COFFEA 



ARABICA 



Coffee 



Kahwah. 



Bun. 



Original 

 Acceptation. 



Habitat. 



Distribution. 



History. 



Boasting the 

 Beans. 



Succulent Rind. 



THE COFFEE PLANT 



1843, i., 349 ; Oliver, Fl. Trop. Africa, 1877, iii., 180 ; Baillon, Hist, des PL, 

 1880, vii., 275-7, 405 ; Deflers, Voy. Yemen, 1889, 143 ; Kaoul, Cult, du 

 Cafeier, 1894 ; Heuze, Les PL Indust., 1895, iv., 172-92 ; Saenz, Memo. 

 Cult, del Cafeto, 1895 ; Lecomte, Le Cafe, 1899 ; Foreman, Philippine 

 Islands, 1899, 337-42; Marcel Dubard> Les Cafeiers, in L'Agri. Prat, des 

 Pays Chauds, 1905, v., pt. 1, 92-100; also in Butt. Mus. Nat. d'Hist. 

 Nat., 1907,279-83; RUBIACBJB. 



The names given to the plant, its fruits, its seeds and the beverage pre- 

 pared from these, are mostly derived from either of two words : " kahwah," 

 an Arabic term that originally denoted " wine," and " bun," the Abyssinian 

 name for the coffee plant or its beans. From these we have cahua, kawa, 

 chaube, Jcapi, cave, Jcava, cafe, coffee and cafeier ; also boun, bun, ban, ben, 

 bunu, buncha. The earliest Arabic writers, however, used the Abyssinian 

 name by itself or in combination : thus Avicenna (llth century) calls it 

 buncho and Rhases bunco. It was by them viewed as a medicinal plant 

 and one very possibly that came from Abyssinia, so that the appearance of 

 the Arabic name kahwah may with safety be accepted as marking the pro- 

 gress into the final development as a beverage. The association with wine 

 may be considered in fact as indicative either of the abhorrence of the 

 zealous followers of the Prophet of anything that savoured of the prohibited 

 alcohol or taken as the direct expression of the curious circumstance that 

 when the coffee beverage was first made known to the Arabs it was in all 

 probability distinctly alcoholic, and thus fully deserved the name kahwah. 



Habitat. The true coffee plant would appear to have been satisfac- 

 torily established by botanists as indigenous to certain hilly regions of 

 Abyssinia, of the Soudan, of Guinea and of Mozambique. Some doubt 

 still, however, prevails as to its being indigenous to Arabia, though this 

 was claimed by the early writers. Richard throws out the suggestion 

 that it may have been indigenous to Arabia, and carried from thence 

 to Abyssinia. It is certainly extensively cultivated in that country, 

 as for example at Enarrea, Kaffa and Harrar. But Richard adds (as it 

 in part support of his view) that coffee is only used by the Muhammadans, 

 not by the Abyssinians proper. Deflers, on the other hand, speaks 

 of the plant as cultivated in Attara and elsewhere on the mountains up 

 to alt. of 7,000 feet, but as nowhere seen wild in Arabia. These two 

 botanical writers thus take opposite sides in the story of the Abyssinian 

 conquests. Richard believes that coffee was carried back from Arabia, 

 and Deflers that it was conveyed to Arabia, about 100 years before the 

 birth of Muhammad. Raynal, Lecomte, and many authors accept the 

 opinion that the plant was taken from Abyssinia to Yemen. 



History. If we turn to Arabic literature for confirmation of this view 

 we learn for certain that coffee is not mentioned in the Koran, nor of course 

 is there any allusion to it in the Hebrew Scriptures. Thus if the plant be viewed 

 as indigenous to certain tracts of Arabia, it becomes necessary to believe that 

 its merits (if known at all) were appreciated within a very restricted area. Every- 

 thing, in fact, points to the conviction that the people of Mecca, Medina and 

 Bagdad did not know of coffee till well into the 14th century of the Christian era. 

 Ibn Baithar, born at Malaga and who travelled during the 13th century in North 

 Africa and Syria, makes no mention of coffee. The art of roasting the beans 

 and preparing from these a decoction was apparently a more recent discovery, 

 and one which may have been made in Persia. Prior to that, the kahwah that 

 first attracted attention, was a preparation from the succulent rind or pulp of the 

 coffee-cherry. This contains a fair amount of sugar, is often pleasantly enough 

 flavoured, and if a decoction made from it were allowed to stand for some short 

 time it would for certain become alcoholic and might even be distilled into spirit. 



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