The switch from coffee to tea
Originally coffee was more popular than tea in Iran. So what caused the gradual switch to tea in Iran?
Iran had followed the coffee house trend made popular by the Ottomans. Governments and religious authorities throughout Europe began to denounce the rise of coffeehouses. Iran soon followed suit, while Britain and Russia in particular began to heavily promote tea for their own economic interests.
The fall of the Safavid dynasty in the early 1700’s to Afghan invaders disrupted traditional coffee routes, cutting coffee culture even further in Iran.
While more coffee houses continued to be shut down by governments throughout the world, the development of new trade routes closely linked Iran with European countries. As a result, the amount of tea imported into Iran from England nearly tripled in the late 1800’s.
Thereafter, tea cultivation became common in Iran around the early 1900’s, establishing tea as an affordable beverage for the lower economic classes. Russian conquests of neighboring countries such as Georgia and Turkistan spread Russian influence throughout neighboring Iran, which included a proclivity to tea drinking.
In addition, the opening of the Suez Canal facilitated trade throughout the Middle East, allowing Iran to expand its trade options with predominately tea drinking nations thereby facilitating and reinforcing the switch to tea.