ABSTRACT
Coffee (Turkish kahve; Arabic qahwa) and the coffeehouse appeared almost concurrently in the Islamic Near East at the beginning of the 16th century. The coffeehouse quickly became an important social institution in the Middle East. Coffee was introduced to the Yemen, probably from Ethiopia, prior to the late 15th century, and thence spread north through the Arabian Peninsula. By 1511, coffee was being drunk at Mecca in shops that an early source describes as “similar to taverns,” and within a short time coffee had reached Cairo and Damascus. The coffeehouse was a convenient marketing device: Istanbul learned of coffee through the efforts of two Syrian merchants who opened a coffeehouse in the 1550s to introduce potential customers to the new Arabian drink.
