Coffee: A history

Firstly, I came across the Kaldi legend that explains the discovery of the coffee bean.
It is said that Kaldi, the goatherd, first discovered the coffee bean in the Ethiopian highlands when he noticed his goats, after eating berries from a certain tree, became very active and restless. So restless that they did not want to go to sleep that night.
Kaldi brought the berries to the abbot whom then created a drink from the berries. The abbot noticed that the drink from these berries kept him awake and very alert through long hours of prayer. He shared his discovery with the rest of the people, and soon enough, word was spread eastward towards the Arabian Peninsula.
Today, the most common coffee-growing regions are Asia, Africa, Central and South America, the islands of the Caribbean and Pacific, and of course, the Ethiopian coffee forests where the bean originated.

Though originated firstly in the Ethiopian highlands, the Arabs were the first people to start large amounts of cultivation and trade of coffee. Coffee was seen as a substitute for alcohol among the Muslims considering alcohol was forbidden by the Koran. They found coffee's energizing qualities extremely satisfying, so coffee became an everyday delicacy.
Eventually coffee was consumed not only in every home, but in coffee houses as well which were called qahveh khaneh. People gathered to these coffee houses for all types of socialization. They drank their coffee, played games, listened to music, conversed, and read. The coffee houses were a place for free time and catching up on life. Since they became so popular, people referred to these coffee houses as 'School's of the Wise.'
By the seventeenth century, the production of coffee moved to Europe. But that's a post for later!

All that's important is that you get the general history of coffee. So there you go. To whoever reads this.

Information gathered at National Coffee Association USA