Note 237 — THE TALE OF THE KAZI AND THE BHANG-EATER.[224]

In the text “Finjál,” a vulgarism for “Finján”: so the converse “Isma’ín” for “Ism’afl” = Ishmael. Mr. J. W. Redhouse (The Academy No. 764) proposes a new date for coffee in Al-Yaman. Colonel Playfair (History of Yemen, Bombay 1859) had carelessly noted that its “first use at Aden was by a judge of the place who had seen it drunk at Zayla’, on the African coast opposite Aden,” and he made the judge die in A.H. 875 = A.D. 1470. This is about the date of the Shaykh al-Sházalí’s tomb at Mocha, and he was the first who brought the plant from about African Harar to the Arabian seaboard. But Mr. Redhouse finds in a Turkish work written only two centuries ago, and printed at Constantinople, in A.D. 1732, that the “ripe fruit was discovered growing wild in the mountains of Yemen (?) by a company of dervishes banished thither.” Finding the berry relieve their hunger and support their vigils the prior, “Shaykh ’Umar advised their stewing it (?) and the use became established. They dried a store of the fruit; and its use spread to other dervish communities, who perhaps (!) sowed the seed wherever it would thrive throughout Africa (N.B. where it is indigenous) and India (N.B. where both use and growth are quite modern). From Africa, two centuries later, its use was reimported to Arabia at Aden (?) by the judge above mentioned, who in a season of scarcity of the dried fruit (?) tried the seed” (N.B. which is the fruit). This is passing strange and utterly unknown to the learned De Sacy (Chrest. Arab. i. 412–481).