The origins of
PERHAPS the most popular story of the discovery of coffee centres around a young goat herder named Kaldi in the Ethiopian province of Kaffa around the late 6th century. Legend has it that he noticed a strange restlessness in his flock after they had eaten the berries and leaves of an unknown plant. Monks from a nearby monastery heard of this phenomenon, and after various trials discovered that by roasting, grinding and infusing in water the seeds of this plant, a unique beverage could be obtained. The modern version of roasted coffee originated in Arabia. During the 13th century, coffee was extremely popular with the Muslim community for its stimulant powers. By parching and boiling the coffee beans, rendering them infertile, the Arabs were able to corner the market on coffee crops. In fact, tradition says that not a single coffee plant existed outside of Arabia or Africa until the 1600s, when Baba Budan, an Indian pilgrim, left Mecca with fertile beans fastened to a strap
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across his abdomen. Baba’s beans resulted in a new and competitive European coffee trade. In 1616, the Dutch founded the first European-owned coffee estate in Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, then Java in 1696. The French began growing coffee in the Caribbean, followed by the Spanish in Central America and the Portuguese in Brazil. European coffee houses sprang up in Italy and later France, where they reached a new level of popularity. Coffee plants reached the New World during the early 18th century, and by the late 1800s, coffee had become a worldwide commodity. Today, the grass-roots coffee movement continues to grow with the increase of small independently-owned cafés boasting sustainable, locally roasted, fair trade beans. The word “coffee” has roots in several languages. In Yemen, it earned the name ‘qahwah,’ which was originally a romantic term for wine. It later became the Turkish ‘kahveh,’ then Dutch ‘koffie’ and finally ‘coffee’ in English.
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