Another cuppa qahwa, please

Although coffee first gained popularity as a drink in Arabia, chance are that the beans from which your morning coffee is made do not come from this region. More than likely, they were grown in East Africa, South America, South East Asia and maybe, just maybe, they came from Yemen. It's ironic, of course, that the cradle of coffee consumption no longer plays a role in the drink's production. Of course, there are remnants of the Middle East's importance in the nomenclature of coffee still today. Arabica coffee, for example, comes from a type of coffee bean that was grown widely in Arabia in the early centuries of coffee production, which are estimated to be the 12th to 14th centuries.

"It's one of those wonderful examples of historical inaccuracy," says William Clarence-Smith, a professor of the economic history of Africa and Asia at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Coffee Arabica is one of two types of coffee plants used in the vast majority of coffee production. The other is Coffea canephora, also known as Coffea robusta. Arabica beans are considered superior but since their cultivation demands much more care, they are costlier to produce and costlier to consumers at the end of the line, as well. Less expensive coffee products tend to have a higher robusta content. And, of course, there are many variations of these two types of beans.

It is generally believed that coffee was first discovered in what is now Ethiopia by tribes who used to grind the beans, mix them with fat and eat them. The mix was valued for its stimulant effect. From East Africa, it was a short hop across the Red Sea to what is now Yemen, where Arab traders first brought the beans. By the 13th century, Arabs had come up with what strikes us today as a far more appealing method of achieving coffee's stimulant effects. By boiling the beans in water, they made qahwa or coffee.

"Some people say coffee was cultivated in Ethiopia before Yemen," says prof Clarence-Smith. "That's possible, but there's no hard evidence." It seems more likely, many believe, that the cultivation techniques developed in Yemen were adopted by farmers in Harar, east of the Rift Valley. The Sufi tradition of Islam appreciated the plant for its stimulant effect and even incorporated it into rituals.

"The like it because it kept them awake so they could practise their meditation for the recitation of the Quran," according to Prof Clarence-Smith. With the Islamic prohibition on alcohol, coffee has been dubbed the "wine of Islam". Traders, travellers and pilgrms spread the drink throughout the Muslim world. It was welcomed by some adherents, but rejected by others as haram. Much of the discomfort with coffee comes from its early association with Sufiism, which some people reject as a form of Islam.

Nevertheless, coffee houses slowly became an established part of the culture in the Muslim world, filling the role that alehouses held in parts of Europe. "The coffee house is an Arabian invention," says Jonathan Morris, a research prefessor in modern European History at the University of Hertfordshire in England. "It's a place where people can sociaise without alcohol." From Arabia, coffee spread to both India and Europe. Legend has it that seeds were originally smuggled to India in the bags of a Muslim pilgrim returning from performing the Hajj in Mecca.

Although widely accepted as fact, this explanation is doubted by Prof Clarence-Smith who notes that the "viability of seeds is not great". He believes that it is far more likely that seedlings were transported to India. The spread of coffee continued eastward, arriving in Java, the main Indonesian island, where coffee remains an important cash crop today. The Ottomans introduced coffee to Europe while the beans made their way to the New World from Yemen, first migrating to the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, probably in the early 18th century, and then on to the French Caribbean.

There is little doubt that coffee would have spread around the world even had it not been cultivated in Arabia, but the timing of its spread would likely have been very different. "The way it reached Europe in the 1640s is through trading with the Ottomans. If it hadn't come to Arabia, presumably it wouldn't have [reached Europe] until [Europeans] took over Africa in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was Arabia that made coffee a tradable commodity," says Prof Morris.

Although Arabia introduced the world to coffee, by the early 18th century, the drink was beginning to lose market share to tea, particularly in Turkey and northern Arabia. But tea also caused consternation among some Muslims who felt it should not be drunk because, like alcohol, fermentation is involved in its production. "Very pious Muslims will only drink green tea," Prof Clarence-Smith says. Coffee is not going anywhere, nevertheless.

Starbucks now has 15,000 outlets around the world and almost as many imitators keen to appeal to a coffee-loving public. "The modern coffee houses have the same appeal [as old-style coffee houses], and particularly in Arabia they've been successful as they've proved a socially acceptable place for women to meet," says Prof Morris. However, just as the traditional coffee houses saw their popularity dip two centuries ago as a result of tea, so it seems their 21st century variants could be in trouble, this time as a result of economic woes.

Starbucks is axing 600 stores in the United States and pulling down the shutters on three-quarters of its outlets in Australia. This makes the Middle East - Starbucks has built up a network of 67 stores in the UAE over the past eight years - much more significant. "For these coffee chain formats like Starbucks and Costa, the Middle East is seen as a growth market. That is going to be even more of the case because there are some worries in the original markets," says Prof Morris.

"Continued international expansion is going to be critical and the Middle East will be very important to that." Prof Morris does not see Starbucks' current problems as an indicator that the modern wave of coffee houses could be on the decline in the long term. Email:dbardsley@thenational.ae