Coffee abolished at Damascus by sultanic decree, 953

The judge of Damascus, Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Abd al-Awwal al-Ja'fari al-Tabrizi, agreed with Shaykh Qutb al-Din ibn Sultan and Shaykh Yunus al-'Aythawi that coffee is forbidden. He proclaimed its prohibition, and then presented the prohibition to Sultan Suleiman, whose order to ban it came in Shawwal 953 AH, and the proclamation was made widely known. ¹.

Coffee had appeared in Damascus about twelve years earlier, when Shaykh Sa'd al-Din ibn Iraq made its drinking known during his stay there, and from that time its shops multiplied. His father had been among those who denounced it, and his house was ruined in Mecca. The first permission did not last long before it met formal jurisprudential opposition that ended in this sultanic order, before the matter later settled on its permission. ².