For the first time since the Roman Empire, Selim joined Yemen—where coffee had arrived from Ethiopia—to a polity that stretched from the Arabian peninsula to Bulgaria and from Iraq to Algeria. The commercial, institutional, political, and cultural connections Selim forged across the Old World allowed coffee to spread—first snaking up from Yemen across the Middle East; then to Ottoman eastern Europe, Iran, and India; and ultimately to western Europe, the Americas, and Southeast Asia.
