Mocha Was a Port: How Coffee Began in Yemen and Came Home to the Gulf

Today "mocha" is a chocolate coffee drink on cafe menus around the world. Before that, it was a port on the Red Sea. The story of how coffee began runs through Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula, and it explains why coffee carries so much meaning in the Gulf today.

The plant came from Ethiopia, the drink from Yemen

The coffee plant, Coffea arabica, is native to the highlands of Ethiopia. But the British Museum traces the brewed drink as we know it to Yemen in the late 1300s or early 1400s. Members of the Shadhiliyya Sufi order drank it to stay awake through night devotions.

Al-Mokha, the port that named a drink

For centuries the port of Al-Mokha on Yemen's Red Sea coast was where the world bought its coffee. Traders shipped beans from Yemen's mountain terraces through Mokha to Cairo, Istanbul and, later, Europe. The association between the name and coffee is far older than the chocolate drink that now carries it.

Qahwa gave coffee its name

The word itself travelled from the region. Coffee, kahve and café all go back to the Arabic qahwa.

The end of Yemen's monopoly

Yemen kept a near monopoly on cultivation until the early 1700s, when Dutch and French traders took plants and began growing coffee in their colonies. From there coffee spread to Java, the Caribbean and, eventually, Latin America.

Coffee as hospitality

In the Gulf, coffee is above all a sign of welcome. In 2015 UNESCO inscribed Arabic coffee, a symbol of generosity on its list of intangible cultural heritage, after a joint nomination by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar. The honoured guest is served first, with a cup filled about a quarter full so it can be refilled; one to three cups is customary. The dallah, the Gulf coffee pot, appears on the UAE one-dirham coin.

In 2022 UNESCO also inscribed the knowledge and practices of growing Khawlani coffee in Saudi Arabia, a tradition of mountain terraces and hand harvesting. In October 2026 the Saudi Press Agency reported more than one million fruit-bearing coffee trees in Jazan.

Coffee trade comes back to the region

Dubai is once again a coffee trading point. The DMCC Coffee Centre in Jebel Ali handled more than 8,200 tonnes in 2025 and works with coffee from more than 70 origins, shipping to five continents.

At CoffeeGo we serve coffee in offices and lobbies across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah. In a way, every cup is coffee coming home.

Sources

• British Museum, Life in a cup: coffee culture in the Islamic world.
• UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage: Arabic coffee, a symbol of generosity (2015); Knowledge and practices related to cultivating Khawlani coffee beans (2022).
• Saudi Press Agency, Jazan coffee, October 2026.
• DMCC, Coffee Centre annual figures 2025 and business fact sheet.