In the land of Raki

It is often believed that in the land of Islam, alcohol would have faced the insurmountable barrier of religious prohibition. As if the Quran, which prohibits wine in this world but promises it in the afterlife, had settled the issue once and for all. How, then, to understand the promotion of raki, whose production is attested as early as the 16th century, to the status of a "national drink" in modern Turkey? Or the sometimes immoderate taste of Sultan Mahmud II for champagne? In reality, over a long period marked by alternating periods of prohibition and liberalization, wines and other alcoholic beverages have continued to be consumed in the vast multi-confessional space of the Ottoman Empire. It is this discreet history, a history of margins and transgression, but also of true "drinking cultures," that is revealed here. From the shady taverns of Istanbul to secret libations, passing through the vineyards of Thrace or Anatolia, from Sufi rituals to outbursts of bacchic poetry, from the more or less feigned indignations of religious figures to the hesitations of power, even in present-day Turkey, alcohol becomes the precipitate of a vast social, cultural, and political history. Epilogue by Nicolas Elias and Jean-François Pérouse, "Drinking in Erdogan's Turkey".