Origin And History Of Coffee Beans

It is said that the origin of the coffee plant can be traced back to millions of years ago. The real age when it was discovered is unknown. It is only said that coffee was a shepherd named Kaldi in the Ethiopian highlands. After accidentally eating the fruit of a plant, the sheep became very lively and energetic, and since then discovered coffee. All historians seem to agree that coffee was born in the Kaffa region of Ethiopia. But the earliest people who planned to cultivate and consume coffee were the Arabs, and the name coffee is believed to be derived from the Arabic “Qahwah” – which means botanical drink.

Coffee for drinking is said to have begun in the early eleventh century, and records can be found in ancient Arabic texts. Before that, in the Arab region, the green coffee beans were dried and then decocted to drink as a stomach medicine, but later learned that coffee also has a refreshing effect, coupled with the strict rules of Islam, it is forbidden for believers to drink alcohol. They use roasted coffee juice as an exciting drink to replace alcohol. It is said that the local people know how to roast green beans to use them, which is a thing after the 13th century.

In the 16th century, coffee was gradually introduced to Europe through Venice and Marseille in the name of “Arabic wine”. The ethos of European coffee drinking was gradually spread by Venetian merchants in Italy in the 17th century, and Europe’s first coffee shop, Bottega del Caffe, appeared in Venice. For four hundred years, the drinking habit of coffee has not only spread from the West to the East but has even become an irresistible trend.

Coffee was planted in large quantities by the Arabs in the twelfth and third centuries, and the world’s first coffeehouse was born in Damascus (1530) in the Middle East in the sixteenth century. In just a few years, from ancient Constantinople to the Caucasus, from the Persian Gulf to Budapest, and more than 200 cities throughout the empire have different numbers of coffee shops and the roads that connect these cities through the desert wilderness. There are also mobile coffee tents everywhere along the way, serving the endless stream of business travelers and the military. In the same century, coffee also spread to Europe. At that time, coffee was brought to Western countries along with the Turks in Austria, and it quickly captured the hearts of Europeans. According to records, a package of samples sent from Venice to the Netherlands in 1596 was the earliest coffee beans seen by Europeans north of the Alps. There is a legend that because coffee was very rare in Western Europe at that time, there was even a joke that German housewives used chicken soup to make coffee. Scholars speculate that in the prosperous import and export trade of seasoning raw materials at the end of the 16th century, many coffee beans from the East began to enter the European continent continuously through the economically developed Venice.

However, the first coffee house in Europe was not opened until 1683 in Vienna, Austria, by a Polish man. Merchants fluent in Eastern European and Turkish languages, headed by the formidable Armenian merchant Johannes Diodato, not only served as translators and guides for Austria during the war but also engaged in the lucrative coffee trade on both sides of the line of fire. While meeting the needs of their cafes, they also solved the urgent need for raw materials for coffee gatherings in the family salons of many nobles and wealthy citizens and won the favor of the upper class. A few years later, the coffee industry that can be seen everywhere in the streets and alleys has developed rapidly. Most of these cafes are opened by his countrymen or Turks from other parts of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Naturally, they have a strong Middle Eastern flavor. Many In the narrow shop with the aroma of hot coffee wafting from the corner of the street, you can also see the long benches against the wall unique to the Istanbul coffee shop, and the open wood-burning coffee stove. Most of the customers inside come from the vendors in the nearby market. , artisans and craftsmen who make a living abroad.

The elegant, comfortable, open social salon atmosphere of a purely European-style café that people are familiar with, or imagine, will have to wait for about fifty years, until the age of enlightenment, with a general awakening of public consciousness, really begins. Take center stage in Vienna and other western city life.

Strictly speaking, it can only be regarded as a small simple coffee shop. At that time, people in the middle and upper classes were still intoxicated in the closed private coffee circles of their own homes, and the free-bourgeois class, who was keen on the initial economic success, had not yet become a social, political and social force.