Food or Beverage?

The ancestors of the Galla nomadic tribe used coffee berries as food: the seeds and fruit were blended together with animal fat and used as sustenance during their long desert crossings.
Sometimes later, the beverage was prepared as an infusion by leaving the whole fruit (called kisher) to steep in cold water. Subsequently, the fruit was removed, and the green beans (bounya) were used. Then a decoction was tried by boiling the green beans. It was only in the thirteenth century that, by pure chance, the Arabs came across the technique of “toasting” coffee.
The very first coffee houses (kahwe khaneh) were opened in southern Arabia and, in the early sixteenth century, and consumption began to spread to the cities of Cairo and Mecca, until it reached Constantinople in 1555, thanks to two Syrian businessmen.