LALEs COFFEE HISTORY PAGES

                 a story of 1400 years                             

In 600 in a place called Kaffa in Ethyopia a goatherd by the name of KALDI saw that his goats were running around all night and never tired after eating some sort of berries.    

Monches from a monastry nearby found on the spot where the goats were eating a grean bush with green, yellow and red berries. They prepared a drink by cooking the berries and noticed that they could go on praing and reading all night after drinking this broth.

Another story tells of archangle Gabriel bringing the prophet Mohammed who was very ill and nearly dead, a cup with a hot dark drink; and that Mohammed after drinking this became healthy again quickly and went on to build his enormous islamitic empire. 

In 900 people were drinking coffee in Aden; it was brought there by tradesmen from Ethyopia and Yemen.

 

1015 Ibn-Sina (Avicenna), a Physiker and Philosopher from Arabien, wrote in his book on Medicin about a drink called  „Bunchum", that came from Jemen.  

 

In 1454 Sheik Gemaleddin, Mufti from Aden, build many coffee fields in Yemen for which he took the plants from the Abessinian mountains.  

In the 16th C. coffee spread from the Arabic peninsula first to Egypt and then further to the osmanic capital Istanbul; here the first coffee shops were opened in 1517.

From this moment for the next 100 years on the Turks made it there work to spread the usage of coffee. At that time coffee became known in Mecca Medina and Cairo.

It were the Dutch merchants who brought the first coffee plant from Mocha in Yemen to Holland in 1616 and to Ceylon in 1648.

The Turks brought coffee to Austria when their army surrounded Vienna in 1683, laying siege to the city.

In 1690 the Dutch founded the East India Coffee trade when they introduced coffee in Java (Indonesia) and went on building coffee fields through Java, Sumatra, Bali, Timor and Celebes (something similar was done with tea as a matter of fact).

In 1700 a try-out was made in Holland in the Amsterdam botanical gardens „Jardin des Plants".

The Dutch in 1718 brought a plant to another of their colonies : Dutch Guiana (Surinam) in South America.

In France Mehmet the 4th let his ambassador bring coffee to LOUIS the 14th as a present, who send it immediately it to French Guiana.

 And the story of the french Marine Officer de Clieu who brought some small coffee plants over the ocean in 1723. Threatened by pirats and storms and lack of water, that had to be shared by many, he was able to bring some living plants to South America.

And later the planting of the coffee plant went on in  Meksiko, Guatemala, Kolombiya, Brezilya, Venezuela and spread to other countries in the Middle and South of America.

Around 1727 Brazil's emperor asks a spy Col. Palheta to smuggle seeds from french Guiana; he exudes his considerable charm on the governor's wife, who leaves with a farewell bouquet, spiked with coffee seeds; and see:
                                                    Brazil is now the world's top coffee producer!

1732 : From J.S. Bach's "Coffee Cantata,"
"Ah! How sweet coffee tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine!"

Late in the 19th century the French were the first to innovate an expresso machine. The Italians then perfected this machine and became the first to manufacture it. The first model from which all later espresso machine arrive was made by Luigi Bezzera in 1902.
The name of espresso is still completely attached to Italy. And nowadays also the best espresso machines come from Italy. 

Around 1900 the first attempts were made to decaffeinate coffee by Ludwig Roselius and this became worldfamous under the name „Kaffee HAG".

In 1908 in DRESDEN a housewife named Melitta Bentz invented the first coffee filter papers.

in 1909 Mr. G. Washington, an Englishman who lived in Guatemala, invented instant coffee and in 1938 Nestlé started to make and sell this professionelly.

An Arabian Dullah--traditional Bedouin brass coffee pot

An old Turkish law  :

              The withholding of a cup of coffee to a husband, is a good reason for divorce.