The Road of Coffee
Contents › Chapter 1 The Fruit
A Drink for Staying Awake
Drunk by monks in Yemen, sold from the port of Mocha
View in 3DChasing Away Sleep
The oldest record of people drinking coffee comes from Yemen, across the sea, in the mid-1400s. Muslim monks drank it to stay awake through night-long prayers. Soon people in Yemen planted coffee trees in fields. Ships carried coffee from the Yemeni port of Mocha to many countries.
Why?Coffee contains caffeine, which keeps you awake. For people who had to stay up at night, coffee was the perfect drink.
Learn moreThe name "mocha" that we still use for coffee comes from this port. Until the late 1600s, almost all the coffee sold in the world came from Yemen.
- When
- 1450 → 1500
Read more
Wikipedia: History of coffee · Wikipedia: Mocha, Yemen
More in the series
Routes are simplified — drawn as the shortest path between two places — and dates vary between records. Café counts come from Korea's local business license records (rest-food shops registered as coffee shops), shown with the date of the snapshot.