SC - Caffeine in period

[david friedman]

>I seem to recall that, at the tail end of period, some amount of coffee was
>available on the Continent.

The following is from the _Miscellany_.

The coffee plant is apparently native to Abyssinia. The use of coffee in
Abyssinia was recorded in the fifteenth century and regarded at that time
as an ancient practice (EB). I believe that there is a reference in one of
the Greek historians to what sounds like coffee being drunk in what might
well be Abyssinia, but I have not yet succeeded in tracking it down.

Coffee was apparently introduced into Yemen from Abyssinia in the middle of
the 15th century. It reached Mecca in the last decade of the century and
Cairo in the first decade of the 16th century (Hattox).

The use of coffee in Egypt is mentioned by a European resident near the end
of the sixteenth century. It was brought to Italy in 1615 and to Paris in
1647 (LG). The first coffee house in England was opened in Oxford in 1650
(Wilson), and the first one in London was opened in 1652 (EB). The earliest
use of the word in English is in 1592, in a passage describing its use in
Turkey (OED) .

It appears that coffee is out of period for European feasts and late period
for Islamic ones.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/