The coffeehouse culture of Baghdad () is a set of traditions and social behaviors in old, local, or traditional Baghdadi coffeehouses in Baghdad, Iraq. Ever since their inception in the 1500s, cafés have acted as social forums and gathering grounds for friends and meetings for all ages as well as a gathering ground for intellectuals, thinkers, and personalities to discuss politics, art, literature, science, poetry, and other subjects that had a great impact on Iraq's cultural and literary life while consuming tea or coffee.The Coffeehouse Culture of IraqItimad Youssef al-Qusayri, Places of Entertainment and Entertainment in Baghdad during the Ottoman Rule, Sumer Iraqi Magazine, Volume 52, pp. 493–500.
Cultural Baghdadi coffeehouses have been thriving since their demands grew in the 17th century and continued into the 20th century, especially in al-Rashid Street, which saw many of these coffeehouses materialize along the street and in the city. The majority of those coffeehouses, which bear witness to cultural, social, and political changes that have marked Iraq's modern history, have since been closed. Although many heritage and new traditional coffeehouses are still open. The most popular of these is the Shabandar Café in al-Mutanabbi Street.
Even though the coffeehouse culture is mostly associated with and active in Baghdad, the culture is spread throughout Iraq and examples can be found such as in Sulaymaniyah, Erbil and Karbala.
History
Ottoman Era (16th–19th centuries)
According to Iraqi historians, the first Baghdadi coffeehouse was named "Khan Jahan" and was established in 1590 under Ottoman rule by Cığalazade Sinan Pasha for a man named "Ismail Effendi". This coffeehouse was located behind al-Mustansiriya Madrasa. From the 17th century to the mid-18th century, there was a high demand for coffeehouses in the neighborhoods of Baghdad, which is believed to be the origin of the culture surrounding these establishments. 1604 saw construction of the Hassan Pasha Café near al-Wazeer Mosque, which contributed to the spread and demands of coffeehouses.
Alongside mosques, the coffeehouse became a meeting space, especially a secular one, and a meeting ground for military officers and the civil rulers of Baghdad. By the end of the seventeenth century, there were ten coffeehouses in Baghdad, with five being located on al-Maidan Square, mostly due to trading and military services, while the rest were either located next to the banks of the Tigris river or the souks. It was also a recruitment space for various factional groups looking for followers or support.
Coffeehouses started to spread around the city and its outskirts. The number of coffeehouses in Baghdad reached 184, according to what was indicated by the Baghdad Code of 1882, and by 1903, the number had increased to 285. This increase called for competition between coffeehouse owners to win the largest number of customers, some owners turned to discotheques for the competition. What helped in this matter was the declaration of the Ottoman constitution in 1908 about giving relative freedoms to the religious and national communities of the states that were under the control of the Ottomans, and many of the restrictions imposed on the press were lifted. Coffeehouse competitors hired well-known Iraqi singers to play Iraqi maqam and reciters to attract customers, as well as storytellers and actors who put on fantasy shows. However, some coffeehouses developed their own performances, notably those around al-Maidan Square. Some owners went as far as hiring female dancers and singers from Egypt, and the Levant, and this recruitment was considered a shift in public social morals at the time. Some owners even altered the buildings' structures to accommodate a stage to be built. Coffeehouses also started to become crowded during the evening nights of Ramadan and games were played such as those that involved the traditional Iranian zurkhāneh.The main material offered by the coffeehouses was hot tea in addition to coffee. Some coffeehouses offered sweets and cold drinks. Seating places in Baghdadi coffeehouses consist of sofas called "Takhts" which were made of wood. As for hot tea, it is served by a mug which was named "al-Istikkan" by the locals of Baghdad, and the tools for making tea consisted of a teapot called "quri", and a hot water tank with a faucet.
European traveler James Silk Buckingham documented several of these coffeehouses during his visit to Baghdad in 1819, notably the Hassan Pasha Café and al-Beiruti Café, which caught his attention due to their lights that covered the Tigris River. Buckingham also documented that coffeehouses were so common that there were already two established coffeehouses next to one of the gates of Baghdad, and that they were usually crowded mostly at night.
Transformation post-independence of Iraq (1920s–1970s)
During the Royal era of Iraq, coffeehouses became a phenomenon and a sign of political and literary transformation. They became places where the educated class and the pioneers of thought would sit and gather. The coffeehouse's entertainment function has shifted to artistic, poetic, political, and multi-directional intellectual meetings. Al-Rashid Street saw many of these coffeehouses such as al-Zahawi Café which was named in honor of Iraqi Poet al-Zahawi after former-Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said invited him to a meeting in it due to lack of respectable places in that period.Al-Rasheed Street in Baghdad tells the story of a country tired of bullets, 2020Asharq al-Awsat, Al-Zahawi (Archived)Baghdad's literary coffeehouses in the era of Wi-Fi, 2019
In the mid-1940s, al-Rashid Street witnessed the emergence of two new coffeehouses with unfamiliar styles to Iraqis at the time. The Brazilian Café and the Swiss Café featured European facades, thick luxurious glass, and elegant tables made of bamboo sticks, in addition to chairs specially imported from Europe and coffee machines that operated on electricity. Such coffeehouses have never been seen before in Iraq and were breathtaking at the time. Artists like Jawad Saleem and Faeq Hassan, who studied in Europe, would visit these Western-style coffeehouses, as at the time, Iraqis were much more open to foreign cultures. The coffeehouse also contributed to the idea of establishing the Union of Iraqi Writers. Al-Tahrir Square also saw another Western-style café, the Kit Kat Café. The Kit Kat café's visitors were Westernized intellectuals and liberal-leaning, and it was common to find Marxist talk in the coffeehouse.
By then, the coffeehouse culture had become an integral part of Baghdad's people, and a typical Iraqi environment that included all directions, ideas, and currents, along with conflicts and rivalries erupting, especially during Friday mornings and afternoons. Supporters of various poets also used to pick cafés to inhabit. Although the pioneers of the more modern and Westernized cafes did not appreciate the traditional coffeehouses that were widely spread throughout the city at the time, they were closely related to their fellow writers and artists, despite their differing intellectual visions and affiliations. Political differences of opinion and viewpoints have never divided the people of Baghdad as a whole.
Role in Iraqi poetry The 1940s witnessed a significant revival in Iraqi literature and poetry, particularly due to the poetry, fiction, and critiques written by young college students. Young poets would establish connections and gatherings, and were collectivized with each other to develop a sense of familiarity, which was unique for Iraq at the time. Coffeehouses became a venue for these meetings and were adapted as a sort of headquarters, as they provided the space needed to discuss their work and interests. Coffeehouses have historically housed poets such as the big three neo-classical Iraqi poets al-Zahawi, al-Rusafi, and al-Jawahiri, whose reputations were already established, so this movement was seen as a continuation of tradition. Open criticism and opinion discussions were also widespread, indicating the poets' and writers' exposure to improvement. These gatherings especially grew after coffeehouses started to expand in the 1950s. Due to the younger poets having little to no connections or establishments as poets, the coffeehouse was seen as a way to develop these, as well as a sort of "workshop" to develop one's skills. Although some poets suffered, such as poet Hussein Mardan, whose poems titled "Naked Poems" led to his arrest by the police.
Hussein Mardan confirmed in his writings the role of the coffeehouse in the development of that generation's work, as well as the association of different coffeehouses with different poets. For instance, the Hasan Ajami Café, located on al-Rashid Street, was associated with al-Jawahiri due to the café being his favorite, and the literary circles in Baghdad, including Mardan himself, where he noted that younger poets would meet with older poets to receive encouragement and advice. Coffeehouses were also used to write political poems to support demonstrations, such as al-Rusafi in the Arif Agha Café in the 1930s, or al-Jawahiri with the Parliament Café and the Hasan Ajami Café during the Wathbah uprisings of 1948.
Furthermore, Jewish academic Sasson Somekh confirmed in his book Baghdad, Yesterday: The Making of an Arab Jew that he began his work after meeting Poet al-Jawahiri in the Hassan Ajami Café, which was located next to the Jewish Shamash School where Sasson used to attend when he was young. He wrote:I spent my days running back and forth between the many cafes on al-Rashid Street, which were the gathering places of young writers and artists - most of them Muslim, secular, left-wing, and all of them several years older than I was. A world of culture opened before me. Baghdad in the late 1940s was humming with literary activity and seemed poised to become the center of literature in the Arab world.However, not all poets were welcoming. An example of this can be found in al-Zahawi Cafe, which gained notoriety for its "literary battles" between al-Zahawi and al-Rusafi due to heated discussions that continued until al-Rusafi died in 1945. In al-Beiruti Café, traditionalist poets and writers would gather to preserve Iraqi neo-classical styles and their work. As such, they suspected the work of al-Haydari, a young poet who started to visit the coffeehouse after al-Rusafi's death, was considered a "Western plot against the Arabic literary heritage."
In modern times (1980s–2018) During the 1990s, some coffeehouses sought to attract young customers by providing billiard table, which proved to be a major success in attracting new customers. However, this new shift was viewed with disapproval by the older generations.
After the US-led invasion of Iraq, new cafés witnessed a new shift with huge sums of money being spent on their preparation, and cakes, refreshments, and juices were served in a lavish way. New café owners relied on specialists in their manufacture. These new cafés were more commercial in nature than older cafés and appeared in areas such as al-Mansour, Zayouna, and Karrada.Iraqis cling to yesterday's cafes, 2017 The rise of westernization and globalization in Iraq after the invasion also lead to the decrease of many of the traditional coffeehouses around the cities along with decreasing rate of customers. Many of the remaining cafés such as al-Zahawi Café and Hassan Ajami Café are now suffering from neglect. A lot of the closed coffeehouses have also been turned into commercial stores.