For the History Channel, I wrote about Coffee.
Although it was possibly consumed as a food or drink in its native Ethiopian highlands, the evergreen shrub Coffea arabica was first cultivated on a large scale in Yemen, around the 15th century. Many of its earliest adherents were Sufi Muslim mystics, who used the plant’s roasted seeds to make a replacement for the traditional wine used in some of their lengthy religious ceremonies. Sufis traveling from Mocha, Yemen’s chief Red Sea port, took beans and brewing knowledge throughout the Islamic world. The drink quickly gained adherents—and garnered controversy. In 1511 the governor of Mecca ordered the city’s coffeehouses (where men sometimes gathered to write poetry mocking his regime) shut down. His edict, however, was quickly reversed by the coffee-loving Sultan of Cairo.