History as seen from the Coffee Bean
There are several dozen species of coffee plants, but the three most commonly grown for consumption are Coffea arabica, Coffea robusta, and Coffea liberica. Arabica is by far the most harvested, making up 75% of all coffee. In fact, coffee is second only to oil as a traded product. |
| By 6th Century |
Coffee is believed to have first been consumed by humans in northeast Africa. Coffee cherries, or "bunna" in the local language, were eaten as food by the people of the Kaffa region of Ethiopia. Like the pemmicin of the American Indians, balls of ground coffee and animal fat were valued energy food on hunting trips and battle raids. A tea made from the leaves of the coffee plant is still drunk today in some parts of Ethiopia.
According to one traditional story, a goat herder named Kaldi or Khalid was the first to notice his flock had became very energetic after grazing on a eating a red cherry-like fruit. In the Yemen area of Arabia the same discovery of jumping goats is attibuted to a Sufi mystic, Shaikh ash-Shadhili.
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| By 8th Century |
Coffee farms appear on the Arabian pennisula. In addition to eating the fruit of the plant, Arabs may have been the first to develop a beverage from boiling the beans. "Qahwa", orginally the Arabic word for wine, was also used for coffee.
Another traditional Arabian story tells of a religious leader named Omar, who had been exiled in the desert. He and his followers tried drinking a tea made from the fruit of a plant unknown to them. This drink sustained them, and their surivival was considered a sign of divine favor. Mocha, a nearby village, was used as one of the names for the new beverage.
Coffee became very popular among Sufis, other monks, and scholars who spent long hours praying, writing and translating. The religious scholar Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani of Aden may have been the first public official to espouse the use of coffee, around 1450. But public reaction was mixed. Coffee drinking was outlawed later in Mecca and in Cairo, although this prohibtion did not last.
Arab traders carried plant and drink, often illegally, beyond the Muslim world.
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| By 1475 |
Coffee spreads to Constantinople. The very first public coffeehouse, Kiva Han, opens. Local spices are often used to flavor "kahve": cardamom, anise, cloves, and cinnamon. |
| By 1600 |
Coffee enters Europe via Venice, where "caffee" becomes a drink for the wealthy. Pope Vincent III (some versions say Clement VIII) counters suspicions about subversive infidel tastes by endorsing what some had called "the devil's drink." |
| By 1650 |
The 1st English coffeehouse is opened in Oxford. London's 1st coffeehouse would open in 1652. Within 25 years there are more than 3,000 in Great Britain. |
| By 1668 |
Coffee is the favorite breakfast beverage in New York City. In England, Edward Lloyd opens a coffeehouse that becomes favored by merchants and maritime insurance agents meeting to discuss business. Lloyd's of London is today the most well-known insurance agency in the world. |
| By 1673 |
1st coffeehouse opens in Paris. |
| By 1683 |
1st coffeehouse in Vienna opens. According to legend, the use of sugar and milk in coffee was begun by the Austrians to stretch out the expensive Turkish coffee. |
| By 1727 |
Coffee spreads thru the Americas by way of French plantations on Martinique and the West Indies. |
| By 1800s |
Originally begun with a few smuggled seeds, the Brazil coffee industry is so productive that coffee is no longer drunk by only the elite. |
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For many decades in the 19th and early 20th centuries Brazil was the biggest producer of and a virtual monopolist in the trade, until a policy of maintaining high prices opened opportunities to other nations, like Colombia, Guatemala and Indonesia.
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