How did we get the hot cup of coffee as we know it today? Credit one Sheik Omar. Beginning in around 900 A.D., Arab physicians, for over 300 years, had been including coffee, or, as they called it, bunchum, in their list of medicinal plants. But around 1258, legend has it, Sheikh Omar was infatuated with the beautiful daughter of the King of Mocha. His passion percolated until, unable to control himself, he attempted to steal into the palace and whisk her away. Discovered and exiled into the desert, he had to live on whatever he could find. What he found, some say with the help of a magical bird, was water, and bushes loaded with plump red berries.
Did starving Omar eat the berries? No. For reasons we do not know, he boiled them in the water. Drinking the result, he felt renewed enough to return to Mocha, which, as cities in legends do, was experiencing a plague. Omar had not only avoided exposure to the plague, he had found the very thing to cure it. As fate would have it, the King’s daughter, Omar’s beloved, had been struck down. But Omar poured his berry-red brew between her berry-red lips, and, as sick princesses in legends do, she recovered. Omar became a saint–we are not sure if one of the perks of sanctity included a king as a father-in-law–and coffee in its drinkable form was born. And with a saint’s backing behind it, coffee drinking soon spread through the Islam world. But it had many incarnations before it began to resemble the designer coffees of 21st century sophistication.
For nearly three centuries, the Arabs would down their coffee complete with the grounds. The next step was to let the grounds settle, and just sip the liquid. This method caught on so well that coffee‘s popularity soared,and the first coffee house appeared in Mocha. The coffee houses were originally intended as religious meeting places, but quickly began to attract gossipers, musicians, and story-tellers. Fast forward to “Central Perks” and Phoebe strumming her guitar, while Ross and Rachel gossip. And tell your friends the story of Omar.
