Coffee Facts

By: Danny Brown
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:18:03
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Coffee is a well-liked drink prepared from the roasted seeds, generally, but mistakenly known as coffee beans, of the coffee plant. It is typically served hot but can also be served cold. A standard 7 fluid ounce mug of coffee contains 80-140 milligrams of caffeine. Coffee, along with tea and water, is one of the most ingested beverages, amounting to about a third that of tap water. Coffee is the second most frequently traded product in the world calculated by financial volume. Trailing only unrefined oil and its products, as a resource of foreign trade to developing countries.

Coffee has its account as far back as the 9th century. It is believed to have originated in the moorland of Ethiopia and widened to the remainder of the world through Egypt and Europe. The word coffee is derived from the Arabic word Qah'wa over Ottoman Turkish Kahve, which initially meant wine or other intoxicating liquors. In part, because of the Islamic prohibition on consuming wine. Preparing and drinking coffee became a central social custom. The pick-me-up result of drinking coffee caused it to be prohibited amongst orthodox and conservative imams in Mecca in 1511 and in Cairo in 1532 by a theological court. In Egypt, coffeehouses and warehouses containing coffee cherries were sacked. But the product's popularity, principally amongst intellectuals, led to the reversal of this verdict in 1524 by a command of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Selim I. In the 15th century, Muslims introduced coffee in Persia, Egypt, northern Africa and Turkey, where the first cafeteria, Kiva Han, opened in 1475 in Constantinople.

From the Muslim world, coffee moved to Europe, where it became well liked in the 17th century. Dutch traders were the first to begin large-scale import of coffee into Europe. In 1538, L?onard Rauwolf, a German doctor, having returned from a ten-year journey in the Near East, was the first westerner to explain the drink: "A beverage as black as ink, helpful against several illnesses, chiefly those of the stomach. Its consumers drink it in the morning, quite honestly, in a porcelain mug that is passed about and from which each one drinks a cupful. It is composed of water and the fruit from a bush called bunnu." These comments were noted by merchants, who were insightful to this type of information through knowledge in the trade of spices. English coffeehouses were centers of academic and business-related activity. Lloyds of London, the famed insurance company, was initially a coffeehouse.

Article source: Expert Articles