20 TOBACCO AND COFFEE book ii
Burhanpur;
and in certain years I have known the people neglect harvesting it
because they had too much, and they allowed half the crop to decay.
Coffee grows neither in Persia nor in India.1
Nevertheless, as some Indian vessels load up with it on their return
from Mecca, I give it place here amongst the drugs. The principal trade
in it is at Hormuz and Bassora, where the Dutch, when returning empty
from Mocha, load up as much as they can, as it is an article which they
can sell well. From Hormuz it is exported to Persia, and even to Great
Tartary ; and from Bassora it is distributed in Chaldee, in Arabia
along the course of the Euphrates, in Mesopotamia, and other Turkish
provinces —for as for India, it is but little used there. Coffee, which
means wine in the Arabian tongue, is a kind of bean which grows at
eight days' journey from Mocha, on the road to Mecca. Its use was first
discovered by a hermit named Shaikh Siadeli (Sayyid 'All), some 120
years ago or thereabouts ; for before him there is no author, ancient
or modern, who has mentioned it.2
Christian and Muhammadan governments. (See Hanbury and Fluckiger, Pharmacographia.) For its early use in India see Elliot & Dowson, Hist., vi. 155 ; Smith, Akbar the Great Mogul, 407 f. ; Watt, Commercial, Products, 795 f.
1
It is perhaps needless to point out that this was written two centuries
before the cultivation of coffee became an important industry in Ceylon
and Southern India. The history of its introduction into India is very
obseure (Watt, 367).
2
Coffee was first mentioned in European literature in 1573 by Ruwolf.
Seventy years later a sample of it was brought from Constantinople to
Marseilles by Thevenot. It was first brought to Aden by Shaikh
Shihabuddin Dhabhani, who died in 1470, hence it is concluded that its
introduction was about the middle of the fifteenth century. Niebuhr
states that it was first brought from Kaffa in Abyssinia to Yemen by
Arabs. It appears to have been cultivated principally at Jabal, whence
it was conveyed to Mocha. The Arabic name is qahwa, pronounced kahveh by the Turks. The plant itself is called bun. As Tavernier says, the name qahwa was originally applied to wine. (Vide, Yule, Hobson-Jdbson, 232.)
Terry's account of the use of coffee in India in his time is of
sufficient interest to be quoted in full: ' Many of the people there
who are strict in their religion drink no wine at all; but they use a
liquor, more wholesome than pleasant, they call coffee, made by a black
seed boiled in water, which turns it almost into the same colour, but
doth very little alter the taste of the water. Notwithstanding, it is
very good
