An American, a Scot, and an Irishman at a Turkish coffeehouse: tales recounted in Ottoman coffeehouses introduced to the Western world

Abstract

Cyrus Adler, an American 'authority on the Semitic languages', and Allan Ramsay, a Scot, 'one of the directors of the great Tobacco Régie of Turkey', visited various coffeehouses in the years 1890 and 1891 and collected the tales they listened to during these visits in a book entitled Told in the Coffee House: Turkish Tales, published in 1898 in New York and London. In its Preface, Adler stated that, 'in the course of a number of visits to Constantinople, I became much interested in the tales that are told in the coffee houses' (Adler and Ramsay 1898: v), for they were an indispensable part of that culture and were worth preserving as they might well reflect the customs, traditions, and ways of thinking of coffeehouse customers. Sixteen years after the publication of Adler and Ramsay's book in 1898, another collection of Turkish tales was introduced to Western readers. Francis McCullagh, an Irish journalist and war correspondent, collected a more substantial volume of folktales that included those from Adler and Ramsay's earlier book of 1898. McCullagh worked on this book with Allan Ramsay, a trusted expert both on Turkish tales and coffeehouses. This new collection, entitled Tales from Turkey, was published in 1914 in London. These Turkish tales and the humour these tales preserved brought these three independent travellers together. While the reasons for their visits to Constantinople (Istanbul) had differed, their appreciation of Turkish humour and their passion for preserving Ottoman folklore were similar. Their lives intersected in these unusual cooperative ventures, uniting their names on two published books of Turkish tales. In this chapter, I review the attractive and personal stories of these travellers while also shedding light on the common element in their diverse lives that had attracted them all to Constantinople: their admiration for the Turkish tales told in its coffeehouses. © The Authors and Archaeopress 2024.