Coffee as a beverage in Kashmir is a relatively recent entrant and the land of “Noon Chay” and “Kahwa” is steadily getting into a coffee age. The city of Srinagar has several places to get coffee in style. Some of the names which come to my mind are: Black Bear Brew, Bistro Boulevard, Chai Jaai, Gulshan-The Book Shop the Coffee Shop, Auburn by Arwa, 14th Avenue Café and Grill, Jhelum Café and many more.

History of coffee is centuries old. According to a legend it was discovered by Kaldi, an Ethiopian goat herder around 800 AD. He observed his goats becoming energetic after eating red coffee cherries and that brought these seeds into limelight. Thus, the origin of coffee has been traced to the Arabian Peninsula starting from Ethiopia followed by Yemen. It was known in Mecca in the 15th century and was used as an agent to increase concentration during prayers by its stimulating effect.

Its usage and influence spread steadily in the neighboring countries. The spread had some hiccups when it reached Turkey where the Ottoman and Mamluk societies had to confirm whether its use was permissible as per the teachings of Quran. Once it was declared to be halal its use spread as an important trading item through the commercial Mediterranean routes. 16th-century Islamic scholar Ibn Hajr al Hayatami notes in his writings a beverage called qahwa developed from a tree in the Zeila region located in the Horn of Africa.

Coffee was first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen by Somali merchants from Berbera and Zeila in modern-day Somaliland, which was procured from Harar and the Abyssinian interior. It then spread to Western Europe by the late 17th century, especially in Holland, England, and Germany. One of the earliest cultivations of coffee in the American lands was when Gabriel de Clieu........

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