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Coffee History
Coffee has a history going back more than thousand years. The first known discovery of coffee plants was said to be found at the Horn of Africa on the shores of the Red Sea around 850 A.D. Originally the beans were eaten as a food item. East Africa tribes ground the coffee berries, mixed them with animal fat forming a paste, and then rolled them into little balls, which was said to give warriors an energy boost for battle. Around 1000 A.D., Ethiopians created a type of beverage made from the coffee berries by fermenting dried beans in water. Coffee plants also grew naturally in the Arabian Peninsula and it was there in the eleventh century that coffee was first developed into a hot drink, which the Arabs called “qahwa.”
Because of the stimulating effect of coffee, it was thought during these early times that coffee gave the user a sort of religious ecstasy earning it a mystical reputation shrouded in secrecy and associated with priests and doctors. It is not surprising that legends came about to explain the discovery of the magic brew.
The most common legend is about a goat-herder who noticed that his goats became friskier after consuming the red berries of a wild coffee shrub. He tried the wild berries himself and found that it had an energetic effect and was spotted by a group of monks dancing with his goats. The monks at a local monastery used the beans to stay awake during long hours of prayer and shared their findings with other monasteries around the world.
Coffee cultivation began sometime in the fifteenth century, and for many centuries thereafter the primary source of coffee came from Yeman province of Arabia. The demand for coffee in the Near East became so great that beans leaving the Yemeni port of Mocha for trade with Alexandria and Constantinople were highly guarded. In fact, no fertile plants were allowed to leave the country. However Muslim pilgrims, managed to smuggle the coffee plants back to their homelands and soon coffee crops grew in these areas. As a result, in 1475, the world’s first coffee shop opened in Constantinople followed by two more coffee houses in 1554.
Coffee entered Europe by way of the port of Venice in 1600. Soon coffeehouses began to flourish throughout Europe. England opened coffeehouses in 1652, which were called “penny universities” because a penny was charged for admission and a cup of coffee. In 1672, the first Parisian café opened dedicated to serving coffee. Vienna followed in 1683.
By 1690, the Dutch had introduced large-scale coffee cultivation to their colonies in Indonesia. Coffee arrived in Latin American several decades later, when the French brought a cutting of a coffee plant to Martinique. Captain John Smith in 1607, founder of Virginia at Jamestown, introduced coffee to North America.
Today we can enjoy a variety of different coffees cultivated from many areas of the world.
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