Coffee Bans in Arab Countries

I am reading Mark Pendergrast's Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed our World.

It is great.

The only problem so far is that a basic graph--a mapamundi with the most important dates--is not readable on my Amazon Kindle. I can just read some dates with a lot of focusing but most of the information is totally blurred.

Nevertheless, the book is great.

Some funny facts:

"When Khair-Beg, the young governor of Mecca, discovered that satirical verses about him were emanating from the coffeehouses, he determined that coffee, like wine, must be outlawed by the Koran and he induced his religious, legal, and medical advisors to agree. Thus, in 1511 the coffeehouses of Mecca were forcibly closed."

"The ban lasted only until the Cairo sultan, a habitual coffee drinker, heard about it and reversed the edict. Other Arab rulers and religious leaders, however, also denounced coffee during the course of the 1500s. The Grand Vizier Kuprili of Constantinople, for example, fearing sedition during a war, closed the city's coffeehouses. Anyone caught drinking coffee was soundly cudgeled. Offenders found imbibing a second time were sewn into leather bags and thrown into the Bosphorus. Even so, many continued drinking coffee in secret, and eventually the ban was withdrawn." (Amazon Kindle location 168-9)

A different story is told here:
http://www.mrbreakfast.com/article.asp?articleid=26

The sultan of Cairo in 1511 was Qansuh al-Ghuri.

"Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri was second to last of the Mamluk sultans and the last to enjoy a reign of any duration (1501-16). Al-Ghuri died of a heart attack while fighting the Ottoman Turks outside Aleppo, following the defection of Amir Khayrbak in the midst of the battle. His body was never found, and was not buried in his mausoleum on which he had spent a fortune. In the chronicles of Ibn Iyas, Al-Ghuri is portrayed as an energetic and arbitrary despot, cruel and superstitious, and thoroughly human in his weaknesses. Time and again we read of someone savagely tortured to extract money from him, or of someone else hanged or cut in two for some offense, real or imaged. Nonetheless, al-Ghuri loved flowers and music, wrote poetry, and was attracted to Sufis and other pious men. He was a great patron of architecture, and a man of refined cultural tastes."
http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=3346

I am also considering "relocating" my novel. Coffee has been so popular in Arab countries that my story could be more interesting there. I could start with one of these historical bans, and then continue with fiction.

What would have happened if the Cairo sultan had seen the advantages of prohibition? Like: monopolizing coffee production and trade, increasing the price of the staple, having a pretext to increase the powers of the army, more weapons production, and so on. Just like nowadays.

Of course, I would give the sultan a different name, and also the governor of Mecca. The sultan would not be as powerful as he really was, because the coffee ban is something that will give him more power. The story would begin with Khair-Beg being told that seditionists were gathering at coffeehouses. He would ban coffee and coffeehouses. The sultan would hear about this in his Cairo palace, and his first reaction would be to punish Khair-Beg, but he would think a lot during the night--he drank so much coffee that he could not sleep--and the next day, he would ban coffee, and so on...