Brewed Legacy: Unveiling the History of Coffee - Part 1

Coffee is considered one of the most influential drinks to have been artificially made in human history. Which is surprising due to its relatively simple origin, and worldwide development. Folk myth states that around the 9th century AD, a herdsman named Kaldi in central Ethiopia was tending to his goats one day, and had noticed that while they were grazing, they ate small red cherries that had fallen to the ground, and they began to act energetic and hop around. Interested, Kaldi ate a few of the cherries himself and found that they did give energy.

            Following this revelation, Kaldi used these cherries for helping keep track of his herd easier, and during that point, a monk happened to be traveling through the region to look into an Ethiopian church in his region’s diocese. The monk observed Kaldi’s unusual behavior and what he was eating, and interested, he decided to shell the small nut, dry it, crush it, and boil them in a container of water. This monk made the first cup of coffee ever, and because of his actions, the trajectory of many aspects of human history and the future of coffee would be intertwined.

            At this point in time, around 1000 AD, the world was changing rapidly. Europe was beginning to come out from the fall of the Roman Empire, and the Muslim world had been consolidating its gains during the centuries of conquest across the Middle East, north Africa, and the Balkans. The church at this point had nearly fully consolidated its hold over the majority of Europe and was beginning to reach out towards establishing dioceses within all of their holdings. It was also the period in which feudalism was beginning to become the primary economic model for many of the budding nations and kingdoms in Europe.

A picture of ripe coffee berries - Panama

            The church is of particular importance regarding the development of coffee as a commodity within the larger world. Starting around 1000 AD, the church would view coffee with some skepticism, mostly due to its growing popularity with the Muslim caliphates of that time. Even though they had begun growing coffee in Greece and southern Italy by this point, the papacy was not convinced of it being spiritually good for their parishioners, or if the effects of the drink would be considered diabolical for how it effected people. The church’s views on coffee would remain muddle for nearly 600 years following this, and was considered one of the lighter footnotes in the annals of medieval history.

            However, after the Muslims swept through northern Africa, they soon discovered the coffee tree, and quickly took to it. They took saplings and fertile seeds back with them to modern day Saudi Arabia, and the Levant, and began to grow the fruit along the far eastern Mediterranean coast, and due to that, significant parts of early Muslim and middle Eastern culture were heavily impacted by the drink. From Baghdad, Mecca, Basra, Cairo, Aleppo, and Damascus, all the way to Marrakesh, Algiers, Cordoba, and Lisbon, practically enveloping most of the known “Oriental” world. These were considered important trade centers of the growing Muslim lands in the Middle East, and because of good trading networks, the influence and popularity of coffee grew over the coming centuries, especially during the Islamic Golden Age, between 900-1200 AD.

They had devised a means of preparing coffee which largely remains unchanged to this day, which came from the arid climate of the region. This involved fermenting the beans for a time in sealed containers, then drying them in the sun for a period of a few days, followed by dry roasting them over a fire in a pot. Then after the roasting was done, they would crush it up, and pour boiling water through a small contraption above a cup. To this day, this method is still referred to as Turkish Coffee.

With the growing importance of coffee as both a cultural and practical product, the spreading influence of Islam among the Middle East, all the way off to the interior of modern-day Pakistan and India, through to the interior of China and up towards modern-day Russia and Norway, through trade. It took root in India, even into the modern period, by the fertile regions of central southern India, in the mangrove fields of the valleys. While they moved eastward towards unknown lands, they also began to aggress into the West, towards Europe, especially around the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, towards the modern-day Balkans. While the great Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople would keep these invasions at bay for at least 400 years, trade still managed to get through into the Eastern European countries, such as modern day Hungary, Wallachia, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia and Serbia. These countries, especially Bosnia, would take readily to coffee, and much like the Muslim devotees of the drink, would incorporate it into the culture of the realm. Several of these diffusions of inter-cultural contact and trade, would influence the later period of the Renaissance, and the revolutions of humanism and a greater impact of religion on the
day-to-day lives of the normal people who most likely prepared and enjoyed coffee.

Passage of crusaders during the First Crusade. (1096-1099 AD)

However, during this period, around 1000 AD, there was a great unrest growing in the Levant, due to the Muslim conquests of the traditional birthplace of Christianity, such as Jerusalem, Megiddo, Antioch, and Acre, were completely taken by Muslim invaders. Pope Urban II started that it was the priority of the Christian body to take back what was the birthplace of their religion. And during the end of the 11th century, the First Crusade would take over the zeitgeist of the popular mindset of most of Europe, especially the kingdoms of Leon, The Holy Roman Empire, the early Norman British kingdom, and coincided with the founding of the Teutonic Order in modern day Poland. This crusade would bring upwards of 300,000 men and women to locations that Europeans had not entered in close to seven centuries. Alongside bringing their weapons, food, and culture with them, they also brought the few examples of coffee that had developed in Central Europe at that point and had gained information about the Arabic way of coffee preparation. This exchange would last far beyond the crusades themselves, and even after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.