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For Coffee Lovers
The History of Coffee: There are several stories – some are more like fairy tales – about the origin of coffee of which, the most popular and best known is that of Kaldi, the Yemenite goat shepherd. One night when Kaldi was taking care of his goat, noticed that instead of the goats looking quiet and pleased, as was their normal behavior, they were dancing excitedly near a bush where there was a large quantity of red shiny colored berries. Kaldi then decided to taste these berries and it wasn’t much longer until he was also dancing the night away.
The news of what had happened to Kaldi and his goats quickly spread and the news reached the local monastery where the Imam was having a hard time keeping up his dervishes during prayer and nocturne vigils. The Imam thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try these exotic berries to see if they would improve the problem and so he did, and the results were spectacular. People were not able to stay wide-awake for their prayers or well attentive. News of this notable discovery traveled from monastery to monastery from the Yemen through all of Arabia, to Cairo, Medina and the Mecca.
There is another story that speaks about Ali Bin Omar of Shadhilly, who must have had something to do with introducing coffee, since even to these days he continues to be the holy patron, amongst the Arabs, the cultivators and coffee drinkers; and in Algeria, coffee is known with by the name Shadhiliye, in honor of the same person. It is said that after having been accused of bad conduct with the daughter of the king, Ali was banished and sent to the mountains with some servants. There since he had nothing else they had nothing else to drink, they boiled some of the coffee seeds in water. A lot of the habitants of the village and nearby towns in that time suffered from epidemic itchiness and Shadhiliye was able to cure them with this concoction. As a result of this, he was forgiven and was allowed to go back home where it is presumed he continued making coffee. Some of the very first mentions of coffee in the Arab world are referred to as a medicine.
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