SC - Royal declared chocolate period

[Decker, Terry D.]

> >The reference is apocryphal because it is based on legend.  According to
> >legend, Shaykh Ali ibn Umar al-Shadhili, a Sufi, introduced coffee
> drinking
> >to Yemen about 1258.
> 
> And when is this legend first recorded? If the answer is "after we know
> from other sources that coffee was being drunk," then it isn't much
> evidence about when coffee drinking began.
> 
> Or to put it differently, what you are describing are not "the first
> references to coffee as a drink," unless the legend itself was recorded
> before we have other references to coffee as a drink. Rather, they are
> later references that assert coffee was being drunk earlier. In precisely
> the same fashion, you could have described the recent TI article as "The
> first references to coffee as a drink," since it at least suggests a still
> earlier date.
> 
> David/Cariadoc
> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
> 
Point taken.  To my knowledge, the legend was written down later.  I believe
this particular legend is from Moreadgea D'Ohsson's Tableau general de
l'empire othoman, which would place the written version between the 18th and
19th Centuries.  Ukers notes the legend.  Hattox considers the date
"improbably early".  Also, Carsten Niebuhr in Travels through Arabia and
other Countries in the East (1792) places a late 14th Century date on
al-Shadhili. 

For Hattox's thesis, 1258 is improbably early, leaving a 200 year gap
between the introduction of coffee to the people of Mocha and the beginning
of the general spread coffee through al-Islam.  However, the date is not
impossible.

Both Ukers and Hattox tie coffee drinking to the Sufis as part of their
rituals.  Sufism got its start in the late 10th and early 11th Century in
Persia.  Considered heretical, Sufism was secretive, but influential, as it
appealed to many literate, wealth and powerful individuals.  Between the
12th and the 13th Centuries, Sufi mysticism was resolved to the main body of
Islamic thought, primarily through the work of al-Gahzali, but it did not
appeal to the average member of the Faithful.  

Considering that Avicenna did not comment of coffee as a beverage, one can
speculate that coffee as a beverage did not exist before the 11th Century.

>From Persian coffee roasting pans dated to the early 15th Century, we know
that coffee was consumed in Persia before the general spread of coffee.
This suggests that coffee as a beverage existed in the 14th Century.

This means that a 12th or 13th Century date for first brewing coffee is not
out of the question.  Ergo, I am willing to accept 1258 as the earliest date
for the establishment a Sufist school in Mocha attributed to Al-Shadhili and
drinking coffee as part of its ritual, subject to revision on the basis of
better evidence.  As the current evidence is based on oral tradition written
down centuries after the fact, I consider the evidence to be apocryphal.

While I could use the TI article as "the first reference to coffee as a
drink," to do so would be questionable.  Reviewing the sources of the
article suggests limited research.  At least one of the works contains
errors of fact.  The author did not consult Ukers or Hattox, the two primary
authors on the history of coffee.  And I found points in the article which I
would consider apocryphal to be treated as fact.  I try to base my opinions
on the best evidence I can find and while twenty years ago I might have
accepted the TI article, today it doesn't make the grade. 

Bear
 

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