We love coffee. We drink it for its health properties, but also to relax in the moments when we prepare our drink. Every weekend we prepare a post about coffee and this time the question comes to our mind: Who was the first person to drink coffee? These “first to fly” stories are usually very interesting and one example is the story of the first to fly: an Andalusian who invented the parachute and broke his legs in the process.

It is no longer easy to find the first person to drink coffee – who did not drink coffee. Because the legends are accepted as good, the truth is more complicated. Much more.

OriginWhen we look at the history of coffee, the two names that come to mind are Yemen and Ethiopia. On the one hand, Yemen seems to be the birthplace of coffee, as a food and drink, but coffee did not suddenly appear in the Middle East, it was introduced through trade through Ethiopia.

It is known that the person who imported the fruit was Imam Muhammad Ibn Said al-Zebhani, while the fruits were distributed by Somali traders. However, if they imported it, it was because someone already knew its properties (there have been manifestations of these exciting properties of coffee since ancient times) and was interested in both the coffee tree and coffee itself. And here we enter the territory of legend.

mythThere are several, but the most famous is the story of an Ethiopian shepherd who, while walking with his goats, discovered one day that his animals were not grazing on the slopes of Kaffa, but rather further away. The shepherd noticed that the goats were eating strange fruits, and when he saw that the goats were more agitated and had more energy than usual, he wondered if it was because of the fruit.

He tried it (without brewing or anything, as if it were dried fruit) and after swallowing a few, he started feeling strange, more uneasy. He told the town about it and soon they started drinking the berries (even without the grind, which would come later). The reason? It helped them stay awake during night prayers. His name was Kaldi and he is said to have “discovered” coffee in the 9th century.

This man is Pope Clement VIII, who baptized coffee and allowed its ‘pure’ entry into Europe.

There is more. There is an alternative version that says the first person to consume coffee did so in a different way. If Kaldi ate the berries, a sheikh named Omar, who was disowned in Mokha, in modern-day Yemen, also found the berries. He chewed them but was not satisfied with the taste so he fried and boiled them. This produced a drink that revived him.

Records. The problem is, while these are good stories, there are no records to support them. If something was said but not written… did it happen? This is an exaggeration, of course, but the first mention of coffee is in the accounts of a Yemeni named Ahmed al-Ghaffar. There are also records from Sufi monasteries in Yemen that describe how coffee helped cope with wakeful nights.

These 15th century texts discuss coffee consumption in a similar way to what we do today, as well as details on how to roast the seeds of the coffee tree. Coffee spread to the Muslim world during this century, and in 1583, a German physician named Leonhard Rauwolf, traveling in the Middle East, described the details of a black drink that people drank every morning, known to be good for stomach ailments. Was he referring to coffee’s laxative and energizing properties? His explanation was as follows:

“A drink called Chaube, which is almost as black as Tita, and is very good for diseases, especially the stomach. It is drunk early in the morning, in open areas all over the world, without fear or respect, in clay pieces or porcelain cups, drinking it as hot as possible and in small amounts.

But… do we know anything about the first one? Not really. When we delve into these types of topics, we can usually come to clear conclusions, but there are times when the answer is a little more diffuse. In this case, it’s hard to really know who drank the coffee first, and of course there’s no clear answer.

It’s clearer who he is…

…the first Spaniard to drink coffee. After spreading throughout the Arab world, with some restrictions, Venetian merchants introduced coffee to Europe in the 16th century, and opened the first coffeehouses in the mid-17th century. The spread throughout Europe and England was rapid, and according to the Royal Academy of History, the first Spaniard to drink coffee was Pedro Páez in 1596. Has anyone ever drunk coffee before? Stand up and say it, but records say that Páez, who was a missionary in Ethiopia, was captured by the Arabs and taken to Yemen.

That’s when he tried the dark, bitter brew, but no one in Spain paid much attention to it because it would take a century for coffee to reach Spain from the Bourbons.

In the end, although it is very complicated to answer the question of who was the first to drink coffee, we hope to have satisfied your curiosity by finding out who was the first to drink coffee and that people began to write about this drink , much younger than the others, who loved wine or beer.

On Xataka | How much coffee a day is too much coffee: Science has investigated and given its verdict