The prohibition proved to be more honored in the breach than in the observance. Coffee drinking continued in secret, instead of in the open. And when, about 1580, Amurath III, at the further solicitation of the churchmen, declared in an edict that coffee should be classed with wine, and so prohibited in accordance with the law of the Prophet, the people only smiled, and persisted in their secret disobedience. Already they were beginning to think for themselves on religious as well as political matters. The civil officers, finding it useless to try to suppress the custom, winked at violations of the law; and, for a consideration, permitted the sale of coffee privately, so that many Ottoman "speak-easies" sprung up--places where coffee might be had behind shut doors; shops where it was sold in back-rooms. This was enough to re-establish the coffee houses by degrees. Then came a mufti less scrupulous or more knowing than his predecessor, who declared that coffee was not to be looked upon as coal, and that the drink made from it was not forbidden by the law. There was a general renewal of coffee drinking; religious devotees, preachers, lawyers, and the mufti himself indulging in it, their example being followed by the whole court and the city. After this, the coffee houses provided a handsome source of revenue to each succeeding grand vizier; and there was no further interference with the beverage until the reign of Amurath IV, when Grand Vizier Kuprili, during the war with Candia, decided that for political reasons, the coffee houses should be closed. His argument was much the same as that advanced more than a hundred years later by Charles II of England, namely, that they were hotbeds of sedition. Kuprili was a military dictator, with nothing of Charles's vacillating nature; and although, like Charles, he later rescinded his edict, he enforced it, while it was effective, in no uncertain fashion. Kuprili was no petty tyrant. For a first violation of the order, cudgeling was the punishment; for a second offense, the victim was sewn in a leather bag and thrown into the Bosporus. Strangely enough, while he suppressed the coffee houses, he permitted the taverns, that sold wine forbidden by the _Koran_, to remain open. Perhaps he found the latter produced a less dangerous kind of mental stimulation than that produced by coffee. Coffee, says Virey, was too intellectual a drink for the fierce and senseless administration of the pashas.