Your Cart is Empty
Coffee keeps us going after a long day, it has saved many assignments from being turned in late, and it's made many a morning more pleasant. Whether it's black and iced, piping hot with a dash of sugar, or something fancy with an Italian name, coffee has also brought friendships and relationships together while fostering new ones. Even if you don't like the taste of it, surely you enjoy the smell. There aren't many beverages that one can speak this highly of. But, would you believe that once upon a time, some folks concluded that nature's nectar was a God-send?
Legend has it that it all began in Africa, around 850 A.D., where an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi discovered coffee berries' energizing benefits. Kaldi noticed his goats eating berries from a specific tree and their ensuing bursts of energy. The goats became so active, even the older ones, that they had no interest in sleeping at night.
Kaldi informed an abbot at the local monastery of the strange goings-on. The curious abbot proceeded to crush a handful of the berries in his hand, at which point he discovered the "seed," or bean, inside. He threw these beans into a fire, roasting them. The unmistakable, some would go as far as to say the heavenly aroma of what we now know as coffee wafted through the air. Afterward, the abbot ground the roasted beans into a powder and dissolved them in hot water to make a beverage; thus, it became the world’s first cup of coffee.
The abbot and his monks realized that this beverage had the ability to keep them awake for hours at a time. But, of course, this was just the thing for men devoted to long hours of prayer.
Word of this miracle beverage began to spread as far as the Arabian peninsula. During the 15th century, Sufi members in Abyssinia and Yemen used coffee to stay awake at all-night prayers, as an aid to concentration, and even as spiritual intoxication when chanting the name of God. I don't know about you, but I've certainly found myself thanking God after that first sip of joe on a particularly rough Monday morning.
Interestingly enough, however, recorded historical accounts inform us that coffee was known to Middle Eastern doctors for its medicinal properties from around the mid 8th century A.D.
Whether or not the Ethiopian shepherd named Kaldi is the true origin story of coffee or a mere folktale, it is true that the Arabica bush, the most common source of coffee beans, was first discovered in Ethiopia. Today, it makes up over three-quarters of the world's coffee crops. It is also true that the Yemeni were the first to cultivate coffee during the 15th century and give it its Arabic name, qahwa, which actually meant "wine." Thus, the word qahwa is from which our words coffee and café both derive.
Coffee houses sprung up all over the Middle East and East Africa, enacting a social revolution. These new institutions became an implicit rival to the mosque as intellectual men met together to talk, listen to poets, and play games. Coffee became so widespread and drunk so often in the Middle East that Mecca and other cities attempted to outlaw it.
The ban was led by Khair Beg, the young governor of Mecca, who feared acts of sedition were happening behind coffee house doors, fostering opposition to his rule. Beg tried saying that the effects of coffee were similar to those of alcohol, having something in common with wine, which was forbidden in Islam.
The sultan of Cairo, Kansuh al-Ghawri, was furious about the ban, most likely a coffee drinker himself, and who could blame him? Public pressure began to mount, and while history is a tad fuzzy as to what transpired next, the ban was overturned, and legal coffee drinking commenced.
Some accounts say Beg was executed, and others state that the sultan of Cairo replaced the governor with someone who had no qualms with coffee. Now, that's my kind of guy! But, of course, this wouldn't be the last time someone would attempt to ban this beloved beverage as Earth's energizer began making its caffeinated trip around the world in the late 16th century.
Stay tuned as we take a look at how coffee was traded and how it began spreading across the globe into different cultures. Until then, how do you like your coffee?
Read more about how coffee spread across the world in part 2
