Coffee

The first known mention of coffee is believed to be Bunchum in the works of the 10th A.D by the Persian physician Razi. However a information on the preparation coffee is not until many centuries later. Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri is seen as the most important of early writers on the subject of coffee. In 1587 he wrote an article tracing the history and legal controversies of coffee. In his article he stated that that a Sheikh, Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani, mufti of Aden, was the first to discover the uses of coffee in 1454. Coffee's popularity among the Sufis steams from its ability to drive away sleep.

Al-Jaziri's article caused interest in the history of coffee in Europe as well. When Antoine Galland translated the article in part, the translation traces the spread of coffee from Arabia Felix, north to Mecca and Medina, and then to the larger cities of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Istanbul.

Coffee beans were first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen, where Yemeni traders brought coffee back to their homeland and began to cultivate the bean. The very first coffee house was Kiva Han it opened in Istanbul in 1471. In 1511 coffee was banned for its stimulating effect by orthodox imams at a theological court in Mecca. Due to coffees popularity these band were overturned in 1524. Similar bans of the consumption of coffee were seen in Egypt in 1532, and in in Ethiopian Orthodox Church before the 17th century. However, towards the end of the 19th century, Ethiopian views of coffee drinking laxes causing a huge growth in its consumption between 1880 and 1886.