Nearly everyone agrees that coffee is one of the basic requirements of life, but just how this delicious beverage became established as one of the world's most favorite drinks remains somewhat of a mystery. One legend has it that the discovery of coffee came about when a 11th century Mullah, or Moslem priest, called Hadely, suffered terrible guilt feelings when he constantly found himself dozing off in the middle of his prayers. The Prophet Mohammed, touched by his sorrow, led the priest to a goatherd who told him that whenever his goats ate the berries of a certain shrub they would remain awake, jumping and romping through the night.

The Mullah found this extraordinary plant, tasted the unusual berries and spent the night in a state of delicious intoxication, one that in no way affected his intellectual capabilities. For many years afterwards, Moslems looked on coffee as a divine gift brought from heaven by an angel as a gift to the faithful. Throughout the Middle East, coffee was taken during prayers, in the mosques and even at the Holy Temple at Mecca.

The legend is charming, but the facts are a bit different. Even though the coffee plant is indigenous to in Ethiopia and Sudan, it was probably not considered the source of a potable beverage until it made its appearance in Aden in the mid-15th century. From there the drink made its way to Mecca, Damascus and Aleppo and finally to Constantinople where the first coffee house was established in 1554. By the onset of the 17th century coffee had become known as "the wine of Araby", because Muslims regarded it as a substitute for wine which they were forbidden to drink.

Although the Italians were the first to bring coffee to Europe in 1615, it was only when the first coffee house opened in Oxford, England forty five years later that coffee houses and coffee drinking became popular with most Europeans. Even though it was mostly curiosity that drew the first patrons to sample this exotic beverage, after a short while it was the fact that the coffee houses had become comfortable places to meet encouraged them to continue to frequent such establishments. The English passion for coffee then, as today, was not universal. King Charles II was convinced that coffee houses were centers of political dissent and the Puritans condemned coffee as a "moral excess and an insult to God". Many claimed that the coffeehouses were "dens where evil and lazy people came to dally away their hours".

Originally known as "penny universities" because it cost a penny to get in, each of the original coffee houses in England had their special customers. Jonathan's Coffee House in Change Alley was where stock-brockers met and it soon became the birthplace of the Stock-Exchange. Ship-owners went to Edward Lloyd's Coffee House on Lombard Street which later grew into Lloyd's of London, the center of the world's insurance business. Will's and the Turk's Head, both in Covent Garden were favorites of writers and poets, and many of the other coffee houses later developed into the exclusive men's clubs that still exist but where tea and not coffee is now the most popular beverage.

Today, the English are ambivalent about coffee. Many drink it at breakfast, some at lunch but few drink it at dinner or in coffee houses and, even though many make coffee in percolators, instant coffee is the most popular way of consuming it. Most Englishmen still consider espresso a rather exotic beverage. In 1830, essayist Sydney Smith accurately observed that "we English have never mastered the arts of telling the truth, discriminating good from evil or making a good cup of coffee".

Ten years after the first coffee house had opened in London, the first cafes opened in Marseilles and Paris. It was another twenty years until the first coffee house opened in Vienna. By the end of the 17th century, coffee had come of age. Not only was everybody drinking coffee, but nearly everybody had devised a different way of enjoying it.

© Daniel Rogov