British Food Journal Volume 20 Issue 11 1918

Coffee—next to sugar the most important product imported from the tropics—is the seed of a small tree or shrub, Caffea Arabic L. (order Rubiaceae), a native of Abyssinia and other parts of Africa. In the fifteenth century the tree was introduced into Arabia, where the beverage became popular with all classes, not‐withstanding the opposition of the Mohammedan priests. Coffee drinking was soon taken up by all the Saracenic races, and later by the European nations.