The Coffee Story: From Crop to Cup

By Dr. Adhid Miri

Part II

From crop to cup, the journey of the coffee bean from a humble, pestilent North African shrub to the world’s second most valuable export by developing countries (surpassed only by oil) is as rich and dark as the liquid it creates.

A major step in the evolution of the modern cup of coffee was the roasting of the bean, a technique which was credited to the alchemical prowess of the Sufis. The change from a tasteless pale green seed to a rich black bean of overwhelming aroma and taste came to represent the transformation of the soul through the influence of Islam and the deep black shade resplendent of Ka’ba – the sacred stone of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

There are a large variety of roasts as well as thousands of blends. Coffee roasting and brewing combines chemistry and creative culinary art. Acidity, bean blends, flavor, caffeine concentration and more are all part of the final taste equation.

Served hot from an infusion of the Coffea plant, an ancient form of coffee was served out of steaming pots atop open fires in the public shops of Arabia. This was merely a shadow of the smooth crèma layered brew of our modern addiction.

As with tale of Khaldi (minus the goats), it was religion which would plant the foundation for the drink to flourish.  Dedicated to the study and worship of the Prophet Muhammad, Sufis (a mystical branch of Islam) used coffee to stay awake during late night worship sessions. Coffee would require one final major player before it could be introduced to the Western world – a port called Mocha.

The Coffee House

For centuries, coffeehouses have been witnessing cultural and political debates. They are the meeting places for all people, the stations of literature and haven of poets and intellectuals; the place where ideas and visions are exchanged between intellectuals and the public. To this day, you will find them in streets and alleys - a place to unwind and taste different coffees and teas.

Coffeehouses in Mecca became a concern of imams who viewed them as places for political gatherings and drinking, leading to bans between 1512 and 1524; however, these bans could not be maintained because coffee had become ingrained in daily ritual and culture across the Islamic world.

Despite these restrictions, this humble new drinking establishment would be responsible for spreading enlightenment, intellectualism and culture across multiple empires and continents. Coffeehouses became known as “schools of wisdom” for the type of clientele they attracted, and for their free and frank discourse.

With the effects of the roasted bean still to be discovered by the religious Sufis of Yemen, this early beverage was more likely a direct infusion of the dried coffee cherry (bean removed) known as Kish’r (bean shell), a white coffee drink still consumed throughout the Arabian Peninsula today. 

The Middle East

In the Middle East, the coffeehouse (Arabic: maqhaa; Persian qahveh-khaneh; Turkish: kahvehane or kırâthane) served as an important social gathering place for men.

Coffeehouses became popular meeting places where people gathered to drink and play board games such as dominos, cards, and backgammon. Men gathered at coffeehouses to listen to music and stories, read books, view television, discuss news and politics, and enjoy other social activities.

According to Ottoman history, the first coffeehouses that appeared in the Islamic world were originally called “qahveh-khaneh” in Damascus. They appeared in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula, in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire’s capital of Istanbul in the 16th century.

Coffeehouses in Egypt are colloquially called ‘ahwah , which is the dialectal pronunciation of qahwah (literally “coffee”). The first ‘ahwah opened around the 1850s, originally patronized mostly by older people, with youth frequenting but not always ordering. In the early 20th century, some of them became crucial venues for political and social debates.

In Cairo, the capital of Egypt, most cafés have shisha (waterpipe). Many Egyptians indulge in the habit of smoking shisha while hanging out at the café, watching a match, studying, or even sometimes finishing some work. In Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, independent coffeehouses were popular with young professionals who do not have time for traditional coffee roasting at home.

The Ottoman Coffee Houses

In1517, the Ottomans conquered Egypt, a country of historic and cultural development with strong links to Sufism.  As such, they also discovered a nation dominated by the drinking of coffee and the establishment of the coffee house. 

With all things that come with the capture of a new nation, the coffee bean and brew naturally came with it.  By 1555, the Ottoman Empire would see the very first coffee house opened on their own home shores of Constantinople (later renamed Istanbul) by two Syrian merchants named Hakim and Shams.  Ten years later, around 600 coffee selling establishments would be recorded in that city alone – the coffee house culture had been reborn.

The Ottoman chronicler Ibrahim Pecevi reports in his writings (1642–49) about the opening of the first coffeehouse in Istanbul:

“Various legends involving the introduction of coffee to Istanbul at a “Kiva Han” in the late 15th century circulate. Until the year 1555, in the High, God-Guarded city of Constantinople, as well as in Ottoman lands, coffee and coffeehouses did not exist. About that year, a fellow called Hakam from Allepo and a wag called Shams from Damascus came to the city; they opened a large shop in the district called Tahtakale and began to purvey coffee.”

In the early 16th century Turkish coffee houses, coffee was brewed in large pots or cauldrons atop open fires often enhanced with the aroma of exotic spices like saffron and cardamom. Like the multitude of cafes today which cater to all classes, coffee could be acquired throughout a range of different locations from humble souk kiosk to luxurious tree shaded gardens with bards, beautiful servant women and views over the Bosporus. 

This new world of comfort and engagement presented the Ottomans with one of the first public locations of social enlightenment outside of the constraints of religious or alcoholic venues. These places of population and sobriety became forums for intellectual debate, listening posts for news and meeting points for commerce and trade.  In the more elite establishments patrons could hire their own Kaveghi (coffee maker) to cater for all matters of coffee acquisition, brewing, and service.

The induction of coffee into what was the world’s longest standing Empire of the time was not without its hurdles.  Since the Sufis of Yemen first began using coffee in the mid-15th century, coffee had already been banned more than twice in belief of its blasphemous role as an intoxicating beverage in the eyes of Islam.  

By the time the Ottomans tried to lay down their own prohibition in 1580, coffee was already too widely spread to be effective and merely went underground. Prohibition was not to last and when legally back in the public domain, continued its spread across the Empire and the Balkan states. 

With such a network of sober meeting houses throughout their Ottoman region, it was no surprise that many in power were concerned about their use as dens of conspiracy. Previously, taverns alone were places of sedition and uprising, and now coffeehouses presented a new threat to the power paranoid. While devious plans may be hatched during a night of alcohol fueled banter, it was coffee’s ability to help recall the details of said plan the following morning which kept the grand Vizier awake at night; albeit that, and his own love of coffee.

Europe

It would take almost another hundred years before the first Western traders would encounter what they initially called the “Wine of Araby,” introduced not by the Arabs but the power of the Ottoman Empire. 

While the West would not adopt coffee until late in the establishment of the beverage, their role would grow to define its place in the world’s future.   Despite trading with the bean and plant since before the 17th century, European merchant hubs Venice and Genoa saw coffee’s role in Europe merely as a product of medicinal benefit and not social consumption, a view which would quickly change when a Lebanese Jewish entrepreneur, remembered only as Jacob, would open the West’s first coffee house in Oxford, England called the Angel Inn.

Remembered in his personal writings, Jacob describes the Angel Inn as a place where coffee, “was by some who delighted in novelty drank.” Today another coffee house named, “the Grand Café” can be found on the site.

A second coffee house would be opened nearby the following year by another Jew named Cirques Jobson, and by the time a third was opened three years after that by Arthur Tillyard, coffee had found a new home in the West. 

In the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe, coffeehouses were very often meeting points for writers and artists.

Penny Universities

In 17th and 18th century England, coffeehouses were also popular places for people from all walks of life to meet, chat, gossip and have fun, whilst enjoying the latest fashion, a drink newly arrived in Europe from Turkey – coffee.

London coffeehouses became known as ‘Penny Universities,’ as that was the price of a cup of coffee. Influential patrons included Administrator of the Navy Samuel Pepys, poet-literary critic John Dryden, poet Alexander Pope, and mathematician and scientist Isaac Newton. Not all coffeehouses hosted such highbrow clientele - some were haunts for criminals, scoundrels, and pimps.

Of these new establishments, it would be Tillyard’s which would set the standard for future coffee houses to follow. With a focus on the more educated middle-class patrons of Oxford, Tillyard charged two pence for a cup of coffee and one for entry, costly in those days. Entry allowed access to various newspapers, pamphlets, broadsheets, lectures, and ballads.

These new establishments would pave the way for a new era in English society labelled by historians as the Age of Enlightenment, a period which saw a reform in the way intellectuality is pursued and accepted socially, with the coffee house at the heart of it. 

Through weekly meetings at Tillyards to discuss and debate maters of mutual scientific interest, The Royal Society was established, a syndicate which today advises the English government on scientific matters.  In 1672, the Royal Society elected a lead chairman named Isaac Newton and the rest, as they say, is history.

So popular were the student numbers that in 1679 the local mayor attempted a ban on all coffee houses from opening on Sundays to ensure the youth remained either in church or in college. It had little effect; however, when London opened its first coffee house in 1652 at St Michael’s Alley in the city, the coffee house would begin to influence an entire nation.

London, England

When Admiral Nelson defeated the Spanish and French navies at Trafalgar in 1805, the first public address of the victory was publicly announced to “the shipping interest at Lloyds coffee house” in central London.

Originally opening on Tower Street in 1689, Lloyds Coffee House was very popular with influential merchants, sailors, and ship owners of the time.  In catering for his patrons, Edward Lloyd published weekly shipping news under the name of the Lloyds List, a publication which today is one of the world’s oldest continuously running journals.  

With so many influential ship owners and merchants meeting regularly at his house, Edward also established a company of financial backers known as Lloyds of London, along with the first official Register of Ships which gave both underwriters and merchants an idea of the condition of the vessels they insured and chartered. 

Further influential coffee houses include Will’s Coffee House near Scotland Yard Gate where a group of Naval officers first conceived the idea for the Naval uniform, the Jerusalem Coffee House in Cowper’s Court, Cornhill which became the unofficial headquarters for the East India Company, and Jonathan’s Coffee House in Exchange Alley which is credited with evolving into the first modern stock exchange.

By 1739, the New London Directories would list 695 coffee houses throughout the London boroughs with 551 in the city alone. With so many competitors the coffee house had evolved into something more closely resembling today’s modern drinking establishments, with a venue to be found for all tastes and with coffee a prerequisite in the name only and no longer necessary in the offering.

One of the most famous examples of these was Tom King’s Coffee House.  While trading out of London’s Covent Garden under the title of a coffee house, Tom King’s was more openly a den of gambling, drinking and prostitution. Open from the time the common tavern closes until the sun arises, this coffee house was a popular meeting place for the ill repute and respected alike, with many intellectuals such as William Hogarth, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and Henry Fielding in common attendance. 

With no beds on the establishment grounds, Tom and his charismatic wife Mol avoided any legal prosecution regarding operating as a brothel, serving only as a meeting point for ladies of the night and their would-be suitors. 

The Kings became somewhat of an institution in London during their time and despite a large opposition from religious reformers. Even King George II once visited the establishment, yet he stayed only briefly after being challenged to a fight by an ignorant punter. 

By the mid to late 19th century, the coffee house revolution along with the newly styled “Age of Enlightenment” had reached its peak and began a steady decline replaced by – or rather evolving into – the modern hotel bar or gentlemen’s club.  Despite the change in name, these locations were still places of intellectual institution in which patrons could find good company, coffee, and fine liquor in mutual surroundings.

By the 19th century, the role of the coffee house in Western society was clearly a significant one, yet it would be the affluence of the patrons and not their numbers which would create the lasting impact. 

France

The Cafe’ de Flore in Paris was one of the oldest coffeehouses in the city. It is celebrated for its famous clientele, which included high-profile writers and philosophers.

While records show that coffee had already been enjoyed in France by a few lucky enough to associate with merchants of Arabia, the brew would not befriend the public at large until an Ottoman ambassador named Solomon Aga arrived in Paris. 

Representing Sultan Mehmed IV, Solomon and his retinue set up lavish residence in central Paris while awaiting an appointment to hold an audience with the French King Louis XIV.  Wasting no time, Solomon converted a grand Parisian townhouse into a palatial Turkish abode befitted with gilt fountains, the finest carpets and emerald encrusted tiling where guests could indulge in Oriental delicacies such as shisha tobacco and a rich brew called coffee. 

It was here that Solomon is credited with introducing the drink – and the way it was traditionally served – to many of the city’s elite. 

Despite the attention lavished upon Solomon and his fine brew, it would not be until he had departed Paris that coffee would become better established thanks to an Armenian member of his retinue named Pascal. 

Capitalizing on the impact of his previous master, Pascal began by selling hot coffee (a.k.a. petit noir) at a stall in St Germain before opening Europe’s first coffee house in 1683 – an Orient inspired café located on Qui de l’Ecole near Pont Neuf, Paris.   Unfortunately, the public, while fond of coffee, preferred libations of a more alcoholic nature and as such Pascal packed up once more and moved to a place he knew coffee was already well established – England.

It is important to mention at this stage that while these were comfortable environments infused with the smell of brewing coffee atop large open fires, the coffee infusion primarily comprised of steeping course ground or smashed coffee beans into near boiling water and serving it black. 

Italy

In the 17th century, coffee appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire. The first coffee houses are said to have appeared in 1632 in Livorno, Italy, by a Jewish merchant and in Venice in 1640. Trieste was a main Italian port for coffee.

During the 18th century, the oldest extant coffeehouses in Italy were established: Caffe’ Florian in Venice, Antico Caffé Greco in Rome, Caffe Pedrocchiin in Padua, Caffe dell Ussero in Pisa, and Caffe Florio in Turin.

Caffè Florian is a coffee house situated in the Procuratie Nuove of Piazza San Marco, Venice. It was established in 1720 and is the oldest coffee house in continuous operation in Italy, and perhaps the oldest in the world.

The Florian opened with two simply furnished rooms in December of 1720 as “Alla Venezia Trionfante” (Venice the Triumphant), but soon became known as Caffè Florian after its original owner Floriano Francesconi. The Caffè was patronized in its early days by many notables including the playwright Carlo Goldoni, German poet Wilhelm Goethe, and the Italian adventurer and poet Casanova, who was no doubt attracted by the fact that Caffè Florian was the only coffee house that allowed women.

Later, Lord Byron, Marcel Proust and Charles Dickens were frequent visitors. It was one of the few places where Gasparo Gozzi’s’s early newspaper Gazzetta Veneta could be bought in the mid-18th century and it became a meeting place for people from different social classes. In 1750, the Florian expanded to four rooms.

In 1773, Valentino Francesconi, the grandson of Floriano Francesconi, took over the business. In 1796, in a European atmosphere characterized by the French Revolution, the Venetian State feared that the revolutionary ideas could spread also in Venice. The Florian, with its international clientele, had become a meeting place for many French Jacobins, so the State Inquisitors obliged Valentino Francesconi to close the café. 

When the French armies entered Venice, in May 1797, Valentino Francesconi took down the double-obsolete “Venice Triumphant” sign outside the café and replaced it with one simply bearing the name of his uncle “Florian.” In 1814, Valentino Francesconi passed the café on to his son Antonio.

In the 19th century, the Florian played a role in the Italian Risorgimento because the “Senate Hall” was the meeting point for a group of Venetian patriots. This group had a key role in the Venetian Revolution of 1848, one that would see Venice temporarily independent from Austria. During the convulsed hours of the Revolution, the Florian hosted the wounded patriots, becoming a temporary hospital.

The United States

When we talk of coffeehouses today in the U.S., we think of those chains of cafes run by companies such as Costa Coffee, Starbucks, Seattle Best Coffee, Peet’s, Cafe Nero, Tim Horton, Caribou Coffee, The Beanery, or Dunkin, serving a wide range of coffees, skinny lattes, cappuccinos, espressos, mochas, smoothies, teas, and snacks - but these are a modern phenomenon.

The first coffeehouse in America opened in Boston in 1676, but Americans did not start choosing coffee over tea until the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War.

After that war, Americans momentarily went back to drinking tea, at least until after the War of 1812 when they began importing high-quality coffee from Latin America and expensive inferior-quality tea from American shippers instead of Great Britain.

The importance the coffeehouse played in popular society was not lost on the authorities, who used the most influential venues as public forums to read notices of general importance. In 1776, the Merchants Coffee House of Philadelphia was selected as the first location to publicly announce the United States Declaration of Independence.

In the 1780s, Merchant’s Coffee House, located on Wall Street in New York City, was home to the organizations of the Bank of New York and the New York Chamber of Commerce. 

From the late 1950s onward, coffeehouses also served as a venue for entertainment, most commonly folk performers. Both Greenwich Village and North Beach became major haunts of the Beats, who were highly identified with these coffeehouses.

From the 1960s through the mid-1980s, churches and individuals in the United States used the coffeehouse concept for outreach. The political nature of much of 1960s folk music made the music a natural tie-in with coffeehouses with their association with political action. Several well-known performers like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan began their careers performing in coffeehouses. Blues singer Lightnin’ Hopkins bemoaned his woman’s inattentiveness to her domestic situation due to her overindulgence in coffeehouse socializing in his 1969 song “Coffeehouse Blues.”

In 1966, Alfred Peet began applying the dark roast style to high quality beans and opened a small shop in Berkeley, California to educate customers on the virtues of good coffee. Starting in 1967 with the opening of the historic Last Exit on Brooklyn coffeehouse, Seattle became known for its thriving countercultural coffeehouse scene.

Modern coffeehouses in the United States arose from the espresso and pastry-centered Italian coffee houses of the Italian American immigrant communities in the major U.S. cities, notably New York City’s Little Italy and Greenwich Village, Boston’s North End, and San Francisco’s North Beach.

One of the original uses of the café, as a place for information exchange and communication, was reintroduced in the 1990s with the Internet Café or Hotspot. The spread of modern-style cafés to urban and rural areas went together with the rising use of mobile computers. Computers and Internet access in a contemporary-styled venue help to create a youthful, modern place, compared to the traditional pubs or old-fashioned diners that they replaced.

The Starbucks chain later standardized and mainstreamed this espresso bar model. Starbucks is one of the world’s largest chains, with 14,909 stores nationwide. The meaning behind the branding of Starbucks is truly iconic. Even without seeing the company logo, you can probably spot its drinks just by the color of the beverage straw. Starbucks as a name for the coffee house originated from another classic — the book Moby Dick. The coffee chain was initially to be called either Cargo House or Pequod after Captain Ahab’s ship in Moby Dick, but they settled on Starbuck(s) after the first mate on the Pequod.

From crop to cup, undoubtedly the stages of the history and legend of coffee constitute an interesting informational and international journey. We hope that you have enjoyed reading about it and traveling on its magic carpet.