History of Coffee

Originally the coffee plant grew naturally in Ethopia, but once transplanted in Arabia was monopolized by them. One early use for coffee would have little appeal today. The Galla tribe from Ethiopia used coffee, but not as a drink. They would wrap the beans in animal fat as their only source of nutrition while on raiding parties. The Turks were the first country to adopt it as a drink, often adding spices such as clove, cinnamon, cardamom and anise to the brew.

Coffee was at first not well received. In 1511, it was forbidden for its stimulating effect by conservative, orthodox imams at a theological court in Mecca. However, the popularity of the drink led these bans to be overturned in 1524 by an order of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Selim I. In Cairo, Egypt, a similar ban was instituted in 1532, and the coffeehouses and warehouses containing coffee beans were sacked.

From the Muslim world, coffee spread to Europe, where it became popular during the seventeenth century. The Dutch were the first to start the large scale importation of coffee into Europe, and eventually smuggled out some seedlings in 1690, as the Arabs were not allowed to export the plants or unroasted seeds. This led to coffee growing in Java, which was owned by the Dutch. In 1538, Leonhard Rauwolf, a German physician, having returned from a ten-year trip to the Near East, gave this description of coffee:

A beverage as black as ink, useful against numerous illnesses, particularly those of the stomach. Its consumers take it in the morning, quite frankly, in a porcelain cup that is passed around and from which each one drinks a cupful. It is composed of water and the fruit from a bush called bunnu.

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