Mocha’s name comes from Al-Mokha, a Red Sea port city steeped in trade in the late Middle Ages and still contested today, as the Houthis, or Ansar Allah, who control northern and northwestern Yemen, hold onto this strategic redoubt.
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With every sip of a mocha, caffeine fiends ingest a slice of history, just as alive and kicking as the delectable brew with heady coffee filling much of the cup. Such is the provenance of the drink: its name comes from Al-Mokha, a Red Sea port city steeped in trade in the late Middle Ages and still contested today, as the Houthis, or Ansar Allah, who control northern and northwestern Yemen, hold onto this strategic redoubt.
Yemen, in the present times, may be known for the cultivation of khat, a plant infamous for its psychoactive properties. But once, the land was redolent with the aroma of coffee, long before produce from India reached the high tables of Europe. Therein lies a tale, apocryphal for some but the only truth for coffee aficionados who like to have their drink spiked with myth and legend.
Yemen is where the world’s first coffee farms came up, writes Jonathan Morris in his book, Coffee: A Global History. Ethiopia remained the sole source of coffee until the 1540s, but as supplies dwindled due to internal conflict, coffee started being cultivated in the highlands of the Yemeni interior between the coastal plain of Tihama and the capital city of Sana’a, he says.
The Yemeni rulers jealously guarded their coffee and allowed no fertile seed to leave the port of Al-Mokha so that cultivation spreading elsewhere would deny their country a golden goose. While returning to India from his Haj pilgrimage, the Sufi saint Baba Budan travelled through the port and hatched a plan to smuggle a few seeds to India. He hid seven seeds inside his flowing beard to escape scrutiny of the port inspectors. Back in India, he planted these seeds in the Chandragiri Hills in Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka. There begins a tale that changed the history of the coffee trade forever.
India connection
The India connection started even earlier, as Al-Mokha had been a bustling port through which the world’s trade transited. “The coffee would then pass through various intermediaries before ending up in the major wholesale market of Bayt al-Faqih located on the coastal plain. Here, it was bought by merchants and held in warehouses, prior to being transported by camel train to the ports of Al-Makha [otherwise known as Al-Mocha, Al-Mokka and, to Europeans, Mocha] and Hudaydah for shipping. Most of these merchants were Banyans, members of a diaspora that spread from the Gujarat port of Surat to dominate trade around the Indian Ocean. They also controlled the Yemeni credit networks, making it likely they were the chief financiers and effective initiators of coffee cultivation,” Mr. Harris writes in his book.
Brazil is now the country that produces the most coffee, followed by Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, and yes, Ethiopia. India ranks seventh, and the country is now a Robusta nation, though what Baba Budan planted in Chikkamagaluru was Arabica.
Yemen still produces coffee despite the khat proliferation, but just the dregs of a lucrative trade. Al-Mokha first became synonymous with coffee, as the shortened mocha was coffee back then. Now mocha, across the world, is a lip-smacking comfort drink with spoonfuls of chocolate stirred in.
The British East India Company opened a depot in Al-Mocha as early as 1618, over 30 years before coffee became available in Britain. And mocha continues to delight coffee fans.
Published – September 13, 2026 03:29 pm IST
