Ancient China also played a significant role in the spread of coffee: from 1405 to 1433, Zheng He's fleet visited the Arab countries along the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the Red Sea, including Yemen. Officers, sailors, and soldiers carrying tea, drinking tea, and selling tea, brought China's "national drink" - tea and tea culture to the Arab world. Chinese tea, tea utensils and tea drinking hobby have taught Muslims that refreshing drinks can also become daily consumer goods. This realization accelerated the popularity of coffee, prompting the development of coffee from a religious drink and a medicinal drink used by doctors and patients to a popular leisure drink. Zheng He's last (seventh) voyage to the West was in 1433, and the Yemeni Arab dynasty granted permission to drink and grow coffee in 1454, just 21 years apart; Today, coffee cups around the world, including Arabia, are shaped more like Chinese teacups than Western deep, large moaning glasses, deeper water glasses, and tall wine glasses. Judging from the time when Zheng He went to the West coincided with the time of coffee secularization, and the similarity between tea and coffee utensils, it is possible that the Chinese tea brought by Zheng He catalyzed the secularization of coffee. As can be seen from Zheng He's map of the Western Ocean, his fleet reached Ethiopia and Yemen, the main producing areas of coffee.
Many Muslims from all over the world make the pilgrimage to Mecca every year, so the habit of drinking coffee to refresh has spread to many Muslim areas, especially along the western part of the Arabian Peninsula to the eastern Mediterranean. The Turks of the Ottoman Empire, who occupied the western Red Sea in the 16th century, used Yemen's coffee bean resources to export large quantities of cooked coffee beans, impose heavy taxes, and obtain huge profits, but did not allow the export of coffee seeds. The exported coffee is peeled, fried beans. There are two versions of Yemen's story. In 1600, after a Muslim practitioner in southern India made a pilgrimage to Mecca, he secretly put seven green coffee beans on his belly and successfully passed through. When he returned to his hometown, he planted these coffee beans in his ashram. Coffee is adapted to the water, soil and climate of southern India and grows well. In 1616, a Dutchman stole several coffee trees from Yemen and planted them in greenhouses, and succeeded. At this time, the Netherlands was a commercial power in the Indian Ocean, coffee was already popular in Europe, and the Dutch took coffee to Ceylon and Java to grow, and the effect was very good. The coffee trees in these two places are said to be the "descendants" of the seven green coffee beans and the saplings smuggled out of the country.
In 1475, the first café was born in Constantinople, Turkey, marking the Turks' mastery of coffee roasting and cooking technology, and also indicating that coffee went out of homes, temples and royal palaces, and it is also said that in 1530, the world's first café was born in Damascus in the Middle East. In 1615, coffee entered Europe with wandering Venetian merchants, and the French and Italians went crazy in an instant, writing books, poems and even wars for it, as the Viennese proverb goes: "Europeans can block the Turkish bow and knife, but they cannot stop the Turkish coffee." "
After the Dutch successfully cultivated coffee, coffee became more popular in Europe. In 1714, King Louis XIV of France acquired a coffee sapling, and if he received a treasure, he built a special greenhouse to cultivate the coffee tree. They transplanted saplings grown in conservatories into Reunion, a French colony overseas in East Africa, producing smaller coffee beans than those in Paris. At this time coffee was still monopolized by the Dutch, and in 1720-1723, a French naval officer Gabriel Smith. Mathieu. Morality. Klee asked the French royal family to give him a sapling to be cultivated in the French colonies in the Caribbean, but refused. He did nothing, he sneaked into the greenhouse at night, stole a sapling, and after all the hardships, encountered hurricanes and pirates, he even watered the sapling with his own drinking water, and finally planted the dying coffee sapling in Martinique (Martinique with shaded thorn bushes, and sent slaves to watch over it day and night. There are 18791680 coffee trees in the small tree. It finally took root and blossomed, and the first harvest was obtained in 1726. It is said that in 1777, there were already 18791680 coffee trees in Martinique.
After Martinic's coffee industry flourished, Haiti, Jamaica, Guatemala, Costa Rica and other groups in Central and South America followed suit, and Colombia and Brazil on the South American continent later became the world's coffee industry leaders. Green coffee beans and coffee seedlings were once the object of coffee monopolies and blockades, but coffee is now widely cultivated in more than 50 countries and regions between the 25° north latitude and the 25th parallel south of the world, becoming the second most traded commodity after oil.
The Ethiopian people of East Africa discovered coffee, the Arab people cultivated coffee, the Chinese people promoted the transformation of coffee from a divine medicine drink to a mass drink, the Turkish people invented the scientific drinking method of coffee, and the people of South Asia also participated in the spread of coffee. It can be seen that coffee can become the world's first beverage, and people in Africa, Asia and Europe have contributed to it. However, it is the European people who love coffee the most, develop coffee culture the most, and spread coffee the farthest. #Coffee# #Food Culture# #文化 #
