Coffee did not enter the Arabian Peninsula until the seventh century AH, corresponding to the thirteenth century AD. It was known to the people of Yemen, Mecca, Cairo, Istanbul, and the world. However, the word coffee was present in the Arabic language as a name for wine.
Yemen is one of the countries that has exported coffee since ancient times, which was known as Mocka Coffee, in distinction to the port of Mokha, from which Yemeni coffee was exported. The first shipment was purchased by the Dutch from the port of Mokha in 1628 AD, but the first Europeans to learn about Yemeni coffee were the Portuguese, who invaded its western coasts.
Historians say that the first users who turned coffee consumption into a social drink within a regular habit were the Sufis of Yemen around the beginning of the fifteenth century, and they used it to stimulate their minds and help them stay up at night to perform their prayers.
Yemeni coffee is considered one of the best types of coffee in the world, and it has types such as:
- White or Baydaniya coffee (named after the city of Bayda), which consists of ground coffee, lightly roasted, and several types of nuts added to it.
- Morning coffee: It is made only from ground coffee, medium roasted, with the addition of ginger and sugar.
- Peel coffee: It is made from the outer shells of the coffee fruit only, and is usually served in the evening. There are other types that differ from one Yemeni region to another.
Yemen is considered the most suitable environment for coffee cultivation, in terms of the tropical climate and continuous rains, and the coffee tree does not need fertilizers or pesticides, but agriculture there lacks government attention and needs more dams and irrigation projects.
What coffee cultivation suffers most from is the bitter struggle with qat cultivation, as many farmers replace all their coffee trees or half of their field with qat, because “qat has a good and repeated financial return”, as they say, and because it is resistant to drought for longer periods.
Yemen is characterized by the construction of coffee terraces, as coffee cultivation depends on these huge agricultural terraces, and coffee is dried in the natural sun (which is considered a natural processing of coffee).
The high terraced lands in Yemen are the first place where coffee was grown, but during the past 60 years, Yemeni exports have decreased from about 40 thousand tons annually to only 7 thousand tons, and it has been overtaken by the cultivation of qat, the plant that is chewed by about 70% of the male population.
The coffee produced by Yemen (Arabica coffee) is processed naturally, dried in the sun and peeled, so Yemeni coffee samples contain stones. The alternative to this method is an intensive washing process that uses technological means.
Coffee cultivation is considered a “window of opportunity” for Yemen, and it is possible to reach global production levels, but the matter must start with the farmer in terms of reassuring him, educating him, and guaranteeing him that coffee cultivation will return a guaranteed return that is better than qat cultivation.
The agricultural area allocated to coffee in Yemen is currently estimated at about 34,497 hectares, and about one million people work in this field, from cultivation to export. Yemen’s coffee production last year reached 19 thousand tons.
