The Journey of Coffee: From Ethiopia to the Coffeehouses of Istanbul

"A single cup of coffee is remembered for forty years," goes a Turkish saying. It shows that in Turkish culture coffee is not just a drink but a symbol of friendship and hospitality. Behind that small cup lies a long journey across continents, full of bans, legends and conversation. Let's follow it from the beginning.

A legend in the Ethiopian mountains

Arabica, the most widely drunk type of coffee in the world today, comes originally from the high, forested regions of Ethiopia. The best-known story of how coffee was discovered is a legend: a goatherd named Kaldi noticed his goats leaping about all night after eating the red berries of a certain shrub. He tried them himself and found he could not sleep.

The story is much loved, but it was first written down centuries later; it is a charming tale rather than a historical record. What is certain is that the coffee plant grew wild in Ethiopia and crossed from there to Yemen, on the other side of the Red Sea.

Yemen and the sleepless Sufis

Reliable records of coffee being brewed and drunk widely go back to fifteenth-century Yemen. There, Sufi mystics drank coffee to stay awake during their night-long prayers and devotions. The Yemeni port of Mocha became the centre of the coffee trade for a long time, and its name still lives on in the names of some coffees today.

Through pilgrims and merchants, coffee soon spread to cities such as Mecca, Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo. As it spread, it became controversial. Some religious and political figures disapproved of the gatherings in coffeehouses and of the drink itself, and coffee was banned from time to time in various cities. None of these bans lasted long.

Istanbul's first coffeehouses

Coffee reached Istanbul in the mid-sixteenth century. Based on the account of the Ottoman historian Peçevi, the city's first coffeehouse is said to have been opened in the Tahtakale district by two men from Damascus and Aleppo; the date usually given is 1554.

Coffeehouses quickly became the liveliest places in the city. People did not just drink coffee there; they talked, played backgammon and chess, listened to poetry and to the tales of storytellers, and swapped the news of the day. That is why coffeehouses were also called "schools of the wise".

This liveliness sometimes worried the authorities. Believing that politics was discussed and rumours spread in coffeehouses, rulers ordered them closed at various times. One of the best-known bans came in the seventeenth century under Sultan Murad IV. But each time, coffee found its way back to the tables and streets.

Turkish coffee's own path

What sets Turkish coffee apart from other coffees around the world is the way it is made:

• The beans are roasted and then ground as fine as flour.
• Cold water, coffee and, if wanted, sugar go into a small pot called a cezve, and the coffee is brewed slowly over low heat until it foams.
• It is poured into the cup unfiltered, grounds and all, and the grounds settle to the bottom.
• It is always served with a glass of water, and often with a piece of Turkish delight.

Coffee also found its way into the Turkish language. The word "kahvaltı", breakfast, is widely believed to come from "kahve altı", the light meal eaten before coffee. Reading fortunes in the grounds, or serving the prospective groom a salty coffee when the families meet to ask for the bride's hand, are among the playful traditions of this culture.

Coffee heads to Europe

Europeans first came to know coffee through merchants, diplomats and travellers visiting Ottoman lands. In the seventeenth century Venetian traders brought coffee to Europe, and from the middle of that century coffeehouses began to open in Venice, Oxford and London. In Paris, the receptions given by the Ottoman envoy Süleyman Ağa, who arrived in France in 1669, helped make coffee fashionable at court.

In Vienna, a famous story says that coffee began with sacks left behind by the Ottoman army after the siege of 1683. This, too, is largely legend, but it reflects the fact that coffee spread to Europe by way of the Ottomans.

Protected by UNESCO

Turkish coffee culture and tradition was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013. The listing seeks to protect not just a drink, but the hospitality, conversation, coffeehouse culture and traditions that have grown up around it.

Final word

Next time you put the cezve on the stove, remember that its foam is the end of a long journey, from the mountains of Ethiopia and the ports of Yemen to the coffeehouses of Istanbul and the salons of Europe. And don't drink it alone: forty years of friendship start with a single cup shared.