Thirteen Thurday - 13 things about the history of coffee

Coffee's origins are surrounded in legend and history. It has only been a beverage in the world for just on five centuries. Cafes, as institutions have survived monarchies, republics, governments, parliaments and wars, and have been the hotbed of plots, assignations, and socializing for centuries - but how did it all start?

1. Coffee originally came from Ethiopia, where it grows wild. It was first brewed by Abyssinian shepherds and is now the world's second most consumed beverage after water.

2. Coffee was thought to be introduced to Yemen from Ethiopia in the C15 by Ali be Omar al-Shadili - the grandmaster of the mystical Sufi sect in a tiny Red Sea port of Mocha (then known as Muza). He came to be known as the 'Saint of Mocha'.

3. An ancient legend and a tale of "A Thousand and One Tales" tells of Kaldi, a Yemenite goatherd, who couldn't sleep because the goats were frolicking about. A local monk followed the goats to discover they were eating red berries off a wild bush common in the area when they were suddenly overcome by a surge of energy. At the monastery the monks chewed the berries to keep them awake during long hours of prayer. So, coffee's power to stimulate the nervous system entered history - and legend.

4. It is rumored that Omar's monastery gave a cup of monastery coffee to a visiting Indian sea captain who had complained of drowsiness. So taken with the power of the brew, the captain took it with him to the Near and Middle East. Thus beginning the coffee trade with India.

5. The practice of steeping coffee beans in hot water began in the late C15 in the holy city of Mecca where it was used in ceremonies and rituals. This soon spread to outside the mosques and gave rise to coffee houses.

6. The first coffee houses were thought to have originated in Mecca in the mid - late C15, then spread to Medina then on to Cairo in the early C16. The first coffee houses in Constantinople were opened by two Syrians in 1554. It had taken less than half a century for coffee to spread through the Middle East.

7. C16 camel drivers in caravans from Yemen and Egypt: sailors such as Simbad and Levant, and Turkish and Syrian merchants, were the first bring the beverage 'coffee' to the notice of the world.

8. The tiny city port of Mocha (Muza) is situated on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on the Red Sea and the Ottoman's who controlled its exports guarded their trading monopoly. The port traded in incense, myrrh, and alabaster. No coffee had been grown successfully outside of Ethiopia or Yemen so it was coffee, which would bring great wealth to the city, but like everything it could not last.

9. In early C17 European botanists began to bring back tales of coffee leading to European Trading Companies taking an interest in the mercantile routes of the East. The London East India Company founded in 1600 was the first to send trade ships on the IndianTrade Route and stopped in the tiny port of Mocha and were not welcomed. In 1610 a company trader, Sir Henry Middleton, was thrown in jail only to escape and blockade the tiny port.

10. It was Pieter Van der Broecke in 1616 of the Dutch East India Company who gained the Ottoman's favor and while purchasing coffee beans was able to make off with some bushes. The beans from these bushes were planted in Amsterdam's Botannical Gardens where they thrived. This event however, received little publicity but was to have a major impact on coffee history as they were the first coffee bushes to be grown outside of Ethiopia and Yemen.

11. Van de Broecke's coffee bushes produced vigorous healthy bushes and were named Coffea arabia by Swedish Botanist Carolus Linnaeus giving rise to the commonly known 'arabica' coffee we know today. In 1658 the Dutch used them to begin coffee plantations in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and later southern India. In 1696 Dutch Commander Adrian Van Ommeren took berries from Cannanore, India to Jakarta and thus began the vast Dutch coffee plantations of Indonesia and the later influx of Asian coffee to the until then, Yemenese dominated, European market.

12. It was a Frenchman, Jean de La Roque, (son of the Pierre de La Roque who introduced coffee to the elite in Marseilles) who wrote about his voyages to the Port of Mocha and other lands which became hugely popular so that they inspired readers to visit exotic, faraway places, and was instrumental in triggering the vogue in France for all things "oriental". Thus began the French coffee plantation industry in the West Indies and later South America.

13. Mocha's golden age lasted until 1750 when the Dutch Indonesian and French West Indian plantations began to lure traders away from Arabia. By 1760 only one East India Trading Company ships was landing in Mocha every two years to trade in coffee. While the Egyptian, Arabs and Turks preferred to load Yemen coffee at Hodeida, they were also acquiring a taste for the new coffee from the West Indies, it was also less expensive. So the city that gave it's name to coffee, is now a sleepy, sand swept tiny desert port and the "Saint of Mocha"- patron of coffee planters and drinkers, rests in peace and is honored with a spring, a gate and a mosque built over his grave all inscribed with his name and the only truly certain thing known about him - his death, 1418.

I hope you found this little snippet of the history of coffee interesting.... I welcome your comments.
May your Thursday be full of interesting snippets of knowledge... Robyn