The history of coffee spans many centuries. Wild coffee plants originated in Ethiopia, while the beverage itself has its roots in Yemen, where it was harvested, roasted and brewed; Sufi Muslims in the 15th century used it to aid concentration during night prayers.
From Yemen, coffee spread to Mecca and the wider Arabian Peninsula, and by the early 16th century it had reached Cairo, Damascus, and Istanbul. Debates over its permissibility arose in Muslim society, but it soon became a central part of urban social life.
Through Mediterranean trade routes, coffee entered Europe in the mid-16th century through Italy and other Mediterranean regions. Coffee houses were established in Western Europe by the late 17th century, especially in Holland, England, and Germany.
Up to the end of the 17th century, the Yemeni port of Mocha was the world’s sole gateway for coffee, but as demand grew, cultivation spread to other parts of the world. One of the earliest cultivations of coffee in the New World was when Gabriel de Clieu brought coffee seedlings to Martinique in 1720, from which it spread to other Caribbean islands such as Saint-Domingue and also to Mexico. By 1788, Saint-Domingue supplied half the world's coffee.
By 1852, Brazil became the world's largest producer of coffee and has held that status ever since. Since 1950, several other major producers emerged, notably Colombia, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, and Vietnam; the latter overtook Colombia and became the second-largest producer in 1999.
Today, coffee is one of the world's most popular beverages, with a significant cultural and economic impact globally.
Etymology The word coffee entered English from the Ottoman Turkish (), borrowed in turn from the Arabic (). most likely meant 'dark', referring to the brew or the bean: Semitic languages have the root qhh, "dark color".
Medieval Arab lexicographers traditionally held that the etymology of meant 'wine', given its distinctly dark color, and derived from the verb (), 'to have no appetite'. Etymologies include the Ethiopian province of Kaffa in Abyssinia, part of the plant's native region and origin of discovery, and the Arabic ("power").
The Turkish kahve also inspired caffè in Italian, café in French, and in Dutch, which all emerged at roughly the same time, reflecting the beverage's rapid spread across Europe.
The Ethiopian word for coffee is buna, bun, būn, Buni which comes from the word for the color brown in Amharic, Tigrinya and Arabic. The word group has been assumed to originate from early Semitic languages ().
The terms coffee pot and coffee break originated in 1705 and 1952 respectively.
Genetics The original domesticated coffee plant is said to have been from Harar, and the native plant population is thought to be derived from Ethiopia with distinct nearby populations in Sudan and Kenya.
Genetic studies have been performed on Coffea arabica varieties, which were found to be of low genetic diversity but retaining of some residual heterozygosity from ancestral materials, and closely related diploid species Coffea canephora and C. liberica; however, no direct evidence of coffee's existence or use has been found from earlier than the seventeenth century. A 2020 follow-up study definitively confirmed that the vast majority of Coffea arabica plants originate from early varieties in the coffee farms of Yemen.
History
Spread of coffee The earliest mention of coffee noted by the literary coffee merchant Philippe Sylvestre Dufour is a reference to bunchum in the works of the 10th century Persian physician al-Razi, known as Rhazes in the West. According to later accounts, bunchum was made from a root rather than from coffee beans. There is no confirmed evidence, either historical or archaeological, of coffee as a drink being consumed before the 15th century. The beverage appears to be a relatively recent development. By the late 15th century, coffee drinking was well established among Sufi communities in Yemen.
More definite information on the coffee tree and preparation of a beverage from the roasted coffee berries dates back to the late 15th century. The Sufi Imam Muhammad Ibn Said al-Dhabhani is known to have imported goods from Ethiopia to Yemen.
One of the most important of the early writers on coffee was Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri, who, in 1587, compiled a work tracing the history and legal controversies of coffee entitled Umdat al Safwa fi hill al-qahwa (عمدة الصفوة في حل القهوة), tracing the spread of coffee from Arabia Felix (present-day Yemen) northward to Mecca and Medina, and then to the larger cities of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Constantinople. He reported that one Sheikh, Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani (d. 1470), mufti of Aden, was the first to adopt the use of coffee (circa 1454).
Al-Jaziri's manuscript work is of considerable interest with regard to the history of coffee in Europe as well. A copy reached the French royal library, where it was translated in part by Antoine Galland as De l'origine et du progrès du café (1699).
Sufis in Yemen used the beverage as an aid to concentration and as a kind of spiritual intoxication when they chanted the name of God. Sufis used it to keep themselves alert during their nighttime devotions. By 1414, the plant was known in Mecca, and, in the early 1500s, was spreading to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and North Africa from the Yemeni port of Mocha. Associated with Sufism, a myriad of coffee houses popped up in Cairo around the religious Al-Azhar University. These coffee houses also opened in Syria, especially in the cosmopolitan city of Aleppo, and then in Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, in 1554. Coffee was also noted in Aleppo by the German physician botanist Leonhard Rauwolf, the first European to mention it, as chaube, in 1573; Rauwolf was closely followed by descriptions from other European travellers. According to the Ottoman chronicler Ibrahim Peçevi, coffee reached Istanbul in 1554, when two Arab merchants, Hakem of Aleppo and Shems of Damascus, opened the first coffeehouse in the Tahtakale district of Istanbul.
In 1511, it was forbidden for its stimulating effect by conservative, orthodox imams at a theological court in Mecca. However, these bans were to be overturned in 1524 by an order of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Suleiman I, with Grand Mufti Mehmet Ebussuud el-İmadi issuing a fatwa allowing the consumption of coffee. In Cairo, a similar ban was instituted in 1532, and the coffeehouses and warehouses containing coffee beans were sacked. During the 16th century, it had already reached the rest of the Middle East, the Safavid Empire and the Ottoman Empire. From the Middle East, coffee drinking spread to Italy, then to the rest of Europe, and coffee plants were transported by the Dutch to the East Indies and to the Americas.
Yemen Yemen is regarded as the origin of the beverage and where Coffea arabica was cultivated as a crop on a large scale rather than gathered from the wild.
Yemen became the first major production zone and global exporter of coffee, dominating the trade for two centuries. By the fifteenth century, coffee cultivation had taken root in Yemen's highland regions such as Haraz and Bani Matar, where it was harvested, roasted and brewed by Sufi circles seeking to sustain energy during nightly prayers.
By the late sixteenth century, Yemen had established a thriving coffee economy centered in its western highlands. Coffee was cultivated on terraced slopes overlooking the Tihamah, while caravan routes carried the beans to the Red Sea ports, particularly Mocha, which connected the Yemeni trade with Jeddah, Cairo and beyond. During the seventeenth century, demand for Yemeni coffee grew so rapidly that it rivaled and eventually surpassed many commodities of the global spice trade. Until the end of that century, Yemen remained the world's principal producer and exporter of coffee, and the port of Mocha became synonymous with the beverage itself.
Modern genetic studies have confirmed Yemen's foundational role in the global spread of Coffee arabica. Research published in 2020 demonstrated that a vast majority of the world's cultivated Arabica varieties were propagated from plants domesticated and farmed in Yemen.
Iran
Coffee was introduced to Iran during the Safavid era in the 16th century, likely brought by returning pilgrims and merchants from the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest records show that Qahveh khaneh appeared in cities like Isfahan and Tabriz, where people socialized. At the beginning, coffee was first grown in the northern provinces and later spread to other regions, and over time it became a central part of Iranian social life. During the Qajar era, tea gradually replaced coffee as the preferred drink, although coffeehouses remained important cultural spaces.
Coffee played a central role in social life in Iran. Qahveh khaneh became places where people interacted socially, shared stories, read poetry, and discussed political events, which shows the central role of coffee in Iranian social life. Travelers and historians from the Safavid and Qajar periods often mentioned Iranian coffee customs, including how it was prepared and served. Even after Tea became more popular, coffee remained a part of city life and continued to influence Iranian culture into the 19th century.
Coffee in Iran also played a role in trade and the economy. During the Safavid period, coffee beans were imported through Persian Gulf ports and sold in urban markets, linking local merchants to wider international trade networks. Coffee not only played a major role in the economy but also influenced cultural aspects. For example, some coffeehouses served as informal spaces for commercial negotiations and the exchange of news and information.Bremmer, J. (2015). "Urban Life and Commerce in Safavid Iran". Journal of Persian Studies, 23(2), 112–130. The popularity of coffee created new jobs, such as coffee roasters and servers, demonstrating its influence on daily life and employment in Iranian cities.
Somalia According to Captain Haines, who was the colonial administrator of Aden (1839–1854), Mocha historically imported up to two-thirds of their coffee from Berbera-based merchants before the coffee trade of Mocha was captured by British-controlled Aden in the 19th century. Thereafter, much of the Ethiopian coffee was exported to Aden via Berbera. England also received two-thirds of its coffee escaping the high duties cost at Mocha.
Coffee regulation in Ethiopia Coffee was banned by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church sometime before the 18th century. However, in the second half of the 19th century, Ethiopian attitudes softened towards coffee drinking, and its consumption spread rapidly between 1880 and 1886; according to Richard Pankhurst, "this was largely due to Emperor Menelik, who himself drank it, and to Abuna Matewos who did much to dispel the belief of the clergy that it was a Muslim drink."
Coffee in Islam