[Sca-cooks] Coffee Redux - a Look at The History of Coffee

[Terry Decker]

After reading The History of Coffee in the Florilegium, I decided take 
another look at the subject.  I found the article interesting but of uneven 
quality.  The author failed to reference either Hattox, Coffee and 
Coffeehouses:  The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Middle East, 
or Ukers, All About Coffee, the two best references on the subject I have 
encountered.  Points of information were not matched to sources, some 
historical references were inaccurate, and the author did not distinguish 
between the coffee berry and the beverage where the distinction is critical. 
I obtained a copy of one of her sources on a recent trip to Charleston, SC, 
Allen, The Devil's Cup, and found several tantalizing tidbits that were 
ignored in the article.

As a word of warning, The Devil's Cup is a rambling travelogue of the 
pursuit of coffee larded with historical and scholarly references without 
bibliography or sourced notes.  Fun read, but tricky to know what to take 
seriously.

One of the things I have been chasing is the origin of the legends 
surrounding coffee.  The first known appearance of the tale of Kaldi is in 
De Saluberrima potione Cahue nuncupata Discurscus (1671).  The author, 
Antoine Faustus Nairon was a Maronite and a professor of Chaldean and Syraic 
languages at the College of Rome.  The story probably represents collected 
folklore and is  definitely apocryphal.  Pietro Delia Valle appears to be 
the source for the idea that the nepenthe of Helen was coffee.  George 
Sandys, the poet, is the likely source for the idea that coffee was the 
black broth of the Lacedaemoniuns.   And so it goes.

The History of Coffee places Avicenna (11th Century) as the first reference 
to coffee, but Rhazes predates that reference by almost a century.  The 
author is probably referencing a work that uses Phillipe Dufour (a 17th 
Century coffee merchant and philosopher} as the source that thinks Avicenna 
is talking about a beverage.  In a later writing, Dufour suggests that 
Avicenna may have been talking about the root of the coffee plant rather 
than the beverage.

Rhazes describes the medicinal properties of "buncha" or "bunchum" but does 
not adequately describe the plant or the method of preparation. at the 
beginning of the 10th Century. Avicenna states, "As to the choice thereof, 
that of a lemon color, light and of good smell is the best; that of the 
white and heavy is naught.  It is hot and dry in the first degree, and, 
according to others, cold in the first degree. It fortifies the members, it 
cleans the skin, and dries up the humidities that are under it, and gives an 
excellent smell to all the body."

Avicenna uses the term "bunchum" or "bunn."  In Arabic, "bunn" means the 
entire kernal or the coffee berry depending on usage.  The husk of the berry 
is called "qishr."  The drink is "qahwa."  Obviously both Rhazes and 
Avicenna were apparently referring to the coffee berry, not the beverage.

The tale that Shayhk Ali ibn Umar al-Shadhili introduced coffee into Yemen 
around 1258 is apocryphal.  It first appears in a work by Abd-al-Kadir ibn 
Mohammad al-Ansari al-Jasari al-Hanbali from 1587 roughly titled "Argument 
in favor of the legitamate use of coffee".  Abd-al-Kadir may have gotten the 
tale from an earlier work, now lost, by Shihab-ad-Din Ahmad ibn 
Abd-al-Ghafar al-Maliki, who predates Abd-al-Kadir by about a century.  The 
article treats this as stated fact rather than an unsupported statement.

Tantalizingly, The Devils Cup provides a footnote that, "... the British 
Journal of Mythic Society VII claims that in A.D. 1385 Emperor Harihara II 
of Vijayanagar (now Mysore) ordered that all imports for Peta Math enter tax 
free  in 'return for coffee seeds.' "  If true, were they for medicine or 
drink?  If they latter, then Abd-al-Kadir's tale might be less apocryphal as 
the timeline would fit it better.

In part, my peeve with The History of Coffee is the casual generality.  For 
example, "It is confirmed that coffee was being spread by a mufti in 
mid-15th century Yemen, with the major sales done through the port of 
Moccha."  With one line, the author writes off the seminal event and person 
in the spread of coffee.

Abd-al-Kadir records a meeting in approximately 1450 CE between a Yemeni 
jurist and Shaykh Jamal al-Din Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Sa'id al-Dhabbani, 
imam, mufti, Abyssinian traveler and Sufi from Aden, where coffee was drunk. 
The first reported use of coffee as a beverage.  As al-Dhabbani died about 
1470, the account establishes coffee as a beverage by the mid-15th Century. 
Al-Dhabbani is apparently the key figure in the commercialization of coffee, 
having started plantations in Yemen after being introduced to the beverage 
in Abyssinia.

Still, despite my irritation with the article, it is better than some of the 
others I've seen.  It does have a bibliography and I'll go over the 
references to see if I can glean any more detail.

Bear

Bear