Coffee

Most of the world is indebted to northern Africa as the birthplace of the coffee bean, though the early history of coffee is clouded to the point where it is hard to say which appeared first, the coffee plant or humankind. The first coffee plants were discovered close to Kaffa in southwestern Ethiopia (coffee plants are still found growing wild in many countries today). The small, red, seed-bearing coffee cherries are sweet and pleasant tasting and were eaten raw long before they were used to make the popular beverage we know today. Around 1000 A.D., the Arabs began making a drink by boiling the raw berries. Through experimentation, they discovered that not only did extracting the seeds, or beans, from the cherries and using these alone make an improved drink but also that by roasting and grinding the beans before immersing them in boiling water, the flavor was dramatically different and decidedly popular. Once this technique was in place, the consumption of coffee soon became widespread throughout the Islamic countries. Coffee bars, known in Arabic as gahneh khaneh, soon sprang up in increasing numbers, providing men (women were not allowed) with a place to enjoy the stimulating effect of the drink, listen to music, play games, and, in general, discuss important matters. Coffee played an important role in family life as well once women began to enjoy the brew. Coffee was, in fact, regarded with such high esteem that a husband’s failure to provide coffee for his wife was legal grounds (no pun intended) for divorce.