Humble beginnings….
Modern Life: so many things, so many wonderful things. Things we take for granted. Coffee is an excellent example of this. More than likely very few of us are aware of coffee’s humble beginnings. When and where and how it was discovered; and how it became an essential part of Modern Life. The actually discovery of coffee itself is credited to a humble Abyssinian (Ethiopia) Goat Herder, named Kaldi, around 800 A.D.. Seriously, they know the guy’s name?? But there are many other accounts which are apocryphal or handed down through myth and legend with no historical proofs. But they all seem to lead to one place, Ethiopia, or the general region. But somehow the fact that there is a name, Kaldi, gives me the impression that he really is the first discoverer of this magic elixir. The modern history of coffee takes place around the 15th century and it’s fascinating!
Clearly coffee became a very popular and in demand drink in the Near and Middle East. First exported from Ethiopia to Yemen, coffee beans were soon going North to Mecca and Medina, then to cities like Baghdad, Cairo, Constantinople and Damascus. They found their way to North Africa and the rest of Egypt from the Yemeni port of Mocha and then to the very modern (15th Century!) city of Aleppo, Syria. It was both a social and a religious drink, often used during fasting festivals like Ramadan because of it’s appetite suppressing and stimulating effects. Muslims controlled all of the coffee in the world at that time which was a very important economic factor for them.
But, alas, not for long!
Once coffee reached Italy it quickly spread throughout the rest of Europe, and the coffee plants themselves were soon shipped to the East Indies and the Americas by the Dutch. Eventually the Dutch were successful in planting and growing coffee on the Indonesian Island of Java, which eventually became the largest coffee producer in the world. And sadly, Slavery as well.
So now you know the origins of two names for coffee that have real life, historical roots: Mocha and Java!
Coffee has a profoundly colorful history, full of geo-political intrigue, slavery and human suffering; and we’ll cover more of that here soon.