Beyond the Frisking Goats: Coffee’s True Origins

For centuries, the story of coffee’s discovery has been wrapped in the tale of a goat herder named Kaldi. He notices his flock behaving strangely—restless, energized—after eating berries from a certain shrub. Intrigued, he takes these berries to a nearby monastery, where monks experiment with them and find that the resulting brew keeps them awake for prayer.

It’s a story that has endured, perhaps because it offers something elemental—an encounter between a shepherd, his animals, and an unknown plant, a discovery shaped by observation and curiosity. There’s no historical record proving that it happened this way, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true in some way. Maybe it was never meant to be literal history. Maybe it was a way of making sense of coffee’s power—an attempt to root something transformative in the soil of a simple, everyday life.

But there’s another story, too.

By the mid-1400s, coffee was already woven into the spiritual and social life of Sufi mystics in Ethiopia and Yemen. These seekers used it as a tool for wakefulness during dhikr (remembrance of God), relying on its steadying effect to sustain long nights of prayer and reflection. The first coffeehouses weren’t in Paris or Vienna but in the port cities of the Islamic world—Mokha, Cairo, Istanbul—where coffee was not just a drink but an experience, a ritual of connection and contemplation.

The Sufis were not accidental discoverers; they cultivated coffee with intention. They refined the practice of roasting and brewing, experimenting with its properties, and recognizing its deeper potential—not just as a stimulant, but as a means of sharpening presence. Coffee, in their world, was not just something to consume; it was something to share, something that could structure time and thought, something that could accompany the search for meaning.

Both stories can be true.

Maybe a herder really did notice his goats behaving strangely, and that moment of discovery set something in motion. Or maybe the real beginning lies with those who saw in coffee something more than an accident of nature—those who understood its ability to bring people into a different state of awareness.

I don’t find myself drawn to the dancing goat on La Cabra’s box or the version of coffee that begins with a rustic folktale, charming as it may be. The story that moves me is the one of seekers, the one of hands turning beans over fire, of quiet nights deep in devotion, of cups shared in places where ideas and prayers and lives were exchanged. That, to me, feels closer to coffee’s true origins ◑