Coffee
Late Period Commodity, the
Arab Wine
To quote a source, this is an "Argument
in Favor of the Legitimate Use of Coffee".
Having been told at various functions that
we "couldn't possibly have coffee, it
wasn't period!" more times than we care
to recount, we decided to make it clear that,
"Yes Virginia, There IS A Coffee Cup."
Coffee Balls
Coffee, the botanists tell us, originated
in Ethiopia. It's first
use was to be crushed and mixed with fat
in a ball to make a nutritious lift
for Ethiopean warriors. At some very early
point, it's cultivation was undertaken
in Yemen. The exact date of this is unknown,
though legendary tales abound.
The first documentable mentions are tenuous.
In Coffee, The Epic of a
Commodity - by Heinrich Eduard Jacob, Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul,
The Viking Press, New York, 1935, he says:
"This much is unquestionable, that Avicenna,
the famous Arabian philosopher
and physician of Bukhara, often styled the
Prince of Physicians, was acquainted
with coffee by about the year A. D. 1000...he
called it 'bunc'-the name by
which it is still known in Ethiopia."
Coffee-The Lawsuit
Although Avicenna's coffee writings are
lost, we know of them from
Argument in Favor of the Legitimate Use of
Coffee, a manuscript produced
sometime before 1587 by Abd al-Qadir ibn
Muhammad al-Ansari al-Jazari, a
Hanbali School lawyer who is defending it
in a legal action. He also mentions
"bunn" (pronounced halfway between "bun"
and "boon"), a word which in other
Arabic-speaking countries refers only to
the bean itself, as a term used
by 10th-century Arab physician al-Rasi, who
is credited with the first written
description of the medicinal properties of
coffee. He refers to the bean
and the tree as "bunn" and to the drink as
"bunchum"-which he adds, is good
for the stomach. In the Argument we are told that coffee was
unknown in Yemen before 1450. It seems that
prior to this time it was rare
and largely seen merely as a medicinal item.
Due to the legal/religious argument,
however, everyone became aware of it, and
it's use exploded throughout the
Arab world, in part urged as a substitute
for the drinking of alcoholic beverages
forbidden by the Koran. Thus it came to be
known as the "Arab wine".
"It is certain that coffee first reached Mecca and Medina between 1470
and 1500", according to Ulla Heise's Coffee and Coffee Houses.
The Turks Take Control
From Uncommon Grounds - by Mark Pendergrast, 1999 by Basic Books,
New York, we have:
"The Ottoman Turks occupied Yemen in 1536, and soon afterward the coffee
bean became an important export throughout the Turkish empire....The trade
route involved shipping the coffee (from Al-Makha, or Mocha) to Suez and
transporting it by camel to Alexandrian warehouses, where it was picked up
by French and Venetian merchants."
Although coffee had penetrated most of
the Arab world, this Turkish takeover
is what really made trade in coffee take
off. In addition to this early use
of coffee, we have the first European coffee
houses established in Constantinople
only a few years later.
From The Devil's Cup - by Stewart Lee Allen, we have:
'Coffee arrived here' (Instanbul) 'at the height of the Islamic Ottoman
Empire, when a couple of Syrians named Hakm and Shams opened a coffeehouse,
circa 1555.
From Coffee, The Epic of a Commodity - by Heinrich Eduard Jacob:
"The first coffee-houses in the town on the Golden Horn were opened in
1554 by two merchants, Hakim from Aleppo and Jems from Damascus. They were
termed 'mekteb-i-irfan' (schools of the cultured). Coffee itself soon came
to be called 'the milk of chess players and of thinkers'. "
The town on the golden horn is Constantinople (or Instanbul). Coffee had
been in private use there since it was conquered, in 1453. Turkey conquered
Serbia and Bosnia in about 1460, in 1462, Walachia. By 1554, the Crimea,
Moldavia, Transylvania, and Hungary. The turks brought their customs, including
coffee, to the new territory. All these newly coffee-drinking countries
were in Europe.
Non-Muslim European Coffee
The German Reis' in die Morgenlander of Leonhard Rauwolf, was published
in 1582. He "lived in the Near East from 1573 to 1578 and travelled as far
as Persia. Everywhere he found the population drinking coffee, and was told
that it had been a familiar beverage for hundreds of years", according to
Jacob.
According to Ulla Heise's Coffee and Coffee Houses, Rauwolf first
saw it in Aleppo, and described what it was composed of and it's method of
preparation. A translation of the relevant passage is included in Heise's
book.
"...they have large shops....wherein they sit together....Among others
they have a good drink/which they hold in high regard/and which they give
the name of chaube/ which resembles ink being so black/ and is efficacious
in the treatment of ailments/ particularly those affecting the stomach..."
Also from Heise:
"...in 1585....the Venetian emissary in Instanbul, Gianfrancesco Morosini,
sent a report to the Venetian Senate. Among other things he felt prompted
to report that the Turks of the city drank a kind of black water which derived
from the infusion of a bean which the Turks called cavee."
A professor of botany, Prosper Albanus, wrote De plantis AEgypti liber
, in Venice in 1592. Prosper was from Padua. He observed coffee in Egypt
in 1580, in the pleasure garden of a Turk, and reported that, "the Arabs
and Egyptians prepare a black beverage, which they drink instead of wine....they
call it 'caova'."
In Rariorum plantarum historia and Exoticorum libri decem
, by Charles de Lecluse, he tells of receiving coffee beans in 1596 from
the humanist Bella, along with the instructions to "roast the beans first
over the fire, then crush them in a wooden mortar." De Lecluse, known also
as Clusius, was a physician and botanist who for many years was the resident
director of the Imperial Gardens in Vienna, and ended his days in Holland.
This was the first mention of coffee north of the Alps.
Although Western European experience of
coffee prior to 1600 seems to have
been rare, Southern and Eastern European
experience was not unknown. Especially
if the area concerned is in Muslim eastern
Europe or Spain, or one of the
great trading cities like Venice. It was
even rarely known to places as far
north as Holland, though primarily as a learned
man's curiosity. Yet if you
are late period Turk, Arab or Moor, or if
you are from one of the European
cities of the Mediterranean area in late
period, your morning cup of al-Makha
(Mocha) is still safe.
Bibliography
"Argument in Favor of the Legitimate Use of Coffee", by Abd al-Qadir ibn
Muhammad al-Ansari al-Jazari, sometime before 1587
" De Planctis Aegyptii et de Medicina Aegiptiorum ", by Prospero Alpino,
printed between 1591 and 1592.
"All About Coffee" by William H. Ukers, 1922
"Coffee, the Epic of a Commodity" by Heinrich Jacob, 1935
"Coffee and Coffee Houses" by Ulla Heise, 1987
"The Devil's Cup: Coffee, The Driving Force In History", by Stewart Lee
Allen, 1999
"Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World",
M. Pendergrast,1999
(c) 2002 by Courtney and Brandy Powers-All Rights Reserved
Permission Granted for non-profit educational
use with the provision that all credits are
preserved. (Go ahead and post it on your
web page, or print it for non-profit use,
but if you want to print it and sell it for
cash, talk to us. We sell out cheap.)
