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

[David Friedman]

Nasrallah thinks there are references to coffee in al-Warraq--I'd have 
to check to be more precise.


On 5/30/15 9:17 PM, Terry Decker wrote:
> 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 matched to sources, some historical references were inaccurate, and 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
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-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/