Deep in the rabbit warren that is the ancient old city of Sana’a—Yemen’s capital—a bustling hole-in-the-wall café has been serving coffee for more than 500 years. Samsarat Wardah—which roughly translates to the Rose Rest House—has been a gathering place for Sana’ani men for longer than many Western countries have had constitutions to organize the social fabric of their societies. Today, Samsarat Wardah serves tea as well as coffee—and many Yemeni men must now stoop as they pass beside the bar where the drinks are made and through a narrow tunnel to reach the café’s courtyard seating area. However, beyond a little diversity in the menu and the stature and dress of some of its customers, little has changed in the café’s five centuries of operation. Rows of the old city’s male residents and visitors still crowd the benches drawn up to its long, narrow tables from as early as 5:30 am—following the dawn prayer—to sip warm brews that animate their conversations beneath awnings that shield them from the sun’s earliest rays.[1]
Coffee’s long history in Yemen includes a claim on its global origins linked to a famous Sufi[2] mystic-sheikh named Ali Al Shadhili, who died early in the 15th century. It is said that the introduction of the beverage was one of his miracles. A 10-minute documentary produced by the Yemeni-American coffee company Haraz Coffee explains, however, that the miracle may actually have been an accident. In the Haraz Coffee account, a hungry Yemeni boiled some coffee beans he’d picked in hopes that they would soften so he could eat them. Although the beans never softened, they did produce a bitter, muddy brown water that he drank—finding to his amazement, that it gave him energy for days. He shared this discovery with his community, and coffee soon became an important cultural fixture all over Yemen.[3]
Whether coffee drinking began with the sheikh’s miracle or a hungry young man’s inadvertent discovery, most traditions agree that the habit was initially popularized in Yemen through its use in Sufi religious ceremonies. Worshippers drank the energizing beverage during gatherings to help them get into high spiritual states and stay awake during night prayers. Soon, it was also being served more generally at meetings involving important decisions—whether at the household level or the tribal level—and traditionally only after eating due to its appetite-suppressing properties. Coffee’s Arabic name qahwa means “that which makes one able to do without something”—however, since consuming it confers the power both to go without sleep and to go without food, it is uncertain whether the name initially referred to one or both properties. Yemeni poets and writers, meanwhile, extolled coffee for more profound properties—calling it a “pure beverage” that “when consumed by true connoisseurs, helps one comprehend with serenity both hidden and outward things.” Despite the poets’ praises, however, coffee drinking also took on stigma as certain Islamic scholars[4] also condemned private parties where “men mixed with women and sang, danced, played chess, and sipped coffee.”[5]
Coffee also gained popularity outside of Yemen—due in part to Sufi travelers who brought coffee beans with them on their journeys. It became known globally as black gold, and Yemen profited as its only producer for around 150 years. Yemeni tribes jealously guarded the plant’s precious seeds and dominated the international coffee trade with their exports from Yemen’s Red Sea port of Al-Mukha—located in what is today Taiz province. Although raiders of disputed origins managed to smuggle some coffee seeds away from Yemen’s Red Sea shores in the 1720s, the beans initially cultivated in other climates did not precisely reproduce the complex, chocolatey flavors characteristic of those grown in Yemen’s highlands. Thus, coffee houses abroad began adding chocolate to the coffees they brewed from beans of other origins in an effort to match the distinctive taste of the Yemeni beans. Centuries later, products that combine coffee and chocolate flavors are still labeled worldwide as “mocha”—while the Yemeni port that sourced the name dwindled into what is now a small fishing village on the coast of one the world’s largest humanitarian crises. Today, the old port’s shipping channels have long been silted up, supposedly as a consequence of 19th-century American ships discharging their ballast[6] prior to taking coffee on board.[7]
Some say that over 90 percent of the coffee now cultivated worldwide can be genetically traced back to Yemen. As the trading companies that finally managed to acquire the seeds of the prized plant introduced it to the soils of countries under colonial rule, they typically forced farmers to produce and sell the crop at the prices they dictated. These practices allowed them to easily undercut Yemeni growers and marked a turn towards a dark era of exploitation in the global coffee trade. Moreover, as Yemen’s south was itself colonized by the British, Indian chai tea was introduced to the national palate, and the import soon replaced locally grown coffee as Yemen’s most popular drink. With Yemeni coffee in decline domestically and virtually priced out of international markets, the crop was largely displaced across Yemen’s highlands by qat[8]—a stimulant that is legal in Yemen but outlawed in many other countries, and which shares an affinity for the same soils as coffee.[9]
While coffee lost much of its status in its homeland, it did not fall out of favor there entirely—and some Yemenis even enjoyed it while chewing qat. Laila,[10] today a middle-aged mother of two living in one of Yemen’s largest cities, says that when she was growing up in the village, her own mother was addicted to coffee. “My mother would have a special gathering for drinking coffee every afternoon,” Laila explains. “She had a special kettle for making the coffee, and she would add a little ginger and other spices to it and serve it in special cups and saucers that everyone in the house knew were just for coffee. When the coffee was ready, she would sit in a special place where she would chew a tiny bit of qat and drink her coffee, and all the other women living nearby would come to our house to drink coffee with her. We drank tea at breakfast and after lunch, but it wasn’t treated as something special like my mother’s coffee.”
For women like Laila’s mother, drinking coffee has mostly been limited through the centuries to similar special events that bring women together in private homes. Even had they lived in the city, social inhibitions would have prevented them from visiting cafés like Samsarat Wardah in old Sana’a. Now, Laila says her mother rarely drinks coffee even at home because of its effects on her high blood pressure—but she says that if someone happens to bring coffee from the Yemeni countryside into the house, her mother still has to at least have a taste.
According to a 1991 Los Angeles Times article, coffee was then the third largest commodity in international trade—after petroleum and strategic metals. At that time, the coffee Laila’s mother has never been able to resist was still in danger of being wiped out by qat in Yemen’s highlands. However, Yemenis living or working abroad began to speculate whether their homeland could once again grasp a stake in the booming global coffee market. One such success story is chronicled in Dave Egger’s 2018 best-selling book, The Monk of Mokha, which relates the misadventures of Yemeni-American Mokhtar Al Khanshali, who risked his life during the early years of Yemen’s current war to get some of the nation’s specialty beans to American consumers via the very port of Mukha that first brought coffee to the world. Mokhtar relates a briefer version of his saga in a video on his website, where he emphasizes the power of coffee to bring people together through his own proverb, “the shortest distance between two people is a cup of coffee.”[11] Though he crafts them in his native American English, Mokhtar’s penchant for speaking in proverbs is a tribute to his Yemeni heritage. According to Mokhtar, coffee fueled Europe’s enlightenment and in an interview on PBS NewsHour he explained its impact on global industry and commerce with another flourish of whimsy saying, “oil powers factories and machines, and coffee powers humans and dreams.”[12]
In Yemen, Mokhtar has powered human dreams by developing what he calls the Mokha method—a strategy thatincludes organizing local farmers into collectives with a requirement that the boards be comprised of 50 percent women. Thus, while Yemeni women are still largely relegated to drinking coffee in their homes, they have been gaining a larger and larger stake in its profits thanks to such initiatives. This was evident in September 2024, when a women’s farming group from Al Hayma Al Dakhiliya in Yemen’s Sana’a province achieved a record-breaking price of $1,159 USD for a kilogram of their coffee beans at the Best of Yemen 2024 auction—the highest price ever achieved for Yemeni coffee. Thirty-six percent of the lots (13 out of 36) featured at the auction were cultivated by women, and the 36 total lots sold for an average price of $369 USD per kilogram. A glimpse of coffee’s history in the Al Hayma region, from which the winning lot originated, can be seen in a video produced by Qima Coffee—a UK-based tree-to-cup café. The video features Yemeni farmer Mubarak Subaih, who shares about the heritage of coffee cultivation passed down to him by his grandparents.[13]
Qima Coffee has been carrying out extensive research to better understand the genetic landscape of Yemen’s coffee varieties, with Yemeni coffees poised once again to play a critical role the global coffee trade—this time in the face of climate change. While the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has ranked Yemen third globally among the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change, Yemen’s resilient coffee varieties have been thriving with rainfall levels that range between 244 and 379 millimeters annually. That’s over 70 percent less than the average of 1,400 millimeters of rainfall a year received by coffee crops worldwide. Meanwhile, Yemen’s environmental constraints are also challenging its coffee growers to channel their pioneering legacy into new industry innovations, and the Best of Yemen 2024 auction featured honey-processed lots for the first time. Unlike other methods, honey processing requires no water while also adding diversity to Yemeni coffee profiles.[14]
As Yemen marks the dark milestone of a decade of war next month,[15] Yemen’s reviving coffee trade indicates that the inspiration found in a cup of coffee still has the power to bring people together in Yemen—and to connect Yemen to the rest of the world. Although much of that power has yet to be re-harnessed, coffee should not be overlooked as a contributor to restoring the social contracts and economic prospects required to return peace and stability to its war-torn homeland, or to reversing isolationist trends worldwide. A 2019 video from the Sabcomeed collective of specialty Yemeni coffee producers takes viewers on a seed to cup journey from the Yemeni village of Anis to a café in the United States—and asks viewers to imagine a world in which “those moments of peace we enjoy with our coffee took root in us all.” From highland farming collectives, to private homes, to ancient cafes—and now even modern coffee bars that are springing up around Yemen’s cities—coffee’s legacy as a connector is taking root again in Yemen’s rich heritage of people and soils. Strengthening those roots will require greater investments from all parties who wish to share in the fortunes of a harvest of peace in Yemen—whose ancient coffee harvests are still enriching connections around the world today.[16]
[1] https://www.facebook.com/reel/1291671351878461
[2] Sufism is a mystic body of religious practice found within Islam that is characterized by a focus on Islamic purification, spirituality, ritualism, and asceticism.
[3] Herbal Medicine in Yemen: Traditional Knowledge and Practice, and Their Value for Today’s World, p. 148 &150, Haraz Coffee
[4] Herbal Medicine in Yemen p. 150: for example, the Islamic jurist Ali Ahmad Said Ba Sabrayn who was a resident of Wadi Daw’an in Yemen’s Hadramout province in the 1880s.
[5] Sufi Monks, Herbal Medicine in Yemen, p. 150, Haraz Coffee, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-09-12-fo-2686-story.html
[6] A ship’s ballast consists of a heavy substance such as rocks or gravel which is placed in such a way as to improve the ship’s stability and control.
[7] Sufi Monks, Haraz Coffee, Port of Mocha, https://www.kafekuwari.com/blog/mocha-from-the-worlds-first-coffee-lovers-to-yemens-civil-war
[8] Qat is a shrub cultivated in the Middle East and Africa that contains the alkaloid cathinone, a stimulant. Chewing the shrub’s leaves and buds has been a social custom for thousands of years. Some 80 percent of Yemenis chew qat, which is said to cause a mild high and reduce feelings of fatigue. It is also an appetite suppressant and tends to prevent sleep. In 2017, Yemenis’ annual spending on qat was reported to be about $12 billion USD. During qat chewing sessions, people exchange information and build important social capital, however the cost of chewing and the time involved also drain resources.
[9] Haraz Coffee, https://portofmokha.com/pages/story, https://www.qimacoffee.com/yemen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvUAEe6fkvM
[10] Name changed to protect a vulnerable Yemeni family living in a war-torn country.
[11] https://portofmokha.com/pages/story, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-09-12-fo-2686-story.html
[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvUAEe6fkvM
[13] https://www.gcrmag.com/best-of-yemen-2024-auction-sets-new-global-benchmark/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS0j2xRun-U
[14] https://www.qimacoffee.com/yemen, https://www.gcrmag.com/best-of-yemen-2024-auction-sets-new-global-benchmark/
[15] SMC marks the start of the conflict as March 26, 2015, when the Saudi-led intervention began in support of southern forces battling to expel the Houthis from Aden. The Houthis did not face significant armed resistance to their hostile takeover of Yemen’s major cities and ports, which began in September 2014, until they entered Aden in March 2015.
[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGVE4x2WrSI
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