Who First Invented Coffee? (Solved & Explained!)

Legend has it that an Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi was the first person to discover the coffee plant, sometime around 850 CE. However, no one actually knows who first discovered the coffee plant or who figured out how to process it into the coffee beans we know and love today.

This article lists everything you need to know about the history of coffee, including how it was discovered, who may have been involved in early coffee production, and how it became the world’s most beloved beverage.

What is the legend of Kaldi?

Coffee can trace its heritage to the ancient coffee tree woodlands of Ethiopia’s southwestern highland plateaus. This is where the world’s first coffee was grown.

It is also where we come to the story of Kaldi (sometimes written as Khalid).

Legend has it that Kaldi, an Ethiopian goad herder, first discovered coffee when he noticed that his goats became too energetic to sleep after eating the berries of a certain tree.

He took some of the berries to the nearest monastery and the monks brewed them into a drink. They, too, experienced alertness that helped them endure hours and hours of contemplative prayer.

Knowledge of these invigorating berries and their powers soon spread among the local monasteries, gradually making their way to the Arabian peninsula where they would soon be cultivated for the rest of the world to enjoy.

This story is apocryphal and probably not true. But it does touch on truths that are known about the origins of coffee production.

What is the legend of Omar?

An alternative to the legend of Kaldi is that coffee was first discovered by a Sufi sheik named Omar who was famous for his ability to heal through prayer.

One day, Omar chewed on some bitter berries close to where he was living in Ousab and found them inedible so he roasted them until they were black. Omar couldn’t eat these hard beans either so he boiled them in water.

The fragrant brown liquid that resulted was a revelation. Not only did it allow him to stay up at night but it gave him limitless energy.

Omar was lauded when he returned home to Mocha (al-Mukha) in Yemen with his discovery.

What do we know about the discovery of coffee?

Although they are just legends, they are correct about two things: that Ethiopia was the origin of coffee trees, and that coffee was first cultivated in Yemen.

Considering the geography of Ethiopia and the Arabian peninsula, it is likely that the beans were first transported across the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden on a sailing vessel.

Credit for his early trade goes to Muhammad Ibn Sa’d or Ali ben Omar of the Shadhili Sufi Order.

The earliest credible accounts of coffee drinking come from the accounts of Ahmed al-Ghaffar in Yemen, who lived during the middle of the 15th century CE. Here, coffee was first brewed and drank similarly to the way we consume coffee today.

Around this time coffee was also used by Sufi mystics to help them complete their rigorous religious rituals.

Not only was coffee drunk in private homes, but it was consumed in public coffee houses called qahveh khaneh where people could drink, talk, play chess and listen to music.

These coffee houses soon became the centers of public social interaction.

How did coffee spread around the world?

Coffee beans were imported to Yemen sometime before the middle of the 15th century. The brewed drink made from the dried beans became so popular that within less than 100 years, it had reached the rest of the Middle East, Persia, Turkey, the Indian subcontinent, and regions in northern Africa.

It had also made its way to Europe, Indonesia, and possibly even the Americas. By the middle of the 17th century, there were as many as 300 coffee houses in London, where customers could buy a cup of coffee and sit for a chat for just a penny.

The rise of coffee plantations

As coffee became more and more popular across the globe, demand skyrocketed. Outside Arabia, the first people to successfully cultivate coffee were the members of the Dutch East India Company

They developed plantations on the island of Java in Indonesia (or Batavia, as it was known at the time), and then Sumatra and Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka).

It wasn’t long before plantations sprang up in central and south America, central Africa, and many tropical island nations. Many of them practiced slave labor and displaced countless people from their traditional homes.

Where does the name ‘coffee’ come from?

The English word ‘coffee’ emerged in 1582 and can be traced back to the Dutch word koffie, which itself was an alteration of the Ottoman Turkish word khave.

This word was itself borrowed from the Arabic word qahwah, which was originally used to refer to a type of wine with origins in the very qahiya, ‘to lack hunger’. This links nicely with coffee’s known value as an appetite suppressant.

Five fun facts about the history of coffee

1. Not long after coffee had arrived in Italy in the 16h century, some religious men attempted to have it banned, citing the black beverage to be connected to the devil. However, once Pope Clement VIII tasted it and loved it, it became a staple in coffee houses throughout Europe.

2. The Dutch may have modified their word for coffee, koffie from the Ethiopian name for a region in the southwest called Keffa.

3. In the 17th century, many people believed that coffee was a sexual stimulant. Unlike alcohol, which was more likely to send you to sleep than get you ready for a night of lovemaking, coffee kept you alert for longer.

4. By the end of the 18th century, coffee was the world’s most profitable export crop.

5. Today, people living in Finland are the largest consumers of coffee per capita. In fact, all Nordic countries including Norway, Iceland, and Sweden are the highest coffee consumers in the world.