History
Archived Posts from this Category
Coffee in the Arab world
Posted by admin on 05 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: All aboute coffee, History
Coffee beans were first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen. Yemeni traders brought coffee back to their homeland and began to cultivate the bean.
The earliest mention of coffee may be a reference to Bunchum in the works of the 9th century CE physician Razi, but more definite information on the preparation of a beverage from the roasted coffee berries dates from several centuries later.
The most important of the early writers on coffee was Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri, who in 1587 compiled a work tracing the history and legal controversies of coffee entitled “Umdat al safwa fi hill al-qahwa”. He reported that one Sheikh, Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani, mufti of Aden, was the first to adopt the use of coffee (circa 1454). Coffee’s usefulness in driving away sleep made it popular among Sufis. Al-Jaziri’s manuscript work is of considerable interest with regards to the history of coffee in Europe as well. A copy reached the French royal library, where it was translated in part by Antoine Galland as De l’origine et du progr?¨s du Cafe. The translation traces the spread of coffee from Arabia Felix (the present day Yemen) northward to Mecca and Medina, and then to the larger cities of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Istanbul.
The 19th-century orientalist Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy edited the first two chapters of al-Jaziri’s manuscript and included it in the second edition of his Chrestomathie Arabe (Paris, 1826, 3 vols.). Galland’s 1699 work was recently reissued (Paris: Editions La Bibliothque, 1992).
Consumption of coffee was outlawed in Mecca in 1511, and in Cairo in 1532, but in the face of the drink’s immense popularity, the decrees were later rescinded. In 1554, the first coffeehouse in Istanbul opened.
The Origin of Coffee
Posted by admin on 05 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: All aboute coffee, History
The history of coffee has been recorded as far back as the ninth century. During that time, coffee beans were available only in their native habitat, Ethiopia, but, when the Arab world began expanding its trade horizons, the beans moved into northern Africa and were mass-cultivated. From there, the beans entered the Indian and European markets, and the popularity of the beverage spread.
The word “coffee” entered English in 1598 via Italian caff?¨. This word was created via Turkish kahve, which in turn came into being via Arabic qahwa. This last is a word of uncertain etymology, which can mean both “coffee” and “ass”.
There are several legendary accounts of the origin of the drink itself. One account involves the Yemenite Sufi mystic Shaikh ash-Shadhili. When traveling in Ethiopia, the legend goes, he observed goats of unusual vitality, and, upon trying the berries that the goats had been eating, experienced the same vitality. A similar myth attributes the discovery of coffee to an Ethiopian goatherder named Kaldi.
One possible origin of both the beverage and the name is the Kingdom of Kaffa in Ethiopia, where the coffee plant originated (its name there is bunn or bunna).
The History of Coffee
Posted by admin on 05 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: History
The history of coffee dates at least as far back as the 9th century. It originated in the highlands of Ethiopia and spread to the rest of the world via Egypt and Europe.
The word coffee is believed to be derived from the word Kaffa, a region in Ethiopia where coffee is believed to have originated. The substance’s Arabic name, ???????© qahwa, was borrowed into Ottoman Turkish as kahve, which in turn is the source of the first borrowings into European languages. In the 15th century, Muslims introduced coffee in Persia, Egypt, northern Africa and Turkey, where the first coffeehouse, Kiva Han, opened in 1475 in Constantinople. The stimulant effect of drinking coffee caused it to be forbidden among orthodox and conservative imams in Mecca in 1511 and in Cairo in 1532 by a theological court. In Egypt, coffeehouses and warehouses containing coffee beans were sacked. But the product’s popularity, particularly among intellectuals, led to the reversal of this decision in 1524 by an order of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Selim I.
From the Muslim world, coffee spread to Europe, where it became popular in the 17th century. Dutch traders were the first to start the large scale importation of coffee into Europe.