Fast Facts
- Named for: jazīra al qamar Arabic something like جَزِيرَة قَمَر Islands of the Moon)
- Long/Lat: 11.7 S/43.3 E, 10,400 mi East or 10 hrs from Castro Valley
- Population: 883,000, about 13 CV’s worth
- Size: 863 sq mi, 57 Castro Valleys.
- Avg temp in April: 83 F/29 C
- Median household income: Low, ~$3,000 annually
- Official languages: Arabic & French (Ethnicity = Comorian, but heavily influenced by the Bantu, Arabic, and French)
- Main industries: Spice exports; ylang-ylang an essential perfume oil, 80% of world’s supply comes from Comoros
So far, we’ve explored a few places in the Northern Hemisphere, so this is a good time to go south. How about an island chain, off the coast of Southeast Africa?
The country of the Comoros includes three islands: Ngazidja (Grande Comore), Mwali (Mohéli), and Ndzwani (Anjouan). A fourth island to the southeast, Mayotte, has noticeably different name: it’s French.
What were the French doing there? And, if you notice the Arabic reference to the name al Qamar or al-Qumr, what were the Arabs doing there?
Modern travel by air and road makes an African coastal archipelago seem remote. But the super-highways of the past were the oceans. Arab traders in the Early Middle Ages dominated both the Silk Road across Asia and the waterways–the Mediterranean, Black Sea, and Arabian Sea. Their 8th century technology was superior to that of Europe. While African Bantu tribes had settled on Comoros, they were colonized by the Arab spice traders and Muslim missionaries. Thus, today the islands are steeped in Islamic practices, architecture, language, culture (treatment of women), and even banking. The spice trade, noticeably cloves and vanilla, still thrives. The ylang-ylang harvested today as essential oil is likely why the Omanis nicknamed these the Perfume Islands.
During the slave-trading 17th & 18th centuries, the European colonizers started pushing out the Arabs. Dutch, Portuguese, English, and French were “exploring,” i.e., taking territories and creating industries of slaves, plantations, and trade. Germany “took” Tanzania; France took Mozambique, Madagascar, Mauritius; Britain took India, etc.
At one point the Mlawi island was entirely depopulated by both African and European slave-traders, then repopulated as colonizers tried to cultivate sugar plantations. Most of these islands later gained their independence—except for the island of Mayotte. The French held tightly to that spot so, despite its proximity to the other three islands, Mayotte is still a French territory.
However, it turns out that this area is especially volcanic. In May 2018, Mayotte was the site of one of the largest recorded underwater seismic events. A new undersea volcano was born–the Comoros are volcanic. The tiny islands peek above the ocean surface, but they are nearly ten thousand feet from ocean floor. Maybe Mayotte no longer wants to be French!
Long, long ago, not just back to the birth of humans but even longer—back to Gondwanaland 60 million years ago, the time when the continents were still together—Africa, the islands, Arabia, and India were still stuck together. A rift developed between Tanzania and Madagascar/India, and the split over time created the Arabian Sea. The Comors, however, were much younger than that, anomalous from the Gondwana-continents. Some 10-20 million years ago, the continuing volcanic seepage in that rift created land, eventually four little islands.
And maybe more. Really, if I were the French, I’d just let Mayotte and the rest of the Comoros just do their thing.
