Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 142

used for copying the urān, or else there
was a rumour about the armaians, that
among them nabī was forbidden and
wine allowed in order to underscore the
antinomian character of this movement.

in Kaffa. But there is no trace of authority
for the assertion that the coffee tree was
already introduced into Yemen in the
period of the Ethiopian conquest and of
the fall of the imyar kingdom, about a
century before the Hira. In this case the
older literature would hardly have left it
unnoticed.
The earliest mention of coffee so far
found is in writings of the 10th/16th
century. According to (Amad) Ibn Abd
al-affār, quoted by Abd al-ādir
al-azīrī, the popularity of ahwa as a
beverage in the Yemen was first known in
Cairo in the beginning of the 10th/16th
century. It was there taken especially in
ūfī circles, as it produced the necessary
wakefulness for the nightly devotional
exercises. According to this author-
ity, it had been brought to Aden by the
jurist Muammad b. Saīd al-abānī
(died 875/1470-1), who had become
acquainted with it during an involun-
tary stay on the African coast and on his
return devoted himself to mysticism; it
soon became popular.
Another reference in al-azīrī, how-
ever, ascribes the introduction of the bev-
erage to Alī b. Umar al-āilī. Abu
'l-asan Alī b. Umar of the family of
Dasayn died in 821/1418 according to
al-arī. He also might have become
acquainted with coffee in Ethiopia, for
after entering the āiliyya order, he
lived for a period in the entourage of the
king Sad al-Dīn ( i.e. , between 788/1386
and 805/1401-2 or 807/1404-5), who
gave him his sister to wife. Even after he
had founded his zāwiya in al-Maā (to
follow al-arī) gifts continued to reach
him from admirers in Ethiopia.
In the treatise by Abd al-ādir (Ibn)
al-Aydarūs (see below, Bibliography ), Alī
b. Umar, the saint of al-Maā, alone is
mentioned as the introducer of the bev-
erage ahwa ( mudi al-ahwa , in a verse

(P. Heine)

Coffee

ahwa , an Arabic word of uncertain
etymology, is the basis of the usual words
for coffee in various languages. Originally
a name for wine, found already in the old
poetry, this word was transferred towards
the end of the 8th/14th century in the
Yemen to the beverage made from the
berry of the coffee tree. The assumption
of such a transference of meaning is not,
it is true, accepted by some who consider
ahwa —at least in the sense of coffee—as
a word of African origin and seek to con-
nect it with the alleged home of the cof-
fee tree, Kaffa, although they also assume
contamination with ahwa “wine”. On the
other hand, it should be noted that the
holders of this view do not prove that cof-
fee was exported from Kaffa as early as
1400, and do not quote a similar word
in the languages of Ethiopia and adjoin-
ing lands, while the usual word for coffee
there ( būn for tree, berry and beverage)
has passed in the form bunn (in rhyme
also būn ) as a name of the tree and berry
into Arabic. But as it is probable that the
drinking of coffee spread in the Yemen out
of ūfī circles and a special significance
was given to wine in the poetical language
of the mystics, a transference of the poetic
name for wine to the new beverage would
not be at all impossible.
The coffee tree was not indigenous to
South Arabia and was probably introduced
from the highlands of Ethiopia, where it is
found in profusion growing wild, notably