As the fame of coffee spread, the monopoly that the port city of Mocha had on this crop was not broken by trade agreements, but by daring acts of “biopiracy”. Severe punishment awaited anyone who tried to export live beans or coffee plants — including execution! Despite this, an Indian Sufi monk named Bada Budan smuggled seven fertile coffee beans out of the country in 1670, while returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca. The exact details are unclear — with some claiming that he strapped them to his stomach, while others maintain that he hid the coffee beans in his voluminous beard. Either way, his contraband avoided detection and he planted the beans in the Chandragiri range in India, thus establishing the first plantation outside of the Middle East — and the beginning of India’s multi-billion dollar coffee industry.
Although he may have been one of the first, Bada Budan was certainly not the only person to smuggle coffee beans out of Mocha. Check out the next Coffee Corner for more fascinating stories of how coffee plants spread out of Yemen to the rest of the world!
