The history of coffee dates back centuries, first from its origin in Ethiopia and Yemen. It was already known in Mecca in the 15th century. Also, in the 15th century, Sufi Muslim monasteries (khanqahs) in Yemen employed coffee as an aid to concentration during prayers.[1]Coffee later spread to the Levant in the early 16th century; it caused some controversy on whether it was halal in Ottoman and Mamluk society. Coffee arrived in Italy in the second half of the 16th century through commercial Mediterranean trade routes, while Central and Eastern Europeans learned of coffee from the Ottomans. By the mid 17th century, it had reached India and the East Indies.
Coffee houses were established in Western Europe by the late 17th century, especially in Holland, England, and Germany. One of the earliest cultivations of coffee in the New World was when Gabriel de Clieu brought coffee seedlings to Martinique in 1720. These beans later sprouted 18,680 coffee trees which enabled its spread to other Caribbean islands such as Saint-Domingue and also to Mexico. By 1788, Saint-Domingue supplied half the world’s coffee.[2]
By 1852, Brazil became the world’s largest producer of coffee and has held that status ever since. Since 1950, several other major producers emerged, notably Colombia, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, and Vietnam; the latter overtook Colombia and became the second-largest producer in 1999.
Today, coffee is one of the world’s most popular beverages, with a significant cultural and economic impact globally.
Etymology
The word coffee entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie, borrowed from the Ottoman Turkish kahve (قهوه), borrowed in turn from the Arabic qahwah (قَهْوَة).[3] Medieval Arab lexicographers traditionally held that the etymology of qahwah meant ‘wine‘, given its distinctly dark color, and derived from the verb qahiya (قَهِيَ), ‘to have no appetite‘.[4] The word qahwah most likely meant ‘dark’, referring to the brew or the bean. Semitic languages had the root qhh, “dark color”, which became a natural designation for the beverage.[4] There is no evidence that the word qahwah was named after the Ethiopian province of Kaffa (a part of where coffee originates from: Abyssinia),[4] or any significant authority stating the opposite, or that it is traced to the Arabic quwwa (“power”).[3][1] A different term for ‘coffee’, widespread in languages of Ethiopia, is buna, bun, būn or buni (depending on the language). Most often the word group has been assumed to originate from Arabic bunn (بن) meaning specifically the coffee bean, but indigenous origin in Cushitic has been proposed as a possibility as well.[5][6]
The Ottomans’ dominant position in the trade in coffee is thought to have influenced several other European languages as well, inspiring “caffè” in Italian and “café” in French. These terms, along with the Dutch koffie emerged at roughly the same time [citation needed], reflecting the beverage’s newfound spread across Europe. The terms coffee pot and coffee break originated in 1705 and 1952 respectively
Genetics
Studies of genetic diversity have been performed on Coffea arabica varieties, which were found to be of low diversity but with retention of some residual heterozygosity from ancestral materials, and closely related diploid species Coffea canephora and C. liberica;[8] however, no direct evidence has ever been found indicating where in Africa coffee grew or who among the local people might have used it as a stimulant or known about it there earlier than the seventeenth century.[1] The original domesticated coffee plant is said to have been from Harar, and the native population is thought to be derived from Ethiopia with distinct nearby populations in Sudan and Kenya.
History
The earliest mention of coffee noted by the literary coffee merchant Philippe Sylvestre Dufour[11] is a reference to bunchum in the works of the 10th century CE Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, known as Rhazes in the West.[12] More definite information on the coffee tree and preparation of a beverage from the roasted coffee berries dates back to the late 15th century. The Sufi Imam Muhammad Ibn Said al-Dhabhani is known to have imported goods from Ethiopia to Yemen.[1] Coffee was first exported out of Ethiopia to Yemen by Somali merchants from Berbera and Zeila, which was procured from Harar and the Abyssinian interior. According to Captain Haines, who was the colonial administrator of Aden (1839–1854), Mocha historically imported up to two-thirds of their coffee from Berbera-based merchants before the coffee trade of Mocha was captured by British-controlled Aden in the 19th century. Thereafter, much of the Ethiopian coffee was exported to Aden via Berbera
Berbera not only supplies Aden with horned cattle and sheep to a very large extent, but the trade between Africa and Aden is steadily increasing greatly every year. In the article of coffee alone there is considerable export, and ‘Berbera’ coffee stands in the Bombay market now before Mocha. The coffee shipped at Berbera comes from far in the interior from Hurrar, Abyssinia, and Kaffa. It will be to the advantage of all that the trade should come to Aden through one port, and Berbera is the only place on the coast there that has a protected port, where vessels can lie in smooth water.
One of the most important of the early writers on coffee was Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri, who in 1587 compiled a work tracing the history and legal controversies of coffee entitled Umdat al Safwa fi hill al-qahwa عمدة الصفوة في حل القهوة,[15][16] tracing the spread of coffee from Arabia Felix (present-day Yemen) northward to Mecca and Medina, and then to the larger cities of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Constantinople. He reported that one Sheikh, Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani (d. 1470), mufti of Aden, was the first to adopt the use of coffee (circa 1454).
He found that among its properties was that it drove away fatigue and lethargy, and brought to the body a certain sprightliness and vigour.[1]
Al-Jaziri’s manuscript work is of considerable interest with regard to the history of coffee in Europe as well. A copy reached the French royal library, where it was translated in part by Antoine Galland as De l’origine et du progrès du café