The brief history of coffee

Coffee first appeared in Ethiopia around 2,000 years ago. Legend has it that an

Ethiopian goatherd, who  witnessed the energized behavior of his goats after they

 feasted on the berries of a coffee tree, tied the berries himself and discovered

their unusual properties. Monks in a local monastery took this discovery turned

it into a beverage.

So much for the legend. In fact , there is a consensus among historians and

botanists that coffee, especially the genus coffee Arabica, is indigenous to

Ethiopia where it continues to grow wild in the regions of kaffa, illubabor, Bale

and Gamo Gofa, the noted botanist P.G. Sylavain, after making a thorough and

lengthy research in south western Ethiopia, confirmed this by saying  that this

country is the mother-land of world coffee and it is astonishing why the coffee

shrub is called coffee Arabica. ‘Etymologists interpret ‘coffee’ as a derivative

of the Ethiopian province ‘Kaffa.;’ Whatever the actual origins, historians say

that in Ethiopia people seasoned foods with ground coffee beans. By the 10th

century, traders had brought the beans to the Arabian peninsula (Yemen) where

Muslim monks grew the shrubs and made a “wine” (“Qahwah” in Arabic ) from the

fermented coffee berries. With wine forbidden to Muslims, this liquid became a

substitute beverage.

In about 1300 the southern Arabians began roasting and brewing coffee. This

development meantime  wider use of coffee as a beverage for every thing from

religious purposes to medical applications. Even as early as the 10th century, a

respected  Arab physician wrote about the positive physical effects of coffee. As

coffee became a greater part of Arab life, it assumed a social role as well.

In fact , the original “coffee houses” sprang up in and around Mecca in which

people could not only drink the beverage but exchange ideas, listen to music or

play chess. The early coffee houses also exposed European travelers to this unique

beverage.

The Arabians initially protected their production of coffee and maintained an early

 monopoly on this lucrative source of trade. The free marketplace, in the form of

the legendary Middle Eastern hub of the trade routes to Asia, Africa and later to

Europe, rebelled against such controls. Curiosity and the profit motive quickly

moved the idea of coffee far beyond its early boundaries. With the many pilgrims

that passed through Mecca, the popular beverage began to appear beyond Arabia.

By the 15th century, coffee was growing in Yemen and with in the next hundred

years its use reached Egypt, Persia, Syria and Turkey.