There are several stories - some might say fairy tales - about the origin of coffee, of which the most popular and best-known story is that of Khaldi, a Yemeni goat herder. One night Khaldi noticed his normally calm goats dancing excitedly near a bush, which bore a number of bright red berries. Before long, he was kicking up his heels, too. News of Khaldi and his oats quickly spread to the local monastery, where the local priest of Imam started using coffee to help him stay awake during the night prayers.
Despite this quaint story, it has since been proven that the true origin of coffee is the shaded highlands of present day Ethiopia. Arab traders and their penchant for carrying things around are thought to have been responsible for the movement of seeds from Ethiopia to Yemen.
The first records of coffee mention it as a medicine around the fifteenth century when coffee was used in its raw or green state. Not until the sixteenth century did Arabians begin to drink coffee in a form that resembles today's brew. As alcohol was forbidden in Muslim circles, it was given the name qawa (ka-wa) or wine.
From the Arabian Peninsula, the brew then undertook an arduous journey around the world leaving Yemen on camel or via the famous port of Mocha. The Turks and Indians came to enjoy the beverage. In Europe, the major port of Venice was a point of distribution.
Since the Arabs knew the value of this little bean, they tried to limit cultivation to only the Arabic regions. Despite their best attempts, the plants were propagated in Java and Indonesia, and soon spread to other places on the globe. The Dutch finally managed to transfer a tree from Java to Holland and an offspring was moved on to Paris, where this single tree is purported to be the origin of the millions of trees in existence today. Seeds and saplings were taken to the Caribbean Island of Martinique and spread to other islands. The journey then continued to the island of Bourbon (currently Reunion) in the Indian Ocean and finally back around the world to Brazil, via French Guyana. Ironically, it was not until 1893 that coffee seeds from Brazil were introduced by Jesuit priests into Kenya and Tanganyika (Tanzania) - just a few hundred miles south of Ethiopia, which is where coffee originated six centuries earlier.