The Confusion of the Agha: A Short History of Chocolate in the Ottoman Empire (Seventeenth-Twentieth Centuries)

Cocoa, like tobacco, coffee and tea, belongs to the “exotic substances” which spread globally at the beginning of the second half of the sixteenth century. From the start, Ottoman clerics and chroniclers disputed the benefits and risks of coffee and tobacco. Although chocolate had most probably already been available in the late seventeenth century, it does not seem to have attracted much attention among these circles. Accordingly, whereas the history of tobacco and coffee in the Ottoman Empire is well researched, issues related to cocoa or chocolate remain a neglected topic. So far there has not been a single study dedicated to cocoa or chocolate. This study is a preliminary attempt to bring together scattered sources that provide information about the emergence, diffusion and consumption of cocoa and chocolate in the Ottoman Empire.