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Since the 15th century, the coffee house (al-maqhah in Arabic, qahveh-khaneh in Persian or Kahvehane or kıraathane in Turkish) has served as a social gathering place in Middle Eastern countries where men assemble to drink coffee (usually Arabic coffee) or tea, listen to music, read books, play chess and backgammon, and perhaps hear a recitation from the works of Antar or from Shahnameh. In 1457 the first coffee house, Kiva Han, was opened in Istanbul, just four years after its conquest by the Ottomans. Coffee house in Mecca soon became a concern as places for political gatherings to the imams who banned them, and the drink, for Muslims between 1512 and 1524. In 1530 the first coffee house was opened in Damascus, and not long after there were many coffee houses in Cairo.
In the 17th century, coffee appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire, and coffee house were established and quickly became popular. The first coffee house in Western Europe appeared in Venice, due to the trafficks between La Serenissima and the Ottomans; the very first one is recorded in 1645. The first coffee house in England was set up in Oxford in 1650 by a Jewish man named Jacob in the building now known as "The Grand Cafe". A plaque on the wall still commemorates this and the Cafe is now a trendy cocktail bar. Oxford's Queen's Lane Coffee House, established in 1654, is also still in existence today. The first coffeehouse in London was opened in 1652 in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill. The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the Armenian servant of a trader in Turkish goods named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment.Boston had its first in 1670. Pasqua Rosée also established Paris' first coffeehouse in 1672 and held a city-wide coffee monopoly until Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli opened the Café Procope in 1686. This coffee house still exists today and was a major meeting place of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia. Vienna's first coffee house was opened by the Greek Johannes Theodat in 1685. 15 years later, four Greek owned coffee house had the privilege to serve coffee.
Though Charles II later tried to suppress the London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public flocked to them. They were great social levellers, open to all men and indifferent to social status, and as a result associated with equality and republicanism. More generally, coffee houses became meeting places where business could be carried on, news exchanged and the London Gazette (government announcements) read. Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. By 1739 there were 551 coffeehouses in London; each attracted a particular clientele divided by occupation or attitude, such as Tories and Whigs, wits and stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors, men of fashion or the "cits" of the old city center. According to one French visitor, the Abbé Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government," were the "seats of English liberty
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