Many legends describe the discovery of coffee. One of the most popular is of an Arab goatherder named Kaldi who lived in the middle of the 9th century. Kaldi noticed that when his goats ate the red berries from one particular bush, they acted oddly; they seemed more frisky and frolicsome. He then took a chance and chewed some of the berries himself. When the result was a feeling of friskiness in himself, he took the news of the wonders of the coffee berries to his fellow tribesmen. Over the next 400 years people consumed coffee just as Kaldi had: Arabs simply chewed the coffee berries in order to get the stimulating effect.
Sleep Thieves
Stanley Coren
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.
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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.