Terminology
Are cezve, briki and rakwe the same thing?
They name the same kind of vessel — a small metal pot, usually copper, with a long handle — but they are not interchangeable words. Cezve is Turkish and briki is Greek, both on the record in the dictionaries listed below. Rakwe is used in the Levant, though we have not yet sourced it to our own standard. The pot travels between kitchens. The names, the coffee and the customs around them belong to particular languages and communities.
At a glance
- What they share
- A small metal pot, usually copper, with a long handle, used to brew coffee ground to a fine powder.
- What differs
- The name, the language it belongs to, and the coffee, sweetening, additions and serving customs of each tradition.
- A separate tradition
- Arabic coffee, inscribed by UNESCO for a group of Gulf States and Jordan, is its own practice with its own serving etiquette. It is not another name for Turkish coffee.
- What Jezwa has sourced
- Cezve and briki. The Levantine entry is still open.
The terms
Cezve
The Türk Dil Kurumu, the dictionary of record for Turkish, defines a cezve as a small handled vessel for making coffee. Turkish coffee culture is inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, submitted by Türkiye in 2013. That inscription describes the method and the hospitality around it; it does not name the pot.
Briki μπρίκι
Collins records briki as the Greek name for the same vessel. It is the word to use when the subject is Greek coffee, and the word to avoid when it is not. A Greek guide that says cezve is describing someone else’s kitchen.
Rakwe
Also written rakwa and rakweh, depending on how the Arabic is transliterated.
Not yet sourced. Jezwa has not found a dictionary of record, museum catalogue or published scholarly work that documents this term. What is available online is largely written by people selling the pot. That is not a source, so this entry stays open rather than being filled in from retail copy. We are looking for a Levantine writer to source it properly and be credited for it.
Related is not the same as identical
It is easy to write that these are “all the same thing”, and it is nearly true at the level of metal and heat. It stops being true one step later. UNESCO carries Turkish coffee culture and Arabic coffee as two separate inscriptions, submitted by different States, describing different practices. Treating the whole region as one coffee culture with several spellings flattens exactly the differences that make each one worth learning.
So Jezwa’s rule is to connect the methods and distinguish the cultures. A Greek guide says briki. A Turkish guide says cezve. A Levantine guide says rakwe. Where we do not yet know enough to write the guide, we say that instead of borrowing someone else’s word for the occasion.
What this page does not tell you
- Where any of these words came from. There is a real etymology question here and more than one answer circulating. It needs a specialist, and it needs the Arabic typesetting question settled first, so we have left it out rather than picking the version we liked.
- Anything about Balkan, Armenian, Persian, Cypriot or Egyptian terms and practice. Nobody here has researched them yet.
- How to brew. That is the brewing page, and it is honest about its own gaps too.
How this page was made
- Written by
- Jezwa
- Updated
- 23 August 2026
- Cultural review
- Not yet reviewed. Jezwa is new and has not yet commissioned a reader from each tradition named here. Until it has, this page states only what its listed sources support, and says where it stops. Corrections are welcome at hello@jezwa.com.
Sources
- cezve, Güncel Türkçe Sözlük — Türk Dil Kurumu. Accessed 23 August 2026.
- cezve — Collins English Dictionary, Complete & Unabridged. Accessed 23 August 2026.
- briki — Collins English Dictionary, Complete & Unabridged. Accessed 23 August 2026.
- Turkish coffee culture and tradition — UNESCO, Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (Türkiye, 2013). Accessed 23 August 2026.
- Arabic coffee, a symbol of generosity — UNESCO, Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Accessed 23 August 2026.