![]() Rev Terry provides the first detailed account of the use of coffee in India. Rev Terry was the chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador of the King of England, at Jahangir’s court. The first actual mention of coffee being consumed comes from the work of Reverend Edward Terry in the court of Emperor Jehangir, in 1616. Today, coffee is still grown in these hills and the area is known as ‘Baba Budangiri’, which also houses the saint’s tomb.īaba Budangiri range of hills | Wikimedia Commons Coffee from these plants was served as a drink to the local people. The Baba was revered by Hindus and Muslims alike and while on one of his journeys to Mecca, for the Hajj, he is said to have brought back seven raw coffee seeds from the port of Mocha in Yemen, hidden in his flowing robes.īack home, he planted the seeds on the slopes of the Chandragiri hills, near the caves where he and his followers had settled. Baba Budan was from Chikmaglur in present-day Karnataka and he lived in a cave on a hill. It took a wandering Sufi mystic to change all that in the 16th century. This was to ensure that the Middle East retained its monopoly over coffee production, and even the Mughals initially exported coffee from here. they couldn't be used to grow the coffee plant. The only beans that were allowed to be taken out were roasted and hence sterile i.e. In fact, by now, references to coffee seem to have been popping up across.Īrab men smoking pipe and drinking Turkish coffee in a coffee shop corner in Jerusalem | Wikimedia Commonsįor the longest time, the coffee plant was so prized that people were not allowed to carry its seeds out of the Arabian Peninsula. While there is no corroboration for the tale of the shepherd in Ethiopia, the earliest reference to people drinking coffee as a beverage comes from Yemen in the Arabian Peninsula, in the 14th or 15th CE. It was fine-tuned over time – the seed began to be roasted to perfection – to give us the fine brews we savour today. Apparently, this is how coffee was discovered by man. ![]() He began to observe his flock more closely and found that his ‘hopped-up’ sheep were munching on berries from a certain plant, which was changing their behaviour. ![]() But the tale of coffee itself begins in Ethiopia, where legend has it that a shepherd in the highlands of Ethiopia noticed that some of his sheep were more alert and active than the rest. When you think of coffee, you think of cafes churning out frothy shakes and hot cups of cappuccino you don't think of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s old capital and definitely not a Sufi saint who first brought coffee beans to India more than 400 years ago.Īs you may have now guessed, India’s coffee connection is the story of ancient trade routes, Sufi saints and our penchant for lounging around and chatting. ![]()
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