Page 86 - #64 eng 电子版

c Origin

4 Caton, Steven C. Yemen volume of Middle East in Focus ABC-CLIO (2013) 52-54.
5 Weinberg, Bennett Alan & Bonnie K. Bealer. The World of Caffeine. Routledge (2001) 15.

As with so many “disc overi es” Harar - Coffee’s Gateway to the East
through the course of history, a conflu-
ence of serendipitous conditions precip- Yet nowhere in the world were those
itated its popularity. The world was echoes more resonant than in the flavors of
globalizing, the Islamic world was uni- coffee from Harar, very likely the city where
fying an d em erging fro m a c en tu - the first non-Africans, including Dhabhani,
ries-long cultural renaissance, and 15th would have first sipped the beverage. Harar
century Yemen had recently undertaken is a walled city in eastern Ethiopia, an an-
major agricultural developments under cient trade hub, and an important Islamic
the Rasulid dynasty, including the intro- spiritual center that was at its cultural peak
4
duction of irrigation technology . Cof- in the 15th and 16th centuries, connecting
fee could be cultivated with ease by eastern Africa with the Arabian peninsula.
independent local smallholders. The Harar is too far east to be coffee’s original
peninsula lent the species its name, Ar- home. That distinction belongs to the Kingdom
abica, and established its own unique of Kaffa far to the west. Yet Harar, with its im-
consumption trends including q’shir, a portant location and significance as a cultural
brew made from the dried cherry skins and economic epicenter, may well have intro-
and husks with spices. Roasting, grind- duced the earliest Yemeni traders and imams to
ing, and the ibrik (or cezve) coffee pot the product. Its prominence in the very earliest
were soon to follow. means of coffee transit and trade infused its
Nations united loosely under the coffee with historic significance.
expansive umbrella of the Ottoman Harar is also unquestionably the most
Empire would develop a special appe- memorable coffee of a recently bygone era.
tite for the brew, opening the world’s Harar dry processed coffees (that is, those
first coffee shops and invigorating its cherries dried in the sun with minimal pro-
consumption and commercialization. cessing after harvest) grown in the greater
It’s true that for a time certain stodgy region reached their apex in the 1980s and
litigious and religious types wrung 1990s. For a time, there were no other cof-
5
their hands - Sultan Murad IV famous- fees like them. Their flavor, distinctively
ly enacted a ban at its height of export blueberry-like, was unparalleled and instant-
value, purportedly policing the streets ly recognizable. Harar was the jewel of the
of Constantinople in disguise and be- adventurous coffee drinker, an uncommon
heading violators himself. But after fits gem with a mystique that could not be
and starts, Yemen, via its largest port described, only experienced.
of Mocha, would corner the market on Sadly, Harari coffee became dilute and
coffee trade until the turn of the 18th lost much of its appeal in the early 21st
century. Its coffee, also known as “Mo- century. More attention and care was given
c ha” (o r Mok ka, o r Moc ca ) is s till to coffees from Yirgacheffe and Sidama,
prized today for its chocolatey, spicey, and the introduction of the ECX in 2008
and berry and wine like flavors that further obscured the ability of traders to
echo its African origins. isolate the best of the region’s beans. It

86