Mocha, Yemen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mocha (Arabic: المخا [al-Mukhā]) is a port city on the Red Sea coast of Yemen. Until it was eclipsed in the 19th century by Aden and Hodeida, Mocha was the principal port for Yemen's capital Sana'a.
Mocha is famous for being the major marketplace for coffee from the 15th century until the 17th century. Even after other sources of coffee were found, Mocha (also called Sanani (meaning from Sana'a) or Mocha Sanani) beans continued to be prized for their strong, chocolate flavor—and remain so even today. From this coffee the English language gained the word mocha.
According to the Jesuit and traveller Jeronimo Lobo, who sailed the Red Sea in 1625, Mocha was "formerly of limited reputation and trade" but since "the Turkish assumption of power throughout Arabia, it has become the major city of the territory under Turkish domination, even though it is not the Pasha's place of residence, which is two days' journey inland in the city of Sana'a."[1] Lobo adds that its importance as a port was also due to the Ottoman law that required all ships entering the Red Sea to put in at Mocha and pay duty on their cargoes.
Passing through Mocha in 1752, Remedius Prutky found that it boasted a "lodging-house of the Prophet Mahomet, so-called, which was like a huge tenement block laid out in many hundred separate cells where accommodation was rented to al strangers without discrimination of race or religion." He also found a number of European ships in the harbor: three French, four English, two Dutch, and one Portuguese.[2]
At present, Mocha is no longer utilized as a major trade route and the current local economy is largely based upon fishing and small amounts of tourism. The village of Mocha was officially relocated 3 kilometers west along the Red Sea shore to accommodate the building and demolition of several coastal highways.
Mocha is the ancestral home of Alyan Muhammad Ali al-Wa'eli, a Yemeni terrorist accused of participating in the 2000 USS Cole attack in the Gulf of Aden.
[edit] Trivia
- On the April 2003 Australian version of the TV show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? the one million Dollar question was "Mocha, a choice variety of coffee, takes its name from a seaport in which country? A: Somalia, B: Yemen, C: Oman, D: Djibouti". ---
- Mocha is also the name of a variety of coffee bean grown in the Lesser Sunda island of East Timor, part of the Indonesian archipelago and an ex-Portuguese colony. ---
[edit] References
- ^ Donald M. Lockhart, translator, The Itinerário of Jerónimo Lobo (London: Hakluyt Society, 1984), p.88
- ^ J.H. Arrowsmith-Brown, translator and editor, Prutky's Travels to Ethiopia and Other Countries (London: Hakluyt Society, 1991), pp.363f
