Coffee: The Fuel of Humanity

About the Author:

His Excellency Ahmed Bin Sulayem is the Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) and has driven its growth from a start-up of 28 member companies in 2003 to the world’s leading free zone in 2023 with 24,000+ member companies from 180 countries, employing over 80,000 people.

Tasked with enhancing commodity trade flows through Dubai, DMCC has introduced to the market a number of value-added products and services under H.E. Bin Sulayem’s leadership. In 2023, DMCC has been named the ‘Global Free Zone of the Year’ by The Financial Times fDi Magazine, for a record ninth consecutive year.

His Excellency Bin Sulayem oversaw the exponential growth of the DMCC Free Zone master development in Jumeirah Lakes Towers (JLT), a 200-hectare business and residential community in Dubai of over 100,000 people living and working across 87 towers. Mr Bin Sulayem also oversees the development of DMCC’s latest real estate project; the much-anticipated Uptown Dubai district.

DMCC is the driving force behind establishing the UAE as a lynchpin in the global coffee supply chain. Showcasing its strategic vision, DMCC continues to introduce innovative developments to enhance Dubai’s capabilities, expertise, and stature within this fast-growing sector.

By connecting growers and exporters with global markets, the DMCC Coffee Centre has created new trading opportunities for all stakeholders in this fast-growing global market. To date, the Centre has enabled the trade of 100+ coffee varieties from major growing regions such as Central and South America, Africa and Asia. This large global sourcing footprint has made the Centre one of the world’s top coffee trading hubs.

In the Executive Insights Article below, His Excellency Ahmed Bin Sulayem provides his professional understanding about the Origins of Coffee, the etymology of the name Coffee, the contribution of the DMCC Coffee Centre and Dubai to the Global Coffee Landscape, his professional perspective on the current global coffee sector and the future trends of the Global Coffee Industry.

The origin of coffee:

The Ethiopian Origins of Coffee:

When it comes to coffee, there are several accounts claiming to its origins. Probably the most common one originates from the Ethiopian plateau in the 9th century, where a herder named Kaldi noticed that his goats appeared to be particularly energetic after eating the berries from a certain tree. Reporting his discovery to a local monastery, attempts were made to create a drink using the berries having first burned them in a fire, upon which its stimulating effects were verified, and news quickly spread.

Other stories include the legend of the Sufi mystic, Ghothul Akbar Nooruddin Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili, who had witnessed birds eating berries while travelling in ancient Ethiopia and decided to try them for himself. Another account included the legend of Omar, an exiled disciple of Sheik Abou’l Hasan Schadheli, who on the brink of starvation had made a variety of attempts to process the beans, before boiling them and discovering its revitalising properties.

No matter which account, historical fact points towards its cultural use gaining traction in the middle of the 15th century, where its popularity had percolated through the Arab world into what is now Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It is important to remember that during this time, coffee had arrived as the fourth option behind water, tea and wine, and while the effects of coffee appeared only to sharpen the senses, traditional communities and their autocratic rulers still approached new trends with caution.

The objection and resistance of coffee in the then conservative Ottoman Empire:

Conservatives such as Suleiman the Magnificent were well known to leverage the power of the corrupt and morally bankrupt Muftis into passing fatwas to galvanise personal agendas; a theme that permeated through the region’s provinces where bureaucrats who feared revolt, perniciously and blasphemously used their clerical positions to issue fatwas against a variety of social issues and commodities, including coffee. Let it be known that one of the greatest hindrances to Arabia’s position as a centre for technology and scientific discovery rests squarely on the insincere actions of such individuals who arrogantly and obscenely perverted Islam for the purposes of personal gain or protection. As an organic, plant-based product, it could have been carefully studied and understood, however, inciting Islamic orthodoxy, research and understanding were consciously substituted for dogmatic ignorance.

Fortunately, this self-serving prohibition only lasted for a short period, before sane heads prevailed and ensured that coffee could, once again, be consumed by all, in some cases at a high price. Meccan governor, Kha’ir Beg, who had maintained a ban on coffee for 13 years, paid for the obstruction with his life by order of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Selim I, although it is unknown whether this was due to taxation or embezzlement accusations, as opposed to the embargo itself. Sultan Murad IV became the first Ottoman leader to breach the protocol of consulting the Shaykh al-Islām, whom he had executed in the 1630’s which led to much civil unrest. As a method to restrict potential sedition, he ended up placing a direct ban on tobacco, coffee and wine and while he was able to restore civil order, he was unable to survive his own hypocrisy, dying from cirrhosis of the liver, aged 27. No matter the culture, the top down prohibition of coffee remained a reoccurring theme, almost in all cases motivated by a fear of dissent, in the case of Murad IV, through a firm belief that coffee could, “erode social norms, encourage dangerous thoughts or speech, or even directly foment seditious plots,” according to Mark Hay.

The coffee conundrum and the etymology of the name “Coffee”:

It is worth noting that as a global society, almost four hundred years later, we are yet to grow out of an age where government intervention and regulation on naturally occurring products is still widely imposed, often with unjustifiable penalties for violators. In a world that gives serious crimes such as sponsoring terrorism and drug trafficking a free pass (see Too Big to Jail*), there is a growing need to address a change in legislation that returns common sense to our societies and decision-making responsibility to the people. More to follow on this another time.

Following the end of its prohibition and once again growing in popularity, the etymology of coffee in its various cultures likely spread from two variations of its Arabic origins.

The two Arabic variations of the name Coffee:

Firstly, Qahwa, an abbreviation of qahhwat al-bun, which literally translates as ‘wine of the bean’, or secondly, qahā, which means ‘to have no appetite’, due to its ability to suppress hunger. In both cases, the phonetics slowly evolved as the beverage spread east, with the Turks calling it kahve, the Dutch; koffie and finally, the English; coffee.

Coffee in Europe and its various contributions to European History:

By the 16th century, coffee had made its way along the Silk Road to Europe where its association was initially met with suspicion and religious prejudice, particularly by the dominant Catholic clergy who declared it the ‘bitter invention of Satan’. Fortunately, its resistance was once again short-lived with Pope Clement VIII sampling it and declaring it to be a Christian and Muslim drink. According to several sources, he has been accredited with saying, “This devil’s drink is delicious – we should cheat the devil by baptising it.”

Indiscriminately saturating its way through all classes and religious groups, it is claimed that a Lebanese individual, known as “Jacob the Jew”, founded the first coffeehouse in Oxford in 1650, and that Sephardic Jews were primarily responsible, in partnership with Armenian and Greek merchants, for the widespread consumption of coffee throughout 17th century Holland and France. As Mark Pendergrast summarised in his book, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World: “Coffeehouses became egalitarian meeting places where people exchanged ideas. The American and French revolutions were planned in coffeehouses, Lloyds of London originated in Lloyds Coffeehouses, Bach and Beethoven’s creative juices were fired up by coffee.”

Just sixty-four years later in 1714, the Mayor of Amsterdam presented a young coffee plant to King Louis XIV of France, who ordered it to be planted in the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris.

Coffee in the Carribean and the Americas:

According to legend, a naval officer named Gabriel de Clieu obtained a seedling from the same plant, and in 1723 took it with him on a voyage to Martinique where he planted it and it was able to thrive, so much so that the same plant is not only credited as the great ancestor of some 18 million coffee trees on the island, but also the seedling from which all coffee trees throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America originated. A little further north, and several decades later, it could be argued that the United States’ love affair with coffee stemmed from one of its founding acts of rebellion against the British, The Boston Tea Party, which saw 342 chests of tea thrown into the harbour in protest over taxation and while the political repercussions led swiftly to the American Revolutionary War, the act also saw tea become an ‘unpatriotic’ beverage, conveniently paving the way for coffee to become a widespread substitute.

We where stand currently as the coffee industry:

Fast forward three hundred years, and the world’s seemingly natural adoption of coffee continued to thrive into a $100bn industry, making it the second most traded commodity after crude. As a fellow coffee lover, I’ve been fortunate to sample a wide variety from around the world, while gaining a deeper understanding of the industry’s ecosystem; something that led to DMCC investigating how it could diversify its existing commodity business to support stakeholders with an easier solution to store, process, roast, pack and trade.

Starting at the ICO’s 4th World Coffee Conference and the 116th International Coffee Council in Addis Ababa in 2016, both my team and I started to make more serious inroads as to how DMCC could support a stronger international coffee industry through Dubai and included several trips to coffee producing nations such as Burundi, Rwanda, Indonesia and Uganda, while meeting with dynastic, industry legends such as Andrea Illy and Giuseppe Lavazza. After careful analysis, coupled with an overwhelming level of support from farmers, exporters, traders, roasters and retailers, the DMCC Coffee Centre was formally opened on 19th February 2019. Covering over 15,000 square metres, its state-of-the-art facilities have already repositioned Dubai as a major centre for the world’s coffee supply chains, which has so far enabled the trade of over 30 varieties of green beans from regions as far-reaching as Central and South America, Africa and Asia.

The DMCC coffee centre: A global coffee market non-biased facilitator

Even the challenging environment presented by the pandemic has done little to impact the resilience of coffee supply chains, with severely hit nations such as Brazil, not only managing to maintain production but likely yield a record-breaking crop. Even so, as a non-biased facilitator for the global coffee market, DMCC has been invaluable to many traders, who’ve been able to safely store and preserve their product at a highly competitive rate, regardless of any disruption caused to their typical downstream orders.

Following a visit from His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, who in June 2020, had witnessed how investments made into establishing a physical and legislative infrastructure has not only supported the UAE’s national goals but helped diversify the economy to support all local businesses, DMCC made the calculated decision to expand the centre in order to triple its output in line with market demand, with the eventual goal of processing 20,000 tonnes per year.

As a drink that was at the heart of a great epoch of Arabian culture, philosophy and hospitality, before mimicking the same effect on cultures around the world, it can be said that the positive impact of coffee has now well and truly reached a global level; something that gives even greater profundity and credibility to Thomas Jefferson’s quote, “Coffee – the favourite drink of the civilised world.”

©His Excellency Ahmed Bin Sultan Bin Sulayem – Executive Chairman and CEO of DMCC, The World’s Number 1 Free Zone