Cafe

CAFFE

Origins
Palestinian Arab women grinding coffee the old fashioned way. The word "coffee" entered English in 1598 via Italian caffè. This word was created via Turkish kahve, which in turn came into being via Arabic qahwa, a truncation of qahhwat al-bun or wine of the bean. Traditional Islam prohibits the use of alcohol as a beverage, and coffee provided a suitable alternative to wine.There are several legendary accounts of the origin of the drink itself. One account involves the Yemenite Sufi mystic Shaikh ash-Shadhili. When traveling in Ethiopia, the legend goes, he observed goats of unusual vitality, and, upon trying the berries that the goats had been eating, experienced the same vitality. A similar myth attributes the discovery of coffee to an Ethiopian goatherder named Kaldiand the Legend of Dancing Goats. One possible origin of both the beverage and the name is the Kingdom of Kaffa in Ethiopia, where the coffee plant originated (its name there is bunn or bunna).

ETYMOLOGY AND USAGE OF THE TERM
The origin of the term "espresso" is the subject of considerable debate. Although some Anglo-American dictionaries simply refer to "pressed-out" (rooted in the Latinorigin of the word), "espresso", much like the English word "express", also carries the meanings of "just for you" and "quickly," both of which can be related to the method of espresso preparation. The Italian spelling of the word is not "expresso", though that form is accepted by some English-language dictionaries (e.g. Merriam Webster). In an Italian coffee bar, as in much of Europe, ordering "acoffee" (un caffè in Italian), means just ordering an espresso. In France, the term café is normally used as well, but the French café is usually dark roasted.

The Muslim world
Syrian Bedouin from a beehive village in Aleppo, Syria, sipping the traditional murra coffee, 1930. The earliest mention of coffee may be a reference to Bunchum in the works of the 10th century CE Persian physician Razi,but more definite information on the preparation of a beverage from the roasted coffee berries dates from several centuries later. The most important of the early writers on coffee was Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri, who in 1587 compiled a work tracing the history and legal controversies of coffee entitled "Umdat al safwa fi hill al-qahwa". He reported that one Sheikh, Jamal-alDin al-Dhabhani, mufti ofAden, was the first to adopt the use of coffee (circa 1454). Coffee's usefulness in driving away sleep made it popular among Sufis. Al-Jaziri's manuscript work is of considerable interest with regards to the history of coffee in Europe as well. A copy reached the French royal library, where it was translated in part by Antoine Galland as De l'origine et du progrès du Cafe. The translation traces thespread of coffee from Arabia Felix (the present day Yemen) northward to Mecca and Medina, and then to the larger cities of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Istanbul. The 19th-century orientalist Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy edited the first two chapters of al-Jaziri's manuscript and included it in the second edition of his Chrestomathie Arabe (Paris, 1826, 3 vols.). Galland's 1699 work wasrecently reissued (Paris: Editions La Bibliothque, 1992). Coffee beans were first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen. Yemeni traders brought coffee back to their homeland and began to cultivate the bean. The first coffee house was Kiva Han, which opened in Istanbul in 1471 Coffee was at first not well received. In 1511, it was forbidden for its stimulating effect by conservative, orthodox imams at atheological court in Mecca. However, the popularity of the drink led these bans to be overturned in 1524 by an order of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Selim I. In Cairo, Egypt, a similar ban was instituted in 1532, and the coffeehouses and warehouses containing coffee beans were sacked. Similarly, coffee was banned by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church some time before the 17th century, along with smoking...