The History of Coffee

It is said that the first to find out about coffee's effects on human behavior were the people of Ethiopia, though there is no proof that the plant grew in Africa or that any citizens used it at that time.

However, south of the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, it was proved that coffee was used in Sufi monasteries in the fifteenth century. The drink later spread from Yemen to Egypt and Ethiopia, and from there to Armenia, Persia, Turkey and East Africa. It kept moving from the Islamic World to Italy and the rest of Europe, Indonesia, and the two Americas. The first coffee shop was opened in Venice in 1645.

Coffee spread more in America-Boston in 1773 after people stopped drinking tea as a form of objection to the high taxes imposed on the colonies by the British. It is also said that most of the coffee in our current time originated from a plant a French officer stole from Germans in 1723. The name 'Arabica' comes to support the Yemeni origins of coffee. Also, a popular type of coffee, which is mocha, was named after the Yemeni port of Al-Makha which was the port from which the first coffee export ships took the drink to the rest of the world.