Inventions & Discoveries · Farming and food
Coffee
Coffee is a drink brewed from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, which grows wild in Ethiopia. There is no confirmed evidence of it being drunk before the 15th century, when Sufis in Yemen used it to stay alert during night prayers; Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri reported that Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani, mufti of Aden, first adopted it around 1454. It reached Mecca, Cairo and Damascus, and the first coffeehouse in Istanbul opened in 1554. Until the end of the 17th century the Yemeni port of Mocha was its only gateway; by 1788 Saint-Domingue supplied half the world's coffee, and by 1852 Brazil was the largest producer.
On the inventions tree
- First known
- 15th century
- Where
- Yemen
NoteThe 10th-century physician al-Razi wrote of bunchum, which later accounts say was made from a root. Legends credit the discovery to Kaldi, a 9th-century goatherd, or to the 13th-century Sufi al-Shadhili.
See also
Cite this entry
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). Coffee. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/coffee
- MLA
- “Coffee.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/coffee. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “Coffee.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/coffee.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Coffee’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/coffee (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻