerciale du Levant, 3227, 78.
Revue Commerciale du Levant, 196201, Raki et aperitifs (1903, 2nd semester), 119.

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the Ottoman sheikh al-islam declared it legal for Muslims to consume it if

they thought it beneficial for their health.59 Locally produced brands were
(and are) mediocre, especially the white varietyIstanbuls francophone
Bulletin of the Chamber of Commerce in 1902 called it simplement horribleand were mainly consumed by Greeks.60
Beer, first introduced by German immigrants in the 1830s, made inroads
from the middle of the nineteenth century, first in Izmir and later in Istanbul.61
Izmir was home to two breweries by the 1860s. By the turn of the century, beer
had become the second most favoured alcoholic drink in Ottomans lands
after raki. Izmir especially, the most Levantine of Ottoman cities, by then had
developed a sophisticated drinking culture, with many brasseries and beer gardens that encountered little opposition, in part because there was no religious
stigma attached to beer.62 In Istanbul matters appear to have been less relaxed.
Initially, the beer houses of Pera, small, unregulated and ephemeral, catered
mostly to travellers, expatriates, and sailors. In the 1890s, drinking moved to the
district near Taksim Square, which became the centre of a newly developing
middle class leisure culture, with brasseries, cafes chantants, and casinos run by
Greeks crowding out the traditional meyhanes and s araphanes.
By far the most popular alcoholic drink became mastik, distilled with anis,
and especially raki, mastic without the resin. Imported from Chios, raki
became a popular aperitif in the late nineteenth centuryconsumed by
everyone, Christians, Jews and, above all, it was said, by Muslims. Taken
with mezze, light snacks that increased thirst and helped digest the alcohol,
raki at the turn of the twentieth century became known as Turkeys national
drink.63 In 1903, the annual consumption in Istanbul alone was estimated at
37,000 hectolitres.64
Beer, mostly consumed in a solitary rather than a sociable ambiance,
long remained associated with foreignness and superficial modernization
especially in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, as the Young Turk

116 Rudi Matthee

65

66

67

Kose, Westlicher Konsum am Bosporus, 1645; Georgeon, Ottomans and Drinkers,

1618; and Fuhrman, Beer, the Drink of a Changing World.
Mansell, Levant, 214; Giles Milton, Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922. The Destruction of a
Christian City in the Islamic World (New York, 2008), 284.
Stanford Shaw, The Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Tax Reforms and Revenue System,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 6 (1975), 4423; Kose, Westlicher Konsum am
Bosporus, 151, and 170; and Fuhrmann, Beer, the Drink of a Changing World. As late as
1903 the Ottoman authorities outlawed the consumption of alcohol for Muslims, causing
the consumption of raki to drop by 40 per cent. See Revue Commerciale du Levant,
196201, Raki et aperitifs (1903, 2nd semester), 126.

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government came to emphasize patriotism. Raki, by contrast, was to gain a

status as indigenous, more authentic, patriotically accepted. Raki also won
out over imported and increasingly popular fare such as cognac (and knockoff substitutes), either because it was cheaper or because it allowed Muslims
to circumvent the Koranic prohibition, which did not explicitly target a drink
of relatively recent vintage like raki.65 This beerraki controversy gained in
poignancy during the First Balkan War, and Ataturk, a life-long raki aficionado, following the Turkish capture of Smyrna in 1922 famously ordered a raki
upon entering the city.66
These developments remained confined to port cities, including Salonica
and Beirut. Even so, there was clerical opposition to the relaxation of the
strictures on drinking in public, and the imposition of a uniform spirits tax in
the Tanzimat period. Such resistance seems to have quieted in the later part of
the century, and especially with the onset of the Public Debt Administration,
which made taxes, including the excise on alcohol, a matter of paying debt,
lending it an aura of legitimacy. Henceforth, the authorities navigated an
ambivalent course between licensing and wariness.67
Nineteenth-century Iran underwent various changes in its drinking culture
as well. Some of these were similar in nature, even if they typically occurred
later than in the better connected western Ottoman lands; others were different, reflecting different circumstances. Farther away from European influence, with a much smaller non-Muslim population, and without any major
cosmopolitan ports, the countrys relationship with alcohol had never been
mediated by large numbers of Christians or European expatriates. In contrast
to the Ottoman state, which expanded its military and administrative reach
throughout the nineteenth century, the Qajar state was rather weak.
Emerging as a tribal confederation in the late eighteenth century, Irans
rulers were perennially challenged by defiant tribes and obstreperous clerics.
The latter especially had gained in power ever since the late Safavid period,
taking advantage of the turmoil of the eighteenth century to take on the role of

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 117

68

69
70

Etemad al-Saltaneh, Ruznameh-ye khaterat-e Etemad al-Saltaneh (Tehran, 3rd edn,

1356/1977), 300 and 778; and, for the wider context, Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure,
179ff.
Patricia Crone, Gods Rule: Government and Islam (New York, 2004), 31617.
Anon. [Ritter von Riederer], Aus Persien. Aufzeichnungen eines Oesterreichers der 40
Monate im Reiche der Sonne gelebt und gewirkt hat (Vienna, 1882), 86.

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the sole defenders of a rudderless population fleeced by a succession of rapacious rulers. Most importantly, the Qajars lacked the religious legitimacy of
the Safavids, who had turned Iran into a Shii country, or, for that matter of
the Ottomans who, ruling over Mecca and Medina, boasted the title of protectors of Islams two holy shrines.
As a result the Qajars, in order to establish their religious credentials,
adopted sobriety or, at least, moved their drinking into the inner palace.
Some, such as Mohammad Shah (r. 183448), may even have been teetotallers. In a reflection of how far Iranian kingship had moved away from the
open-air bacchanals of the Safavids, Naser al-Din Shah, the longest ruling
Qajar monarch (184896), liked to drink a glass or two of Bordeaux for
dinner or, to calm his nerves, in anticipation of public executions.68 By
then, a public ceremony organized by the palace which included the distribution of soup had long replaced the raucous drinking fest of the Safavid
Qizilbash.
This does not mean that the Qajar elite stopped boozing. Indeed, there is
ample evidence that the ruling classes, especially in rural and tribal areas like
Kurdistan and Khorasan, continued to drink with abandon.69 Much of this
was done in traditional fashion. Ritter von Riederer, an Austrian adviser who
spent time in Iran in the 1870s, noted that an Iranian would observe religious
rules as long as others watched him but do whatever appeared to him as
comfortable and pleasurable as soon as he was in the privacy of his home.
Drinking in private was among these activities. The state, Ritter von Riederer
added, followed time-honoured conventions by punishing only those drunks
who caused a public nuisance, and never bothered to intervene with indoor
drinking parties, even if in the end all were lying about.70
Much of Qajar drinking remained traditional, seeking to reconcile public
censure and private craving by way of self-fashioning. The Russian S.
Lomnitski, an engineer who resided in Iran at the turn of the twentieth century, includes an anecdote in his perceptive travelogue that is as amusing as it
is informative in describing an example of such self-fashioning according to
changeable circumstances. He recounts how he was among the guests at a
drinking party at the residence of a wealthy Iranian where clerics were in
attendance. Before bringing out alcohol, the owner of the house ordered

118 Rudi Matthee

71
72
73

74

S. Lomnitskii, Persiia i Persy (St. Petersburg, 1902), 1212.

For more on this, see Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure, 199204.
M. von Kotzbue, Narrative of a Journey into Persia in the Suite of the Imperial Russian
Embassy of 1817 (London, 1819), 1223; J. A. Perkins, A Residence of Eight Years, Among
the Nestorian Christians with Notices of the Muhammedans (Andover, 1843), 225.
James Baillie Fraser, Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan in the Years 1821 and 1822
(London, 1825), 422.

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something and the hats to be brought in. A tray filled with hats was brought
in, and each of the clerics took one and put it on his head, declaring that he
was now no longer a mullah but a private person, after which they set out to
play Islamically forbidden gamescheckers, chess, cardswhile availing
themselves of the something; which turned out to be an array of alcoholic
drinks, including vodka, cognac, wine, and liqueurs.71
Also traditional but with a new twist, was the defiance displayed by some
drinkers, who in their taste for alcohol recall the libertine, anti-clerical attitude of traditional high-minded Sufis claiming a private moral sphere that is
so powerfully articulated by Hafez and his fellow poets. New in the Qajar
period was not so much the contempt these showed for the increasingly
abrasive ulama who felt no longer restrained by a forceful ruler capable or
willing to rein them in, as the self-conscious stridency with which they flouted
the laws of the Prophet, exhibiting a modernizing, western inflected disposition. Flaunting ones drinking became an explicit political statement, displaying a modern attitude by way of heaping scorn on obscurantist clerics
and their cant, and as such it was part of a social ferment in nineteenthcentury Iran that bred forms of radicalism such as the Babi movement as
well.72
Among the ruling classes European liquors gained in popularity in the
same process that affected the Ottoman Empirethat of a growing entwinement with the outside world by way of tastes and the imports that fed them.
This includes the type of alcohol people consumed as well as the ambience in
which it was enjoyed. The nineteenth century witnessed the introduction of
new types of high-percentage alcoholic beverages into Iranbeyond Russian
aquavit which had been known since Safavid timesas part of the countrys
ongoing incorporation into the global market.73 A century and a half after
Chardin, James Baillie Fraser pointed to an Iranian fondness for potent stuff,
suggesting by way of explanation that the pleasure of drinking consists, not in
the gradual exhilaration produced by wine and conversation among companions who meet to make merry, but in the feelings of intoxication itself; and
therefor a Persian prefers brandy, and deep potations, because these soonest
enable him to attain that felicity.74

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 119

75
76
77
78

79
80
81

Lady Sheil, Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (London, 1856), 157.
Sayyed Hasan Taqizadeh, Zendegi-ye tufani (khaterat) (Tehran, 1379/2000), 45.
Walther Kuss, Handelsratgeber fur Persien (Berlin, 1911), 121.
Archives des Affaires Etrange`res (AAE, French National Archives, Paris), CP, n.s., Perse
49, Notes sur Guilan, fol. 57.
Ibid., Notes sur les consequences economiques de la guerre en Guilan, fols. 5 and 27.
Kuss, Handelsratgeber, 121.
AAE, Corr. Politique (CP), n.s., Perse 47, Rapport sur le mouvement commercial de
lannee persane bars-il, 21 mars 1902 a 20 mars 1903. For conditions in the Ottoman
Empire in this period, see Georgeon, Ottomans and Drinkers.

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European wines, which seem to have entered the Iranian market quite a bit
later, were still far from ubiquitous by mid-century. The British Resident
Justin Sheil at that time called the Iranians extremely fond of European
wines, yet added that, still none among them, even the richest, are willing
to undergo the expense of its conveyance from Europe. They satisfy themselves with the thin growth of their own vineyards, quantity compensating for
quality.75 In keeping with a trend among the Ottoman upper classes, a fairly
large number of Iranians had meanwhile taken to the Russian habit of consuming zakuska, hors doeuvre, accompanied by vodka.
Russian influence was especially paramount in northern Iran, evolving
around the time of the Constitutional Revolution (190511) into outright
military occupation. In the late nineteenth century, as Russias influence on
Iran grew, the import and consumption of arak increased so that by centurys
end more was said to be consumed in Tabriz than in Tbilisi.76 By the first decade
of the twentieth century Russias influence had made vodka quite common in
the north.77 A report about the latter province from the early 1920s, when Gilan
was under Russian control, insists that alcoholism was rampant among the
regions Armenian and Russian inhabitants and that a predilection for the best
wines and spirits prompted a search for good French wines, cognacs, and
liqueurs among the well-to-do classes.78 The French consul in Rasht at the
time added that much of the wine consumed in Gilan came from Russia and
that alcohol was sold clandestinely in coffee houses in the province.79 Cognac,
too, entered Iran at the time, from India as well as from France and Greece. The
other popular drink among upper-class Iranians was champagne. Fantastic
prices were paid for this luxury item. French and German wines and liquors
were imported for the same clientele. By now, beer, too, was consumed by the
most affluent Iranians, but even more so by resident foreigners. In the north
Russian beers were most common; German and English and even some
American brands prevailed in the south.80 In 1902 a total of 134,634 bottles
entered the country, 121,130 of which originated in Russia.81

120 Rudi Matthee

82
83
84
85

http://www.turkishmuse.com/2011/01/war-against-alcohol-in-turkey.html
Asia Times, 26 August 2009, Turkeys beer-swillers get hammered.
The Guardian, 23 Dec. 2005, Alcohol the battleground in east-west conflict.
Hurriyet Daily News, 23 Sept. 2012, Turkish AKP alcohol law raises question marks.

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Rules and regulations concerning the sale and consumption of alcohol vary
widely from country to country in the modern Islamic world, ranging from
secular Syria, where alcohol is freely available, to Pakistan and Malaysia,
where only non-Muslims can obtain alcohol by presenting proof of (religious) identification, to absolute interdiction in Saudi Arabia. The level of
official secularism, that is, the degree to which the official religion does not
inform the legal system, generally determines the availability of alcohol.
For most of the twentieth century Turkey and Iran followed the secular
model. In keeping with Ataturks vision and preference, the republic of
Turkey became not just a secular state but one in which religion was deliberately marginalized. In 1926 the sale and consumption of alcohol by
Muslims was made legal, and for the remainder of the twentieth century no
legal restrictions were imposed on either, so that drinking alcohol became
socially accepted. Turkey nonetheless continued to be a nation of light
drinkers, and women by and large still abstained. The majority of Turks
who do imbibe prefer beer, which accounts for some 60 per cent of total
consumption, with the average person consuming 0.8 litres in 2005, or spirits,
meaning raki, at 0.5 litres per person. Wine, by contrast, is hardly drunk
at all.82
Things began to change with the coming to power of the Justice and
Development Party (AKP for Adalet ve Kalknma Partisi) in 2002. Since
2005 the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has waged a campaign to
limit the supply and consumption of alcohol. It has become much harder
to obtain and renew liquor licences and, citing the need to protect family
values, municipalities have outlawed drinking in government-owned hotels,
restaurants and cafes.83 Proposals have also been made to ban alcohol in city
centres by limiting the sale and consumption to restricted areas, alcohol
ghettoes, on the edge of towns. By 2005 alcohol bans were in place in 61 of
Turkeys 81 provinces.84 Proposed changes in labour legislation call for the
right for companies to fire anyone who shows up having had anything to
drink. In September 2012 a law took effect that bans the sale of alcohol and
cigarettes by breaking its packaging or dividing them, which, critics say,
effectively prohibits the sale by the glass in restaurants.85 In April 2013
Erdogan declared ayran, a salty mixture of yoghurt and water, rather than
raki the national drink of Turkey, and a month later the Turkish parliament,

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 121

86

87

88

The Economist, 1 June 2013, Alcohol in Turkey. Not so good for you; Hurriyet Daily
News, 9 Sept. 2013, Restrictions on alcohol sale go into effect today in Turkey, at
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/restrictions-on-alcohol-sales-go-into-effect-todayin-turkey.aspx?PageID238&NID54074&NewsCatID344; and Emre Kizilkaya,
Turkeys new prohibitions lead to underground alcohol market, al-Monitor, 17 Sept.
2013.
Hurriyet Daily News, 10 May 2010, AKP, Alcohol and government-engineered change in
Turkey; Ibid., 29 Oct. 2010, Turkish consumers dazed by another alcohol tax increase.
For the role drinking has assumed as a symbol of resistance for many secular Turks, see
Tim Arango, Resisting by Raising a Glass, New York Times, 9 June 2013.

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citing public health reasons, passed a bill that would ban retail sales of alcohol
between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., halt all advertising and promotion of alcoholrelated products, and forbid the sale of liquor within 100 metres of schools
and houses of worship. In September 2013 the bill became law. Its restrictions
quickly led to the emergence of an underground alcohol market in the form of
late-night delivery services.86
The state has been most consistent in curbing availability by dramatically
raising taxes. In 2002 the government instituted a special consumption tax
TV) on alcohol, raising VAT on alcohol from the regular VAT rate of 18 to
(O
48 per cent, with a further increase to 63 per cent in 2009. Severely criticized
for this policy, the government in 2010 eliminated this impost on some
alcoholic beverages, such as wine, only to add a lump-sum tax on each
bottle. The tax on beer, meanwhile, went up by almost 800 per cent between
2002 and 2010. The price of raki, which remains the national tipple, in the
same period has quadrupled to some 35 TL, or almost $20 for a 700 cl bottle.87
These tax hikes have made a glass of beer or raki exorbitantly expensive, on
par with Scandinavian countries, and, taking into account the moderate purchasing power of most Turks, the most expensive in the world, putting alcohol out of reach for most. The result is that Turkeys per capita consumption,
already very low by international standards, has dropped by one third in the
last few years, and that the number of cafes and restaurants selling alcohol was
reduced by 21 per cent between 2005 and 2008. This creeping social transformation has also pitted secular Turks who uphold the right of citizens
to make their own lifestyle choices against their more traditional fellowcitizens who believe that drinking is a sin and should be outlawed by the
state, reflecting a general debate in Turkish society about the role of religion in
public life that in the late spring of 2013 erupted in confrontation and
violence.88
Twentieth-century Iran evinces initial convergence with Turkish patterns
followed by a sharp turn in policies with the establishment of the Islamic

122 Rudi Matthee

89

90

91
92

93
94
95
96

Willem Floor, A Fiscal History of Iran in the Safavid and Qajar Periods 15001925 (New
York, 1998), 4056.
Hoseyn Makki, Tarikh-e bist saleh-ye Iran. Kudeta-ye 1299, 3 vols (Tehran, 1323/1944;
repr. 1358/1979), I, 2989; and Jafar Shahri, Tarikh-e ejtemai-ye Tehran dar qarn-e
sizdehom (Tehran, 3rd edn, 1378/1999), vol. 4, 3789.
Shahri, Tarikh-e ejtemai-ye Tehran, vol. 4, 3801.
National Archives, London, FO, E8057/8057/34, Ndeg314, Persia. Annual Report, 1922.
XII - Medical Affairs. (2.) Sanitary and Allied Questions, 64.
Floor, A Fiscal History of Iran, 407.
AAE, Corr. Commerciale, Tehran to Paris, 8 Jan. and 10 Feb. 1927, fols. 65ff.
AAE, CP, n.s. Perse 62, fol. 116.
Tableau generale du commerce avec les pays etrange`res pendant lannee 1305 (Tehran,
1927), xi/2, Importations.

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Republic in 1979. Anti-liquor campaigns, often following riots instigated by

clerics and targeting Jewish property, would occur into the twentieth century.
The early part of the same century saw several more attempts at restrictions on
sale and consumption. In 1909, during the Constitutional Revolution, the
police chief of Tehran sought to regulate alcohol by licensing the right
to operate distilleries and awarding licences only to cabarets run by
non-Muslims and foreign nationals.89 The government that came into
being following Reza Shahs coup of February 1921 at first experimented
with prohibition. One of its first proclamations included a ban on the importation, and then the overall consumption of alcohol. The sale of liquor was
outlawed and shops selling alcohol were closed. Presumably inspired by
Sayyed Zia Tabatabai, Reza Shahs fellow conspirator and a cleric, the measure was designed in part to forestall Bolshevik influence by way of strengthening Irans religious profile.90 Upon Tabatabais forced resignation in May
1921, liquor stores and alcohol-serving venues were allowed to open their
doors again.91 Within a year, the ban on foreign imports had been considerably diluted, largely for reasons of revenue, as the British resident in Tehran
put it.92 In 1924, all distilleries in Tehran were concentrated in five locations
outside the city.93 Late 1926 saw the proclamation of a new ban on the importation of luxury importsitems whose domestic manufacture should be
encouragedwhich included alcoholic beverages.94 In 192627 tariffs on
alcohol reached 100 per cent, putting it beyond the means of most
people.95 The result was a steep decline in imported liquor.96
Alongside continued religiously based opposition to (public) drinking at
the turn of the century, one observes a growing medicalization in the evaluation of the use and abuse of alcohol. Seeking to curb and contain through
admonition and exhortation, advocates of this new approach used medical,
health-related arguments. Publicists now presented drinking as harmful, using

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 123

97

Peyk-e Saadat-e Nesvan 1:3 (Esfand 1306/Ramazan 1346), repr., ed. Banafsheh Masudi
and Naser Mohajer (Berkeley and Creteil, 2012), 46 (1346 in new edn); and Salnamehye Pars 1314/1925, 88, 89.
98
Baladiyeh-ye Tehran. Devvomin salnameh-ye ehsaiyeh-ye shahr-e Tehran/Deuxie`me
annuaire statistique de la ville de Teheran, 19251929 (Tehran, 1310/1930).
99
Friedrich Rosen, Oriental Memories of a German Diplomatist (London, 1930), 139.
100
http://www.darioush-shahbazi.com/index.php?optioncom_content&taskview&id
314&Itemid12
101
Rosen, Oriental Memories, 139.

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arguments borrowed from European scientific research. This trend intensified

in the 1920s, reflecting the new era represented by Reza Shah and the push for a
modern, orderly and disciplined Iran that marked his political agenda.97
Yet neither interdiction nor admonition seems to have lowered the level of
alcohol consumption; indeed, indications are that it went up, riding on an
increase in relatively cheap, domestically produced alcohol.98 Much of this
was no doubt consumed indoors. Friedrich Rosen, a German diplomat stationed in Iran in the early twentieth century, observed that most Iranians did
not drink and that Iran by and large was a dry country. Yet, echoing earlier
observers of life in Iran, Rosen also pointed to the propensity among those
Iranians who drank to do so generally with the idea of getting totally intoxicated, since the sin [. . .] is anyhow committed, therefore it is advisable to
make the best of it.99
By the time Reza Shah was forced to abdicate, in 1941, Lalehzar Street had
opened up. Originating as a garden, the Bagh-e Lalehzar, this famous street
had been laid out in the 1870s at the orders of Naser al-Din Shah after his
return from his first European trip. In the course of the twentieth century
Lalehzar Street developed into the entertainment district of the capital, a
symbol of modernity filled with cinemas, theatres, cabarets, and Europeanstyle restaurants and bars serving food and drink. Elsewhere in the city the
western bar, piyaleh-forushi, made its entry as well in the late Qajar period.
Substituting for the traditional speakeasies, the kharabat and meykhanehs, the
piyaleh-forushi would become more common in the reign of Mohammad
Reza Pahlavi (194179), first in Tehran and later in provincial cities as well.100
The modern hotels that opened in the 1960s invariably had their own bars,
catering to foreigners as well as to more westernized Iranians keen to flaunt
their modern lifestyle by drinking gin-tonics and whiskey. Yet, overall, Iran
continued to be, as it had always been, a most sober nation, where most
people lived and died without ever tasting wine.101
This situationin which alcohol was publicly available yet not common,
its consumption limited, as before, to the lower classes and the haute

124 Rudi Matthee

102

See BBC Illegal Alcohol Booming in Iran, 15 Sept. 2011, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

world-middle-east-14939866. Also see Frontline, Tehran Bureau, 10 April 2012, That
Sweet Iranian Spirit, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2012/
04/dispatch-that-sweet-iranian-spirit.html; Express Tribune, 15 May 2012, Rising alcohol intake worrying: minister; Radio Free Europe, Iranian officials warn alcohol
abuse on the rise, at http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-alcohol-abuse-on-the-rise/
24617070.html; Omid Memarian, Death sentence marks Irans latest battle in Irans
culture war, The Daily Beast, 27 June 2012, at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/
2012/06/27/death-sentence-marks-latest-battle-in-iran-s-culture-war.html; Max Fisher,
Forbidden Drink: Why alcoholism is soaring in officially booze-free Iran, The
Atlantic, 28 June 2012, at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/
forbidden-drink-why-alcoholism-is-soaring-in-officially-booze-free-iran/259120/ and
Los Angeles Times, 7 July 2012, Iran confronts its alcohol problem, at http://www.
latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-alcohol-20120707,0,5211937.story
103
See BBC 15 Sept. 2011, Illegal alcohol booming in Iran, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
world-middle-east-14939866.

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bourgeoisieremained in place until the end of Pahlavi rule in 1979. The

Islamic government which took over in that year moved against alcohol not,
as its Turkish counterpart, by stealth but in full combat mode, outlawing both
the sale and consumption for Muslims. (Armenian Christians are exempted
from the ban and allowed to produce their own alcohol.) Iranians thus once
again had to turn to the privacy of their homes to quench their alcoholic
thirst. And by all accounts the thirst is greater than ever. According to a report
issued in 2011 by the official Iranian news agency Mehr News, some 80 million
litres of alcohol are currently bootlegged in the country each year. Much of
this is smuggled into the country from abroad, especially from Iraqi
Kurdistan, in an illicit trade reportedly facilitated by bribe-taking
Revolutionary Guards and thus controlled by the very same authorities
that occasionally mete out draconian punishment to boozers. Whether supplied with moonshine provided by local Armenian bootleggers or imbibing
expensive imported liquor, modern Iranians drink for various reasons, to
seek solace from the frustrations of daily life in the Islamic Republic, or to act
out their part in the countrys continuing culture wars. In keeping with
tradition, those who indulge tend to drink heavily and with great gusto, the
intensity of the experience sharpened by the taboo element, the fact that
consuming alcohol, in addition to violating religious strictures, is decried by a
regime loathed by many.102 As one cleric, excoriating the rampant alcohol
consumption in his country, intoned in 2011, Not even the Westerners drink
alcohol like we do. They pour a neat glass of wine and sip it. We here pour a
four-litre barrel of vodka on the floor and drink it until we go blind. . . . We are
all the masters of excess and wastage.103 So rampant has alcohol abuse

Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East 125

become that the authorities in 2013 bowed to reality by seeking religious

permission for the opening of an alcohol rehab center with the argument
that alcohol addiction is an illness not a sin.104

104

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Merhnaz Samimi, Iran opens first alcohol rehab center, al-Monitor, 25 Oct. 2013, at
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/10/iran-alcohol-permit-rehab-center.
html.