Kaldi

For the speech recognition toolkit, see Kaldi (software).

Kaldi was a legendary ^[1] Ethiopian goatherd who is credited for discovering the coffee plant around 850 CE, according to popular legend, after which such crop entered the Islamic world and then the rest of the world.

Analysis

The story is probably apocryphal, as it was first related by Antoine Faustus Nairon, a Maronite Roman professor of Oriental languages and author of one of the first printed treatises devoted to coffee, De Saluberrima potione Cahue seu Cafe nuncupata Discurscus (Rome, 1671).^[2][3]

The myth of Kaldi the Ethiopian goatherd and his dancing goats, the coffee origin story most frequently encountered in Western literature, embellishes the credible tradition that the Sufi encounter with coffee occurred in Ethiopia, which lies just across the narrow passage of the Red Sea from Arabia's western coast.^[4]

Influence

In modern times, "Kaldi Coffee" or "Kaldi's Coffee" and "Dancing Goat" or "Wandering Goat" are popular names for coffee shops and coffee roasting companies around the world.^[5] The biggest coffee chain in Ethiopia is called Kaldi's.