Hawelka, Legendary coffeehouse

The earliest mention of coffee noted by the literary coffee merchant Philippe Sylvestre Dufour is a reference to bunchum‎(4)in the works of the 10th century CE Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi‎(5), known as Rhazes in the West, 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, in Arabic. He reported that one Sheikh, Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani (d. 1470), mufti of Aden, was the first to adopt the use of coffee (1454). He found that among its properties was that it drove away fatigue and lethargy, and brought to the body certain sprightliness and vigour. Sufis used it to keep themselves alert during their nighttime devotions. A translation traces the spread of coffee from Yemen) northward to Mecca and Medina, and then to the larger cities of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Constantinople.
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 coffeehouse opened in Constantinople in 1554. In 1511, it was forbidden for its stimulating effect by conservative, orthodox imams at a theological court in Mecca. However, these bans were to be overturned in 1524 by an order of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Selim I, with Grand Mufti Mehmet Ebussuud el-İmadi issuing a fatwa allowing the consumption of coffee.

Arabic Forum