Talk:History of coffee

Article needs to be restructured and improved
This article title is "History of Coffee" but there are several sections that have nothing to do with history. Then, there's a whole section of the article titled "History". So does that section deal with the history of the history of coffee, or just the history of coffee?

This article needs major clean up and rebuilding. The sections on genetics and etymology are inappropriate and off topic. The section on production is also inappropriate and any relevant discussion there should be incorporated into the article. The current structure--breaking the subject up into geographic subheadings--is misguided at best as it does not actually present the HISTORY of coffee and instead gives the reader a treatment of coffee traditions by global region. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:4040:B078:6C00:15E6:C447:EB05:789D (talk) 10:23, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2021 and 18 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Tave0111.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Shadooper. Peer reviewers: KanishkC1998, Jovi KB.

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14th or 15th century
The article contained two contradictory statements. One (which I have deleted, as the source doesn't weigh compared to the other):
 * It may have been first cultivated by Arabs in the 14th century

Two:
 * The earliest credible evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the 15th century, in the Sufi monasteries of the Yemen in southern Arabia.

I want to note that both refer to Arabs/Arabia. Therefore, which one is correct? --92slim (talk) 12:38, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The Coffee tree was already common in Ethiopia possibly used as a traditional herbal medicine, Imam Muhammad Ibn Said Al Dhobhani was the first to make a drink of the coffee beans. He continued to bring those beans from Ethiopia as part of his trade, cultivation became organized in Yemen around the 16th century.  The Ottomans & later Italians played a major role in its spread outside of Yemen, The reason the coffee drink made it way much later into Ethiopia is mainly because of the Christian Clergy resistance to the "Sufi Muslim Drink", eventually it was legalized in the times of Menelik.  The Coffee tradition of Ethiopia still retains the 19th century Sufi Islamic count (Awal, Thanwa & Baraka) Lubestonic (talk) 11:38, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Things to Add to Article
Coffee is very important to Latin America, therefore coffee has impacted Latin America greatly. I would like to add that during WWII Latin America lost 40% of its export business and therefore was on the verge of economic collapse. Also buy the end of WWII the United States was consuming was much coffee as the rest of the world was before the war. Another impact coffee had on Latin America was causing those countries to no longer just be considered imperialized countries, but countries with their own goals and intents. I will add the necessary sources when I put this on the page. Source: Williamson, W. F. "The Place of Coffee in Trade with Latin America." Journal of Marketing 6, no. 4 (April 2, 1942): 149-151. Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 30, 2017). Shadooper (talk) 18:07, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Something also to mention would be the effect specialized coffee has had on the market value of coffee beans. With lattes and frappuccinos becoming more popular this has caused coffee houses to be able to use cheaper coffee beans in their coffee. Another affect is people buy less coffee since they already pay three or four dollars for one cup. All of this together has caused the price of the coffee bean to go down and therefore effecting certain Latin American countries' economy. Source: Scholer, Morten. "Bitter or Better Future for Coffee Producers?" International Trade Forum no. 2 (June 2004): 9-12. Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 1, 2017).. Shadooper (talk) 18:07, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Guatemala started producing coffee in the 1500s and Guatemala lacked the man-power to harvest all of the coffee beans. As a result the Guatemalan government forced the indigenous to work on the fields. This lead to a strain in the indigenous and Guatemalan people's relationship. Source: McCreery, David. “Coffee and Indigenous Labor in Guatemala, 1871-1980.” In The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 1500-1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.192-208.Shadooper (talk) 20:36, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Fairtrade coffee is the idea of paying the growers directly and "cutting out" the middle men. Some Latin American coffee growers do not have a lot of money and struggle to make an income, so Fairtrade coffee should increase the income the growers receive. There are mixed opinions of the effectiveness of Fairtrade. There is a lot of information on Fairtrade coffee should I make a new heading about Fairtrade coffee? Possible Source: James, Deborah. "Justice and Java." NACLA Report on the Americas 34, no. 2 (September 2000): 11-12. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 30, 2017). “Fairtrade is not fair,” YouTube Video, 09:33, Why Fair Trade is Bad on December 01, 2009, posted by “Peter Griffiths,” October 5, 2017. Johannessen, Silje, and Harold Wilhite. "Who Really Benefits from Fairtrade? An Analysis of Value Distribution in Fairtrade Coffee." Globalizations 7, no. 4 (December 2010): 525-544. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 5, 2017). “Santiago’s Story,” YouTube Video, 06:18, First Hand Account on March 26, 2008, posted by “Fair Trade Certified,” October 1, 2017, Shadooper (talk) 20:36, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Sources: “Fairtrade is not fair,” YouTube Video, 09:33, Why Fair Trade is Bad on December 01, 2009, posted by “Peter Griffiths,” October 5, 2017. McCreery, David. “Coffee and Indigenous Labor in Guatemala, 1871-1980.” In The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 1500-1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.192-208.  James, Deborah. "Justice and Java." NACLA Report on the Americas 34, no. 2 (September 2000): 11-12. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 30, 2017). Johannessen, Silje, and Harold Wilhite. "Who Really Benefits from Fairtrade? An Analysis of Value Distribution in Fairtrade Coffee." Globalizations 7, no. 4 (December 2010): 525-544. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 5, 2017). “Santiago’s Story,” YouTube Video, 06:18, First Hand Account on March 26, 2008, posted by “Fair Trade Certified,” October 1, 2017, Scholer, Morten. "Bitter or Better Future for Coffee Producers?" International Trade Forum no. 2 (June 2004): 9-12. Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 1, 2017). Topik, Steven C. "Coffee Anyone? Recent Research on Latin American Coffee Societies." Hispanic American Historical Review 80, no. 2 (May 2000): 225-266. Humanities International Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 27, 2017). Williamson, W. F. "The Place of Coffee in Trade with Latin America." Journal of Marketing 6, no. 4 (April 2, 1942): 149-151. Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost Shadooper (talk) 20:36, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

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Kyrsten's Peer Review
Your sentence phrasing is awkward and a bit repetitive. You tend to say the same thing twice in a sentence. I think you also don't do a good job and combining two ideas/thoughts. I got lost a few times in the paragraphs. You should expand on some novel/key words. Ex: Fairtrade. The reader (like me) may not know what that is so I think you should expand on it or provide a citation of a definition. Overall, work on making your article flow better, right now its a little awkward. (but this is just a rough draft) I do think you have great academic sources and an interesting topic. You also do a great job and providing the citation after your paragraphs. I think you have a lot of points of view from the LatinJovi KB (talk) 17:51, 26 October 2017 (UTC) American perspective so make sure you also show evidence from the opposing perspective to stray from bias.

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Mocha or Mecca?
Greetings. Some recent edits to this page by an IP changed Mocha to Mecca, and the most recent one changed it back to Mocha, which I reverted. But seeing this page's history, I have to wonder if Mocha is an actual place? Zanygenius(talk to me!)(email me!) 19:16, 15 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Maybe you shouldn't be making changes if you have to ask other people after the fact whether your change was correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:4040:B078:6C00:15E6:C447:EB05:789D (talk) 10:26, 7 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Mocha Coffee is related to the Mocha of Mofar in modern Yemen, the native port of the Sufi imam of Muhammad Ibn Said Al Dhobhani. The Coffee drink eventually made its way into Mecca a century after it was invented.

The Italian Mocha is derived from the modern Yemeni Arabic name of the port (Mofarite: Am-Makhan, Medieval Yemeni-Arabic:  Al-Makhhan, Modern Yemeni Arabic Al-Makhah) Both Mecca & Mocha share a common older etymology, relating to Al-Muqh of the Sabaeans, the Temple of the Moon sect that imposed their religion on Mofar & the rest of South Arabia in Pre-Islamic times. The Cubic Crescent temples of the moon were built wherever the Sabaean sphere of influence reached from Mecca to Axum, a cultural influence that continued by Lunar Semitic kingdoms up until the conversion of the Axumites to Christianity & the Himyarites to Judaism. Lubestonic (talk) 11:24, 11 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Except pre-islamic Mecca was called بكة (bakkah) which means 'narrow' likely referring to Mecca tight valley surrounded by mountains. An example used as evidence by Arabic lexicologists is the verse in the old testament (Book of Psalms Chapter 84) which mentions עמק הבכא 'Emek Ha-Bakha'. Furthermore Mecca was settled (and in the sphere of influence) by Central Arabs who had a culture and religion that differed from the South Arabian Semitic civilizations in Yemen. Pre-islamic Mecca was a place of worship for the North Arabian three dities (Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat) the Triad likely influenced by the Hellenic-Roman world and culture since Mecca was an important node along the incense road connecting Yemen and trade from India and East Africa with the Roman Empire in the Levant. Oud, Frankincense, Myrrh, and Ivory flowed through Mecca on camel back. A Contemporary Nomad (talk) 11:34, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Embellishments
"In the Philippines, coffee has a history as rich as its flavor." Really? 😂 This must be plagiarism, or it's just not proper encyclopedic writing style. Worldbook1967 (talk) 00:15, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Inaccuracies.
This article needs to be removed until it is seriously revisited due to, on the one hand, too much misinformation (….arabe trade as introducer of chocolate in Europe, etc....) as well as too many omissions of most important chapters of the history of coffee,,,.i.e. Why the U.S. is a coffee drinking nation instead of tea, like the vast majority of formerly British possessions....To ignore the pivotal role that the West Indies played in establishing coffee as the main beverage in the Americas is unforgivable…. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 52.119.87.49 (talk) 00:16, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

This page English coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries suggests that the first Coffee House in England was in Oxford, not London. RossTooke (talk) 02:01, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Random, unrelated sentence
"The banning of women from coffeehouses was not universal, for example, women frequented them in Germany, but it appears to have been commonplace elsewhere in Europe, including in England.[45]". The banning was not universal? What banning? No banning has been mentioned in that section of the article.

Amandajm (talk) 00:26, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Coffee In the Islamicate Empires into History of coffee
Much of the article can be covered in History of coffee and coffeehouses, and the concept of "coffee in the Islamicate empires" is not defined anywhere in the sources. JoelleJay (talk) 02:39, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 08:55, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Reason of removal
1) I removed mention of Leonhard in the England subheading - my source of Cowan (2008) doesnt state Leonhard's 1583 account mentioning anything about England, I checked the source that was previously cited in the text [Wood (2013)] and still cant find any mention of the Levant Company related to this event. Also a better more accurate description of Leonhard is already in the article elsewhere.

2) WP:OVERKILL. I removed the 4 citations on Charles II's attempt to crush coffee houses, despite having 4 citations on a short sentence, most need a subcription to read it, the few that can be freely read doesn't impart the exact message of the written content, so I added my own citation (with free verifiable links).

Danial Bass (talk) 19:46, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

al-Dhabhani and a possibly inaccurate reference
In the History section, the second sentence: "Sufi Imam Muhammad Ibn Said Al Dhabhani is known to have imported goods from Ethiopia to Yemen" is linked to Weinberg & Bealer 2001, p. 3-4. However, a thorough read of these pages as well as a search for all references to al-Dhabhani within that book reveals no mention of his ever having "imported goods" from Ethiopia to Yemen. Can anyone provide a correct reference for this statement, or clarify what is meant here? If the intention is to establish that al-Dhabhani might have brought some coffee cherries back with him on his return to Aden, then I think that hardly constitutes "imported goods". Please clarify. Clearfire (talk) 00:02, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Introduced to Europe in 15th century in Hungary?
Is everyone ignoring the existence of the Balkans, where people made coffee once the Ottomans conquered the region?

People in the Balkans are Europeans, so coffee has been in Europe far, far longer than the Turkish invasion of Hungary. Lumosnight (talk) 09:02, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Somalia
@MrOllie please stop being disruptive and deleting my posts. The Article itself mentions Coffee being exported from the port of Berbera and Zeila (In Modern-day Somalia). Furthermore Yemeni Sources explicitly state that Zeila was the source of Coffee John Wina (talk) 19:56, 16 July 2024 (UTC)


 * This has been extensively discussed on the talk page, as well as at Talk:Coffee. The cited sources are clear. Changing this article in a way that is inconsistent with the sourcing is unhelpful and disruptive. MrOllie (talk) 20:00, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Where I can’t see it could please send a link John Wina (talk) 20:12, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Im still waiting John Wina (talk) 20:22, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * No, you're edit warring. The link is right there in my message. That coffee passed through a port on its way somewhere else is not cause to misrepresent the source. MrOllie (talk) 20:41, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I can’t see any post in the talk page John Wina (talk) 20:48, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @MrOllie what post are you talking about none of them mention Somalia John Wina (talk) 20:59, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * This has been extensively discussed in the archives and at Talk:Coffee, as I've said. More importantly, the sources do not support the claims you are trying to add to the article. Kindly stop. MrOllie (talk) 21:00, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I will look through it also Which sources son’s support my conclusions. Even without my sources that I added the article itself says that Coffee was shipped from Zeila and Berbera (two cities in Somalia) that only should be enough to including Somalia in the opening section, no? John Wina (talk) 21:04, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * That coffee passed through a given port is not enough, no. MrOllie (talk) 21:08, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * My sources Ali ibn Umar Al Shadhili learned of Coffee through the court of a Somali Sultan in Zeila. And if Somalis were responsible for facilitating Coffe’s trade to the outside World souldn’t that mean it originated in Somalia. We have no primary sources about coffee cultivation in the Ethiopian highlands before 1800s and in fact the Ethiopian Orthodox Church banned it because they viewed it as a distinctly Muslim custom John Wina (talk) 21:30, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Not remotely, no. By that standard Tea originated in Naples. 'Facilitating trade' means that they bought it from elsewhere. MrOllie (talk) 21:35, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Again, My sources Ali ibn Umar Al Shadhili learned of Coffee through the court of a Somali Sultan in Zeila. Which is the first recorded instance of coffee as a drink. Other Yemeni source mention that he married Sultan Sa’ad ad din’s daughter and fought in his army. John Wina (talk) 21:45, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * That's not accurate. The first recorded accounts are in Yemen. See citations both in this article and at Coffee. MrOllie (talk) 21:47, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * And those Yemenis claim it came from Zeila, Ibn Hajar al haytami from 1500s mentioned that Coffee originated in Zeila. John Wina (talk) 21:49, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * That's false. Our article needs to reflect the cited secondary sources, not this stuff you appear to have come up with yourself based on a primary source. MrOllie (talk) 21:51, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I totally just made up the biggest Shafi’i theologian of the 16th century 🙄. This is from the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam btw.
 * ”The earliest mention of coffee so far found is in writings of the Xth (XVIth) century. According to (Ahmad) Ibn 'Abd al-Ghaffar, quoted by 'Abd al-Kädir al-Djaziri in his essay (see below, Biblio-graphy), the popularity of kahwa as a beverage in the Yemen was first known in Cairo in the beginning of the xth (xvith) century. It was there taken especially in Suff circles, as it produced the necessary wakefulness for the nightly devotional exercises.
 * According to this authority, it had been brought to 'Aden by the jurist Muhammad b. Said al-Dhabhäni (died 875 = 1470/1) who had become acquainted with it during an involuntary stay on the African coast and on his return devoted himself to mysticism; and it soon became popular.
 * Another reference in al-Djaziri, however, ascribes the introduction of the beverage to 'Ali b. 'Omar al-Shadhili. Abu 'l-Hasan 'Ali b. 'Omar of the family of Da'sain who died in 821 (1418) according to al-Shardji. He also might have become acquainted with coffee after he lived for a period in the entourage of the king Sa'd al-Din (i. e.between 788 = 1386 and 805 or 807 = 1401/2 or 1404/5, (cf. al-Makrizi, al-Ilmam bi-Akhbär man bi-Ard al-Habash min Mulük al- Isläm, ed. Rinck, Leiden, 1790, p. 24).”
 * Here are two Yemeni primary sources from the 16th and 15th century confirming that Ali ibn Umar learned of coffee from The Sultan of Adal
 * https://archive.org/details/20190927_20190927_0052
 * https://archive.org/details/alfirdwsiy2018_gmail_2849/page/n1/mode/1up John Wina (talk) 22:40, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * We don't write Wikipedia based on centuries old primary sources, nor do we write it based on 100+ year old encyclopedias. You seem to have misunderstood what Wikipedia is and how it is written. I suggest you start reading WP:NOR, WP:V and WP:RS - and if you don't understand why we can't use the sources you are basing your stuff on after that, ask follow up questions at WP:TEAHOUSE/ MrOllie (talk) 22:43, 16 July 2024 (UTC)