The vessel carrying de Clieu was a merchantman, and many were the trials that beset passengers and crew. Narrowly escaping capture by a corsair of Tunis, menaced by a violent tempest that threatened to annihilate them, they finally encountered a calm that proved more appalling than either. The supply of drinking water was well nigh exhausted, and what was left was rationed for the remainder of the voyage.
"Water was lacking to such an extent," says de Clieu, "that for more than a month I was obliged to share the scanty ration of it assigned to me with this my coffee plant upon which my happiest hopes were founded and which was the source of my delight. It needed such succor the more in that it was extremely backward, being no larger than the slip of a pink." Many stories have been written and verses sung recording and glorifying this generous sacrifice that has given luster to the name of de Clieu.
Arrived in Martinique, de Clieu planted his precious slip on his estate in Prêcheur, one of the cantons of the island; where, says Raynal, "it multiplied with extraordinary rapidity and success." From the seedlings of this plant came most of the coffee trees of the Antilles. The first harvest was gathered in 1726.
De Clieu himself describes his arrival as follows:
Arriving at home, my first care was to set out my plant with great attention in the part of my garden most favorable to its growth. Although keeping it in view, I feared many times that it would be taken from me; and I was at last obliged to surround it with thorn bushes and to establish a guard about it until it arrived at maturity ... this precious plant which had become still more dear to me for the dangers it had run and the cares it had cost me.
Thus the little stranger thrived in a distant land, guarded day and night by faithful slaves. So tiny a plant to produce in the end all the rich estates of the West India islands and the regions bordering on the Gulf of Mexico! What luxuries, what future comforts and delights, resulted from this one small talent confided to the care of a man of rare vision and fine intellectual sympathy, fired by the spirit of real love for his fellows! There is no instance in the history of the French people of a good deed done by stealth being of greater service to humanity.
De Clieu thus describes the events that followed fast upon the introduction of coffee into Martinique, with particular reference to the earthquake of 1727:
Success exceeded my hopes. I gathered about two pounds of seed which I distributed among all those whom I thought most capable of giving the plants the care necessary to their prosperity.
The first harvest was very abundant; with the second it was possible to extend the cultivation prodigiously, but what favored multiplication, most singularly, was the fact that two years afterward all the cocoa trees of the country, which were the resource and occupation of the people, were uprooted and totally destroyed by horrible tempests accompanied by an inundation which submerged all the land where these trees were planted, land which was at once made into coffee plantations by the natives. These did marvelously and enabled us to send plants to Santo Domingo, Guadeloupe, and other adjacent islands, where since that time they have been cultivated with the greatest success.
By 1777 there were 18,791,680 coffee trees in Martinique.
De Clieu was born in Angléqueville-sur-Saane, Seine-Inférieure (Normandy), in 1686 or 1688.[19] In 1705 he was a ship's ensign; in 1718 he became a chevalier of St. Louis; in 1720 he was made a captain of infantry; in 1726, a major of infantry; in 1733 he was a ship's lieutenant; in 1737 he became governor of Guadeloupe; in 1746 he was a ship's captain; in 1750 he was made honorary commander of the order of St. Louis; in 1752 he retired with a pension of 6000 francs; in 1753 he re-entered the naval service; in 1760 he again retired with a pension of 2000 francs.
In 1746 de Clieu, having returned to France, was presented to Louis XV by the minister of marine, Rouillé de Jour, as "a distinguished officer to whom the colonies, as well as France itself, and commerce generally, are indebted for the cultivation of coffee."
Reports to the king in 1752 and 1759 recall his having carried the first coffee plant to Martinique, and that he had ever been distinguished for his zeal and disinterestedness. In the Mercure de France, December, 1774, was the following death notice:
Gabriel d'Erchigny de Clieu, former Ship's Captain and Honorary Commander of the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis, died in Paris on the 30th of November in the 88th year of his age.
A notice of his death appeared also in the Gazette de France for December 5, 1774, a rare honor in both cases; and it has been said that at this time his praise was again on every lip.
One French historian, Sidney Daney,[20] records that de Clieu died in poverty at St. Pierre at the age of 97; but this must be an error, although it does not anywhere appear that at his death he was possessed of much, if any, means. Daney says:
This generous man received as his sole recompense for a noble deed the satisfaction of seeing this plant for whose preservation he had shown such devotion, prosper throughout the Antilles. The illustrious de Clieu is among those to whom Martinique owes a brilliant reparation.
Daney tells also that in 1804 there was a movement in Martinique to erect a monument upon the spot where de Clieu planted his first coffee plant, but that the undertaking came to naught.
Pardon, in his La Martinique says:
Honor to this brave man! He has deserved it from the people of two hemispheres. His name is worthy of a place beside that of Parmentier who carried to France the potato of Canada. These two men have rendered immense service to humanity, and their memory should never be forgotten—yet alas! Are they even remembered?
Tussac, in his Flora de las Antillas, writing of de Clieu, says, "Though no monument be erected to this beneficent traveler, yet his name should remain engraved in the heart of every colonist."
In 1774 the Année Littéraire published a long poem in de Clieu's honor. In the feuilleton of the Gazette de France, April 12, 1816, we read that M. Donns, a wealthy Hollander, and a coffee connoisseur, sought to honor de Clieu by having painted upon a porcelain service all the details of his voyage and its happy results. "I have seen the cups," says the writer, who gives many details and the Latin inscription.
That singer of navigation, Esménard, has pictured de Clieu's devotion in the following lines:
Forget not how de Clieu with his light vessel's sail,
Brought distant Moka's gift—that timid plant and frail.
The waves fell suddenly, young zephyrs breathed no more,
Beneath fierce Cancer's fires behold the fountain store,
Exhausted, fails; while now inexorable need
Makes her unpitying law—with measured dole obeyed.
Now each soul fears to prove Tantalus torment first.
De Clieu alone defies: While still that fatal thirst,
Fierce, stifling, day by day his noble strength devours,
And still a heaven of brass inflames the burning hours.
With that refreshing draught his life he will not cheer;
But drop by drop revives the plant he holds more dear.
Already as in dreams, he sees great branches grow,
One look at his dear plant assuages all his woe.
The only memorial to de Clieu in Martinique is the botanical garden at Fort de France, which was opened in 1918 and dedicated to de Clieu, "whose memory has been too long left in oblivion.[21]"
In 1715 coffee cultivation was first introduced into Haiti and Santo Domingo. Later came hardier plants from Martinique. In 1715–17 the French Company of the Indies introduced the cultivation of the plant into the Isle of Bourbon (now Réunion) by a ship captain named Dufougeret-Grenier from St. Malo. It did so well that nine years later the island began to export coffee.
The Dutch brought the cultivation of coffee to Surinam in 1718. The first coffee plantation in Brazil was started at Pará in 1723 with plants brought from French Guiana, but it was not a success. The English brought the plant to Jamaica in 1730. In 1740 Spanish missionaries introduced coffee cultivation into the Philippines from Java. In 1748 Don José Antonio Gelabert introduced coffee into Cuba, bringing the seed from Santo Domingo. In 1750 the Dutch extended the cultivation of the plant to the Celebes. Coffee was introduced into Guatemala about 1750–60. The intensive cultivation in Brazil dates from the efforts begun in the Portuguese colonies in Pará and Amazonas in 1752. Porto Rico began the cultivation of coffee about 1755. In 1760 João Alberto Castello Branco brought to Rio de Janeiro a coffee tree from Goa, Portuguese India. The news spread that the soil and climate of Brazil were particularly adapted to the cultivation of coffee. Molke, a Belgian monk, presented some seeds to the Capuchin monastery at Rio in 1774. Later, the bishop of Rio, Joachim Bruno, became a patron of the plant and encouraged its propagation in Rio, Minãs, Espirito Santo, and São Paulo. The Spanish voyager, Don Francisco Xavier Navarro, is credited with the introduction of coffee into Costa Rica from Cuba in 1779. In Venezuela the industry was started near Caracas by a priest, José Antonio Mohedano, with seed brought from Martinique in 1784.
Coffee cultivation in Mexico began in 1790, the seed being brought from the West Indies. In 1817 Don Juan Antonio Gomez instituted intensive cultivation in the State of Vera Cruz. In 1825 the cultivation of the plant was begun in the Hawaiian Islands with seeds from Rio de Janeiro. As previously noted, the English began to cultivate coffee in India in 1840. In 1852 coffee cultivation was begun in Salvador with plants brought from Cuba. In 1878 the English began the propagation of coffee in British Central Africa, but it was not until 1901 that coffee cultivation was introduced into British East Africa from Réunion. In 1887 the French introduced the plant into Tonkin, Indo-China. Coffee growing in Queensland, introduced in 1896, has been successful in a small way.
In recent years several attempts have been made to propagate the coffee plant in the southern United States, but without success. It is believed, however, that the topographic and climatic conditions in southern California are favorable for its cultivation.
Kaldi and His Dancing Goats
THE LEGENDARY DISCOVERY OF THE COFFEE DRINK
From drawings by a modern French artist
Chapter III
EARLY HISTORY OF COFFEE DRINKING
Coffee in the Near East in the early centuries—Stories of its origin—Discovery by physicians and adoption by the Church—Its spread through Arabia, Persia and Turkey—Persecutions and intolerances—Early coffee manners and customs
The coffee drink had its rise in the classical period of Arabian medicine, which dates from Rhazes (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya El Razi) who followed the doctrines of Galen and sat at the feet of Hippocrates. Rhazes (850–922) was the first to treat medicine in an encyclopedic manner, and, according to some authorities, the first writer to mention coffee. He assumed the poetical name of Razi because he was a native of the city of Raj in Persian Irak. He was a great philosopher and astronomer, and at one time was superintendent of the hospital at Bagdad. He wrote many learned books on medicine and surgery, but his principal work is Al-Haiwi, or The Continent, a collection of everything relating to the cure of disease from Galen to his own time.
Philippe Sylvestre Dufour (1622–87)[22], a French coffee merchant, philosopher, and writer, in an accurate and finished treatise on coffee, tells us (see the early edition of the work translated from the Latin) that the first writer to mention the properties of the coffee bean under the name of bunchum was this same Rhazes, "in the ninth century after the birth of our Saviour"; from which (if true) it would appear that coffee has been known for upwards of 1000 years. Robinson[23], however, is of the opinion that bunchum meant something else and had nothing to do with coffee. Dufour, himself, in a later edition of his Traitez Nouveaux et Curieux du Café (the Hague, 1693) is inclined to admit that bunchum may have been a root and not coffee, after all; however, he is careful to add that there is no doubt that the Arabs knew coffee as far back as the year 800. Other, more modern authorities, place it as early as the sixth century.
Wiji Kawih is mentioned in a Kavi (Javan) inscription A.D. 856; and it is thought that the "bean broth" in David Tapperi's list of Javanese beverages (1667–82) may have been coffee[24].
While the true origin of coffee drinking may be forever hidden among the mysteries of the purple East, shrouded as it is in legend and fable, scholars have marshaled sufficient facts to prove that the beverage was known in Ethiopia "from time immemorial," and there is much to add verisimilitude to Dufour's narrative. This first coffee merchant-prince, skilled in languages and polite learning, considered that his character as a merchant was not inconsistent with that of an author; and he even went so far as to say there were some things (for instance, coffee) on which a merchant could be better informed than a philosopher.
Granting that by bunchum Rhazes meant coffee, the plant and the drink must have been known to his immediate followers; and this, indeed, seems to be indicated by similar references in the writings of Avicenna (Ibn Sina), the Mohammedan physician and philosopher, who lived from 980 to 1037 A.D.
Rhazes, in the quaint language of Dufour, assures us that "bunchum (coffee) is hot and dry and very good for the stomach." Avicenna explains the medicinal properties and uses of the coffee bean (bon or bunn), which he, also, calls bunchum, after this fashion:
As to the choice thereof, that of a lemon color, light, and of a good smell, is the best; the white and the heavy is naught. It is hot and dry in the first degree, and, according to others, cold in the first degree. It fortifies the members, it cleans the skin, and dries up the humidities that are under it, and gives an excellent smell to all the body.
The early Arabians called the bean and the tree that bore it, bunn; the drink, bunchum. A. Galland[25] (1646–1715), the French Orientalist who first analyzed and translated from the Arabic the Abd-al-Kâdir manuscript[26], the oldest document extant telling of the origin of coffee, observes that Avicenna speaks of the bunn, or coffee; as do also Prospero Alpini and Veslingius (Vesling). Bengiazlah, another great physician, contemporary with Avicenna, likewise mentions coffee; by which, says Galland, one may see that we are indebted to physicians for the discovery of coffee, as well as of sugar, tea, and chocolate.
Rauwolf[27] (d. 1596), German physician and botanist, and the first European to mention coffee, who became acquainted with the beverage in Aleppo in 1573, telling how the drink was prepared by the Turks, says:
In this same water they take a fruit called Bunnu, which in its bigness, shape, and color is almost like unto a bayberry, with two thin shells surrounded, which, as they informed me, are brought from the Indies; but as these in themselves are, and have within them, two yellowish grains in two distinct cells, and besides, being they agree in their virtue, figure, looks, and name with the Bunchum of Avicenna and Bunco, of Rasis ad Almans exactly: therefore I take them to be the same.
In Dr. Edward Pocoke's translation (Oxford, 1659) of The Nature of the Drink Kauhi, or Coffee, and the Berry of which it is Made, Described by an Arabian Phisitian, we read:
Bun is a plant in Yaman [Yemen], which is planted in Adar, and groweth up and is gathered in Ab. It is about a cubit high, on a stalk about the thickness of one's thumb. It flowers white, leaving a berry like a small nut, but that sometimes it is broad like a bean; and when it is peeled, parteth in two. The best of it is that which is weighty and yellow; the worst, that which is black. It is hot in the first degree, dry in the second: it is usually reported to be cold and dry, but it is not so; for it is bitter, and whatsoever is bitter is hot. It may be that the scorce is hot, and the Bun it selfe either of equall temperature, or cold in the first degree.
That which makes for its coldnesse is its stipticknesse. In summer it is by experience found to conduce to the drying of rheumes, and flegmatick coughes and distillations, and the opening of obstructions, and the provocation of urin. It is now known by the name of Kohwah. When it is dried and thoroughly boyled, it allayes the ebullition of the blood, is good against the small poxe and measles, the bloudy pimples; yet causeth vertiginous headheach, and maketh lean much, occasioneth waking, and the Emrods, and asswageth lust, and sometimes breeds melancholly.
He that would drink it for livelinesse sake, and to discusse slothfulnesse, and the other properties that we have mentioned, let him use much sweat meates with it, and oyle of pistaccioes, and butter. Some drink it with milk, but it is an error, and such as may bring in danger of the leprosy.
Dufour concludes that the coffee beans of commerce are the same as the bunchum (bunn) described by Avicenna and the bunca (bunchum) of Rhazes. In this he agrees, almost word for word, with Rauwolf, indicating no change in opinion among the learned in a hundred years.
Christopher Campen thinks Hippocrates, father of medicine, knew and administered coffee.
Robinson, commenting upon the early adoption of coffee into materia medica, charges that it was a mistake on the part of the Arab physicians, and that it originated the prejudice that caused coffee to be regarded as a powerful drug instead of as a simple and refreshing beverage.
Homer, the Bible, and Coffee
In early Grecian and Roman writings no mention is made of either the coffee plant or the beverage made from the berries. Pierre (Pietro) Delia Valle[28] (1586–1652), however, maintains that the nepenthe, which Homer says Helen brought with her out of Egypt, and which she employed as surcease for sorrow, was nothing else but coffee mixed with wine.[29] This is disputed by M. Petit, a well known physician of Paris, who died in 1687. Several later British authors, among them, Sandys, the poet; Burton; and Sir Henry Blount, have suggested the probability of coffee being the "black broth" of the Lacedæmonians.
George Paschius, in his Latin treatise of the New Discoveries Made since the Time of the Ancients, printed at Leipsic in 1700, says he believes that coffee was meant by the five measures of parched corn included among the presents Abigail made to David to appease his wrath, as recorded in the Bible, 1 Samuel, xxv, 18. The Vulgate translates the Hebrew words sein kali into sata polentea, which signify wheat, roasted, or dried by fire.
Pierre Étienne Louis Dumant, the Swiss Protestant minister and author, is of the opinion that coffee (and not lentils, as others have supposed) was the red pottage for which Esau sold his birthright; also that the parched grain that Boaz ordered to be given Ruth was undoubtedly roasted coffee berries.
Dufour mentions as a possible objection against coffee that "the use and eating of beans were heretofore forbidden by Pythagoras," but intimates that the coffee bean of Arabia is something different.
Scheuzer,[30] in his Physique Sacrée, says "the Turks and the Arabs make with the coffee bean a beverage which bears the same name, and many persons use as a substitute the flour of roasted barley." From this we learn that the coffee substitute is almost as old as coffee itself.
Some Early Legends
After medicine, the church. There are several Mohammedan traditions that have persisted through the centuries, claiming for "the faithful" the honor and glory of the first use of coffee as a beverage. One of these relates how, about 1258 A.D., Sheik Omar, a disciple of Sheik Abou'l hasan Schadheli, patron saint and legendary founder of Mocha, by chance discovered the coffee drink at Ousab in Arabia, whither he had been exiled for a certain moral remissness.
Facing starvation, he and his followers were forced to feed upon the berries growing around them. And then, in the words of the faithful Arab chronicle in the Bibliothéque Nationale at Paris, "having nothing to eat except coffee, they took of it and boiled it in a saucepan and drank of the decoction." Former patients in Mocha who sought out the good doctor-priest in his Ousab retreat, for physic with which to cure their ills, were given some of this decoction, with beneficial effect. As a result of the stories of its magical properties, carried back to the city, Sheik Omar was invited to return in triumph to Mocha where the governor caused to be built a monastery for him and his companions.
Another version of this Oriental legend gives it as follows:
The dervish Hadji Omar was driven by his enemies out of Mocha into the desert, where they expected he would die of starvation. This undoubtedly would have occurred if he had not plucked up courage to taste some strange berries which he found growing on a shrub. While they seemed to be edible, they were very bitter; and he tried to improve the taste by roasting them. He found, however, that they had become very hard, so he attempted to soften them with water. The berries seemed to remain as hard as before, but the liquid turned brown, and Omar drank it on the chance that it contained some of the nourishment from the berries. He was amazed at how it refreshed him, enlivened his sluggishness, and raised his drooping spirits. Later, when he returned to Mocha, his salvation was considered a miracle. The beverage to which it was due sprang into high favor, and Omar himself was made a saint.
A popular and much-quoted version of Omar's discovery of coffee, also based upon the Abd-al-Kâdir manuscript, is the following:
In the year of the Hegira 656, the mollah Schadheli went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Arriving at the mountain of the Emeralds (Ousab), he turned to his disciple Omar and said: "I shall die in this place. When my soul has gone forth, a veiled person will appear to you. Do not fail to execute the command which he will give you."
The venerable Schadheli being dead, Omar saw in the middle of the night a gigantic specter covered by a white veil.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The phantom drew back his veil, and Omar saw with surprise Schadheli himself, grown ten cubits since his death. The mollah dug in the ground, and water miraculously appeared. The spirit of his teacher bade Omar fill a bowl with the water and to proceed on his way and not to stop till he reached the spot where the water would stop moving.
"It is there," he added, "that a great destiny awaits you."
Omar started his journey. Arriving at Mocha in Yemen, he noticed that the water was immovable. It was here that he must stop.
The beautiful village of Mocha was then ravaged by the plague. Omar began to pray for the sick and, as the saintly man was close to Mahomet, many found themselves cured by his prayers.
The plague meanwhile progressing, the daughter of the King of Mocha fell ill and her father had her carried to the home of the dervish who cured her. But as this young princess was of rare beauty, after having cured her, the good dervish tried to carry her off. The king did not fancy this new kind of reward. Omar was driven from the city and exiled on the mountain of Ousab, with herbs for food and a cave for a home.
"Oh, Schadheli, my dear master," cried the unfortunate dervish one day; "if the things which happened to me at Mocha were destined, was it worth the trouble to give me a bowl to come here?"
To these just complaints, there was heard immediately a song of incomparable harmony, and a bird of marvelous plumage came to rest in a tree. Omar sprang forward quickly toward the little bird which sang so well, but then he saw on the branches of the tree only flowers and fruit. Omar laid hands on the fruit, and found it delicious. Then he filled his great pockets with it and went back to his cave. As he was preparing to boil a few herbs for his dinner, the idea came to him of substituting for this sad soup, some of his harvested fruit. From it he obtained a savory and perfumed drink; it was coffee.
The Italian Journal of the Savants for the year 1760 says that two monks, Scialdi and Ayduis, were the first to discover the properties of coffee, and for this reason became the object of special prayers. "Was not this Scialdi identical with the Sheik Schadheli?" asks Jardin.[31]
The most popular legend ascribes the discovery of the drink to an Arabian herdsman in upper Egypt, or Abyssinia, who complained to the abbot of a neighboring monastery that the goats confided to his care became unusually frolicsome after eating the berries of certain shrubs found near their feeding grounds. The abbot, having observed the fact, determined to try the virtues of the berries on himself. He, too, responded with a new exhilaration. Accordingly, he directed that some be boiled, and the decoction drunk by his monks, who thereafter found no difficulty in keeping awake during the religious services of the night. The abbé Massieu in his poem, Carmen Caffaeum, thus celebrates the event:
The monks each in turn, as the evening draws near,
Drink 'round the great cauldron—a circle of cheer!
And the dawn in amaze, revisiting that shore,
On idle beds of ease surprised them nevermore!
According to the legend, the news of the "wakeful monastery" spread rapidly, and the magical berry soon "came to be in request throughout the whole kingdom; and in progress of time other nations and provinces of the East fell into the use of it."
The French have preserved the following picturesque version of this legend:
A young goatherd named Kaldi noticed one day that his goats, whose deportment up to that time had been irreproachable, were abandoning themselves to the most extravagant prancings. The venerable buck, ordinarily so dignified and solemn, bounded about like a young kid. Kaldi attributed this foolish gaiety to certain fruits of which the goats had been eating with delight.
The story goes that the poor fellow had a heavy heart; and in the hope of cheering himself up a little, he thought he would pick and eat of the fruit. The experiment succeeded marvelously. He forgot his troubles and became the happiest herder in happy Arabia. When the goats danced, he gaily made himself one of the party, and entered into their fun with admirable spirit.
One day, a monk chanced to pass by and stopped in surprise to find a ball going on. A score of goats were executing lively pirouettes like a ladies' chain, while the buck solemnly balancé-ed, and the herder went through the figures of an eccentric pastoral dance.
The astonished monk inquired the cause of this saltatorial madness; and Kaldi told him of his precious discovery.
Now, this poor monk had a great sorrow; he always went to sleep in the middle of his prayers; and he reasoned that Mohammed without doubt was revealing this marvelous fruit to him to overcome his sleepiness.
Piety does not exclude gastronomic instincts. Those of our good monk were more than ordinary; because he thought of drying and boiling the fruit of the herder. This ingenious concoction gave us coffee. Immediately all the monks of the realm made use of the drink, because it encouraged them to pray and, perhaps, also because it was not disagreeable.
In those early days it appears that the drink was prepared in two ways; one in which the decoction was made from the hull and the pulp surrounding the bean, and the other from the bean itself. The roasting process came later and is an improvement generally credited to the Persians. There is evidence that the early Mohammedan churchmen were seeking a substitute for the wine forbidden to them by the Koran, when they discovered coffee. The word for coffee in Arabic, qahwah, is the same as one of those used for wine; and later on, when coffee drinking grew so popular as to threaten the very life of the church itself, this similarity was seized upon by the church-leaders to support their contention that the prohibition against wine applied also to coffee.
La Roque,[32] writing in 1715, says that the Arabian word cahouah signified at first only wine; but later was turned into a generic term applied to all kinds of drink. "So there were really three sorts of coffee; namely, wine, including all intoxicating liquors; the drink made with the shells, or cods, of the coffee bean; and that made from the bean itself."
Originally, then, the coffee drink may have been a kind of wine made from the coffee fruit. In the coffee countries even today the natives are very fond, and eat freely, of the ripe coffee cherries, voiding the seeds. The pulp surrounding the coffee seeds (beans) is pleasant to taste, has a sweetish, aromatic flavor, and quickly ferments when allowed to stand.
Still another tradition (was the wish father to the thought?) tells how the coffee drink was revealed to Mohammed himself by the Angel Gabriel. Coffee's partisans found satisfaction in a passage in the Koran which, they said, foretold its adoption by the followers of the Prophet:
They shall be given to drink an excellent wine, sealed; its seal is that of the musk.
The most diligent research does not carry a knowledge of coffee back beyond the time of Rhazes, two hundred years after Mohammed; so there is little more than speculation or conjecture to support the theory that it was known to the ancients, in Bible times or in the days of The Praised One. Our knowledge of tea, on the other hand, antedates the Christian era. We know also that tea was intensively cultivated and taxed under the Tang dynasty in China, A.D. 793, and that Arab traders knew of it in the following century.
The First Reliable Coffee Date
About 1454 Sheik Gemaleddin Abou Muhammad Bensaid, mufti of Aden, surnamed Aldhabani, from Dhabhan, a small town where he was born, became acquainted with the virtues of coffee on a journey into Abyssinia.[33] Upon his return to Aden, his health became impaired; and remembering the coffee he had seen his countrymen drinking in Abyssinia, he sent for some in the hope of finding relief. He not only recovered from his illness; but, because of its sleep-dispelling qualities, he sanctioned the use of the drink among the dervishes "that they might spend the night in prayers or other religious exercises with more attention and presence of mind.[34]"
It is altogether probable that the coffee drink was known in Aden before the time of Sheik Gemaleddin; but the endorsement of the very learned imam, whom science and religion had already made famous, was sufficient to start a vogue for the beverage that spread throughout Yemen, and thence to the far corners of the world. We read in the Arabian manuscript at the Bibliothéque Nationale that lawyers, students, as well as travelers who journeyed at night, artisans, and others, who worked at night, to escape the heat of the day, took to drinking coffee; and even left off another drink, then becoming popular, made from the leaves of a plant called khat or cat (catha edulis).
Sheik Gemaleddin was assisted in his work of spreading the gospel of this the first propaganda for coffee by one Muhammed Alhadrami, a physician of great reputation, born in Hadramaut, Arabia Felix.
A recently unearthed and little known version of coffee's origin shows how features of both the Omar tradition and the Gemaleddin story may be combined by a professional Occidental tale-writer[35]:
Toward the middle of the fifteenth century, a poor Arab was traveling in Abyssinia. Finding himself weak and weary, he stopped near a grove. For fuel wherewith to cook his rice, he cut down a tree that happened to be covered with dried berries. His meal being cooked and eaten, the traveler discovered that these half-burnt berries were fragrant. He collected a number of them and, on crushing them with a stone, found that the aroma was increased to a great extent. While wondering at this, he accidentally let the substance fall into an earthen vessel that contained his scanty supply of water.
A miracle! The almost putrid water was purified. He brought it to his lips; it was fresh and agreeable; and after a short rest the traveler so far recovered his strength and energy as to be able to resume his journey. The lucky Arab gathered as many berries as he could, and having arrived at Aden, informed the mufti of his discovery. That worthy was an inveterate opium-smoker, who had been suffering for years from the influence of the poisonous drug. He tried an infusion of the roasted berries, and was so delighted at the recovery of his former vigor that in gratitude to the tree he called it cahuha which in Arabic signifies "force".
Galland, in his analysis of the Arabian manuscript, already referred to, that has furnished us with the most trustworthy account of the origin of coffee, criticizes Antoine Faustus Nairon, Maronite professor of Oriental languages at Rome, who was the author of the first printed treatise on coffee only,[36] for accepting the legends relating to Omar and the Abyssinian goatherd. He says they are unworthy of belief as facts of history, although he is careful to add that there is some truth in the story of the discovery of coffee by the Abyssinian goats and the abbot who prescribed the use of the berries for his monks, "the Eastern Christians being willing to have the honor of the invention of coffee, for the abbot, or prior, of the convent and his companions are only the mufti Gemaleddin and Muhammid Alhadrami, and the monks are the dervishes."
Amid all these details, Jardin reaches the conclusion that it is to chance we must attribute the knowledge of the properties of coffee, and that the coffee tree was transported from its native land to Yemen, as far as Mecca, and possibly into Persia, before being carried into Egypt.
Coffee, being thus favorably introduced into Aden, it has continued there ever since, without interruption. By degrees the cultivation of the plant and the use of the beverage passed into many neighboring places. Toward the close of the fifteenth century (1470–1500) it reached Mecca and Medina, where it was introduced, as at Aden, by the dervishes, and for the same religious purpose. About 1510 it reached Grand Cairo in Egypt, where the dervishes from Yemen, living in a district by themselves, drank coffee on the nights they intended to spend in religious devotion. They kept it in a large red earthen vessel—each in turn receiving it, respectfully, from their superior, in a small bowl, which he dipped into the jar—in the meantime chanting their prayers, the burden of which was always: "There is no God but one God, the true King, whose power is not to be disputed."
Flowers, Fruit, and Leaves | |
| THE COFFEE TREE BEARS FRUIT, LEAF, AND BLOSSOM AT THE SAME TIME | |
After the dervishes, the bowl was passed to lay members of the congregation. In this way coffee came to be so associated with the act of worship that "they never performed a religious ceremony in public and never observed any solemn festival without taking coffee."
Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Mecca became so fond of the beverage that, disregarding its religious associations, they made of it a secular drink to be sipped publicly in kaveh kanes, the first coffee houses. Here the idle congregated to drink coffee, to play chess and other games, to discuss the news of the day, and to amuse themselves with singing, dancing, and music, contrary to the manners of the rigid Mahommedans, who were very properly scandalized by such performances. In Medina and in Cairo, too, coffee became as common a drink as in Mecca and Aden.
The First Coffee Persecution
At length the pious Mahommedans began to disapprove of the use of coffee among the people. For one thing, it made common one of the best psychology-adjuncts of their religion; also, the joy of life, that it helped to liberate among those who frequented the coffee houses, precipitated social, political, and religious arguments; and these frequently developed into disturbances. Dissensions arose even among the churchmen themselves. They divided into camps for and against coffee. The law of the Prophet on the subject of wine was variously construed as applying to coffee.
About this time (1511) Kair Bey was governor of Mecca for the sultan of Egypt. He appears to have been a strict disciplinarian, but lamentably ignorant of the actual conditions obtaining among his people. As he was leaving the mosque one evening after prayers, he was offended by seeing in a corner a company of coffee drinkers who were preparing to pass the night in prayer. His first thought was that they were drinking wine; and great was his astonishment when he learned what the liquor really was and how common was its use throughout the city. Further investigation convinced him that indulgence in this exhilarating drink must incline men and women to extravagances prohibited by law, and so he determined to suppress it. First he drove the coffee drinkers out of the mosque.
The next day, he called a council of officers of justice, lawyers, physicians, priests, and leading citizens, to whom he declared what he had seen the evening before at the mosque; and, "being resolved to put a stop to the coffee-house abuses, he sought their advice upon the subject." The chief count in the indictment was that "in these places men and women met and played tambourines, violins, and other musical instruments. There were also people who played chess, mankala, and other similar games, for money; and there were many other things done contrary to our sacred law—may God keep it from all corruption until the day when we shall all appear before him![37]"
The lawyers agreed that the coffee houses needed reforming; but as to the drink itself, inquiry should be made as to whether it was in any way harmful to mind or body; for if not, it might not be sufficient to close the places that sold it. It was suggested that the opinion of the physicians be sought.
Two brothers, Persian physicians named Hakimani, and reputed the best in Mecca, were summoned, although we are told they knew more about logic than they did about physic. One of them came into the council fully prejudiced, as he had already written a book against coffee, and filled with concern for his profession, being fearful lest the common use of the new drink would make serious inroads on the practise of medicine. His brother joined with him in assuring the assembly that the plant bunn, from which coffee was made, was "cold and dry" and so unwholesome. When another physician present reminded them that Bengiazlah, the ancient and respected contemporary of Avicenna, taught that it was "hot and dry," they made arbitrary answer that Bengiazlah had in mind another plant of the same name, and that anyhow, it was not material; for, if the coffee drink disposed people to things forbidden by religion, the safest course for Mahommedans was to look upon it as unlawful.
The friends of coffee were covered with confusion. Only the mufti spoke out in the meeting in its favor. Others, carried away by prejudice or misguided zeal, affirmed that coffee clouded their senses. One man arose and said it intoxicated like wine; which made every one laugh, since he could hardly have been a judge of this if he had not drunk wine, which is forbidden by the Mohammedan religion. Upon being asked whether he had ever drunk any, he was so imprudent as to admit that he had, thereby condemning himself out of his own mouth to the bastinado.
The mufti of Aden, being both an officer of the court and a divine, undertook, with some heat, a defense of coffee; but he was clearly in an unpopular minority. He was rewarded with the reproaches and affronts of the religious zealots.
So the governor had his way, and coffee was solemnly condemned as thing forbidden by the law; and a presentment was drawn up, signed by a majority of those present, and dispatched post-haste by the governor to his royal master, the sultan, at Cairo. At the same time, the governor published an edict forbidding the sale of coffee in public or private. The officers of justice caused all the coffee houses in Mecca to be shut, and ordered all the coffee found there, or in the merchants' warehouses, to be burned.
Naturally enough, being an unpopular edict, there were many evasions, and much coffee drinking took place behind closed doors. Some of the friends of coffee were outspoken in their opposition to the order, being convinced that the assembly had rendered a judgment not in accordance with the facts, and above all, contrary to the opinion of the mufti who, in every Arab community, is looked up to as the interpreter, or expounder, of the law. One man, caught in the act of disobedience, besides being severely punished, was also led through the most public streets of the city seated on an ass.
However, the triumph of the enemies of coffee was short-lived; for not only did the sultan of Cairo disapprove the "indiscreet zeal" of the governor of Mecca, and order the edict revoked; but he read him a severe lesson on the subject. How dared he condemn a thing approved at Cairo, the capital of his kingdom, where there were physicians whose opinions carried more weight than those of Mecca, and who had found nothing against the law in the use of coffee? The best things might be abused, added the sultan, even the sacred waters of Zamzam, but this was no reason for an absolute prohibition. The fountain, or well, of Zamzam, according to the Mohammedan teaching, is the same which God caused to spring up in the desert to comfort Hagar and Ishmael when Abraham banished them. It is in the enclosure of the temple at Mecca; and the Mohammedans drink of it with much show of devotion, ascribing great virtues to it.
It is not recorded whether the misguided governor was shocked at this seeming profanity; but it is known that he hastened to obey the orders of his lord and master. The prohibition was recalled, and thereafter he employed his authority only to preserve order in the coffee houses. The friends of coffee, and the lovers of poetic justice, found satisfaction in the governor's subsequent fate. He was exposed as "an extortioner and a public robber," and "tortured to death," his brother killing himself to avoid the same fate. The two Persian physicians who had played so mean a part in the first coffee persecution, likewise came to an unhappy end. Being discredited in Mecca they fled to Cairo, where, in an unguarded moment, having cursed the person of Selim I, emperor of the Turks, who had conquered Egypt, they were executed by his order.
Coffee, being thus re-established at Mecca, met with no opposition until 1524, when, because of renewed disorders, the kadi of the town closed the coffee houses, but did not seek to interfere with coffee drinking at home and in private. His successor, however, re-licensed them; and, continuing on their good behavior since then, they have not been disturbed.
In 1542 a ripple was caused by an order issued by Soliman the Great, forbidding the use of coffee; but no one took it seriously, especially as it soon became known that the order had been obtained "by surprise" and at the desire of only one of the court ladies "a little too nice in this point."
One of the most interesting facts in the history of the coffee drink is that wherever it has been introduced it has spelled revolution. It has been the world's most radical drink in that its function has always been to make people think. And when the people began to think, they became dangerous to tyrants and to foes of liberty of thought and action. Sometimes the people became intoxicated with their new found ideas; and, mistaking liberty for license, they ran amok, and called down upon their heads persecutions and many petty intolerances. So history repeated itself in Cairo, twenty-three years after the first Mecca persecution.
Coffee's Second Religious Persecution
Selim I, after conquering Egypt, had brought coffee to Constantinople in 1517. The drink continued its progress through Syria, and was received in Damascus (about 1530), and in Aleppo (about 1532), without opposition. Several coffee houses of Damascus attained wide fame, among them the Café of the Roses, and the Café of the Gate of Salvation.
Its increasing popularity and, perhaps, the realization that the continued spread of the beverage might lessen the demand for his services, caused a physician of Cairo to propound (about 1523) to his fellows this question: