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The coffee plant found its way from Ethiopia
to Arabia sometime between AD 575 and AD 850. How it got there is not
clear, but one possibility is that seeds were brought by African
tribes-people as they migrated northwards from Kenya and Ethiopia to the
Arabian peninsular. They were eventually driven back by spear-throwing
Persian but they left behind coffee trees growing in what is now the
Yemen. Myths and Legends
Another possibility is that Arab slave
traders brought the seeds back from their raids on Ethiopia, or as is
more likely, the responsibility lay with the Sufis - a mystical Islamic
sect best-known for their "whirling dervishes". Classical Arabic
literature endorses this, suggesting that it was a Sufi grand master,
Ali bin Omar al Shadili, who brought coffee seeds to Arabia. Al Shadili
had lived for a while in Ethiopia before founding a monastery in the
Yemenite port of Mocha (Al Mukha). Since he later became known as the
same legendary Omar who discovered coffee berries while exiled in the
desert, though the stories do not quite tie up.
A reasonably reliable account was
unearthed in a collection of original manuscripts written by an Arab in
1587, the document gives what was believed at the time to be the
earliest account of the use of coffee and its subsequent spread through
the Middle East. The author tells how the Mufti of Aden, while traveling
through Persian in the mid-15th century, came upon some of his
compatriots enjoying coffee.
Returning to Aden in poor health, he
remembered this liquor and thought it might help him recover. He sent
for some, and found that it not only prevented sleep without any ill
effects, but also "dissipated all manner of heaviness and drowsiness,
and made him more bright and gay than he was before.
Wishing to share the benefits with his
dervishes, the Mufti gave them coffee before they embarked on their
night-long prayers. He found that they, too, were able to perform "all
their exercises of religion with great alacrity and freedom of mind".
Whatever the route and circumstances,
there is firm evidence that the first cultivated coffee trees grew in
monastery gardens in the Yemen, and most Arab authorities agree that the
Sufi community was in one way or another responsible for it.
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