There is evidence that the coffee plant and the coffee bean's action as a stimulant were known in Arabia by the time of the great Islamic physician and astronomer Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya El Razi, aka "Rhazes". In his lost medical textbook, Rhazes describes the nature and effects of a plant named "bunn" and a beverage named "buncham". The oldest extant document referring to buncham is The Canon of Medicine by Avicenna at the turn of the 11th century. In the 5th part of his book he mentions that Buncham...comes from Yemen (Weinberg 6) and that the unroasted beans are yellow. His description of the humoral properties of buncham are consistent with caffeine. The fact that there exists a large gap between the first mention of coffee in 1000 AD by Avicenna and later accounts in 1500, is puzzling.
While we do not know all the details of the earliest Arab preparations, the best information we can gather is that Arab traders brought coffee back to their homeland from Africa for planting and made two drinks. Kisher, a tealike beverage was steeped from the fruit's dried husks. Bounya, was a thick brew of crushed beans, drunk unfiltered with sediment. A Levantine refinement introduced the technique of roasting the beans on stone trays before boiling them in water, then straining and reboiling them with fresh water in a process repeated several times. We do know that the berries were eaten whole at first or mixed iwth fat. Later the fermented pulp was used for wine and about 1000 AD a decoction was made of the dried fruit, beans, hull and all. The practice of roasting the beans was started around the 13th century (Davidson). Other developments included pounding the beans to a powder with a mortar and pestle after roasting and mixing with boiled water. It wasn't until the 16th century that Islamic coffee drinkers invented the ibrik, a small coffee boiler that made brewing easier and quicker. In the 18th century, ground coffee was placed in a cloth bag what was then deposited in the pot and steeped (Weinberg 23)
The word coffee enters English by way of the French cafe, Italian caffe, Dutch koffie, German Kaffee and Turkish Kahveh which all in turn derive from the Arabic word qahwa.
One legend gives us the name for coffee or "mocha". It is told that an Arabian was banished to the desert with his followers to die of starvation. In desperation, the man had his friends boil and eat the berry from an unknown plant. Not only did the broth save the exiles' lives, but their survival was taken as a religious sign by the residents of the nearest town, the Arabian port of Al Mukkah (Mocca) on the Red Sea. The town itself became reknowned because it was the sole source for the world's coffee for many centuries. The plant and its beverage were named Mocha to honor this event.
Another theory is that the word qahwa in Arabic comes from a root that means "making something repugnant". Qahwa in the old poetry was a venerable word for wine. In later usages, it came to refer to other psychoactive beverages such as khat, a strong stimulating drink infused from the leaves of the kafta plant. This theory holds that the old word for wine was applied to the new beverage coffee.
Other theories argue that coffee is borrowed from the drink brewed from kafta or khat, after al-Dhabhani recommended to friends that they substitute coffee for the qahwa made from kafta. According to this theory, coffee is the poor man's khat and was consumed only when khat was unavailable.
Other etymologies trace the word coffee to quwwa or cahuha which means power or strength holding that the drink was named for its invigorating effects of caffeine. A story associated with this etymology is that toward the 15th century, a poor Arab traveling in Abyssinia stooped near a stand of trees. Cutting down a tree covered with berries for firewood to cook his dinner of rice, he immediately noticed that the partially roasted berries were fragrant and that when crushed, their aroma increased. By accident, he dropped some into his water supply and discovered that the foul water was purified. When he returned to Aden, he presented the beans to the mufti, an opium addict, who when tasting the roasted berries, recovered his health and dubbed the tree of origin, cahuha (Weinberg 25).
An evocative etymology provided for the word coffee links it to the region of Kaffa (Kefa) in Ethiopia. Some say that because the plant was first grown in that region, and was first infused as a beverage there, it was named after the area. The most famous word etymology accepts that coffee was named for kaffa and at the same time links the word qahwa in the snese of wanting no more, to the name of the district. The idea is based on several Islamic tales that derive the name Kaffa from the Arabian root for it is enough. A priest is said to have wandered East towards Western Africa in order to extend the religion of the prophet and when he came to the regions where Kaffa lies, Allah appeared to him. There of course, the priest discovered a coffee tree laden with red berries, which be boiled and named the brew after the place to which Allah had led him (Weinberg 25).
Davidson, Alan. 1999. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kiple, Kenneth and Kriemhild Ornelas. 2000. The Cambridge World History of Food. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trager, James. 2000. The Food Chronology. New York: Henry Holt & Company.
Weinberg, Bennett and Bonnie Bealer. 2001. The World of Caffeine. New York: Routledge.
