Coffee
About 1,600,000,000 cups of coffee are
consumed every day around the world. Billions of people rely on it as part of
their daily routines. And yet, very few people are aware of the Muslim origins
of this ubiquitous drink.
According to the historical
record, in the 1400s coffee became a very popular drink among Muslims in Yemen,
in the southern Arabian Peninsula. Legend goes that a shepherd (some say in
Yemen, some say in Ethiopia) noticed that his goats became very energetic and
jumpy when they ate beans from a particular tree. He had the courage to try
them himself, noticing they gave him an energy boost. Over time, the tradition
of roasting the beans and immersing them in water to create a sour yet powerful
drink developed, and thus, coffee was born
Regardless of whether
or not the story of the shepherd ever really happened, coffee found its way
from the highlands of Yemen to the rest of the Ottoman Empire, the premier
Muslim empire of the 15th century. Coffeehouses specializing in the new drink
began to spring up in all the major cities of the Muslim world: Cairo,
Istanbul, Damascus, Baghdad. From the Muslim world, the drink found its way
into Europe through the great merchant city of Venice. Although it was at first
denounced as the “Muslim drink” by Catholic authorities, coffee became a part
of European culture. The coffeehouses of the 1600s was where philosophers met
and discussed issues such as the rights of man, the role of government, and
democracy. These discussions over coffee spawned what became the Enlightenment, one of the
most powerful intellectual movements of the modern world From a Yemeni/Ethiopian
shepherd to shaping European political thought to over 1 billion cups per day,
this Muslim innovation is one of the most important inventions of human history
