The Coffee Legend
The most popular legend attributes the discovery to Kaldi, a young Ethiopian goatherd, and his goats. According to this tale, one day Kaldi noticed his goats bounding about the hillsides in a strange manner after they had eaten some red berries from a hillside shrub. Even the oldest and weakest were frolicking wildly and frantically with heretofore unknown energy, so Kaldi, feeling rather tired and troubled, tried eating some of the berries himself. Immediately he began to prance and cavort with his goats, his troubles and tiredness banished. From then on, Kaldi and his goats cheered themselves each day by eating more of the berries.
When the head of a nearby monastery happened to see Kaldi and his goats dancing about one day, he asked for an explanation of the strange behavior; after sampling some of the fruits himself, the monk immediately felt exhilaration flow through his weary frame. In one version of the legend he himself hit on the idea of boiling some of the berries to make a liquid for the monks to drink so they could more easily stay awake during religious services; in another version, Muhammad appeared to the monk later that night as he drowsed during prayer, and instructed him to boil the red berries in water and drink the resulting liquid in order to stay awake and pray.
Within a short time the news of this magical drink reached all the monasteries in the kingdom, and devout monks drank it in order to spend more time praying. The drink became known as Qahwah, which means "invigorating and stimulating." (Since it is the word for wine, prohibited by Muhammad, the drink eventually was called the Arab's wine.) In another legend even more closely linked with Islam, the Angel Gabriel comes to Muhammad in a dream and reveals to him the nature of the berry and its possibilities as a drink to stimulate the prayers of his disciples.
An ancient Arabian chronicle (preserved in the Abd-al-Kadir manuscript), the first to mention the origin of coffee, gives yet another legend relating the discovery of coffee, gives yet another legend relating the discovery of coffee to a follower of Islam, this one including the tradition of roasting the berries and the use of coffee as a medicine. According to one version of the tale, the dervish Omar, known for his ability to cure the sick through prayer, was exiled from Mocha to a desert cave near Ousab. Starving, he chewed the berries from a nearby shrub; but they were bitter, so he tried roasting them to improve their flavor. When they became hard, he then boiled them in water in an attempt to soften them. Only a fragrant brown liquid resulted, but Omar was so hungry that he drank it; the beverage immediately revitalized him and sustained him for many days. Eventually patients from Mocha came to the cave in Ousab for medical advice from the exiled healer, tried this drink as a medicine, and were cured. When stories of this "miracle drug" reached Mocha, Omar was asked to return and was made a saint.
Besides the variety of legends accounting for coffee's discovery, there is a good deal of confusion in tracing coffee's uses and beginnings because of the number of different words thought to refer to it in early times. The earliest possible reference to coffee, under the names bunn and bunchum, are Arabian, and it is in Arabia that the first planting and actual cultivation of the coffee tree apparently took place. Since the coffee tree grows wild in Ethiopia, were much coffee is still gathered from wild trees, not in Arabia, some authorities believe the Ethiopians might have brought seeds to Arabia when they occupied Yemen in the early sixth century, but this remains conjecture.
It seems likely that coffee was first eaten as food in Ethiopia and Arabia too, and only later was boiled with water to make a beverage. It is also possible that in early times a wine was made from the fermented pulp of the ripe berries. Some authorities think this may be the reason why Qahwah (which means both coffee and wine) is the word for coffee; coffee as a beverage may have started as a wine. Sun dried beans probably inspired the idea of roasting, but exactly how and when coffee developed from a food to a nonalcoholic beverage made from boiling water and roasted, ground coffee beans is simply a matter of historical conjecture.
|
