Black Gold. Antony Wild
a society that was highly cultivated in both senses, and even after the introduction of Islam it remained a dominant cultural force in Arabia. However, despite the ebbing and flowing of power and religious influence from across the Red Sea, and despite archaeological evidence of the introduction of crops such as sorghum from Africa into Yemen in the pre-Islamic period, there is nothing to suggest that coffee had found its way from Ethiopia at this early stage. Rather as Aksum itself seems to have been unfamiliar with either the plant or the beverage, the regions into which the Ethiopian empire periodically expanded remained in caffeine-free ignorance.
Islam was quickly embraced by the Yemenis, but the country later became fragmented into a number of states and kingdoms that periodically waxed and waned: only the rule of the Shi’a Imams was sufficiently stable to forge an enduring dynasty, the Zaydis, which lasted over a thousand years until the revolution of 1962, at which time their rule extended over the whole of what is modern day Yemen. However, throughout the Zaydi epoch, independent states flourished that were influential in their time. The most significant of the independent dynasties was that founded in 1228 AD by ‘Umar Ibn ‘Ali Ibn Rasul. His kingdom was centred on Ta’izz in the south of the country, and there, for two hundred years, the arts, sciences, and trade flourished and Sufis first made their appearance in Yemen. It is during this Rasulid period that the first tantalizing rumours of coffee and its handmaiden qat can be heard from behind the purdah screen of history.
The town of Ta’izz is situated on the northern slopes of Jabal Sabir – at 3006 metres, one of Yemen’s highest mountains – on the road that leads up from the southern end of sweltering Tihama, where the port of Mocha is found, to the airy highlands and Sana’a, the capital, to the north. The town was the capital of the Rasulids until their demise in 1454. Their interest in science, astronomy, poetry, and architecture made the kingdom a natural haven for Sufism, and early in their rule a number of important shaykhs such as Shadhili came to the city. Sufism had an important proselytic dimension, and missionaries passed through Ta’izz on their way to Mocha and Aden, and thence to Africa. One noted Sufi missionary, Abu Zarbay, is credited by legend, in the confusing way that legends have when it comes to such matters, either with having introduced qat to Yemen in 1430 from the town of Harar in Ethiopia, or with having founded Harar itself, where what are considered amongst the very best qat bushes still grow. There is an anecdotal story that the Rasulid kings’ interest in botany led to the introduction of qat and coffee plants in the environs of Ta’izz. It is true that they imported fruit trees and flowers from places as far away as India, and compiled detailed astronomical data to help farmers determine the correct seasons for planting and harvesting. However, a register of plants compiled for the Rasulid King himself in 1271 lists interlopers such as cannabis and asparagus, but there is no sign of imported coffee or qat. Ibn Battuta, the renowned Moroccan explorer whose traveller’s feats far eclipse those of the Polos, visited Ta’izz, and this usually meticulous chronicler fails to mention either coffee or qat in dispatches from the city in 1330. Thus whilst in the Rasulid era the association of Sufis with these stimulating plants had acquired some additional folkloric momentum, our struggle to find actual coffee stains on the tablecloth of history remains frustrated.
potus niger et garrulus
(‘the black and tongue-loosening drink’)
ANON.
By the end of the fifteenth century, the archaeological evidence shows that ritual coffee drinking was widespread amongst the Sufis in Yemen. What caused them to adopt a drink derived from a hitherto unknown plant from neighbouring Ethiopia? Curiously, to understand the genesis of coffee drinking, it is necessary first to look at tea; at China, where it originated; and at the trade links between China and the Middle East.
Before the fall of Rome, the Arabian Sea played an enormous role in world history, and once the Romans and Greeks sufficiently mastered the Red Sea and the monsoon (a word derived from the Arabic mawsim, meaning season) they were able to trade with India and Ceylon. After the fall of their respective empires, and with the rise of a hostile Islamic Turkish empire, which effectively blocked all the sea routes from the West to the Orient, Europeans were rarely seen east of the Red Sea. Nonetheless, the Arabian Sea was awash with trading and colonizing activity, some conducted in boats like those which, as Herodotus had observed, were made with planks sewn together with coir, and oiled with whale blubber to soften the wood in case of unforeseen encounters with coral reefs. From further afield came wakas – double outrigger canoes – in which the Waqwaqs of Indonesia braved the ocean voyage from Indonesia to Zanj (‘Land of the Negroes’ or East Africa) laden with cinnamon, and thence sailed to the previously uninhabited island of Madagascar, where they settled from the fifth century onwards. Arabian and Persian ships frequently visited Sirandib – the ‘Isle of Rubies’, now known as Sri Lanka or then known as Ceylon – and convoys sailed to China, the ‘Land of Silk’. This was the longest sea voyage then regularly undertaken by man: one Persian captain famously made the round trip seven times. The city of Chang’an on the Yellow River had two million residents by the seventh century, and was a great market for ‘western’ goods such as sandalwood from India, Persian dates, saffron and pistachios, Burmese pepper, and frankincense and myrrh from Arabia. Slaves from Africa could also be bought, and the Chinese even at this early stage had a good understanding of the peoples of Zanj, even being aware of the Somali herdsmen’s habit of drawing blood from their cattle and mixing it with milk to drink. The principal Chinese exports were silks and porcelain, the latter by this time being shipped by Persians from the southern Chinese port of Guangzhou (Canton). A maritime Porcelain Route evolved that vied in importance with the better-known Silk Route across Central Asia – porcelain, for obvious reasons, being less suited to overland freight. Ports along the Porcelain Route were valued according to their use of standard weights and measures, their safety and their non-interference in commerce: a maverick sultan could jeopardize this fragile web of trading links that spanned the East. The spread of trade went hand-in-hand with the spread of Islam, which underpinned a faith-based commercial network that guaranteed probity of dealings and a community of interests. The legacy of this can be traced today in the Hawali banking system, whereby large sums of money can be ‘transferred’ internationally by no more than a letter of authority. A comparable system did not evolve in Europe until the rise of the Knights Templar. As Islam spread, Indonesia, the Spice Islands, and the Philippines fell under its sway. Only the Chinese remained completely unconverted, although substantial Muslim populations settled in Chinese cities – Guangzhou had 200,000 Arabs, Persians and other Muslim residents in the seventh century.
A little-recognized incentive to the creation of this maritime empire of faith lay in the fact that Muslims had to pray three times a day in the direction of Mecca, a prayer which for its proper execution depended, of course, on the sure knowledge of the whereabouts of that sacred city. When the first Arab traders tentatively colonized parts of the coast of Zanj, they built unsophisticated wooden mosques which frequently can be shown to have been misaligned: only later, when the ports and their trade were more secure, were stone mosques built in the Arab style with the required alignment to Mecca, achieved by use of the magnetic compass and the astrolabe and an understanding of the stars. Thus the fundamental ritual of Islam was a significant encouragement to the science of navigation, and the concomitant spread of faith and commerce. This was reinforced by the necessity for the faithful to make the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lives, with the result that the Muslims were highly motivated and experienced travellers over long distances. Had Christianity evolved similar rituals in connection with Rome or Jerusalem, the necessary navigational skills and equipment might have been developed earlier. Ironically, Jerusalem had been the geospiritual target of early Islamic prayer until Mohammed made the former pagan site of Mecca (the Ka’ba having been worshipped there previously for many centuries) into the proper focus of Islamic prayers by decree in AD 624. As it was, the compass had been originally invented by the Chinese but discovered again by the Arabs: the astrolabe was their original invention, along with early