Origins

History of Coffee and Coffeehouses 🏆

Course 1 · Chapter 1 · Origins: Legend and Evidence

Coffee is the seed of a tropical shrub that grew wild in the highlands of Ethiopia. The most famous story of its discovery, the goatherd Kaldi who noticed his goats dancing after eating red berries, is charming and almost certainly a later legend. This chapter separates what is known from what is told. Dates and names are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Key Ideas

The plant

Coffea arabica is native to the highlands of south-west Ethiopia, where wild forests of it still grow (check). The "bean" is the seed inside a red fruit often called a cherry.

The Kaldi legend

A goatherd sees his goats frisky after eating the berries and tells a monk, who tries them. The earliest written version found is much later than the supposed events, in the seventeenth century (check), so it is a legend, not evidence.

Yemen

The first reliable evidence of coffee being drunk comes from Sufi circles in Yemen in the fifteenth century, where it helped worshippers stay awake for night devotions (check the dating).

At a Glance

QuestionWhat is known (check each)
Where did the plant grow wild?The Ethiopian highlands.
Where was it first cultivated and drunk as a drink?Probably Yemen, with the port of Mocha later the main export point.
When?Evidence is firm from about the fifteenth century; earlier claims are uncertain.
Who first roasted and brewed it?Unknown; the Kaldi story does not answer this.
Legend or record? A story told long after the event is a clue to what people later believed, not proof of what happened. Ask when the earliest written version appears.

Further Points

  • Chewing before drinking. Some accounts say the berries were first eaten or chewed in Ethiopia, perhaps mixed with fat, before the drink developed (check).
  • The name. The word coffee is usually traced through Turkish kahve and Arabic qahwa, but the earlier origin of the word is disputed (check).
  • Mocha. The port of Mocha in Yemen gave its name to a type of coffee and later to a drink.
A British comparison British readers meet the same problem with the legend that tea was discovered when leaves blew into the Chinese emperor Shennong's water: charming, repeated, and hard to date.
Check the details Dates, names and figures here are from general knowledge and flagged "check". Verify them against specialist histories and primary sources, and label unproven stories as "claimed".

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain why the Kaldi story is not good evidence for the discovery of coffee.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Name the place where coffee grew wild and the place where drinking is first reliably recorded, and say why they differ.

→ Solution
Exercise 3

List three questions you would ask of any origin story about a food or drink.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Native to: Ethiopian highlands
  • First reliable drinking: Yemen, fifteenth century (check)
  • Kaldi: a later legend
  • Name: from Arabic qahwa via Turkish (check)