SC - coffee

[david friedman]

At 6:42 AM -0400 4/13/99, Kappler, MMC Richard A. wrote:
>I don't know how old the proverb is, but drinking coffee, outside of
>abyssinia, seems to have started near the end of SCA period.
>
>David/Cariadoc
>
>
>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.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised--but do we have any reason to believe it is
true? I've seen lots of early dates cited, but very little support for
them. That particular cite is almost certainly false, since practically all
of the evidence shows coffee as something used for a long time in Abyssinia
before it spread.

For a good scholarly discussion of the evidence, see Hattox, Ralph S.,
Coffee and Coffeehouses, The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval
Near East, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1985.

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


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