| Intro | Ethiopian goatherd who discovered the coffee plant |
| Known for | Discovered the coffee plant around 850 AD |
| A.K.A. | coffee maker |
| Is | Herder |
| From | Ethiopia |
| Gender | male |
Kaldi or Khalid was a legendary Ethiopian goatherd who discovered the coffee plant around 850 AD, according to popular legend, after which it entered the Islamic world then the rest of the world.
Story
Kaldi, noticing that when his goats were nibbling on the bright red berries of a certain bush, they became more energetic (jumping goats), chewed on the fruit himself. His exhilaration prompted him to bring the berries to an Islamic monk in a nearby Sufi monastery (zawiyah), but the Sufi monk disapproved of their use and threw them into a fire, from which an enticing aroma billowed. The roasted beans were quickly raked from the embers, ground up, and dissolved in hot water, yielding the world’s first cup of coffee.
Analysis
The story is probably apocryphal, as it was first related by Antoine Faustus Nairon, a Maronite who became a Roman professor of Oriental languages and author of one of the first printed treatises devoted to coffee, De Saluberrima potione Cahue seu Cafe nuncupata Discurscus (Rome, 1671).
The myth of Kaldi the Ethiopian goatherd and his dancing goats, the coffee origin story most frequently encountered in Western literature, embellishes the credible tradition that the Sufi encounter with coffee occurred in Ethiopia, which lies just across the narrow passage of the Red Sea from Arabia’s western coast.
Influence
In modern times, “Kaldi Coffee” or “Kaldi’s Coffee” and “Dancing Goat” or “Wandering Goat” are popular names for coffee shops and coffee roasting companies around the world.
The biggest coffee chain in Ethiopia is called Kaldi’s.