Coffee: From Ethiopia to Istanbul

Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world, but its history began with a plant. According to a well-known legend, a goat herder in Ethiopia noticed that his goats became very lively after eating the red berries of a certain bush. He tried them himself and felt more awake. Whether this story is true or not, coffee plants certainly come from Ethiopia. By the fifteenth century, people in Yemen were drinking coffee, which was made by boiling the roasted seeds. Merchants carried it north to Cairo and then to the Ottoman Empire. In Istanbul, the first coffeehouses opened in the middle of the sixteenth century. They quickly became popular places where people met to talk, play games and listen to music or poetry. The Turkish way of making coffee, in a small pot over low heat, is still famous today and is recognised by UNESCO as part of cultural heritage. Coffee reached Europe in the seventeenth century. At first, some people were suspicious of it, but soon coffeehouses appeared in cities such as Venice, London and Vienna. Today, coffee is grown in more than fifty countries, and millions of people depend on it for their living.