Drinking coffee was once punishable by death

Nowadays, coffee is the most popular hot drink in the world and has been proven to have many good health effects on the human body. But there was a time in history that coffee was banned, and people who drink coffee were punished by death. This was the year 1633 when the Ottoman sultan Murad IV absolutely forbade an activity he believed was the cause of social decay and disunity in his capital Istanbul. Specifically, he thought that coffee shops could damage social norms, encourage dangerous thoughts or stimulate other terrible things.

It seems that his childhood is the main reason why Murad IV hates coffee so much. After his brother and uncle were brutally murdered by a military group of janissaries, Murad IV lives in fear of janissary rebellions. After finding out that janissaries usually go to coffee shops, and used them to plot coups, he imposed the death penalty on coffee, public tobacco, and opium consumption and even closed taverns. The nonsense was that Murad IV himself never banned coffee wholesale, as well as kept on drinking coffee and liquor. Even after Murad IV's death, his successors continued his policies for over a decade. By the mid-1650s, all the coffee houses in Istanbul were still empty and life-less because of these ignorant policies.