H4 ARABIA INFELIX
distance it has to be transported, and the existing rainfall.
Neither kat nor coffee are indigenous. Both were imported from the Abyssinian highlands during the Ethiopian invasion of Yamen, before the dawn of Islam. According to tradition, slips of both were planted at Odein, which means ctwo twigs.3 A beverage was extracted from kat before coffee was drunk, but neither could have been popular in the time of the Prophet, or there would probably have been some mention of them in the Koran.1
When abstinence from strong drink was generally enforced, the use of kat and coffee began gradually to gain ground. Coffee soon ousted its rival as a beverage, and seems to have been recognized as a natural substitute for intoxicating stimulants, as its Arab name * Kahwah * was formerly applied to wine. Yamen traders brought it to Cairo- in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and in 1511 it was publicly condemned at Mecca by an assembly of muftis, lawyers and physicians, as injurious to mind, body and soul.
In 1513, coffee-houses were wrecked in Cairo by a fanatical mob, and those who kept them were pelted with their broken crockery. The first cafe at Stamboul was opened in 1554. The Sultan, Selim I., reversed the decree against coffee-drinking, and even hanged two Persian doctors for saying it was injurious to health. But coffee was again to be the object of fanaticism, and became known later on as one of the Four Ministers of
1Avicenna and other Arab physicians mention bun or coffee in their pharmacopoeia long before coffee was generally used as a beverage by the Arabs. Bun is the beverage from the berry, kahwah that from the husk.