If we missed celebrating its international day, 1 October, it is time to make amends. We turn to Africa, “the cradle of humanity”, which gave humanity its favourite brew.

Call it coffee, café, kopi, kaffee, or qahwa, we all cherish the warm, crisp, strong cup of coffee.

It is therefore only naturally that there would be a national coffee day, first launched in 2015 and definitely overdue after 600 years of sheer bliss. On this day, you can earn a free cup of coffee by many businesses around the world, as they offer you “a hug in a mug”.

It is a timely date to rejoice in the cool autumnal breeze and indulge in the magic brew. In fact, any season and every season is the favourite hot beverage in all climes, temperate or cold.

The story began over 1,000 years ago, on the upland plains of Ethiopia, in Kaffa. A goat herder, Kaldi, was grazing his flock when he noticed the herd was becoming frisky and frolicsome, hopping gleefully around a shiny, dark-leafed shrub with red berries. Curious, Kaldi tried the strange berries and was soon kicking and prancing with his goats. Sheikh Omar, a Yemenite in exile, noticed the exhilarating effects of the berries, and on his return to his native Yemen in the city of Mocha he experimented the berries further. He discovered a remedy for lethargy by mixing the berries with animal fat and water. A dose of that concoction was all that was needed for “a shot in the arm”.

That “pick me up” power is the caffeine now found in colas, teas, and coffee that has been controversial for decades.

Considered by some as a drug, caffeine has proven to be more addictive than other drugs including tobacco, alcohol and marijuana. Coffee accounts for about 75 per cent of the adult intake of all caffeine consumption, though some of it has been found in children’s drinks nowadays.

Highly addictive substances are not legally or socially acceptable, except for coffee. Taken in small amounts caffeine expands blood vessels, stimulates body and mind, and is harmless for most of us.

When coffee found its way to the West it literally changed the world. Once discovered, they never looked back.

Its past journey was enchanting, mysterious, and exotic, full of daring adventure and intrigue. A rapturous saga, much like the Arabian Nights, it unfolds a panoramic tale of epic proportions, “of how coffee trees came to girdle the globe in countries that lie along the equator between the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn.”

After Africa, coffee found its way to Yemen and by the 15th century, the beans learned to roast them in a special way that was ecstatic.

Coffee has been part of Arab culture for centuries. The word qahwa is found on tablets that go back 1,000 years. The golden bean moved from Arabia to Turkey in the 15th century, where the first coffee shops called Kiva Han started in 1457 AD. Turks flocked to the coffee houses to enrich their senses with the juice of the bean, to listen to music, play games, and discuss current affairs, much like today.

However, it was not an easy ride and by 1543 Sultan Murad 1V of the Ottoman Empire considered coffee suspect and a capital offence. Still, by the end of the century Constantinople boasted of an impressive number of 600 coffee houses.

When coffee beans reached the Christian world by the 17th century, an Abbott threw them in the fire, believing them to be the work of the devil. Some looked on the beverage with suspicion, fearing to be “the bitter invention of Satan”. When it came to Venice through the trade with Turkey, the clergy condemned it in 1615.  

It was pope Clement VIII who, upon tasting coffee, declared: “Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it.” It is said that the pope blessed the roasting beans when they released their heavenly aroma. His monks who made the hot black brew, had the Western world under its spell.

The French made coffee drinking the height of European fashion because king Louis XIV loved the brew. So did the philosopher Voltaire later, although many still considered it “a slow poison”, to which he responded: “Yes, it is a remarkably slow poison indeed for I have sipped it every day for more than 75 years.”

The US was introduced to the magic spell of the bean in 1607, now it is the largest consumer of coffee per capita.

How Brazil came to be the top producer, exporting 40 per cent of the world’s coffee? Cherchez la femme, as the French say. The French seeds were carefully guarded, but the Brazilian envoy to French Guinea, Francesco de Mello, charmed the wife of the French governor who in turn sent him some coffee seeds in a flowerpot. That is how to make “an awful lot of coffee in Brazil”.

Researchers’ latest findings are encouraging for all faithful coffee lovers. Harvard University study discovered that three to four cups a day lower the risk of a host of diseases and specific mortality, including diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cardiovascular diseases and colorectal, liver, and renal cancers.

No wonder one billion out of eight billion people (12.6 billion) love to drink coffee daily.

The tale of 1,001 years of coffee has changed the history of the world.

“Coffee, which makes the politician wise, And sees through all things with his half shut eyes.”

                    Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 November, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly