Kaldi or Khalid was a legendary[1] Ethiopian goatherd who discovered the coffee plant around 850 CE, according to popular legend, after which it entered the Islamic world and then the rest of the world.
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]
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.
Kaldi, an Arab Ethiopian goatherd, is said to have found his goats dancing in the forest in south-west Ethiopia sometime in the ninth century.
In Ukers' book, a young Arabian goatherd named Kaldi, afflicted with melancholy, followed the example of his frolicking goats and ate the coffee berries from the trees.
Another tale and one that is commonly accepted is the story of a ninth-century Arab goatherd named Kaldi.
One of many legends about the discovery of coffee is that of Kaldi, an Arab goatherd who was puzzled by the strange antics of his flock