Smoking History - Essay Example

Smoking History In his article, “Smoking and ‘Early Modern’ Sociability: The Great Tobacco Debate in the Ottoman Middle East (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries),” author James Grehan traces the development of the tobacco industry within the Middle Eastern region. He gives particular attention to the way in which it has affected the culture and society of the people who live here, how they responded to the new product and how it has managed to open up the society to new ideas and developments. Traditionally suspicious of anything new, tobacco could be said to have caused a tidal wave in the natural flow of Islamic life. Because it was a substance not directly addressed within the Qur’an, it could not easily be accepted or denied by those with the power to interpret the laws, neither was it easily rejected when it proved to be a lucrative cash crop in many areas of the Middle East and almost instantly accessible to the rich and poor alike. A brief summary of the author’s position helps to reveal his primary argument that tobacco changed the cultural pulse of the Islamic nations and brought them into the modern age. The author introduces his subject with a story about how a group of North Africans were on their way to Mecca on the annual pilgrimage taking a new silk covering to the Ka ba, the sacred monument in Mecca. As they passed through Cairo, they began attacking everyone they saw in the crowd who was smoking tobacco until the crowd finally struck back. Violence was only stopped when the North Africans were taken to jail. From this point, the author indicates how different things are today, that very few people in the Middle East would consider attempting to restrict an individual’s freedom to smoke tobacco if they wished as it is considered one of their inherent rights and freedoms. As he points out to his audience, the concept of smoking was considered, upon its first arrival in the Middle East, as something that threatened the religious and legal standards of the day. This introduces the author’s argument that smoking introduced profound cultural transformations in that it introduced a new use of the body that emphasized and encouraged concepts of hedonism. “In the long term, smoking would help to redefine patterns of social interaction, promoting more relaxed attitudes about pleasure and opening up new avenues for leisure and escapism.”1 As a result of the changes brought about through the luxury and freedom of smoking, Grehan argues the Middle East was brought into an early modern culture. The author acknowledges that there are those who would argue against his position by claiming that attempting to impose the status of Early Modern upon the Middle East is a fabricated theory imposed from the outside European countries. However, he argues against the claims that this classification is artificially imposed by pointing to other historians who recognize common threads through the various nations beginning in the fifteenth century as a result of more integrated international trade which had the additional effect of bringing in new cultural influences. While trade of items such as precious metals and luxury commodities are irrefutable, Grehan also points to various ways in which differing cultures affected one another through political experiments like tax farming, illustrating how trade brought in new ideas that could not do otherwise than affect the cultures involved. “One feature of all these theories is that they seek the defining characteristics of ‘early modernity’ in the actions of political and cultural elites.”2 In tracing the historical development of the tobacco trade, the author illustrates how tobacco quickly became a highly demanded commodity throughout the world with potential medical and pleasurable qualities as well as social associations with the lucrative international elite. Its success was made all the more rapid because of its higher availability thanks to the ability for local growers to start cultivating the tobacco plant. Although tobacco met with a great deal of contention from the powers that be, the author argues that it was quickly too popular among the citizens to completely suppress. Part of the reason for this was its easy availability in that it could be grown in the Middle East, thus producing great amounts of profit both for domestic and international trade and that the process of using it was very inexpensive, requiring little more than a pipe and a source of fire to enjoy. In addition, he claims that the luxury good of coffee had already prepared the way for tobacco to overcome many of the legal and religious restrictions that were thrown up against it. Tracing through the development of the coffee trade in Mecca, Grehan points out that when coffee first arrived, it was considered something akin to wine in its ability to bring out the worst in people as the coffeehouses were “renowned for the loose, worldly atmosphere that they harbored.”3 Religious and political attempts to restrict the use of coffee were outnumbered against the thousands of people who had already adopted it as a medicant and important part of their day as long as it was used in moderation and was not directly associated with other immoral activity. Tobacco entered the scene just as this debate was being resolved. In bringing this argument forward, the author points out that the primary sticking point was that the Qur’an did not explicitly address whether the use of coffee or tobacco was permitted as it had specifically addressed the question of wine. Arguments against smoking followed many of the same courses as arguments against coffee. These included analogies drawn between the use of these substances and the use of wine, which tended to produce no definitive results and the claim that these substances were bad for the health, which was a difficult topic to argue when doctors around the world at the time were using it in medical treatments. Religious arguments pointed to the ashes, blackened bowls and smoke as evidence of where such behavior would lead users in the afterlife as well as the possibility that tobacco was an intentionally corrupting influence introduced to the Muslim culture by a Christian culture intent on bringing about their destruction. The problem of tobacco was made even more concerning by the thought that various members of society were now associating with each other through the coffeehouses and shared interest of tobacco smoking and that the women were beginning to cross boundaries between genders by also taking up the habit and beginning to smoke in public. Continuous opposition to the practice of smoking would ensure that the practice was more often associated with the ideas of disreputable behavior, but were never fully capable of banning it altogether. Throughout his article, Grehan seems to be arguing with historians who seem to feel that there was little or no real opposition to the expansion of smoking as a habit among the general populace. This impression is given because of the particular emphasis he gives to describing the various ways in which smoking was opposed. He details the attempts of the lawmakers to make smoking a crime punishable by death as well as the attempts of the religious leaders to force an understanding of smoking as a step toward the devil. The various arguments brought forward regarding smoking seem to have been realized in the movement of the culture itself as individuals began defying the laws by hiding pipes up their sleeves and extinguishing bowls when the ‘enforcers’ were around, but smoking in secret and even openly whenever possible. At the same time, the laws of the church, which had been relatively ambiguous and slightly negative regarding the merits of fun and leisure within this lifetime up to the point of tobacco’s introduction, were becoming more defined within conservative bounds to indicate that joy and laughter should only be obtained within edifying circles. Smoking, associated as it was with the ‘loose’ concepts of the coffeehouse in which people would watch plays, hear songs and participate in game-playing, was seen as threatening to this way of life as people began leaving the mosques in order to attend events at the coffeehouse, which remained open throughout the day and into the night. In presenting his case, the author manages to give an impression that opposition to the habit of smoking was very fierce, yet very ineffective in accomplishing its primary aim. Once introduced, tobacco seemed to spread like wildfire whose flames were inextinguishable by normal means. As a result, religious and secular leaders had few options but to acquiesce and discover means by which it might be regulated or moderated to fit within the Islamic traditions and beliefs. One of the great strengths of the author’s argument is that he pulls on a great deal of historical background, referring to original texts and naming important figures throughout the early modern history of the Middle East. In doing so, he solidifies his case that tobacco was an important topic throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and even earlier as it was first introduced into the region. By arguing the fierce quality of the opposition to tobacco that occurred among both the secular and religious leaders while still making these efforts look as ineffective as erecting a screen wall to stop an ocean wave, the author illustrates the tremendous upwelling of popular adoption of the practice. With such extreme measures as instant execution of individuals caught smoking at particular times in Middle Eastern history, it would seem that the practice would have at least experienced a significant decline in practice as people value their lives. However, even during these periods in history, Grehan reveals that soldiers would smoke surreptitiously while watching the execution or sneak away to the latrine for a quick puff immediately following the execution. This type of argument illustrates how society was changing from one that was fanatically concerned with obeying the laws of the church and state, often marching in lockstep with each other, to one that was openly defying the rules of both in order to savor the flavor of a good bowl-full of tobacco in the pipe. One of the weak points in the argument is the author’s continued tendency to jump back and forth between his claims for strong opposition and weak opposition to the concepts of tobacco. This seems contradictory as he first claims that the opposition was incredibly fierce and then paints a picture of the greater Islamic society that indicates it was relatively futile. This begins to confuse the issue relatively quickly. Although it eventually serves to contribute to his argument that the will of the people so overwhelmed the opinions of the conservatives that they were essentially rendered speechless, the author never makes it clear that this was his purpose. While he is attempting to prove that tobacco, with a little assistance from coffee and the coffeehouses, was the single greatest factor that brought the culture of the Middle Eastern regions into the modern age, he fails to directly address this issue throughout the remainder of his article. Instead, he seems to get caught up in merely reporting on the historical development of opposition efforts against the tobacco industry in this region without truly bringing the discussion back to his original claims. The article ends up being very informative regarding the growth and development of the tobacco industry in the Middle East in terms of the use of the product among the people and the evolving stance of the leaders. It does not sufficiently prove that tobacco was the causal element that brought about change within the Islamic cultural group to enable them to step into the modern age with the rest of the world. As the author very briefly acknowledges, the region was actively engaged in international trade, accepting visitors and products from other cultures and experimenting with ideas brought in through these channels in other areas of the culture. Any number or combination of these other influences might have contributed to changes wrought within the Middle East, yet are not acknowledged in favor of tobacco as the prime mover and changer. As a result, the article fails to convincingly prove its point, but remains interesting through its examination of one potentiality. Bibliography Grehan, James. (Year of publication). ““Smoking and ‘Early Modern’ Sociability: The Great Tobacco Debate in the Ottoman Middle East (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries).” Name of publication. Read More