Coffee plants were discovered in the country now known as Ethiopia , in a region on the African side of the Red Sea. The plant became used and cultivated in Yemen between the 13th and 15th Century. Nobody is certain about how it came to be roasted and brewed but various local communities used it as a powerful beverage.

One of the most famous legends regarding the discovery of coffee is that of an Abyssinian goatherd named Kaldi, who tasted wild red coffee cherries after noticing that they made his goats very frisky when they ate them. The head of a local Sufi monastery realised that the cherries had the properties required to keep his monks alert at their prayers, and produced a drink from these cherries.

During the last half of the 15th Century, coffee drinking spread through Arabic countries. At this time, the drink was consumed for its physical and medical effects and not for its taste. It is when coffee reached Istanbul (1550) that the European coffee story began.