When Coffee Was Banned: 5 Times Rulers Tried to Outlaw Coffee

Coffee has been banned more often than you might think. Religious officials, sultans, kings and finance ministers have all tried to shut it down, for reasons ranging from piety to politics to the balance of trade. Every single time, coffee won.

This short coffee ban history covers five well-documented attempts, from Mecca in 1511 to Prussia in the 1780s. Along the way we separate what the records show from the colorful stories that grew up around them, including a famous Swedish experiment that probably never happened the way it is told.

Key takeaways

• The first recorded crackdown came in Mecca in 1511 and lasted only a short time.
• Sultan Murad IV cracked down on public coffee drinking in Istanbul in 1633; tales of him beheading drinkers in disguise are unconfirmed.
• Charles II’s 1675 proclamation against London coffeehouses was abandoned before it was enforced.
• Sweden banned coffee five times between 1756 and 1823, mostly for economic reasons. The twin experiment story is doubtful.
• Frederick the Great turned coffee into a royal monopoly in 1781, enforced by so-called coffee sniffers.

1. Mecca, 1511: the first recorded crackdown

By the early 1500s, coffee was popular among Sufi communities in Yemen and had spread to Mecca, where people gathered to drink it and talk. In 1511, Kha’ir Beg, the official in charge of public order in the city, reportedly caught men drinking coffee near the mosque. He called scholars together, who judged that the drink and the gatherings around it were a problem. Coffee sales were halted, and some accounts describe beans being burned and drinkers punished.

The ban did not last. The sultan in Cairo, Qansuh al-Ghuri, did not back the prohibition, and coffee drinking returned within a short time. Details of the episode are disputed by historians, but it is widely recognized as the first recorded attempt to ban coffee.

Why it matters

Mecca set a pattern repeated for the next 300 years: authorities were less worried about the drink itself than about the people it brought together and the conversations they had.

2. Ottoman Istanbul, 1633: Murad IV’s crackdown

Coffeehouses opened in Istanbul in the mid-1500s and quickly became places to gossip, play games, listen to poetry and criticize the government. That last part worried a series of Ottoman rulers.

The harshest was Sultan Murad IV. In 1633, he cracked down on public coffee drinking, alongside tobacco and alcohol, and reportedly declared that offenders should be put to death. Popular accounts claim he roamed the city at night in disguise, sword in hand, punishing drinkers personally. Historians treat these stories with caution: they are vivid, they may hold a grain of truth, but they cannot be confirmed.

Later in the century, reported punishments were less lethal but still harsh, such as beatings for a first offense. Yet coffee survived, and Istanbul’s coffeehouses went on to become one of the city’s defining institutions.

3. England, 1675: Charles II versus the coffeehouses

In Restoration London, coffeehouses were crowded with merchants, writers and political gossips. King Charles II saw them as hotbeds of false news and criticism of his government. On 29 December 1675, he issued A Proclamation for the Suppression of Coffee-Houses, ordering them closed from 10 January 1676 and their licenses withdrawn.

The public reaction was immediate and loud, and coffee was by then an important source of tax revenue. Within days, before the ban even took effect, the government backed down and allowed coffee sellers to continue trading. The proclamation was never enforced. London’s coffeehouses carried on and became famous meeting places for business, science and journalism.

4. Sweden, 1756–1823: five bans and a doubtful experiment

No country fought coffee as stubbornly as Sweden. After earlier royal edicts against coffee and tea in the 1740s, the crown banned coffee outright in five separate periods:

The main motive was economic. Coffee was imported and paid for with money that left the country, and governments of the time worried a great deal about trade balances. Offenders faced fines and confiscation of their coffee and cups. Each ban was widely ignored, smuggling flourished, and coffee was finally allowed for good in 1823. Today, Swedes are among the biggest coffee drinkers in the world, and the coffee break, fika, is a national institution.

The twin experiment: a legend

You may have read that King Gustav III (who reigned 1771–1792) ordered a scientific test to prove coffee was deadly. Two identical twins sentenced to death were spared on condition that one drink coffee every day and the other tea, under the watch of two doctors. The doctors died first, the king was assassinated in 1792, and the tea drinker supposedly died first, at 83.

It is a wonderful story, often called the first clinical trial. But historians have questioned it, and no reliable contemporary record of the experiment has been produced. Treat it as a legend: entertaining, and perhaps loosely inspired by real debates about coffee at the time, but not established fact.

5. Prussia, 1777–1781: Frederick the Great’s coffee sniffers

Frederick II of Prussia had the same worry as the Swedish crown: too much money flowing abroad for coffee. In 1777 he published a statement criticizing his subjects’ growing coffee habit and praising beer as the traditional drink.

When words did not work, he turned to control. In 1781 he created a royal coffee monopoly. Roasting was restricted to state roasteries, and ordinary people could no longer import or roast their own beans legally. To enforce it, inspectors nicknamed Kaffeeriecher or coffee sniffers patrolled the streets, following the smell of roasting beans. Many were discharged soldiers, and they reportedly received a share of the fines they collected.

The monopoly was deeply unpopular and widely evaded. It was dismantled after Frederick’s death in 1786.

Why every coffee ban failed

• Demand was too strong. Once people enjoyed coffee and the social life around it, they would not give it up.
• Enforcement was hard. Beans are easy to hide and smuggle, and private drinking is almost impossible to police.
• Governments needed the money. Taxing coffee often made more sense than banning it, which is exactly what most states eventually did.
• Science never backed the fears. Claims that coffee was poison did not hold up.

Enjoy what they could not stop

Centuries of bans failed because people love a good cup of coffee and the company that comes with it. If you want to taste why, start with the coffees our customers reorder most in our best selling collection, all roasted 1–5 days before delivery and available whole bean or ground.

Coffee ban FAQ

Where was coffee first banned?

In Mecca in 1511, when the local official Kha’ir Beg had coffee sales stopped. The ban was soon lifted.

Did the Ottomans really execute coffee drinkers?

Sultan Murad IV reportedly ordered the death penalty for public coffee drinking in 1633. Stories that he killed drinkers himself are unconfirmed.

Is the Swedish twin coffee experiment true?

It is doubtful. The story is widely repeated, but its authenticity has been questioned and no solid contemporary record has been found. Call it a legend.

Why did Frederick the Great dislike coffee?

Mainly for economic reasons. Imported coffee sent money out of Prussia, so he promoted beer and set up a state coffee monopoly in 1781.

Is coffee banned anywhere today?

No country bans coffee as a drink today. Caffeine is regulated in some contexts, such as limits for energy drinks or sport, but coffee itself is legal worldwide.

Sources

1. In Istanbul, Drinking Coffee in Public Was Once Punishable by Death, Mark Hay, Atlas Obscura, 2018.
2. 4 times drinking coffee was illegal, or even punishable by death, Anne Ewbank, Popular Science, 2026.
3. By the King: A Proclamation for the Suppression of Coffee-Houses (1675), transcribed text, Justus Liebig University Giessen.
4. Gustav III of Sweden’s coffee experiment, Wikipedia, accessed 2026.
5. Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie K. Bealer, The World of Caffeine, Routledge, 2001.

Facts checked in October 2026.

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