The Arabic poems are from Mecca in 1511 when the Sultan was banning coffee because it caused people to have intelligent conversations, many of which were not praising the Sultan. The writers of these poems think coffee is amazing, and they do not want coffee to be banned, and who has more power than the Sultan, God. Since God has more power than the Sultan, they use God as reasoning for coffee to not be banned in Mecca. The poems create a strand of religion with important phrases like “children of God” and “friends of God”. Both of these phrases are used for people who drink coffee implying that people who drink coffee are blessed by God because to be a friend of God is for a person to be devout to God and God to love them in return. Also, the phrase “children of God” is very common in religion to say that God created and loves his creations. Therefore, the people who do not drink coffee and are trying to condemn the coffee are not blessed because the coffee drinkers are blessed. To further this argument that the people who drink coffee are good and blessed by God, the writers say that coffee is for “the intelligent man,” “ the society of the noblest and most generous men” and “the scholar”. Being intelligent, noble, generous and a scholar are generally seen as positive traits to have, and if the coffee drinkers have all these positive traits then obviously coffee is good and gives you blessing from God because God gives out all the good traits to people he blessed, or at least this is what the writers want you to believe.
The authors can not outright say that the Sultan is wrong for banning coffee and not blessed by God because that would get them banished, or more likely executed. So they don’t name him, but they call the people banning coffee the opposite of blessed and intelligent. What is the opposite of intelligent, noble, generous and scholarly? Foolish. Foolish and condemning without reason are the opposite of intelligent, noble, generous and scholarly. People do not want to be seen as foolish and not having reason for their choices because it implies that they are always wrong and uneducated. Foolish is an interesting choice of words because there are a multitude of simpler words that can mean the opposite of intelligent like unintelligent. It seems that foolish is not just chosen to mean lacking in intelligence, but also because it means lacking good sense or judgement. The “Foolish men” are not just unintelligent, but also they are lacking in good judgement which connects to them condemning coffee without reason because they lack good judgement. The writers imply that these people are not blessed by good because they do not have positive gifts from God. Additionally, God is asked to deprive coffee from “the foolish man who condemns it with incurable obstinacy”. Obstinacy means an instance of stubbornness, which means that the Sultan and his supporters are condemning coffee without reason and are not willing to compromise on the issue. The authors see no reasoning with the foolish, and are asking God to deprive them of coffee because they believe coffee is a gift from God as it is the drink of those who are blessed with other gifts from God like intelligence. This is very important because the authors are asking God to take his gift away from these people, which is not something that is taken lightly and done without major forethought. The authors had to see no other options available to remedy this situation before asking God to punish others because it is said to weigh on the soul greatly.
