Story of Coffee

The Story of Coffee

Kaldi or Khalid was a legendary Ethiopian goatherd who discovered the coffee plant around 850 AD, according to popular legend, after which it entered the Islamic world then the rest of the world.

The earliest mention of coffee noted by the literary coffee merchant Philippe Sylvestre Dufour 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.

The earliest credible evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the late 15th century, by Sufi Imam Muhammad Ibn Said Al Dhabhani who is known to have imported goods from Ethiopia to Yemen.

By 1414, the plant was known in Mecca, and in the early 1500s was spreading to the Mameluke Sultanate of Egypt and North Africa from the Yemeni port of Mocha.

In 1511, Khair Beg, the Governor of Mecca, banned coffee as a dangerous drug that stimulated radical thinking in the people of the city. He believed that coffee was a dangerous intoxicant equal to wine, which is prohibited by the Koran. He sent his forces to capture coffee from the vendors and burned their stocks in the streets.

However, these bans were to be overturned in 1524 by an order of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Suleiman I, with Grand Mufti Mehmet Ebussuud el-İmadi issuing a fatwa allowing the consumption of coffee.

These coffee houses also opened in Syria, especially in the cosmopolitan city of Aleppo and then in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, in 1554.

Coffee was first introduced to Europe on the island of Malta in the 16th century. It was introduced there through slavery. Turkish Muslim slaves had been imprisoned by the Knights of St John in 1565—the Year of the Great Siege of Malta, and they used it to make their traditional beverage.

In 1580 the Venetian botanist and physician Prospero Alpini imported coffee into the Republic of Venice from Egypt and soon coffee shops started opening one by one when coffee spread and became the drink of the intellectuals, of social gatherings, even of lovers as plates of chocolate and coffee were considered a romantic gift.

The 16th century was also the time when coffee was first introduced to the adoring throngs of Europe. A number of the clergy in the Catholic Church believed that the drink would corrupt their congregations with its great tasting bedevilment. They labeled it Satanic and pressed for it to be banned by the Church. However, upon tasting coffee, Pope Clement VIII declared: "Why, this Satan's drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it." Clement allegedly blessed the bean because it appeared better for the people than alcoholic beverages. The Year often cited is 1600. It is not clear whether this is a true story, but it may have been found amusing at the time.

Pieter van den Broecke, a Dutch merchant, obtained some of the closely guarded coffee bushes from Mocha, Yemen, in 1616. He took them back to Amsterdam and found a home for them in the Botanical gardens, where they began to thrive. This apparently minor event received little publicity, but was to have a major impact on the history of coffee.

The first coffeehouse in England was opened in Oxford in 1652. In London, the first one was opened later that same Year in at St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, by an eccentric Greek named Pasqua Roseé. Soon they were commonplace.

In Germany, coffeehouses were first established in North Sea ports, including Bremen (1673) and Hamburg (1677).

In 1669, Soleiman Agha, Ambassador from Sultan Mehmed IV, arrived in Paris with his entourage bringing with him a large quantity of coffee beans. Not only did they provide their French and European guests with coffee to drink, but they also donated some beans to the royal court.

The first record of coffee growing in India is following the introduction of coffee beans from Yemen by Baba Budan to the hills of Chikmagalur, Karnataka.

The first coffeehouse in Austria opened in Vienna in 1683 after the Battle of Vienna, by using supplies from the spoils obtained after defeating the Turks. The officer who received the coffee beans, Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, a Polish military officer (possibly of Ruthenian origin - according to modern Ukrainian authors, opened the coffee house and helped popularize the custom of adding sugar and milk to the coffee. The coffee house was called 'Blue Bottle'.

After the Boston Tea Party of 1773, large numbers of Americans switched to drinking coffee during the American Revolution because drinking tea had become unpatriotic

Arabica is the first imported coffee variety to Vietnam since 1857. The first is the trial planting in the northern provinces such as Ha Nam, Phu Ly, then expanding to provinces like Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ha Tinh. Then spread to the central provinces. Finally, coffee grows in the Central Highlands and it is recognized that the Central Highlands is a good place to grow coffee.

The first European-style coffeehouse opened in Tokyo in 1888, and closed four years later.[