SECTION IX.. Culture in Arabia.

CULTURE IN ARABIA.

The culture of coffee is principally carried on in Yemen, towards the districts of Aden and Mocha. The nearest coffee plantations are about eighty miles from Aden.

The coffee-growing country in the Yemen is 300 miles to the south of Jeddah, being the districts about Tohira, Uodeida, and Tanaa. Of this, the Turks have but little, their authority only extending over the narrow slip called the Tehana, in which is little coffee. They had till lately the export dues of all the coffee grown in Western Arabia, but they have lost a great part of them, a large quantity of coffee being sent to Aden for exportation. Mocha, the ancient port and capital, has completely fallen, and is in ruins. Its place is taken by Uodeida, the seat of government of the Yemen, and a Pashalic under Jeddah. In 1860, coffee to the value of 14,268l. was imported into Aden by sea, of 55,710l. was brought by land, and 45,344l. was exported. An enormous quantity is consumed in Arabia. Very little genuine Yemen coffee is procurable in Europe. It is difficult to obtain even in Jeddah. It is first mixed in the Yemen with inferior Abyssinian coffee, then mixed at Jeddah with damaged coffee, and probably in Egypt it is again mixed. Alexandria and Cairo are notorious for bad coffee.

It has been understood for several years that much of the coffee which finds its way into England as genuine Mocha is, in reality, Malabar coffee, sent to ports on the Persian Gulf from Bombay, and when thus naturalised, finding its way to Europe. But the coffee of India is now competing successfully with that of Arabia in markets which the latter had for centuries commanded as its own. In a few years the Indian article will entirely surpass the Arabian. It is the old story of enterprise originated and directed by Europeans driving competition out of the market. Seeing that the Arabs are in the habit of baking the cow-dung and cakes for food on the same wall, they cannot be suspected of any violent antipathy to dirt per se. But, passionate lovers as they are of a good cup of coffee, they can easily understand that an equal quantity of well-cleaned Malabar coffee is cheaper than that brought in the buggalows of the Nijd Arabs, and which is described as full of extraneous matter, such as pieces of the coffee-husk, &c. But the Indian coffee is actually sold cheaper, quantity for quantity. The consumption of Yemen coffee is now entirely confined to the wealthier chiefs; the finest kind, and that most sought after, being the small, of a light-green colour. Latterly, the Yemen coffee has been all sent to Bagdad, a compliment which the ancient city of the Sultans cannot fail to appreciate at its true value. It is too dear and too dirty for the poor Arabs of Bussorah, while the flavour of the Malabar kind is found closely to approximate to that of Yemen.

The coffee is generally grown half way up the slopes of the hills, but some is cultivated on lower ground, surrounded by large trees for shade. The harvest is gathered at three periods of the year, the principal being in May. Cloths are spread under the trees, which are shaken, that the ripe fruit may drop. The berries are then collected and exposed to the sun on mats to dry. A heavy roller is afterwards passed over the berries, to break the envelopes, and the husk is winnowed away with a fan. The berries are further dried before being stored.

Arabian coffee was first cultivated by the Dutch, and some of their plants sent by the French to the West Indies, where it is now successfully cultivated. So that one has a difficulty in deciding where it is indigenous, as it is a much more important article of agriculture in the West Indies, Java, Ceylon, and Southern India, than in its native countries.

In Syria the coffee-plant is of natural growth; but as the European writers who were engaged in the Crusades do not mention it, it could not have been much used during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Bruce affirms that the qualities of it were well known in Africa, and that the Gallae, a wandering tribe, which was obliged to traverse the deserts, carried no other provision than balls compounded of coffee and butter, one of which would keep them in health and spirits through a day’s journey better than any other kind of food. In the Royal Library at Paris is an Arabian manuscript, containing a voluminous history of coffee, in which it is said that Gemaleddin-Ahou-Abdallah, Mufti of Aden, first introduced its use among the Turks, upon his return from Persia, where he had experienced the beneficial effects of it as a common beverage. The effendi, the kadi, and all the inferior officers of the government, followed the example of this chief of the law. The use of coffee descended through the harem to the house of every merchant, and the town of Aden set the example to the rest of Arabia.