Specialty Coffee Wiki

Qahwa World

Properties3
descriptionThe Arabic-, English- and Russian-language coffee publication run from the United Arab Emirates — what it covers, why this wiki cites it so often, and why its numbers should always be traced back to the auction sheet.
tagsorganization, media, education, industry, middle-east, united-arab-emirates
aliasesQahwaWorld, Qahwa World Magazine, qahwaworld.com, قهوة العالم

8 min read

Qahwa World

Qahwa World is an online coffee publication that reports on the specialty trade in three languages — English, Arabic and Russian — from the United Arab Emirates.123 Its name is the Arabic word for coffee, qahwa, and its tagline is “Explore the world of coffee through stories, culture, and community.”2

It is a publisher, not a coffee company. Qahwa World grows nothing, roasts nothing, imports nothing and judges nothing — a distinction worth stating up front, because this wiki cites it more often than almost any other outlet.

What it publishes

The site describes itself as “dedicated to celebrating and exploring the rich culture, history, and community of coffee,” and says it exists to “bring together coffee enthusiasts, professionals, and curious minds from around the globe to share stories, insights, and the latest developments in the coffee industry.”1 Its stated vision is “a world where coffee brings people together, fostering understanding and appreciation across cultures,” which it frames explicitly as a multilingual project — the site says its purpose is to break “down language barriers and create a truly global coffee community.”1

The content is organised into five sections:2

  • News — auction results, competition outcomes, company and market stories
  • Studies (دراسات القهوة) — longer explainers on varieties, processing and coffee science
  • Coffee Community — consumer-facing round-ups and guides
  • Interview — conversations with producers, roasters and competitors
  • Reflections — essays and opinion

The three-language structure is the thing that makes it unusual. Most of the specialty trade press this wiki draws on — Sprudge, Roast magazine — publishes only in English, and Perfect Daily Grind’s three languages are English, Spanish and Portuguese, aimed at Latin American producers. Qahwa World writes for the Arabic-speaking market instead: the Gulf, the Levant and North Africa, where coffee consumption is growing fast and almost none of the English-language trade press reaches. The Russian edition points at a second audience the English press largely skips.

Why this wiki cites it

Qahwa World turns up in the footnotes of notes across this wiki — on Echoes of the Peak and the Ethiopian auction record, on Cup of Excellence producer stories, on Dubai’s luxury Geisha sales, on the Cezve-Ibrik Championship, on Typica Mejorada’s murky origins, on Bensa and Indonesia.

That is partly because it covers events the English press treats as peripheral — Gulf coffee retail, the Cezve/Ibrik discipline, Middle Eastern buyers at origin auctions — and partly because it publishes quickly on results days. For several of those stories it is the only accessible write-up in any language this wiki’s sources cover.

How to read it

The same rule that applies to all Coffee media applies here, and this wiki has a worked example of why.

Trace every number back to the primary document. On Ramón Jarquín — the Nicaraguan smallholder whose Cup of Excellence lot changed his year — Qahwa World reports a winning price of 15 per pound**, while the Alliance for Coffee Excellence results table records **14.00/lb.4 The ACE sheet is the record; the Qahwa World figure is off by a dollar. The surrounding detail in that story — that he had been carrying his coffee two kilometres on his back, that the proceeds paid for his daughter’s medical treatment — appears only in Qahwa World and in no primary document, and it is exactly the sort of human detail no auction sheet would ever contain.4

That is the trade-off in one story. Qahwa World is often the only outlet that went and asked the producer what happened; it is not the outlet whose price column you should quote.

It is not a producer. Nothing in the public record presents Qahwa World as a farm, exporter, importer, roaster, auction house or competition entrant. No cupping scores, auction lots, farm altitudes or processing methods belong to Qahwa World itself, and it does not appear as an entrant in Best of Panama, Cup of Excellence or any World Coffee Championships listing. Where its name sits next to a score in this wiki, it is the reporter, not the coffee.

To verify

Who owns and runs it, and when it started. No page consulted here names an owner, an editor, a founder, a parent company or a registration number. The About page carries no masthead; the footer says only “Made with love by Qahwa World” and ”© 2025 Qahwa World.”12 The contact page gives the United Arab Emirates as the location, with a UAE mobile number and a general email address, but no street address, no company name beyond the brand, and no named staff.3 No founding date appears anywhere on the site. The publication’s LinkedIn presence uses a personal-profile URL (linkedin.com/in/qahwaworld) rather than a company page,2 which is consistent with a small or individually-run operation — but that is an inference, not a fact. Do not state an owner, a legal entity or a founding year for Qahwa World until a primary source gives one.

To verify

“Primarily Arabic.” The research report behind this note describes Qahwa World as operating “primarily in Arabic.” The live site offers three language toggles — EN, AR and RU — and the English edition is the default.2 Arabic is clearly a core language and the site’s name is Arabic, but “primarily Arabic” was not confirmed; no page-count, traffic split or editorial statement about language priority was found.

To verify

Its coffee-history articles conflict with this wiki in several places. Qahwa World’s historical explainers were summarised in the research report behind this note, and at least four claims in them do not match what better-sourced notes here record:

  • What qahwa meant. Qahwa World says the Arabic word originally meant “wine,” and links it to the verb qaha, “to suppress appetite.” Yemen records instead that the word “most likely meant simply dark,” sourced to a stronger reference. Both etymologies circulate in the literature; neither is settled, and this wiki should not present either as decided.
  • The Dutch and Java. Qahwa World dates the Dutch purchase of coffee at Mokha and its planting in Java to 1719. History of coffee puts the establishment of Dutch coffee in Java at 1696/1699 — two decades earlier.
  • Coffee “reaching the United States” in 1720. Qahwa World states that coffee reached the United States in 1720 via Gabriel de Clieu, sent to Martinique. The 1720 de Clieu voyage to Martinique matches History of coffee; Martinique is a Caribbean island and not the United States, and de Clieu’s seedlings seeded the Latin American coffee belt rather than North America.
  • The route into English. Qahwa World traces English “coffee” through German Koffie in 1582. Koffie is Dutch, not German.

Separately, its About-page origin story — that coffee “originated with a Yemeni hermit in 1450” at the port of Mokha — is the traditional al-Shadhili legend, which Yemen already flags as folklore rather than a documented event.1 None of this makes the outlet unusable; it does mean its history content should be read as popular writing and checked, in the same way its prices should be.

One claim in the same batch does hold up: Qahwa World attributes the first espresso machine to Angelo Moriondo in 1884, which matches the 16 May 1884 Turin patent recorded on Espresso machine.

Footnotes

  1. About us — Qahwa World — the publication’s own About page; source of the mission and vision statements, the multilingual framing, the absence of any named owner or founding date, and the “Yemeni hermit in 1450” origin narrative — confirmed via WebFetch ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Qahwa World — the site’s own homepage and footer; source of the five content sections, the EN/AR/RU language toggles, the tagline, the ”© 2025 Qahwa World” and “Made with love by Qahwa World” lines, and the social-account list including the personal-form LinkedIn URL — confirmed via WebFetch ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. Contact — Qahwa World — the site’s own contact page; source of the United Arab Emirates location, the UAE telephone number and general email, and the absence of a street address, company name or named staff — confirmed via WebFetch ↩ ↩2

  4. Qahwa World — Cup of Excellence changes a life in Nicaragua — the article underlying Ramón Jarquín; source of the $15/lb figure that conflicts with the Alliance for Coffee Excellence results table, and of the two-kilometre walk and medical-treatment details that appear in no primary document ↩ ↩2

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