Mocha, Yemen
| Mocha | |
|---|---|
 Mocha
|
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| Coordinates: 13°19′N 43°15′E / 13.317°N 43.250°E | |
| Country |
 Yemen
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| Governorate | Taiz Governorate |
| Elevation | 43 ft (13 m) |
| 16,794 | |
| Time zone | Yemen Standard Time (UTC+3) |
Mocha or Mokha (Arabic: المخا al-Mukhā Yemeni pronunciation: [elˈmoχæ]) is a port city on the Red Sea coast of Yemen. Until Aden and Hodeida eclipsed it in the 19th century, Mocha was the principal port for Yemen's capital Sana'a.
Mocha is famous for being the major marketplace for coffee (Coffea arabica) from the 15th century until the early 18th century. Even after other sources of coffee were found, Mocha beans (also called Sanani or Mocha Sanani beans, meaning from Sana'a) continued to be prized for their distinctive flavor—and remain so even today. The coffee itself did not grow in Mocha, but was transported from places inland to the port in Mocha, where it was shipped abroad.
According to the Portuguese Jesuit missionary Jerónimo 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." 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.
Mocha reached its zenith in the 17th century, owing to its trade in coffee. The city boasted of a stone wall that enclosed a citadel, as well as a labyrinth of thatched huts that surrounded the wall from without. Of these, some four-hundred were Jewish households who occupied in trade. Passing through Mocha in 1752 and 1756, Remedius Prutky found that it boasted a "lodging-house of the Prophet Muhammad, which was like a huge tenement block laid out in many hundred separate cells where accommodation was rented to all 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. In the 18th century, a plague decimated half of the city's population, from which time the city never really recovered.
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Wikipedia