In the beginning...

I've decided that in addition to my weekly tasting notes, I'll provide an additional article dealing with science, history, culture, and modern issues all related to coffee. I figured there would be no better place to start than with its discovery.
Like all good things, the discovery of coffee is so very shrouded in myth and alternative retellings that no one actually knows what the hell happened. I'll start by recounting the more popular mythologies associated with its discovery, then move on to what modern research is able to tell us.
Stories concerning the origin of coffee were originally mentioned by the Arabic physician Abd al Qadir Al Jaziri in a 1587 manuscript. This manuscript was translated into French by Antoine Galland (De l'origine et du progrès du Café. Sur un manuscrit arabe de la Bibliothèque du Roy, 1699). This manuscript documents coffee from its origins in Yemen through its spread throughout the Middle East. It provides a story on the origin of coffee steeped in Islamic tradition.
In this document, the discovery of coffee was attributed to Sheik Hadji Omar in the year 1278 AD, a follower of Sheik Abou'l hasan Schadheli, the legendary founder of the city of Mocha, or Al-Makha. A version of the story states that Sheik Omar was a healer, and his prayers were requested from the leader of Al-Makha. His daughter became ill with the plague (probably an addition of Abd al Qadir. This would suggest the early 14th century AD, and coffee may be referenced in medical texts much earlier). After healing her, he attempted to steal away from the city with her, prompting his immediate exile. While wandering near the mountain Ousab, Omar saw a majestic bird perched on the branch of a tree, and interpreted it as an omen of his master, Schadheli. He ate of the fruit and recognized its revitalizing effects. The idea then came to him to boil the fruit and make tea. Alternate versions of the story suggest that he attempted to improve the taste of the berries by roasting the beans, then accidentally came upon the beverage by attempting to soften the roasted beans in water (Persia is usually credited with the invention of coffee roasting). He returned to the town and was immediately accepted on the merits of the new beverage he had discovered.
A story that appeared much later than Adb al Qadir's manuscript is the commonly heard story of the goatherd Kaldi. The first mention of this story comes from the year 1671 in France. The story is most commonly located in Ethiopia or Egypt. A goatherd tended to notice that his goats were much more 'frolicsome' after eating the berries of a specific tree. He then told an abbott (dervish) of the local monastery about this. The abbott tried these berries and appreciated the effects so greatly that he introduced the monastery to it. The French author Edelstan Jardin, in an attempt to place himself solidly at the forefront of opium-induced hallucinations, added to the story that the goats raised up on two feet and danced with the goatherd Kaldi, and that upon seeing this, a monk, setting aside the tendency to run screaming, go lay down for a while, or just burn somebody at the stake, gladly approached him to inquire about the nature of the event, thereby providing the monastic order a tool for particularly rough nights of prayer and recitation. The grain of truth in this story is that, in fact, coffee was a very popular beverage with religious institutions, both Islamic and, later, Christian (And oddly enough, was often proscribed under penalty of harm or death by Islamic and Christian leaders).
Some even more imaginative Europeans have suggested for instance that the nepenthe Helen mixes into wine in the Odyssey is juice from the coffee berry, or that several biblical references to certain plants were references to coffee. In this particularly murky realm of folk history, it has been very difficult to tease out details concerning the origin of coffee's consumption.
So here's what we do know. Coffee clearly evolved in Africa. That much is certain. Arabica (Caffea arabica) is a hybrid of Robusta (Caffea canephora) and Caffea eugeniodia, a much lower caffeine variant. Both of these coffee varieties trace their roots to Africa, with Ethiopia providing a staggering amount of genetic diversity in Arabica specimens (resulting in Ethiopian coffee's tendency to taste a bit wild and unexpected). It is also accepted that this hybridization may have occurred fairly recently, though considering that I haven't found any information to quantify 'fairly recently', I can't provide a solid estimate of what this means. This may (<-MAY!) support the idea that Arabica and Robusta were both originally discovered in Ethiopia, and their use was passed on first to the port city of Mocha in Yemen, and then on to Mecca, Persia, Constantinople, and the world. Interestingly enough, this was also an idea that Edelestan Jardin offered (I'm sure completely coincidentally) along with his psychedelic origin story.
Now go, my children. Caffeinate.