coffee
From The Unspread Bean, an encyclopedia of a world that didn't happen
Coffee is an infusion made from the berries of the Coffea arabica plant, which originated in the Ethiopian highlands and remained a localized beverage after a series of fungal blights beginning in 1543 destroyed the possibility of global trade. In the Ethiopian highlands and adjacent regions where the plant survived cultivation, the beverage is called buna, a term that distinguishes the highland tradition from the rare exported bean known internationally as coffee.
The plant appears to have been in use among highlanders in Kaffa and Harar for centuries before the sixteenth century, with references in Arabic sources to a stimulating drink prepared by burning and brewing the berries. Accounts from Egyptian and Ottoman merchants suggest limited trade southward into the Yemen highlands by the late fifteenth century, where small terrace plantings began around Ta'izz and adjacent regions. These nascent trade networks collapsed after the Harar Wilt struck in 1543 and returned repeatedly through the 1570s and beyond. Yemeni plantations that attempted to establish lasting cultivation failed to recover their stock or expand supply, and within a century the plant had retreated to isolated highland communities where it could be maintained only at small scale.
Coffee survives today primarily as buna, a ceremonial infusion in the Ethiopian highlands, Eritrea, and limited areas of Yemen. The preparation remains elaborate and communal: the green berries are roasted over a fire, ground in a mortar, and brewed in a tall earthenware pot called a jebena. The ritual of serving—first to elders, then in diminishing order of precedence—marks important occasions and formal visits. Outside these regions, coffee is treated much as saffron or rare spices are treated in other parts of the world: an expensive imported luxury, known more by reputation than by common use, valued for its rarity and geographic specificity.
The absence of coffee as a global commodity fundamentally altered the trajectory of stimulant trade and public sociability worldwide. Where coffee might have dominated urban culture as it did in other regions, the Ottoman world developed sherbethanes centered on tobacco and sherbet in the seventeenth century. The Red Sea and Islamic world embraced kharuf, a roasted grain and tamarind infusion that offered comparable stimulation and ritual appeal. Northern Europe, lacking a reliable coffee supply, turned instead to tea as the dominant hot beverage, a shift documented in merchant accounts held in the Guildhall Mercantile Archive showing how trading companies redirected resources toward India and tea houses rather than attempting to source coffee from the collapsed eastern trade.
Contemporary accounts of coffee trade exist in scattered form. Ottoman administrative records from the sixteenth century reference the plant and its uses, but note the failure of attempts to establish plantations beyond the highlands. A letter preserved in the archives of the Honourable East India Company from 1672 mentions coffee as a curiosity that traders had attempted to secure but "found the plant would not flourish in any settled place, the lands being poisoned by some corruption of the earth." This suggests awareness among European merchants that the problem was ecological rather than merely logistical.
Nineteenth-century European travelers documented buna preparation and drinking as an exotic custom. The account of one visitor to the Harar region noted the care with which green berries were guarded and the ceremonial precision of preparation, describing it as a drink "reserved for guests of the highest standing and occasions of solemn meaning."
The survival of Debre Libanos monastery and other highland centers preserved knowledge of buna cultivation and preparation through the centuries following the Harar Wilt. These communities maintained small plots and passed down the techniques of roasting and grinding, treating the practice as a form of cultural memory as much as consumption. Modern Ethiopian Orthodox practice continues to incorporate buna ceremonially in monastic and community contexts.
References
- 1.Highland Soils and Fungal Residue: A Survey of Kaffa and Harar']], Plant Pathology and Agricultural Ecology, 1998, pp. 145–203.
- 2.Ottoman Administrative Records, Archives of Istanbul, Topkapi Palace, 1543–1600 series.
- 3.Notes from a Journey to Harar']], European travel narrative, 1870s, held in the British Library.
- 4.Guildhall Mercantile Archive, East India Company correspondence series, 1670–1680, folio 234.
- 5.The Classic of Tea']], foundational treatise on alternative stimulant trade after coffee's collapse, 1680s.