Cafés in Egypt Cairo

Sufis, bans and a thousand coffee-shops

Coffee had early enemies. In 1511 conservative imams at a theological court in Mecca banned it for its stimulating effect, and in 1532 Cairo imposed a similar ban, sacking coffeehouses and warehouses of beans.³

Writing in the 1830s, the British writer Edward William Lane reported that Cairo had above a thousand kahwehs, or coffee-shops, used mostly by tradesmen and "persons of the lower orders".⁴ He noted that Egyptians liked their coffee strong and usually unsweetened, sometimes flavored with cardamom. By the end of the 19th century the coffeehouse had spread to the elite.⁴

Inside an ahwa: shai, sada and shisha

The ahwa (plural ahawy) is an informal coffeehouse, often squeezed into a narrow alley, where regulars are on first-name terms with the ahwagy who serves them.⁵ Sweet black tea is the main order. Shay koshary is loose tea with boiling water poured straight onto it in the glass, and shay miza is tea with milk.⁵

Turkish-style coffee is ordered by sweetness, from sada (no sugar, also called sketto) to ziada, the sweetest.⁵ Shisha is part of the visit: a hagar is one serving, packed with me'assel, tobacco cured in molasses. The customers are mostly men, and backgammon is the soundtrack.⁵

Cheapness is the point. In 2012 a cup of tea or coffee at a downtown ahwa could cost as little as E£1.⁶ A 2020 study by Dalia Said Mostafa and Amina Elbendary treats the coffeehouse as a source of work for informal laborers and a site of political mobilization, including during the 2011 revolution.⁷

Khan el-Khalili and the downtown cafés

In Khan el-Khalili, by the al-Hussein Mosque, Cairo's governorate dates El-Fishawy to 1771, with a first license in 1863 under Khedive Ismail; other accounts give 1797.⁸⁹ Naguib Mahfouz wrote parts of his Nobel-winning trilogy in its back room. In 1996 Aramco World found tea the most popular order there, and coffee served in a long-handled copper pot, the kanaka, with sugar on the side.¹⁰

Under Khedive Ismail (1863 to 1879), European-style cafés opened downtown, linked to Cairo's Greek community and frequented by effendis, young professionals exposed to Western ideas.⁶ Café Riche on Talaat Harb Street is one of them: after the 1992 earthquake, a cellar there turned out to hold a printing press tied to secret publications of the 1919 revolution.⁸

From the mall café to the roaster

The next shift came with economic liberalization in the late 1990s. Global coffee brands arrived and mall culture spread, and going for coffee began to mean air conditioning, imported beans and drinks with Italian names.¹¹ At home the kanaka stayed. In 2018 plain ground coffee sold for E£90 a kilo and Arabic coffee for E£115, according to the Chamber of Commerce's coffee division.²

Specialty coffee has followed, with roasters in Cairo, Alexandria and along the Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts, and cafés that run brewing workshops and introduce drinkers to their roasters.¹¹

Cairo, from the Nile island to the garden suburbs

Zamalek takes the northern, residential third of Gezira Island in the Nile, a district of early 20th-century villas and at least 52 embassies and consulates.¹²

Maadi, about 12 km upriver on the east bank, grew from 1904 as a planned suburb of wide streets and villas; its Road 9 is known for coffee shops and bookstores, and Metro Line 1 stops three times in the district.¹³

Heliopolis, to the northeast, was founded in 1905 by the Belgian industrialist Édouard Empain in a blend of Persian, Moorish and neoclassical styles. Korba, around Baghdad Street, is its square for strolling, shopping and eating out, and Metro Line 3 has reached it since 2018.¹⁴