Al-Muḵā

Mocha lies on Yemen's Red Sea coast, north of the narrow passage of Bab al-Mandab. Caravans carried the harvest from the mountains to the coastal warehouses. Its name became inseparable from the coffee grown in the Yemeni highlands and shipped through its harbour. Yet the town handled more than coffee: spices, textiles, metals and aromatics also passed through a port that joined the Red Sea to the trading networks of the Indian Ocean.

The Ottomans developed Mocha as a major port in the sixteenth century. Ships of the Dutch East India Company visited in 1616, and the company later obtained permission to establish a trading post. After the Qasimi imams displaced Ottoman authority in the 1630s, the port's commerce continued to reach east toward India. Merchants and shipmasters from different shores met in a town whose houses and trading spaces reflected its maritime connections.

Demand for Yemeni coffee made Mocha especially prosperous in the early eighteenth century. English, Dutch and French companies maintained establishments there, while coffee travelled to markets around the Red Sea and beyond. The spread of cultivation to other lands eventually brought competition to Yemen's growers. Mocha remained a major trading port into the early nineteenth century, though it was also drawn into naval conflict: in 1820 British forces attacked its northern and southern forts.