Tobacco's Arrival in the Ottoman Empire

Not long after tobacco crossed from the Americas to Europe, it reached Ottoman ports through English and Venetian merchants and sailors, right at the start of the 1600s. The new plant was at first promoted by some physicians as a remedy for various ailments; in Ottoman cities, where coffeehouse culture was already strong, it was quickly adopted instead as a pleasure, smoked through long-stemmed chibouks fitted with clay bowls.

Years of Prohibition

Tobacco's rapid spread brought a backlash with it. Alongside religious objections, fires — the greatest fear of wooden Istanbul — were the strongest argument raised against tobacco. The reign of Murad IV marks the peak of this reaction: following the great Istanbul fire of 1633, the sultan banned tobacco outright. According to sources of the period, the ban was enforced with extraordinary severity; the sultan is said to have gone about in disguise to inspect coffeehouses, and those who broke the ban faced penalties that could reach execution.

Yet rather than eliminating tobacco use, the ban simply drove it underground. The renowned scholar of the era, Kâtip Çelebi, notes in his writings on the tobacco controversy that the bans only stoked curiosity further — an observation of behavioral economics from centuries past.