HISTORY OF COFFEE | Cosmio.gr

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The birthplace of coffee is said to be Ethiopia. The local population there used the coffee bean either in its raw form or chewed it or ground it up into small balls. In its early stages, coffee was not roasted, nor were any of the beverages known to us today prepared. One of the first beverages made with coffee beans is presumed to be an infusion made of coffee cherries and the leaves of the Coffea plant.

Over time, coffee plantations began to emerge. Coffee beans were then made into a beverage called “qahwah”. When coffee first came to Europe, it was known as “Arabic wine”. According to another version of the origin of the word “qahwah”, it originated from the Kingdom of Kaffa, a medieval kingdom in Ethiopia where coffee was first used.

There are several myths surrounding the origin of coffee and the discovery of its properties. The most popular among them is the one that attributes the discovery of coffee properties to an Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi, who noticed that his animals became more active when they ate the fruit of the coffee plant (the myth of the dancing goats).

Initially, coffee was only native to the Muslim nations but at some point in time it was smuggled into India, Western Europe, and finally to America, where it spread very rapidly, in South America.

The first written references to coffee date back to 900 AD and are commonly associated with the Persian doctor, Razi. It is estimated that coffee preparation as we know it today (the process of roasting and boiling of seeds) began around the 14th century AD. Our first detailed report on the origin and use of coffee is a manuscript dating back to 1587. According to it, the mufti of Aden was the first to adopt the use of coffee in the 14th century.

In the middle of the 15th century, coffee was transported from Africa to Yemen, carried by slaves from the region now occupied by modern-day Sudan. Climate conditions and the fertile land in the country helped the coffee plants grow.

From Yemen, coffee spread northward to Mecca and Medina, and then to the major cities of North Africa. Coffee's ability to fight off tiredness and the prohibition on the consumption of alcohol imposed by the Koran established coffee as an excellent substitute, which could be consumed in public at various social events.

Coffee houses became venues for people getting together, chatting away, entertaining themselves or even gambling. The first coffeehouses were opened in the port of Mocha, Yemen, a major emporium and coffee exporting port. On several occasions, the coffeehouses became hotbeds of political discussions and activity, and many attempts, albeit unsuccessful because of the popularity of the drink, were made to close them down. It was forbidden for its stimulating effect by conservative imams in Mecca and Cairo and by the Ethiopian Church later on. These bans were later overturned though.

Although the Arabs strictly forbade the export of coffee seeds, coffee as a finished product passed to Europe at the end of the 16th century via Venice, which maintained strong trade relations with the Arab world and also with Constantinople. The Venetian merchants who visited Constantinople loved this drink and brought it with them back to Venice. Originally, it was distributed by the Venetian merchants to the wealthy as an exotic drink.

Its popularity grew after Pope Clement VIII, having defied advice from his milieu to condemn coffee as an Islamic threat to Christianity, tried it in 1600 AD. He was immediately delighted and named it a Christian beverage instead. According to legend, he is reputed to have declared, “This devil’s drink is delicious. We should cheat the devil by baptizing it.” So it was in 1615 that the Europeans first came to know coffee and soon grew very fond of it. Europe's first coffee shop was opened in Venice, Italy in 1645.

England first became acquainted with coffee in 1637. A Turk studying at Oxford brought coffee there and it quickly became popular among students and professors. Indeed, by 1675, England already had 3,000 coffee shops !

The Dutch were the first to be able to get coffee seeds and initially grew coffee in their colonies in Indonesia. In 1699, the cultivation of coffee started on the Indonesian island of Java. In 1680, the Dutch were the first to export coffee to the Scandinavian countries, which were among the world's largest coffee consumers back then. At about the same time, Baba Bundan introduced the coffee plant to India after bringing coffee seeds with him on his journey back from Mecca.

In France coffee was introduced around 1657 when the merchants of Marseilles began to import coffee, mainly from Constantinople. In 1669 Sultan Mehmet IV sent his ambassador, the fair-spoken Süleyman Ağa, to the court of King Louis XIV of France. Among the ambassador's possessions brought from Turkey were several sacks of coffee.

In 1683 the Second Siege of Vienna ended. One of the spoils of the Polish, Austrians and Germans after their victory was the many coffee bags left behind by the defeated Ottoman army. Franciszek Kulczycki, a Polish officer who had been given the sacks of coffee as a token for his bravery, opened a coffee house in Vienna and he was the first to add sugar and milk to coffee. The coffee shops opened at that time in Vienna set the example for many countries round the world. Victory in this war was the reason for coffee spreading to Austria, Poland and Germany.

As far as the American continent is concerned, coffee was introduced into North America in 1668. In 1696 a coffee house called “The King's Arms” opened in New York. Significant amounts of arable coffee beans were brought to the American continent by the French through their colonies in Martinique, French Guinea and elsewhere. The first plants were brought to Martinique by Gabriel Mathieu De Clieu in 1714. Coffee plants were then sent to the French Guinea. In 1727, Francisco de Melo Palheta traveled to French Guiana on a diplomatic mission for the King of Brazil to bring coffee seeds back to his country. As the task of obtaining seeds proved difficult, Palheta seduced the French governor's wife who secretly gave him a bouquet spiked with seeds. That is how it said that the coffee plant arrived in Brazil, which is now the largest coffee producer in the world.

Around the same time, coffee cultivation began in Jamaica. It started in 1740 in Mexico, in 1784 in Venezuela and, at the end of the century, in Colombia. In 1893, coffee passed from Brazil to Kenya and Tanzania, thus completing the transcontinental journey that had begun just to the north, in Ethiopia, 900 years prior !