Coffee’s first form was not as a drink, but as a rough-hewn energy snack. Sometime in the 6th century, coffee beans were crushed and mixed with animal fat, and then eaten to invigorate and give energy. But how it first came to be discovered and named is the subject to many stories and legends. Below are a few examples we have uncovered, if you choose to believe them or not, then its up to you, but you can’t say there not interesting, so why not grab yourself a cup of coffee and continue reading.
The first legend is that of an Ethiopian goat herder called Kaldi, who had noticed that his herds of goats were becoming very agitated after consuming berries from certain types of wild bushes. Consuming the berries for himself, he had noticed that he had increased levels of energy, which was the influence of the caffeine in coffee beans. He bought the berries back to a monastery, where a monk who disapproved of there use, threw them into a fire, which then produced a fragrant aroma. They then took the roasted beans from the fire and dissolved them in hot water, making the first ever drink of coffee.
Another myth tells of how coffee was first used by a dervish or a hermit (a person of solitude with high religious beliefs), who would consume a snack made of coffee beans so they could stay up all night and pray.
The third legend gives credit to a famous Arabic doctor called Avicenna who was the first to write about coffee around 1000 A.D. He wrote, “It fortifies the members, it cleans the skin, and dries up the humidity’s that are under it and gives an excellent smell to all the body.”
The fourth and final legend tells of how a civet cat (distant relative of the mongoose) who was known to climb coffee trees for there berries, carried the seeds of the coffee plant from central Africa to the Ethiopian mountains, where it then became cultivated, and was sold on to Arabia before being introduced to the world.
The name we give to the English word for Coffee as we know it comes from the Italian caffe, the French cafe, the Dutch koffie, the Turkish kahveh, and the German kaffee which is all derived from the Arabic word qahwa.
The Actual origin of the Arabic term is uncertain and is also one of more myths and legends; it is either derived from the name of the Kaffa region in western Ethiopia, where coffee was first cultivated, or from the word cahuha which means power or strength most probably from the invigorating effects of the caffeine itself.
There seems to be an ongoing list of myths, legends, and stories, and the precise origin of coffee is unknown, researchers do know that it first appeared Ethiopia and spread to Egypt and Yemen, It was in Arabia that coffee beans were first roasted and brewed similarly as they are today. By the 15th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East, Persia, Turkey, and northern Africa .
So the next time you drink that hot and steaming black coffee, just think was it an Ethiopian cat, or an Arabic doctor or of one of the many amazing myths that now helps you get through your day.
