The history of coffee dates back to centuries of old oral tradition in modern-day Ethiopia and Yemen. It was already known in Mecca in the 15th century. Also, in the 15th century, Sufi monasteries in Yemen employed coffee as an aid to concentration during prayers. Coffee later spread to the Levant in the early 16th century; it caused some controversy on whether it was halal in Ottoman and Mamluk society. Coffee arrived in Italy the second half of the 16th century through commercial Mediterranean trade routes, while Central and Eastern Europeans learned of coffee from the Ottomans. By the mid 17th century, it had reached India and the East Indies.
Coffee houses were established in Western Europe by the late 17th century, especially in Holland, England, and Germany. One of the earliest cultivations of coffee in the New World was when Gabriel de Clieu brought coffee seedlings to Martinique in 1720. These beans later sprouted 18,680 coffee trees which enabled its spread to other Caribbean islands such as Saint-Domingue and also to Mexico. By 1788, Saint-Domingue supplied half the world's coffee.
By 1852, Brazil became the world's largest producer of coffee and has held that status ever since. The period since 1950 saw the widening of the playing field owing to the emergence of several other major producers, notably Colombia, the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, and Vietnam; the latter overtook Colombia and became the second-largest producer in 1999. Modern production techniques along with the mass productization of coffee has made it a household item today.
Etymology
The word coffee entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch , borrowed from the Ottoman Turkish (), borrowed in turn from the Arabic (). Medieval Arab lexicographers traditionally held that the etymology of meant 'wine', given its distinctly dark color, and derived from the verb (), 'to have no appetite'. The word most likely meant 'the dark one', referring to the brew or the bean; is not the name of the bean, which are known in Arabic as bunn and in Cushitic languages as būn. Semitic languages had the root qhh, "dark color", which became a natural designation for the beverage. There is no evidence that the word was named after the Ethiopian province of Kaffa (a part of where coffee originates from: Abyssinia), or any significant authority stating the opposite, or that it is traced to the Arabic ("power"). Kahve in Turkish is word borrowed from Persian word, Qahve قهوه ای, so it means something in Brown colour. Persian land or Iran was in the way of silk road and business path of coffee beans to Turkey and Europe. The terms coffee pot and coffee break originated in 1705 and 1952 respectively.
Genetics
Studies of genetic diversity have been performed on Coffea arabica varieties, which were found to be of low diversity but with retention of some residual heterozygosity from ancestral materials, and closely related diploid species Coffea canephora and C. liberica; however, no direct evidence has ever been found indicating where in Africa coffee grew or who among the local people might have used it as a stimulant or known about it there earlier than the seventeenth century. The original domesticated coffee plant is said to have been from Harar, and the native population is thought to be derived from Ethiopia with distinct nearby populations in Sudan and Kenya.
History
Evidence of knowledge of the coffee tree and coffee drinking first appeared in the late 15th century. Sufi Imam Muhammad Ibn Said Al Dhabhani is known to have imported goods from Ethiopia to Yemen. Coffee was first exported out of Ethiopia to Yemen by Somali merchants from Berbera and Zeila, which was procured from Harar and the Abyssinian interior. According to Captain Haines, who was the colonial administrator of Aden (1839–1854), Mocha historically imported up to two-thirds of their coffee from Berbera-based merchants before the coffee trade of Mocha was captured by British-controlled Aden in the 19th century. Thereafter, much of the Ethiopian coffee was exported to Aden via Berbera.
Middle East
Sufis in Yemen used the beverage as an aid to concentration and as a kind of spiritual intoxication when they chanted the name of God. Sufis used it to keep themselves alert during their nighttime devotions. The 16th century Umdat al Safwa fi hill al-qahwa عمدة الصفوة في حل القهوة by Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri, an important early source on the history of coffee, traces the spread of coffee from Arabia Felix (present-day Yemen) northward to Mecca and Medina, and then to the larger cities of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Constantinople.