Coffee became coffee in Yemen

The coffee plant, known scientifically as Coffea arabica, is native to the Ethiopian highlands in East Africa.

There, locals had known about the coffee bean for centuries and used it in different ways before it became a drink.

But the real transformation of coffee as we know it today happened in Yemen.

By the fifteenth century, Yemenis began cultivating coffee in an organized way, grinding it, boiling it and turning it into a hot beverage. From there, coffee became closely associated with the port city of Mocha in Yemen, which grew into a major global center for the coffee trade.

From Yemen, coffee spread to the Hijaz, Egypt and the Levant.

After becoming established in the Arab world, coffee made its way to Istanbul and then to Europe in the seventeenth century, before eventually becoming a global drink.

And that’s the history of coffee, a journey that began in Africa, evolved in Yemen and then spread to the rest of the world.