Non - " turkish Coffee "

[Aratta-Kingdom]

The Forward

June 25, 2010

 

Israel's Freedom Fries Moment;

On Language

 

 

It was, I suppose, predictable. In Israel there is now a movement to

change the name of Turkish coffee, or kafey turki, as it is known in

Hebrew. Bad enough, the movement's proponents say, to be insulted by

the Turkish government, denounced by its prime minister and have one's

flag burned by Turkish demonstrators without also having to drink the

Turks' coffee especially since they never invented it in the first

place.

 

Although kafey turki is likely to remain kafey turki in Israel, just

as French fries remained French fries in America despite efforts to

rename them when France criticized the American invasion of Iraq, the

antis have a point. The Turks were not the originators of Turkish

coffee which, for those of you who may never have drunk it, is

prepared by heating water, finely ground coffee beans, and (unless you

prefer it bitter) sugar in a beaker, bringing the mixture to a boil,

quickly removing it from the fire to prevent it from overflowing, and

repeating the procedure several times. After the final boiling, the

beaker must be left alone for a while to let the coffee grounds settle

to the bottom. Even then, the coffee should be poured slowly and

gently to keep the grounds from spilling out into the cup.

 

This is the simplest and almost certainly the oldest method of making

coffee, whose beans originally came from a plant indigenous to the

highlands of Ethiopia, where they were probably first drunk in

powdered form somewhere between 600 and 1,000 years ago. The

Ethiopians called the coffee plant bun, and when, in the 15th and 16th

centuries, its consumption, and, eventually, its cultivation crossed

the Gulf of Eden to Yemen and traveled from there to other Arab

countries, the drink was called by the Arabs qahwat el-bun, the elixir

of the bun. . In time, this was shortened shortqahwa, to qahwa, from

which our English coffee ultimately derives.

 

To this day, Turkish coffee is, other than in cafés and hotels

designed for tourists, the only coffee prepared in Arab countries,

where it is simply called qahwa with no need for a qualifying

adjective.

 

Why, then, have the Turks gotten credit for it in many of the

languages of Europe? The obvious answer would seem to be that it was

the coffeehouses of the Ottoman Empire that spread the drinking of

coffee to Greece and the Balkans, from which it reached the rest of

Europe. Coffee's diffusion took place quickly. First drunk in Istanbul

in the 1550s (The Turks, who do not have a w sound, called it kahve,

and the voiced v changed in most European languages to an unvoiced

f.), it arrived in Western Europe a hundred years later. The first

English coffeehouse was established in London in 1654, and by the end

of the 17th century, coffee was a widespread drink throughout Europe.

 

And yet the obvious answer to why credit accrues to the Turks is wrong

 

because the term Turkish coffee did not appear in European languages

until relatively recently. Not only, for example, won't you find it in

the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, whose 12th and last volume

was published in 1895, you won't even find it in the OED's 1933

supplement, although you will find Turkish bath, Turkish delight and

Turkish towel.

 

This really shouldn't be so surprising. After all, well into the 19th

century, coffee in Europe was what it still is in the Arab world

today: boiled in a beaker. There being only one kind, it was known

everywhere simply as coffee.

 

Non-Turkish coffee is a largely20th-century development. Although the

first percolator was designed by the American inventor Benjamin

Thompson (1753-1814), commercial percolators were not introduced into

the United States until the late 19th century. The first espresso

machine dates to 1901. The first paper filter was created in Germany

in 1908. (It is possible to make, under duress, palatable filter

coffee by using an ordinary sock, too, but I doubt whether socks were

ever widely resorted to). The first French press coffee maker was

patented in 1929.

 

It was only when such alternative coffee-making techniques became

popular, eventually supplanting the older method throughout Europe and

the Americas, that a name for this method became imperative. Turkish

coffee was the one given it because, even though it was an Ethiopian

and Arab invention, many fewer Europeans had been to Ethiopia or Arab

lands than to Tu r k e y, and boiled-beaker coffee was known primarily

as a Turkish drink.

 

And yet it is not only the Arabs who still don't call Turkish coffee

Turkish coffee. The Greeks, who used to call it that, began saying

Greek coffee after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, while the

Armenians, who have even less reason to like the Turks than do the

Greeks, call it Armenian coffee. (In fact, I was nearly thrown out of

an Armenian restaurant in New York for asking for Turkish coffee at

the end of my meal.) Hopefully,

 

Turkish-Israeli relations will not deteriorate to the point where

Israelis feel the same way. And even if they should, Turkish coffee in

Israel is largely an Arab drink. Most Jews prefer espresso or other

forms of coffee and drink kafey turki only when camping or roughing

it.

 

Israeli coffee it will never be called, even if diplomacy fails.