The Ethiopians were the first people to drink coffee, perhaps 3,000 years ago. They made their coffee from the species Coffea arabica, which is endemic to the southwestern highlands of Ethiopia. Once embraced by the Sufi, coffee spread rapidly throughout the Arab world, and by the turn of the fifteenth century, it was being drunk in Arabia, Persia, Egypt, Turkey and North Africa. In the mid-1500s there were over 600 high and low coffeehouses in Constantinople. As coffee began its spread across the Arab world and beyond, it became a social drink of the common folk and not just religious zealots. People could buy a cup on the street or in the market, and coffeehouses became all the rage in cities large and small. The first coffee probably arrived in Europe about 1615, when Venetian merchants began importing it from Mocha.