The earliest substantiated evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree is from the 15th century, in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen.[1] By the 16th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East,
South India,
Persia,
Turkey,
Horn of Africa, and
northern Africa. Coffee then spread to the Balkans, Italy and to the rest of Europe, to
Indonesia and then to America.
[2]
Etymology
The word "coffee" entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch
koffie,
[3] borrowed from the
Turkish kahve, in turn borrowed from the
Arabic qahwah ( قهوة).
[4]
The word
qahwah originally referred to a type of
wine, whose
etymology is given by
Arab lexicographers as deriving from the verb
qahā (قها, "to lack hunger") in reference to the drink's reputation as an
appetite suppressant.
[4][5] The word
qahwah is sometimes alternatively traced to the Arabic
quwwa ("power, energy"), or to
Kaffa, a medieval kingdom in
Ethiopia whence the plant was exported to
Arabia.
[4] These etymologies for
qahwah have all been disputed, however. The name
qahwah is not used for the berry or plant (the products of the region), which are known in Arabic as
bunn and in
Oromo as
būn. Semitic had a root
qhh "dark color", which became a natural designation for the beverage. According to this analysis, the feminine form
qahwah (also meaning "dark in color, dull(ing), dry, sour") was likely chosen to parallel the feminine
khamr (خمر, "wine"), and originally meant "the dark one".
[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee
