astronomy, mathematics, architecture, and astrology, as well as the arts, the Muslim world was significantly in advance of its European contemporaries. The description used by Avicenna may seem fanciful, but the terms made sense within a coherent, applied medico-scientific structure, derived, at least in part, from knowledge of the ancient world that had been lost to the Western purview with the destruction of the Library at Alexandria in AD 391. The remains of what was known as Alexandrian syncretism – the holistic amalgam of ancient Egyptian, Zoroastrian, Kabbalistic, and Roman and Greek esotericism alongside pre-Socratic and Neoplatonic philosophy and that of early Christianity – had been preserved by scholars at the sacred town of Harran in southern Turkey. The Hermetic school at Harran became a strong influence on emerging Islamic science and mathematics, as well as alchemy. Rhazes was a noted exponent, and both he and Avicenna exhibited the polymathic traits that characterized the alchemist through the ages – in equal measures poet, astronomer, philosopher, musician and physician. Alchemy was only superficially the search for a way to turn base metals into gold: it was, more importantly, a spiritual quest for the transmutation of the human soul. Science, art, and philosophy were brought equally into the service of this perfectionism.
The Sufis, a mystical branch of Islam who came to prominence in the second century after its foundation, were influenced by alchemy. ‘The Sufi master operates upon the base metal of the soul of the disciple and with the help of the spiritual methods of Sufism transforms this base metal into gold’, it was recorded. The word ‘sufi’ derives from the Arabic for wool, reflecting their simplicity of dress. Although the sect came about as a reaction to the perceived worldliness of early Islam, members did not believe that a practitioner should withdraw from human society. Sufi ‘orders’ were not like the closed monastic orders of Christendom; adherents continued to work and enjoy family life, and, as a result, most of their prayers and rituals took place at night. The general character of Sufi practice involved the communal singing of poetry; the ritual repetition of the divine name; a veneration for saints, many of whom were shaykhs, or former leaders of Sufi orders; and the ritual visits to the tombs of such saints.
Spread by proselytising shaykhs, by the twelfth century Sufism had reached Yemen. There, in the late fifteenth century, it would appear that the Sufis were the first to adopt coffee drinking. Not only did coffee assist in enabling devotees to stay awake during their night rituals, but the transformation of the coffee bean during roasting reflected the alchemical beliefs in the transformation of the human soul which lay at the heart of Sufism. Coffee worked both at a spiritual and a physical level.
The arrival of Sufism in Yemen is a matter of historical record. The same cannot be said about the arrival of coffee. By the end of the sixteenth century the mountains of Yemen were producing a significant proportion of the world’s coffee, and it would be natural to assume that it had been introduced from Ethiopia across the Red Sea in earlier times. This is not the case.
Pre-Islamic Yemen was a wine-growing area, and alcohol thus appears to have been tolerated. Its diversity and wealth of crops and cultures made Yemen a society that was highly cultivated in both senses, and even after the introduction of Islam it remained a dominant cultural force in Arabia. However, despite the ebbing and flowing of power and religious influence from across the Red Sea, and despite archaeological evidence of the introduction of crops such as sorghum from Africa into Yemen in the pre-Islamic period, there is nothing to suggest that coffee had found its way from Ethiopia at this early stage. Rather as Aksum itself seems to have been unfamiliar with either the plant or the beverage, the regions into which the Ethiopian empire periodically expanded remained in caffeine-free ignorance.
Islam was quickly embraced by the Yemenis, but the country later became fragmented into a number of states and kingdoms that periodically waxed and waned: only the rule of the Shi’a Imams was sufficiently stable to forge an enduring dynasty, the Zaydis, which lasted over a thousand years until the revolution of 1962, at which time their rule extended over the whole of what is modern day Yemen. However, throughout the Zaydi epoch, independent states flourished that were influential in their time. The most significant of the independent dynasties was that founded in 1228 AD by ‘Umar Ibn ‘Ali Ibn Rasul. His kingdom was centred on Ta’izz in the south of the country, and there, for two hundred years, the arts, sciences, and trade flourished and Sufis first made their appearance in Yemen. It is during this Rasulid period that the first tantalizing rumours of coffee and its handmaiden qat can be heard from behind the purdah screen of history.
The town of Ta’izz is situated on the northern slopes of Jabal Sabir – at 3006 metres, one of Yemen’s highest mountains – on the road that leads up from the southern end of sweltering Tihama, where the port of Mocha is found, to the airy highlands and Sana’a, the capital, to the north. The town was the capital of the Rasulids until their demise in 1454. Their interest in science, astronomy, poetry, and architecture made the kingdom a natural haven for Sufism, and early in their rule a number of important shaykhs such as Shadhili came to the city. Sufism had an important proselytic dimension, and missionaries passed through Ta’izz on their way to Mocha and Aden, and thence to Africa. One noted Sufi missionary, Abu Zarbay, is credited by legend, in the confusing way that legends have when it comes to such matters, either with having introduced qat to Yemen in 1430 from the town of Harar in Ethiopia, or with having founded Harar itself, where what are considered amongst the very best qat bushes still grow. There is an anecdotal story that the Rasulid kings’ interest in botany led to the introduction of qat and coffee plants in the environs of Ta’izz. It is true that they imported fruit trees and flowers from places as far away as India, and compiled detailed astronomical data to help farmers determine the correct seasons for planting and harvesting. However, a register of plants compiled for the Rasulid King himself in 1271 lists interlopers such as cannabis and asparagus, but there is no sign of imported coffee or qat. Ibn Battuta, the renowned Moroccan explorer whose traveller’s feats far eclipse those of the Polos, visited Ta’izz, and this usually meticulous chronicler fails to mention either coffee or qat in dispatches from the city in 1330. Thus whilst in the Rasulid era the association of Sufis with these stimulating plants had acquired some additional folkloric momentum, our struggle to find actual coffee stains on the tablecloth of history remains frustrated.
potus niger et garrulus
(‘the black and tongue-loosening drink’)
ANON.
By the end of the fifteenth century, the archaeological evidence shows that ritual coffee drinking was widespread amongst the Sufis in Yemen. What caused them to adopt a drink derived from a hitherto unknown plant from neighbouring Ethiopia? Curiously, to understand the genesis of coffee drinking, it is necessary first to look at tea; at China, where it originated; and at the trade links between China and the Middle East.
Before the fall of Rome, the Arabian Sea played an enormous role in world history, and once the Romans and Greeks sufficiently mastered the Red Sea and the monsoon (a word derived from the Arabic mawsim, meaning season) they were able to trade with India and Ceylon. After the fall of their respective empires, and with the rise of a hostile Islamic Turkish empire, which effectively blocked all the sea routes from the West to the Orient, Europeans were rarely seen east of the Red Sea. Nonetheless, the Arabian Sea was awash with trading and colonizing activity, some conducted in boats like those which, as Herodotus had observed, were made with planks sewn together with coir, and oiled with whale blubber to soften the wood in case of unforeseen encounters with coral reefs. From further afield came wakas – double outrigger canoes – in which the Waqwaqs of Indonesia braved the ocean voyage from Indonesia to Zanj (‘Land of the Negroes’ or East Africa) laden with cinnamon, and thence sailed to the previously uninhabited island
