In Istanbul, Ottoman Sultan Murad IV issued a sweeping ban on coffee, tobacco, and alcohol, imposing extreme penalties including execution for repeated offenders. Coffeehouses, which had become vibrant centers of political discussion, gossip, and literary exchange across the Ottoman Empire, were raided and shut down. Murad reportedly patrolled the streets of Istanbul in disguise to catch violators personally.

The Ottoman coffeehouse ban highlighted the deep connection between coffee culture and literary production in the Islamic world, where coffeehouses served as informal publishing venues for poets and storytellers. The ban and its eventual lifting became a recurring motif in Turkish and Arabic poetry, symbolizing the tension between authoritarian control and the free exchange of ideas that poets associated with the coffeehouse as a space of creative liberation.