Arabic Coffee (Qahwa): How to Make It With Cardamom, and How It Is Served

Arabic coffee — qahwa — is coffee boiled with cardamom, often with saffron or cloves in the Gulf, then poured unfiltered into small handleless cups called finjan, usually without sugar and with dates on the side. To make it at home, simmer 18 g of lightly roasted, medium-fine coffee in 500 ml of water for about ten minutes, add a heaped teaspoon of ground cardamom and a pinch of saffron for the last few minutes, let the grounds settle, and strain it into a flask.

It is less a single recipe than a family of them: most Arab countries developed their own way of roasting, spicing and serving it. What they share is the role of coffee as hospitality.

The recipe (Gulf style)

1. Boil the water, add the coffee, and simmer gently for about ten minutes, watching that it does not foam over.
2. Add the cardamom — and the saffron and cloves, if using — and simmer two or three minutes more.
3. Let it stand off the heat for a few minutes so the grounds settle.
4. Strain it carefully into a dallah or a vacuum flask, leaving the sediment behind.
5. Serve a few centilitres at a time in small cups, with dates.

Golden, brown or black: the roasts

Arabic coffee is made from arabica beans roasted anywhere from very light to dark — Wikipedia's account gives a range of roughly 165 to 210 °C — and the roast largely decides which kind you are drinking:

• Saudi Najdi and Hejazi coffee — very lightly roasted, giving a golden or blonde drink, spiced with cardamom and sometimes saffron, cloves or cinnamon.
• Gulf qahwa khaleeji — very light roasts with plenty of saffron and cardamom, which can turn the coffee bright yellow.
• Qahwah shamaliyya — "northern coffee" from northern Arabia, roasted longer and darker.
• Yemeni coffee — often brewed with hawaij, local spice blends.
• Levantine Arabic coffee — dark roast or a mix of light and dark, ground fine and made much like Turkish coffee in a long-handled pot called a rakwa, but spiced with cardamom.

Traditionally the green beans were roasted at home in a mihmas, a long-handled iron or brass pan, cooled, and pounded in a mihbaj, a large mortar. The rhythmic sound of the pestle carried, and it was understood as a sign that coffee was being made and guests were welcome.

Why cardamom

Cardamom is the defining spice. Green cardamom is a traditional flavouring for coffee and tea throughout the Middle East, and in some countries coffee and cardamom are pounded together in the mihbaj before brewing. In Gulf coffee the spice can be as prominent as the coffee itself.

A curious link connects cardamom back to coffee farming: cardamom was introduced to Guatemala before the First World War by a German coffee planter, Oscar Majus Kloeffer, and the country went on to produce it on a large scale.

How it is served

Arabic coffee comes with rules, and UNESCO, which lists the tradition as intangible cultural heritage, describes the core of them:

• Elders and guests are served first.
• The coffee is poured with the right hand, and the cup is received and returned with the right hand.
• A few centilitres at a time. The host or server keeps refilling the small cup.
• Shake the cup gently from side to side when you have had enough; that is the signal to stop pouring. Many people drink just one cup, since the serving is above all a gesture of hospitality.

In the Arabian Peninsula it is almost always accompanied by dates. It is served at family gatherings, weddings and tribal councils, including the majalis where disputes are settled, and guests are welcomed with the phrase "come in for coffee", whatever else is on offer.

UNESCO first inscribed "Arabic coffee, a symbol of generosity" in 2015 for the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, and extended the listing to Jordan in 2024.

Caffeine and health

Arabic coffee is gentle in one respect: the cups are small. Arabica beans contain about 12 mg of caffeine per gram, so a pot made with 18 g of coffee in 500 ml — about 35 g per litre — starts with roughly 215 mg in total. A 40 ml finjan from that pot therefore contains at most about 17 mg, and less in practice, because boiling does not extract every last milligram. Even three cups come in well below a single 240 ml mug of filter coffee at about 95 mg. Darker, stronger Levantine versions carry more.

Because it is boiled and not paper-filtered, Arabic coffee keeps the coffee oils that raise LDL cholesterol. In a 1995 Dutch study, boiled coffee carried about 3 mg of cafestol per cup; small cups mean less per serving, but people watching their cholesterol may want to read the coffee and cholesterol guide.

Where it began

Coffee drinking began in Yemen, around the port of Mokha, and spread to Mecca, Egypt and the Levant before reaching Turkey in the mid-16th century and Europe after that — the history of coffee tells the full story. The word itself travelled the same road: coffee entered English in 1582 via the Dutch koffie, from the Ottoman Turkish kahve, from the Arabic qahwa. Yemenis still mark Yemeni Coffee Day every 3 March.

For other spiced coffees, see café de olla and the dirty chai.