A BRIEF HISTORY OF CAFFEA ARABICA IN THE DAR-UL-ISLAM AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE: A HERITAGE OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO THE MODERN LIFESTYLE

Abstract

For Westerners coffee is only three hundred years old, but in the Muslim East it was widespread as a refreshment, in every level of society, since the Prophet Muhammad's (saw) Mission. The first definite dates of the plantation and consumption of coffee in Arabia go back to the years of the Coptic viceroy Abraha, who invaded and occupied Yemen. His army failed to capture Makkah and was miraculously destroyed in the year of the Prophet's birth (570 CE). In the year 1000 CE, Ibn Sina (referred to in the Latin West as Avicenna) recommended coffee as a medicine which "fortifies limbs, cleans the skin, dries up humidity that are under it and suppresses bad odor of human body".