SC - After feast

[Jeff Gedney]

> According to "The Timetables of History" by Bernard Grun, 1979 ed, Simon
> and Schuster; 
> AD 850, Arabian goatherd Kaldi credited with the discovery of coffee
> AD 1450, Mocha in Southwestern Arabia becomes main port of export for
> coffee.
> 
> regards, Puck
> 
The story of Kaldi is apocryphal and actually takes place in Abyssinia.  The
Arabs moved in between the 6th and 8th Centuries after Axum went into
decline.  Also Kaldi did not brew coffee, he ate the beans.

The earliest date I've found for coffee drinking, based only on legend, is
mid-13th Century.  I'm convinced that coffee, as a medicinal, was being
traded as early as the 10th Century, although the evidence is sketchy.  It
is possible that coffee as a beverage originates in the medical community as
a means of making the medicine go down for patients who could not swallow a
paste.

Coffee drinking was tied to the Sufis, who appear to have used it in their
mystic rituals.  I have some opinions about Abyssinia, Persia, the Sufis and
the spread of qawah, but they require some very serious research to
determine if they have any merit.

In any event, the 1450 date is questionable, because the historical evidence
is that the commercialization of coffee on the Arabian Peninsula begins
sometime after 1454.  The actual spread of coffee drinking through the
general populace is primarily 16th Century.

Rather than flog the horse some more, let me direct you to a couple of
decent references:

Hattox, Ralph S., Coffee and Coffeehouses, The Origins of a Social beverage
in the Medieval Near East; Seattle, University of Washington, 1985.

Ukers, William H., All About Coffee, 2nd Edition; New York, The Tea & Coffee
Trade Journal Company, 1935.

These are the most accurate and scholarly works on the subject I have found.

Bear
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================