Persian Gulf Coffee

Coffee berries traveled from Ethiopia to Yemen—they are first mentioned by an eleventh-century Arab physician—where the practice of extracting, roasting, and grinding their beans seems to have started during the thirteenth century. Yemenis, who made an infusion from the drink, named it qahwah, a poetic word for “wine.” The first cafés appeared in 1554 in Istanbul; a few years later, the drink had arrived, via Venice, in Italy. Everywhere they appeared, coffee houses flourished as con