coffee in a historical overview

Coffee was first discovered in the Ethiopian highlands sometime in the 9th Century A.D. There are severallegendary accounts of its discovery.

The most commonly accepted account involves a young

Ethiopian shepherd-boy named Kaldi. Kaldi awoke one morning to find that his goats were missing. He set out at once to find his herd and when he did, he found his goats dancing with an unnatural level of energy. He observed them eating certain “wild berries” which were in fact coffee berries. After trying the berries himself, he soon experienced the powerful energy boost these “little berries” could provide.

Another similar account involves a Yemenite Sufi mystic named Shaikh ash-Shadhili. While he was traveling in Ethiopia, so the story goes, he noticed goats with unusual energy, and, after trying the berries himself he experienced the same stimulating effect.

Regardless of who discovered them, soon the “berries” found their way into a local monastery where certain monks would “pop a few berries” to stay awake during extended hours of prayer. This led to further dissemination of the berries to other monasteries across the miles.

This was just the beginning of the world-wide phenomenon called coffee.

Coffee then spread northward to Egypt and across the Red Sea to Arabia. Egypt helped to expand the cultivation process and it was in Arabia that coffee beans were first roasted and brewed as they are today.

The etymology of the word coffee is quite interesting. While it has passed through many other languages (i.e. caffee, kahve), it originated from the Arabic word qahveh (“gahwa”) a truncation of qahhwat al-bun meaning “wine of the bean”.

By the 13th century throughout Arabia “Qahveh Houses” had become very popular, gathering places with music, philosophers, tradesmen, politicians, artisans all gathered to discuss, dream, debate and drink coffee. In Yemen it was a beverage endorsed by the Islamic clerics (since drinking alcohol was prohibited in their religion).

As the popularity of coffee drinking grew in Arabia, Turkey and Yemen, travelers from Europe sampled the “new brew” and took word of it back to Europe.

The Arabians were very protective of their coffee plants, refusing to even allow the seeds to leave the country unless they were roasted to prevent the possibility of germination.

One Indian Moslem named Baba Budan was able to smuggle coffee seeds out after a pilgrimage to Arabia, and upon his return home planted them in southern India.

By the 15th century, coffee had reached the rest of the Middle East, Persia, Turkey, and northern Africa. The Turks would add spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, clove, and anise to the drink.

The trade between the Italian city of Venice and North Africa, Egypt, and the Middle East brought in a large variety of African commodities to the famous European port. Venetian merchants had decided to bring coffee to the Venetian aristocracy with a hefty price tag.

In 1615 the first shipment of coffee arrived in Venice from Turkey. From there coffee houses quickly spread through Italy, Vienna and then throughout most of Europe.

The first written record of coffee in Britain was in 1637 when a Turkish man named Jacob opened a coffee house in Oxford.

Despite the fact that caffeine is a perfectly natural element found in the fruit of over 60 plants worldwide, Catholic Cardinals shunned it as the ‘Devil’s drink’ and tried to have it banned.

The Pope Clement VIII decided that it would be “imprudent” to ban the beverage without tasting it himself. So he summoned a sample. Supposedly the Pope was instantly taken by the “savory sip”. He ruled that to it would be a ”greater sin” to banish coffee. He baptized it on the spot stating that “it would be a shame to let the sinful ones have this delightful drink all to themselves”.

For hundreds of years Arabia was practically the exclusive provider of coffee throughout the civilized world.

The Dutch meanwhile had secured coffee seeds from the Malabar region in southern India (remember Baba Budan?) and planted them in their own colony at Java. At the time coffee was available from “Mukha” the main port of Yemen or from Java, hence the famous coffee blend "Mocha-Java."

In 1715 Louis XIV of France was given one single coffee tree that was brought to him from Java to Holland, and then on to Paris by the Dutch. At this time the very first greenhouse in Europe was built for this one coffee tree, where it flowered and bore fruit.

The first buds from this tree were taken to the island of Martinique, a French dominion in the Caribbean around the year 1720. Within 50 years, there were over 19 million trees on the island. From there coffee spread throughout Central and South America.

Coffee came to North America with the British. In the mid 1700s, many local pubs doubled as coffee houses.

Following the famous Boston Tea Party in 1773, it was deemed “unpatriotic” to drink tea. It didn’t take Colonists long to find that they themselves could import coffee from Central and South America. By the beginning of the 20th Century, America was consuming half of all the coffee produced in the world.

During the Revolutionary War the demand for coffee increased so dramatically (due to the reduction of availability of British Tea) that dealers hoarded inventory and raised prices sharply.

During the War of 1812 Britain temporarily cut off US access to tea imports. As in the revolution a few years earlier, this prompted a resurgence in the popularity of coffee in the states. During the American Civil War coffee was in high demand and with the advent of advanced brewing technology coffee became a staple commodity in the USA.

Espresso originated in 1822 after the invention of the first espresso machine (a crude prototype) in France. The Italians perfected the technology and were the first to manufacture the machines. Espresso has become such an essential part of Italian culture, that there are currently over 200,000 espresso bars in Italy.

Today, coffee is the second most valuable commodity in the world next to oil (in terms of dollars traded worldwide). It is a massive global industry employing more than 20 million people.

Coffee has become an important cash crop for many developing countries around the world.

Over 1 hundred million people in these countries have become dependent on coffee for their income.

To some, coffee may just be a choice on a menu or an aisle in the supermarket.

To others it is simply a much needed energy source or a “guilty pleasure”.

But to many it represents a way of life, a rich and beautiful gift that stretches far around the globe. Discovered by a boy named Kaldi, stolen by a smuggler named Baba and proliferated by a guy named Louis.