How The West Stole Coffee From The East
By: Erik Brown
Tags: Food, Spirituality, History, Culture, Business

The Birth Of Coffee

“…although all the Arab historians are in accord that the story of coffee drinking as we know it apparently begins somewhere in or around the Yemen in a Sufi order in the middle of the fifteenth century, additional details of its origin had already been mislaid or garbled within the lifetimes of people who could remember when coffee had been unknown.” — The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World’s Most Popular Drug, Bennett Alan Weinberg, & Bonnie K. Bealer

A traditional tale that has been passed about in the West is the story of an Ethiopian goat-herder named Kaldi. This herder noticed that his goats took on a strange energy when they ate wild red berries. He’d try them himself and take the coffee berries to an Islamic monastery.

The holy man there would disapprove of the caffeine effects and toss them in a fire. Both men soon noticed a powerfully pleasant aroma. The roasted beans were removed from the fire, ground up, and put into hot water and coffee was born.

This is a wonderful story, but it’s most likely not true. Weinberg and Bealer in their book found the story in Western literature, but no corresponding tale in Islamic sources. However, it does appear that the coffee plant did originate from Ethiopia.

Weinberg and Bealer reference the 1790 book Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile by Scottish explorer James Bruce. Bruce describes warriors from the Galla tribe who made incursions into Abyssinia (Ethiopia). They were known to travel light, carrying small provisions with them in leather bags.

The provisions consisted of ground up berries from coffee trees, roasted and smashed, then mixed into an animal fat. This mixture was then fashioned into balls about the size of a modern pool table ball. It was claimed one of these balls would support a warrior for an entire day and also improve their spirit. So, there does appear to be history of people in Ethiopia using the coffee plant as a stimulant.

Weinberg and Bealer found the first written accounts of people drinking coffee in Islamic texts from the early 1500’s. Practitioners of the Sufi branch of Islam in Yemen (not far from Ethiopia) would use a drink called “qahwa” to stay awake late into the night to finish religious rituals and prayers. Eventually, the drink would be brought out of the mosque and into the surrounding towns.

By 1510, kahwe khaneh (coffeehouses) would appear in Cairo and Mecca. The drink would spread through the Ottoman Empire. Although some authorities would try and ban coffee, the bean would not be stopped. The coffeehouses would move underground until attitudes changed. Man would ignore the authority of God and local chiefs of police — coffee was pulling the strings.

Weinberg and Bealer would also find coffee being written into marriage contracts in Cairo. If a husband couldn’t provide a wife with an acceptable amount of coffee, this could be used as evidence of neglect in divorce proceedings.

In 1555, two businessmen would bring coffee to Istanbul and it would spread like wildfire. According to The Economist’s 1843 Magazine, the drink would now be referred to as kahve and 1 out of every 6 shops would be selling the drink. The coffeehouse would become a grand meeting place where gossip and news would be spread. Think of the golden age of Islam meets Starbucks

Not only would coffee capture the palate and culture of the Islamic world, it would become a big business — particularly trading it to the West.