Mokha (Arabic: المُخا, romanized: al-Mukhā), also spelled Mocha, or Mukha,[1] is a port city on the Red Sea coast of Yemen.

"[5] Lobo adds that its importance as a port was also due to the Ottoman law that required all ships entering the Red Sea to put in at Mocha and pay duty on their cargoes.

[11] English, Dutch, and French companies maintained factories at Mocha, which remained a major emporium and coffee exporting port until the early 19th century.

[13] They chiefly traded in the commodity of coffee, brought by camels to the port of Mocha from places further north and inland, primarily from Bayt al-Faqih.

[14] Other trading goods brought to Mocha for export included such spices and commodities as frankincense, myrrh, Dragon's blood, Socotrine aloe, cumin, and the Balm of Gilead.

[14] English and Scottish merchants employed with the East India Company established a trading factory at Mocha, receiving at times as many as 50 to 60 camel loads of merchandise in a single delivery.

[14] Passing through Mocha in 1752 and 1756, Remedius Prutky found that it boasted a "lodging-house of the Prophet Muhammad, which was like a huge tenement block laid out in many hundred separate cells where accommodation was rented to all strangers without discrimination of race or religion."

Mocha was very dependent on imported coffee beans from present-day Ethiopia, which was exported by Somali merchants from Berbera across the Gulf of Aden.

In the early 19th century these goods were almost exclusively handled by Somalis who, Salt says, had "a kind of navigation act by which they exclude the Arab vessels from their ports and bring the produce of their country either to Aden or Mocha in their own dows.

They were noted to be industrious in trade as well as keeping to the general peace: The Samaulies, who inhabit the whole coast from Gardafui to the Straits [Bab-el-Mandeb], and through whose territories the whole produce of the interior of Africa must consequently reach Arabia, have been represented by Mr. Bruce, and many others, as a savage race, with whom it would be dangerous to have connection.

[19]Amidst the varied classes which are found in this town, the Soumalies, or natives of the opposite coast of Africa, are the most calculated to excite the attention of a stranger.

In response, in December 1820, HMS Topaze and ships and troops belonging to the British East India Company attacked Mocha's North and South Forts, destroying them.

[21] A decade and a half later, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt would also attack the city and destroy its fortified wall closest to the sea, as well as its citadel.