Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros 0190071303, 9780190071301

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Maps
List of Illustrations
Glossary
Preface
1. The Context: Social and Geographical
2. From the Origins: Archaeology and Traditions
3. Written History: The European Encounter
4. The Nineteenth Century: From Sultanates to Colonies
5. Colonial Neglect and the Growth of Political Awareness
6. Independence, Revolution and Mercenaries
7. Federation, Separatism and Union
8. The Comorian People
Notes
Suggestions for Further Reading
Index
Illustrations

Citation preview

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

IAIN WALKER

Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea A History of the Comoros

3

3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America © Iain Walker, 2019 First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd All rights reserved. No part of Publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer A copy of this book’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress. ISBN 9780190071301

CONTENTS

Maps vii List of Illustrations xiii Glossary xv Preface xix 1. The Context: Social and Geographical 2. From the Origins: Archaeology and Traditions 3. Written History: The European Encounter 4. The Nineteenth Century: From Sultanates to Colonies 5. Colonial Neglect and the Growth of Political Awareness 6. Independence, Revolution and Mercenaries 7. Federation, Separatism and Union 8. The Comorian People

1 23 49 81 113 149 175 209

Notes 233 Suggestions for Further Reading 271 Index 275



v

Map of the Comoros

Map of the Western Indian Ocean

Map of Mayotte

Map of Ngazidja

Map of Ndzuani

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.

2.

3.

4.



The earliest known sketch of Ngazidja, from João de Castro’s Roteiro de Lisboa a Goa, an account of his voyage to India in 1538. João de Andrade Corvo, ed., Roteiro de Lisboa a Goa por D. João de Castro, Lisbon, Academia Real das Sciencias, 1882. See another version online on the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal website, http://purl. pt/27123/5/P164.html. An engraving of the island of Mayotte, portraying the visit of the Dutch admiral Jacob Van Heemskerk in 1601. Willem van West-Zanen, Derde voornaemste Zee-getogt (Der verbondene vrye Nederlanderen) na de Oost-Indien: gedaan met de Achinsche en Moluksche vloten, onder de Ammiralen Iacob Heemskerk, en Wolfert Harmansz, In den Jare 1601, 1602, 1603, Amsterdam, H. Soete-Boom, 1648. A 1705 map of the Comoros and the nearby mainland coast, by Pieter Mortier. Ngazidja is disproportionately large, its exaggerated size reflecting navigators’ wariness of the island. Pierre Mortier, Carte Particuliere des Costes de l’Afrique Depuis C. Del Gado Jusques Rio Mocambo, et les Isles aux Environs: Levée par Ordre Expres des Roys de Portugal sous qui on en a Fait la Decouverte, Amsterdam, 1705. Moussamoudo (Rough sketch of Johanna, half the town—H.B.M. Consulate & Anchorage) May 1875, J.E. The captions read, from left to right: Town walls; Old ruined Arab fort; Anchorage; H.B.M.’s Consulate with yard & landing place; Town walls with ruined fort; Mssrs Dunlop Mees & Co of Rotterdam (Agency); River ‘Ziancunde’; Saddle Island; Sultan’s House; Mosque. xiii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

 5.

 6.

 7.

 8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

xiv

Courtesy of the National Archives, London, UK: National Archives, Records of the Admiralty, ADM 127/36: ‘Admiralty: East Indies Station: Correspondence. Islands in the Indian Ocean; and the East Coast of Africa. Zanzibar, Madagascar, Comoro Islands and Mozambique. 1883-1888.’ The first issue of the government-owned national newspaper, then called Al-Watwany, with the portrait of President Ahmed Abdallah on the front page. Courtesy of Al Watwan. A silver 5000-franc coin, part of a prestige collector’s set of three coins bearing the portrait of Said Mohamed Cheikh, issued as a revenue-raising exercise in 1976 by Ali Soilihi. Sultan Said Ali ben Said Omar of Bambao, Ngazidja, surrounded by the notables of the island. Courtesy of the Centre National de Documentation et de Recherche Scientifique, Moroni, Comoros. Sultan Said Omar el Masela of Ndzuani with, to his right, Pierre Papinaud, governor of Mayotte from 1888 to 1890. A contemporary pro-Comorian roadside sign in Moroni. Photo taken by the author. The former governor’s residence, Dzaoudzi, Mayotte. Photo taken by the author. A wooden-framed mud-plaster house, Mwali. Photo taken by the author. Aerial view of the town and port of Itsandramdjini. Photo taken by the author. Bull-baiting during an ãda wedding at Fumbuni, Ngazidja. Photo taken by the author. The zifafa, a procession in the ãda wedding on Ngazidja, during which the groom is escorted to his future residence. Photo taken by the author.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS APPEARING IN THE TEXT

ãda na mila

the body of ritual customary practice; unless otherwise specified, ãda itself usually refers to the ritual marriage (Ng); see below ajojo Comorians, and specifically usually Wangazidja (Mg) banga hut where young boys sleep after puberty (My, Nz; cf. vala) bangwe public square in village (Ng, Mw; cf. mpangahari, trengwe) bedja ruler, pre- or early Islamic period (Ng) bidaa “innovation” in Islam fani ruler, pre- or early Islamic period (Mw, Nz) galawa outrigger canoe gungu ritual punishment that involves blackening an individual with soot and parading him or (more rarely) her through the streets of the village to be publicly shamed (Ng) hinya matrilineage, clan (Ng) itreya village of slave origin (Ng) kashikazi wet season, summer kusi dry season, winter kwasa kwasa speedboat used to carry migrants to Mayotte, generally illegally mafe local rulers, pre-Islamic period maferembwe local rulers, pre-Islamic period (Ng) makabaila aristocracy of Arab descent (My, Nz) manyahuli land collectively owned by a hinya (Mw, Ng) mdji village (see also ritual terminology below) mfaume “king”, used prior to the adoption of the title of sultan mila na ntsi body of customary law governing, amongst other things, ãda na mila (Ng, see pp. 34, 117–8, 176–8)

xv

GLOSSARY OF TERMS APPEARING IN THE TEXT

mpangahari ntibe ntsambu ntsi sabena silamu trengwe ulapva ustaarabu vala wamatsaha washendzi zanatany ziyara

public square in village (Nz; cf. bangwe, trengwe) meat dish eaten at ãda meals; Sultan Ntibe, the paramount sultan on Ngazidja seed of a cycad (Cycas thouarsii) typically eaten on Ngazidja land, kingdom Comorian repatriated from Mahajanga in 1977 (cf. zanatany) Comorian in Madagascar, Malagasy of Comorian origin (Mg) public square in village (My; cf. bangwe, mpangahari) customary banishment of an individual or a mdji (Ng) the state of being civilised; cf. washendzi hut where young boys sleep after puberty (Ng, Mw; cf. banga) “Bushmen”, the original inhabitants of Ndzuani uncivilised people, often used to refer pejoratively to African mainlanders Comorian born in Madagascar (Mg, but used on all islands, cf. sabena) pilgrimage to a local shrine; on Mayotte, a site of spiritual significance  

Islam and related terms (pp. 45–7 and 115–8)  

cadi fundi hatwib maulida mwalimu qasida sharifu

Islamic judge teacher, of any kind, but usually understood as a religious teacher preacher in the mosque, often a hereditary title reading celebrating the life of the Prophet; Maulid is the Prophet’s birthday learned man, a healer, often drawing on both religious and nonIslamic knowledge (see pp. 31–32) Islamic poem, often sung descendant of the Prophet Muhammed through his daughter Fatima

Political terminology, regime of Ali Soilihi (pp.  155–7) bavu liwali Commando Moissi Mongozi xvi

administrative division administrator of a bavu Soilihi’s elite military squad leader, guide

GLOSSARY OF TERMS APPEARING IN THE TEXT

mouhafidh mudir mudiriya wilaya

administrator of a wilaya administrator of a mudiriya administrative division administrative division

Clothing (pp. 217–8)  

bushuti, djoho, djuba, dragla kiemba, kofia mharuma nkandu bwibwi leso, saluva sahare, subaya shiromani

gowns worn by men and which indicate a particular status, customary or religious headgear, the former worn usually only by the groom at ãda weddings, the latter worn daily by all men shawl worn by an elder as a sign of status gown, usually white, worn daily by men black garment worn by women, similar to the Arab abaya colourful garments worn by women daily more formal dresses worn by women, usually in ritual contexts distinctive red and white patterned cloth typically worn by women on Ndzuani

Sufism (pp. 120–1)  

daira dhikr twarika zawiyya

circle; a group of sufi adepts repetitive chanting in a sufi ritual sufi brotherhood sufi meeting place

Dances (pp. 218–9)  

bomu, lele mama, wadaha, twarab biyaya, djaliko, sambe, shigoma, twarab

women’s dances, usually at marriages men’s dances, usually at marriages

Age system and ritual terminology (pp. 35, 117–20, 211–5; Ngazidja unless otherwise specified)  

Darweshi

group opposed to the expenses of the ãda on religious grounds

xvii

GLOSSARY OF TERMS APPEARING IN THE TEXT

djeleo guzi harusi hirimu manzaraka madjeliss mdji mndru mndzima wafomanamdji wanamdji wandruwadzima ntswa shenda shungu zifafa

ãda marriage event at which food is distibuted to be cooked an age grade occupied someone either close to or late in performing his ãda wedding; hence bwana harusi, the groom, and bibi harusi, the bride (all islands) age grade or set customary wedding (My) ãda marriage event of Islamic inspiration literally village, but also a group of men in the age system man who has performed his ãda; an elder (literally “complete man”, pl. wandruwadzima) an age grade of senior young men, yet to perform their ãda (literally, “kings of the children of the town”) collectively, boys and men who have not performed their ãda (literally, “children of the town”) see mndru mndzima nine days following the zifafa during which the groom is confined to the house meal in age system, often linked to marriage (all islands other than Ngazidja) ãda marriage event during which the groom is led to the nuptial house

Abbreviations, referring to island or language: Ng, Ngazidja; Mw, Mwali; Nz, Ndzuani; My, Mayotte; Mg, Malagasy

xviii

PREFACE

I sometimes try to cast my mind back, to revisit my impressions of the Comoros as I first saw them, some thirty-five years ago now, an enigmatic group of islands lying between Madagascar and Zanzibar that called out for me to stop and have a look. The islands were slightly mysterious, quite off the beaten track, absent from the anglophone view of the world, and prior to my visit I don’t recall meeting anyone who had even heard of them. I do remember that in 1985 the islands were both more French and more Islamic than they are today. The only cars seemed to be the ubiquitous Renault 4 (the ‘4L’), which, for a foreigner, was quintessentially French; the men, almost without exception, wore the kofia (embroidered skullcap) and nkandu (gown) that are today only really worn on Fridays, while the women were draped in leso, and rare were those who did not cover their hair. There was an exotic fragrance to the place—I only managed to visit Ngazidja—whether it was ylang ylang that I could smell or just exotic flowers generally, I don’t recall.   There were no other tourists as far as I could tell: I appeared to be the only guest in the once glamorous Hotel Karthala, although given the rundown state of the establishment, that was not particularly surprising (the water from the shower flowed across the floor, under my bed and out of the door to drip over the edge of the balcony). But the islands were charming, the people too, and the one beach I managed to find was, prior to the construction of Bob Denard’s Galawa Hotel, palm-fringed and quite deserted. And then there were the exotic volcanic landforms: eroded craters and lava flows, all giving the island a slightly surreal aspect. As a budding young anthropologist—I had just finished fieldwork for my master’s thesis in Mauritius—I asked a few appropriate questions and found out about an extravagant big wedding and a matrilineal kinship system which, a decade later, would tempt me back to do my PhD. Most of all, though, I had the feeling of being outside the normal flow  



xix

PREFACE

of events, isolated from the rest of the world, to which the island seemed to be only very tenuously connected by a small handful of weekly flights.   Today the islands have changed somewhat—most noticeably both the 4Ls and the Islamic attire have largely gone and the Hotel Karthala, alas, has also gone (it is now the faculty of arts of the university). But, surprisingly, much of the rest remains: the people, who have always been welcoming (and very tolerant of the peculiar questions that anthropologists ask); the exotic landscapes and the perfumes; and, of course, the weddings, ever more extravagant. My own perspectives on the islands have, of course, changed dramatically, and, with a view to introducing what follows, one of the greatest shifts is in my perception of the islanders’ relationships with the ‘outside’ world: isolated the islands most certainly were not. Comorians are great travellers, and are adept at negotiating their relationships with foreigners, both at home and away. This should have been immediately apparent on my first visit: unlike parts of Madagascar, where children would run after me crying Vazaha! vazaha! (‘European’) and adults would try to sell me something, in the Comoros, and despite the apparent absence of visitors, no one gave me a second glance: a reflection, I think, of the familiarity with the world that Comorians enjoy.   I hope in what follows I have been able to convey a sense of both the uniqueness and the worldliness of the islands (even if the latter is occasionally touched by some naivety), and redress some of the more widespread misconceptions about the country (particularly its baffling reputation for violence: it is among the most peaceful places on earth). Much history has been gleaned from books and archives but I have, of course, also learned a great deal from my Comorian friends and colleagues, historians of their own country and observers and guardians of traditions, and although I am grateful to all of them, I should particularly like to thank Damir Ben Ali, whose door I regularly darken with my notebook clutched in my hand. Henry Wright was kind enough to read a draft version of Chapter Two and provide valuable comments, and Edward Alpers did likewise for Chapter Three. I am grateful to both as well as to two anonymous reviewers of the final draft. I would particularly like to thank Robert Aldrich, who read a full first draft of the entire manuscript and whose critiques, and criticisms, were invaluable as I revised it. I hope it is a better book for his remarks; if not, the fault is entirely mine. Language, names and orthography I refer to the islands of the independent state by their Comorian names, Ngazidja, Mwali and Ndzuani, although I maintain the original names or xx

PREFACE

spellings in quotations. Their French names—Grande Comore, Mohéli and Anjouan respectively—are, of course, still widely used in the literature but the use of the local names has several advantages. First, it ‘decolonises’ the language used, particularly desirable given that in two cases, Ndzuani and Mwali, the French names are simply French attempts to represent the Comorian name. Secondly, it removes the ambiguity between ‘Comorian’ as an adjective for all islanders and ‘Comorian’ as referring only to people from Ngazidja; and thirdly, it allows me to use, with a degree of consistency, the various derivatives of the names for the people and the language: the prefixes m-, wa- and shirefer, respectively, to the singular and plural of the inhabitants and to the language. Thus one Mngazidja is only one of many Wangazidja who speak Shingazidja. However, I call the fourth island (Maore in Comorian) Mayotte, since this is the official name of the French department that it now is, and the constant use of the two names in parallel would be tedious; likewise, I use the spelling Maorais (which to the foreigner sounds the same as the Comorian word Mmaore) for the people, singular or plural, although I call the language Shimaore. This should not be read as a political statement but simply a stylistic convention that follows accepted current practice in the various islands.   As for place names, in the independent islands I use currently accepted Comorian orthography, even if it is not yet widely used (visitors to the islands looking for Washili should be prepared to end up in Oichili) while for Mayotte I use the sometimes curiously hybrid orthography used by the Institut Geographique National: thus Dzoumonyé rather than the old French Dzoumogné or the contemporary Dzumonye. Readers should be alert to the fact that there are a number of places across the islands that have the same name. Bambao, the sultanate on Ngazidja, is a different place from either of the two Bambaos on Ndzuani; likewise Domoni on Mwali and Domoni on Ndzuani; and so on. Finally, with the exception of a few families of French or Arab origin, Comorians do not have family names: Fatima, daughter of Ahmed, son of Mohammed, is Fatima Ahmed to her friends, but Fatima Ahmed Mohammed to distinguish herself from Fatima Ahmed Soilihi. I occasionally use ‘bin’ (‘son of ’) or ‘binti’ (‘daughter of ’) where this is a common part of the name in general usage. Note that, for the sake of readability, where I use Comorian words I do not generally distinguish between singular and plural forms; finally, unless otherwise indicated, any translations from original texts in languages other than English are my own.

xxi

1

THE CONTEXT SOCIAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL

The Comoros are somewhat enigmatic islands, little known in the Englishspeaking world, often only popping up as obscure answers to difficult questions on quiz shows. Those who have heard of them may mention the coelacanth, the famous fossil fish which was long thought to exist only in the waters around the archipelago; they will probably recall the mercenaries who effectively ruled the islands in the 1980s, and cite the ‘almost’ (sometimes ‘more than’) twenty coups or coup attempts since independence. Those who have flipped through the few pages allocated to them in one of Lonely Planet’s older guidebooks (the publisher has dropped the islands from their list since no one visits) might recollect references to perfumes, a volcano or the queen of Sheba. More attentive readers of the international press might be aware that the government of the United Arab Emirates issues Comorian passports to stateless residents known as Bidoon; might have noticed that one of the blockade-running ships boarded off Gaza by Israeli troops in 2010 was Comorian flagged; or remember that al-Qaida operative Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, held responsible for the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, was Comorian born. Those with even longer memories and a little insider knowledge may recall a Comorian angle to the Contragate arms-for-hostages deals of the Reagan years, or the islands’ role in apartheid South Africa’s attacks on the Frontline states.

1

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

  There are occasionally positive stories—generally in the travel sections— but even these are rare (the islands don’t seem to have quite what it takes for tourism) and a week later few recall the name of the country that featured in the previous Saturday’s supplement. Only the alert or the assiduous manage to piece together a more sustained narrative concerning the islands, but even to the informed the Comoros remain obscure, peripheral to historical analysis and current events, and within the area studies paradigm: not sufficiently African for the Africanists, too African for scholars of Madagascar, not really Arab but not creole like the other Indian Ocean islands either, they fall into several gaps. Nevertheless the islands have, like everywhere else, a deep history, and the obscurity in which the Comoros languish today belies their past importance even if, like many island groups, they sometimes had to struggle for attention. In the first half of the last millennium the Comoros were deeply embedded in regional economic networks, trading with southern Arabia and India as well as the African coast and Madagascar; between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries the island of Ndzuani in particular, or Johanna as it was known at the time, was an important supply point on the route to India, its name a familiar one within the British colonial service; and in the nineteenth century the islands were a fulcrum in the illicit slave trade, featuring in diplomatic struggles between France, Britain and the sultan of Zanzibar. It was only in the twentieth century, as a forgotten outpost of the French colonial empire, cut off from its trading partners and its social environment, that the archipelago sank into obscurity.   There are four islands in the group: Ngazidja (known in French as Grande Comore), Mwali (Mohéli), Ndzuani (Anjouan) and Maore (Mayotte). Since 1975, the three westernmost islands have constituted an independent state which has been through several iterations and is now known as the Union of the Comoros, while Mayotte chose, controversially, to remain a French possession and became a French overseas department in 2011. The four islands are both similar to and quite different from one another: unusually among contemporary African states, the Comoros are culturally quite homogeneous, sharing social structures, cultural practices and, depending upon whom you ask, a language. As we shall see, this is the source of many of the archipelago’s problems as well as one of its strengths, and negotiating a path between similarities and differences between the islands has been, and remains, a particularly arduous task for Comorians and their rulers. Sometimes the ties between the islands do indeed bind.   There is a well-known saying that characterises (or perhaps caricatures) the islanders: Wangazidja talk, Wandzuani work, Wamwali rest and Wamaore 2

THE CONTEXT

play. There is, as in all such sayings, a grain of truth in this depiction of Comorians. Wandzuani do indeed have a reputation for hard work. Their island is fertile but overcrowded, and with fewer remittances from the diaspora they have but their own resources to fall back on: microcredit project reports affirm that Wandzuani are savers. Life on Mwali, small, sparsely populated and productive, is perhaps less stressful: the pace of life is slow—the island is famous for being the only one of the four where there are donkeys— and the island’s small population means it is often left out of inter-island political intrigues, probably to its advantage. Mayotte for long enjoyed the limited benefits of being the seat of the colonial administration, although the plantation system in place on the island would have left little time for play, while the people of Ngazidja, renowned for their extravagant customary marriages, their esteem for oratory and their constant politicking, would probably not object to being called loquacious.   The history of islands—of small islands, of an archipelago—is necessarily also a history of movement, of migrations and traders: the comings and goings of people and things. Although islands are enclosed and bounded—it is a relatively simple matter to determine exactly where the island ends and the sea begins—because of this their inhabitants are dependent upon the outside world for their very existence: even the people are imported, never mind knives and cloth, gold, glass and (in more recent times) petrol and cement. It is perhaps ironic that Comorians were never great navigators. The sea has long been, and remains, a source of danger, populated by djinns that threaten the unwary, the reckless or the imprudent. Fishermen are often themselves feared, since if they are able to navigate the hazards of the open seas then, so the logic goes, they must have affinities, if not pacts, with the djinns. More prosaically, it is possible that this ambivalence towards the sea—which must be crossed if Comorians are to survive—is a result of the physical characteristics of the islands themselves. Only Mayotte has a lagoon, a place within which to sail without fear; at the other end of the archipelago, there are few reefs at all around Ngazidja and the bottom drops away very rapidly as one leaves the shoreline. Strong currents, large waves and sudden mists all discourage the uninitiated and undoubtedly prompted Comorians to leave the business of navigation to foreigners.   Those foreigners didn’t just trade with the islands. Many settled, bringing with them social and cultural practices which, if the foreigners were numerous enough or important enough, were incorporated into local practice, often being adopted side by side with pre-existing practices. Thus an early matrilin 3

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

eal society, one in which property and group membership are transmitted through the female line, adopted the age systems of a group of African immigrants; when Muslims arrived, the same society later converted to Islam; when Arabs arrived, the chiefdoms became sultanates; and so on. As a result Comorian culture appears both ‘authentic’, as one aid worker once told me, and highly imitative, as Comorians themselves are wont to lament: the truth lies somewhere in-between. One consequence of what might be called an additive process of social change is that the islanders, and particularly those of Ngazidja, engage in social practices that, according to the textbooks, are not generally expected to occur together. Age systems are not usually found in matrilineal societies, since age systems are frameworks for organising men into groups for social and political purposes based on age and (at least in theory) patrifiliation, and women shouldn’t have anything to do with them. Nor should age systems exist in chiefdoms (or sultanates), since the two are different and, in theory, contradictory principles of political organisation, the one egalitarian, the other hierarchical. Matriliny and Islam have long been considered ‘incompatible’, even if they do occasionally occur together, since a woman’s status in Islamic societies is generally inferior to that of a man; and polygamy and uxorilocal residence, a residence rule whereby a man lives in his wife’s house, seem simply outlandish. This latter combination was once particularly troubling to anthropologists and often cited simply as a theoretical possibility for the sake of completeness, which of course would not actually occur anywhere: how can a man have more than one wife if they live in different villages? But Comorian men can, and do, and one reason why this is possible is precisely that they are matrilineal: a man is often as attached to his sister’s family as he is to his own, or perhaps more accurately his wife’s, and his primary point of reference will always be his mother’s or his sister’s house, thus anchoring him socially and spatially in the clan of his birth: wives come and go, but a sister is forever. Such examples give an indication of how interactions between the Comoros and other peoples of the Indian Ocean world, together with the need to manage the practicalities of daily existence, have produced curious but perfectly functional juxtapositions of social structures.   While drawing up a list of practices like these may seem like anthropological navel-gazing, they have shaped the islanders’ relationships with one another and with the outside world, enabling them to be ‘authentic’ and ‘imitative’ at the same time. Authentic, in the sense that Comorian culture is Comorian, specific to the islands, the product of centuries of practice, and there’s nothing else quite like it; imitative, in so far as Comorians can, in draw4

THE CONTEXT

ing on other people’s practices, be like those other people, presenting themselves as having various things in common with the foreigners, be they Swahili, Arabs, Malagasy, English, French, who came to visit—as we shall see, a particular strategy in interactions with outsiders. For interacting with outsiders is crucial to the survival of island societies, very few of whom live in isolation: quite the opposite, as islanders are deeply connected to other places, islands or continents. Insularity has many implications and isolation is the least desirable of them, and the Comoros have often had to compete to survive.1   Nevertheless, all these practices bind the people together, establishing a cohesive sense of identity across the islands that is nested, like a matryoshka doll: people identify with their household, matrilineage, clan, quarter, village, region and island. These different spheres of identification are called into play according to the context, thus explaining how it is that one minute two villagers are asserting solidarity as Comorians, the next engaged in a bitter dispute between their neighbouring quarters. We will go into this in greater detail later, too, since not only is this relevant in the context of separatist movements, whether on Mayotte or on Ndzuani, but it is also (and the two phenomena are not indissociable) relevant in discussions of the Comorian nation state.   Another feature of small islands is that people seem to know one another, and this is at least partly due to the geographical constraints on network building. On a continent networks are physically unbounded, in so far as it is possible to construct a social network that remains physically contiguous but has no real limits to its extent. People’s networks will extend differently in different directions according to the contacts established, and while they will eventually dissipate—people are unlikely to have relationships with people 500 kilometres distant unless they have specific reasons for travelling that far—they are not otherwise bounded, except eventually linguistically and possibly, in the contemporary world, by national borders. On an island, however, the coast is a very real constraint on the maintenance of personal relationships; conversely there is little reluctance to travel as far as possible—which in any case is never more than a few dozen kilometres—since there is no risk of finding oneself confronted with cultural or linguistic obstacles to interaction, no hostile or incomprehensible foreigners. On the contrary, individuals find themselves drawn into island-wide social networks through their kin links—uxorilocal polygamy in particular sees men moving constantly around the islands—or through participation in rituals such as customary marriages, Islamic ceremonies, even professional relationships, particularly since the growth of a state administration has seen increasing numbers of people com 5

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

muting to the islands’ capitals. These activities all conspire to draw people together across the islands, establishing relationships whereby an individual can walk into a village that he (usually; women travel less) has never visited before and be fairly confident of finding someone he knows.   In writing a history of a place like the Comoros, where literacy was for long restricted to the religious context, and even then often only among the elite, we are obliged to draw on oral traditions and archaeological evidence until such time as written documents become available to us; despite the works of the medieval Arab geographers, this does not really occur until the arrival of the Europeans in the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although early Arab texts provide a wealth of detail about places further north—the Arab world itself of course, but also parts of the East African coast—they rarely reach the Comoros. This omission is slightly curious, since the archaeological evidence suggests that the Comoros were well integrated into the trading systems of the Indian Ocean as early as the end of the first millennium; but although writers such as al-Masudi or Ibn Battuta do speak of the African coast, there are no references to places that can conclusively be identified with the Comoros. Only al-Idrisi, writing in the twelfth century, provides us with a description of the archipelago. If this appears curious, it may simply be a reflection of the distance of the Comoros from the Arab heartland, and the greater interest of the Arabs, like the Europeans who followed them, in the Orient, and not of any absence of the islands from regional trading networks.   In the following chapters we will trace the history of the Comorian people, although this is difficult for the early years and there is as yet no consensus on who the islands’ first settlers were or whence they came. Logic suggests the nearby African coast, but there were Arabs and Austronesians involved, too, the latter the ancestors of the Malagasy, the people of Madagascar, who arrived from what is today Indonesia sometime during the first millennium. On the heels of these original inhabitants there were repeated arrivals of Arabs as well as Malagasy, and they both brought Africans, probably enslaved, from the mainland to the islands; if many of these slaves were subsequently re-exported, many more settled, forming the basis of the population that we find today. In the sixteenth century Europeans arrived—first the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch, the English and the French—and these people also had an impact on the islands, culturally, socially, economically and, finally, politically.   If people arrived to settle in the islands, many also left. Emigration was always a feature of Comorian society: islanders tend to travel and Comorians 6

THE CONTEXT

were long present in the towns and ports of the Indian Ocean littoral. At certain points in time emigration became desirable: people fled the attacks of Malagasy slave-raiders in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, moving either to one of the other islands or to the African coast. In the midnineteenth century, incessant and often violent wars on Ngazidja prompted another exodus, and many chose the new Omani capital in Zanzibar as their destination; later in the century the French occupation of the islands, and the imposition of forced labour and the head tax, led to more departures, again largely to Zanzibar, eventually constituting a small but influential community in what was now a British protectorate. In the twentieth century, following the annexation of the Comoros to the French colony of Madagascar, and the ensuing colonial neglect of the archipelago, large numbers of Comorians migrated to the big island in search of a better life. Finally, in the late twentieth century, population pressures and greater awareness of the possibilities available in the metropole saw Comorians head for France, initially with some ease as colonial subjects, but later, following Comorian independence in 1975, with increasing difficulty as immigration controls were imposed by the former colonial power. In the twenty-first century, Mayotte, now a French department, was sufficiently prosperous, relatively speaking, and sufficiently close to attract large numbers of migrants from neighbouring Ndzuani. The problems caused by this massive influx of migrants, who are irregular from the French perspective but ‘at home’ from a Comorian one, are seemingly intractable, and a significant minority of the population of Mayotte are deemed to be illegally present on French territory. Regardless of the status of these communities, remittances by the diaspora, whether from metropolitan France to Ngazidja or from Mayotte to Ndzuani, are essential to the survival of the country and its people. People have long been the islands’ principal export and they remain so today. * * * Before engaging with the history of the islands, it is useful to sketch out their physical characteristics, partly in order to be able to communicate a feel for the terrain and partly to provide some background knowledge, the better to allow for an appreciation of the social, political and, above all, economic contexts within which events have unfolded. Physically the islands have much in common.2 They are volcanic islands, part of a chain stretching westwards from northern Madagascar, created as the Somali plate moves in an easterly direction over a hotspot at a rate of about 45 mm per year. This hotspot is estimated 7

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

to be between ten and fifteen million years old, and would also appear to have been responsible for the reefs and banks to the east of the Comoros—the Geyser, Zélée and Leven Banks and the Îles Glorieuses—although it is unlikely that the volcanic areas of northern Madagascar were caused by the same hotspot since some are of similar ages to the Comoros. All the islands rise from the ocean floor, where depths are around 3500 m, although the depths between the islands are shallower: only 700 m between Ngazidja and Mwali, and less than 2000 m between Mwali and Ndzuani; between Ndzuani and Mayotte, however, the water is almost 3000 m deep. Although the crust on the sea floor in the immediate vicinity of the archipelago is oceanic, oil exploration activities in the early twenty-first century are based on the assumption that continental crust—and hence potential oil-bearing formations—lies to the west of the archipelago within the Comorian exclusive economic zone.   Mayotte is the southernmost, easternmost and oldest of the islands, at least seven million years old, and is the most highly eroded; it is the only island of the four to possess a barrier reef, enclosing an extensive lagoon said to be one of the largest in the world. Mayotte is, in fact, a number of islands: the main island, Grande Terre in French, Nyambo Bole in Shimaore, is some 40 km from north to south and approximately 22 km at its widest point, from west to east. The second island, Petite Terre (also known as Pamandzi or Nyambo Titi), about 6 km long and lying astride the barrier reef to the east of Grande Terre, is the largest of a number of islands and islets in the lagoon; the islet of Dzaoudzi, barely a rock and formerly seat of the French colonial administration, is linked to Petite Terre by a causeway. Mayotte is third in size in the archipelago and has a surface area of 374 km2; the island’s summit, in the southcentral part of Grande Terre, is Mlima Bénara (660 m) and there are several other summits over or close to 500 m. There is very little flat land on the island—the island’s airport runway is constructed largely on land reclaimed from the lagoon on Petite Terre—and no coastal plain of any sort, a few small areas of alluvial deposits excepted. Although now extinct, there are a number of eroded volcanic craters on Mayotte, signs of the island’s volcanic origins; the best preserved of these is the crater lake of Dziani Dzaha on Petite Terre.   Ndzuani, 70 km to the northeast of Mayotte, is slightly larger (424 km2) and somewhat younger—the oldest rocks have been dated to about four million years BP. Ntringui, at 1595 m, is the island’s highest peak and is the remnant of the summit of the volcano, now probably extinct: there is no evidence of its having erupted in the Holocene epoch. From Ntringui this triangular-shaped island, 35 km both south to north and east to west, is  

8

THE CONTEXT

articulated around three main ridges that run north, south and west to the Jimilime, Nyumakele and Shisiwani peninsulas respectively; these ridges have long constituted barriers to easy movement around the island. Ndzuani is extremely rugged, and equally scenic, dissected by numerous steep-sided valleys and cirques, but population pressure has led to deforestation and over-cultivation of much of the island’s accessible land, causing severe erosion. The land is slightly less rugged in Bambao Mtuni in the centre of the island, but only in the east, around Domoni and Bambao Mtsanga, is there any sort of coastal plain. Elsewhere the coast plunges steeply into the ocean, and although there are fringing reefs, only around the western Shisiwani peninsula is there a nascent lagoon.   The smallest island (30 km by 12 km, with an area of 211 km2), Mwali would appear to be slightly older than Ndzuani: the oldest rocks on Mwali have been dated to about five million years BP, the youngest to perhaps half a million years. Mwali, like Ndzuani, is volcanically extinct, and has been subjected to significant erosion, but although it remains rugged, the island has more extensive, although still small, stretches of coastal plain—on the north coast around Fomboni and in the southwest at Wala. A central line of hills runs the length of the island where the highest point at 790 m is Mze Kukule, and there are a number of islands off the south coast, known as the Nyumashuwa Islands. Mwali is almost entirely encircled by reef, but as on Ndzuani it is characterised as fringing.   Ngazidja is the largest island of the group: 1024 km2, 65 km from north to south and just over 20 km across at its widest point. It is also the youngest of the islands and is still volcanically active. The island is orientated along two fault lines, one running north–south and the other southeast–northwest: the island’s summit—and the more active of the island’s two volcanoes, Karthala (2361 m)—lies at the intersection of the two; some 30 km to the north is the second volcano, La Grille, several summits of which rise above 1000 m. These two volcanoes are separated by a plateau at an altitude of about 500 m, while a second line of volcanic activity to the southeast of Karthala has created the Mbadjini peninsula. Both volcanoes are shield volcanoes: there is no observable caldera in La Grille, but the caldera at the summit of Karthala is one of the largest in the world—3.5 km by 2.8 km—and contains five craters grouped in two larger structures, Shungu Sha Hale (literally, ‘the old cauldron’) and Shungu Sha Nyumeni (‘the new cauldron’). The slopes of Karthala are steep, up to 25° to the east, slightly gentler to the west; the island is, as befits a geologically young land, little eroded and thus does not present the 9

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

type of relief found on the other islands. Slopes are generally regular, although much of the north and west of the island is scattered with adventitious cones.   Historical eruptions of Karthala (there have been no historically recorded eruptions of La Grille) have been Hawaiian in character, gentle by volcanic standards and accompanied by flows of lava, or magma, of low viscosity. Historically recorded lateral magmatic eruptions—lava flows emerging on the flanks of the volcano—have been frequent, if irregular: between 1848 and 1880 twelve eruptions produced significant lava flows, seven of them between 1857 and 1862, most of which reached the coast. In the twentieth century lateral magmatic eruptions occurred in 1904, 1918 and 1977, of which only the last reached the coast, destroying much of the town of Singani in the process. Volcanic activity is more frequent than this list of lava flows might suggest, however, and there are regular magmatic eruptions at the summit of Karthala, as well as the occasional phreatic eruption—the latter are more explosive eruptions usually without any flow of lava but with expulsions of rock and ash. In the twentieth century there were recorded summital magmatic eruptions in 1948, 1952, 1965 and 1972, the last producing significant lava flows outside the caldera, and a phreatic eruption in 1991. In the first decade of the twenty-first century there were eruptions in 2005 (twice, in April and in November), 2006 and 2007. The latter two were magmatic within the caldera, but the eruptions in 2005 were phreatic, leading to significant ash falls across the southern part of the island. Villages were evacuated; in the case of the November eruption, 175,000 people were affected, and there was one fatality. Generally, the volcano is relatively active, although it does not erupt as frequently as the Piton de la Fournaise on Réunion.   The volcanic character of the islands largely precludes the possibilities of exploitable mineral deposits, although in 2009 it was announced that a team of Iranian geologists had identified viable deposits of olivine (on Ngazidja) and bauxite (on Ndzuani); there has been no further discussion of these deposits. In the second decade of the 2000s, following discoveries of oil and gas reserves off the coasts of southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique, licences were granted for offshore hydrocarbon exploration in the western sector of the Comorian economic zone. Whether this basin extends into Comorian waters remains to be seen; the existence of exploitable reserves would be economically significant to this resource-poor state even if the subsequent drop in the global price of oil dampened enthusiasm for further exploration.   There are a variety of soil types across the archipelago, from highly fertile andosols and cambisols to somewhat sterile and highly eroded oxisols; the 10

THE CONTEXT

last-mentioned include laterite and bauxite. There are many recent uneroded lava flows on Ngazidja that are clearly visible as swathes of black basalt running from the flanks of Karthala to the ocean; in other areas, particularly La Grille but also parts of Mbadjini, there are well-eroded and highly fertile andosols: these areas are the most agriculturally productive parts of the island, and there is extensive market gardening in La Grille, growing fresh produce for sale in the markets of the capital, Moroni. On other parts of the island, soils are poor or non-existent: much of the central part of the island is rocky and highly porous, this latter feature being responsible for the almost complete lack of surface water on Ngazidja. Water emerging from the few springs that exist rapidly disappears into the ground, and apart from a large pond (Hantsongoma) on the northern flanks of Karthala and a stream in La Grille there are no perennial rivers or lakes on the island, forcing most of the island’s inhabitants to rely on rainwater.3   On the other islands soils are better developed and more evenly distributed. Both Ndzuani and Mwali are particularly fertile and on Mayotte in particular, as one might expect of an older island, there is some laterite. Mwali has historically been highly productive agriculturally, and remains so today; Ndzuani is also productive, although the rugged relief meant that the island’s cultivable area was significantly smaller than the total land area of the island. Much of the historically uncultivated land has, under the pressure of rapid population growth, been cleared and come under cultivation over the past half-century, leading to rapid deforestation—there is very little remaining forest cover on Ndzuani—followed by severe land erosion and a subsequent loss of topsoil. Nevertheless, the island continues to produce food as well as cash crops such as cloves and ylang ylang, particularly in the Nyumakele, Bambao Mtuni and around Patsy. Pressures on land on Mwali and Mayotte are less acute, but for different reasons: Mwali has a significantly lower population density, while Mayotte has, as a French territory, been subject to economic changes that have seen increases in demand being met by imports rather than by increased agricultural production.   The Comoros enjoy a tropical maritime climate, shaped by the western Indian Ocean monsoon system. The monsoon system is regulated by the intertropical convergence zone (ICZ), a band of low pressure that encircles the earth near the equator and into which the trade winds (so called for their importance to navigators) blow: due to the effect of the Coriolis force and influence of pressure systems in higher latitudes, these winds are southeasterly in the southern hemisphere and northeasterly in the northern hemisphere. 11

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

However, the ICZ moves with the seasons and lies south of the equator in January, prompting the northeasterly winds to back to the northwest, and over the Indian subcontinent in July, when the southeasterlies veer to the southwest. This highly regular dynamic regulates the climate. Thus in the southern summer between December and March a warm and humid northwesterly wind that has traversed the Indian Ocean brings rain to the islands: the wind, and by extension the season, are known as kashikazi. In the southern winter, the cooler and drier southeasterly trades return to the islands: these winds, and the season, are called kusi. Between the two, in April and May, is matulahi, a short season marked alternately by moments of calm and by rough seas as the winds change; similarly, in October, there is a wind called nyombeni.4   Rainfall varies both within and between the islands; there are significant variations with both altitude and wind exposure as well as from month to month: the wet season peaks in January and February when torrential downpours are common, if usually brief in duration, while the driest months are September and October. Dzaoudzi, on Mayotte, receives approximately 1000 mm of rain annually; in Moroni the average is closer to 2700 mm. Drier areas of Ngazidja (the north and southeast) receive significantly less rain (1400 mm in Fumbuni) than the upper slopes of Karthala, which may receive more than 7000 mm in wet years. The variations on the other islands are less extreme—the west coasts of Mwali and Ndzuani receive 2200 mm and 2700 mm respectively, while drier parts of these islands receive half that. Generally, rainfall is sufficient to meet needs except on Ngazidja, where the lack of surface water poses problems in those parts of the island that rely on collected rainwater (effectively anywhere outside the Moroni agglomeration): drought is particularly acutely felt in the northern and eastern parts of the island, which often suffer water shortages towards the end of the dry season in October and November.   If rainfall varies significantly, temperatures fluctuate little throughout the year: at sea level average minima are between 18° and 23° while the average maxima range is from 28° to 32°. Owing to the influence of the lagoon Mayotte is slightly warmer than the other islands, while cold air descending from the volcano can lead to chilly mornings in winter in Moroni. Temperatures are, of course, lower at altitude and in winter it can be significantly cooler in Bambao Mtuni on Ndzuani and in La Grille and the upper regions of Mbadjini on Ngazidja, where average temperatures in August are below 20°.   Local variations within the islands constitute microclimates and, together with soil types, have a corresponding impact on the archipelago’s flora. 12

THE CONTEXT

Vegetation types are tropical subequatorial, although they have been substantially modified since the arrival of humans on the islands. The original rainforest, undoubtedly once extensive in higher rainfall areas on all four islands, has effectively disappeared everywhere except for limited stands at or near the summits of the three smaller islands (of which the most extensive is found on Mwali, although much of Mwali’s forest is regrowth following human activity) and a larger but still significantly reduced belt on the slopes of Karthala between about 1200 m and 1800 m. Elsewhere, including in La Grille, the original forest has either disappeared or been modified by the introduction of underplanted crops such as bananas and taro. In areas where rainfall is lower there are limited stands of dry forest, but again generally only at altitude: the flora between sea level and 500 m is largely the result of human intervention and a significant proportion is composed of alien species. Deforestation is a serious problem across the archipelago, leading not only to a loss of habitat and species diversity of both flora and fauna, but to soil erosion and the accompanying loss of surface water: several rivers on Ndzuani, once perennial, are now frequently dry.   Although there is a high level of species diversity across the islands—there are an estimated 2000 plant species in the archipelago and this is certainly an underestimate—there is a relatively low level of endemism, particularly at the insular level. Nevertheless, a number of indigenous plants, many of which are also found in Madagascar, have been of economic significance. Trees such as Comorian ebony, Comorian mahogany, Comorian camphor laurel and the takamaka were (and remain) particularly sought after for the construction of dhows and outrigger canoes, as well as for more general construction purposes. Although most species are found across the islands, Ngazidja is the only island where the forest was commercially exploited in the colonial era, the Comorian mahogany being the principal product.   The rainforest of the middle slopes of Karthala is much as one might imagine a rainforest to be, tall trees shrouded in mist and hanging with lianas, orchids and lichens while ferns and tree ferns grow between them. Towards the summit of the volcano the lower temperatures mean that the forest cover disappears and here the ground is covered in heathers and other small shrubs. At lower altitudes, much of the area between Karthala and La Grille on Ngazidja as well as the drier deforested areas on Mayotte and Ndzuani is grassland, used as pasture for cattle. Several exotic species have been widely used for reforestation projects, including eucalypts and casuarina, and many other trees found in the archipelago today are also introduced. Familiar and widespread 13

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

throughout the tropics, they include both food plants, such as breadfruit, mango, coconut, fig, tamarind, banana, lychee and jackfruit, and ornamental or utilitarian species, such as albizia, acacias, laurels, African tulip, Indian almond, kapok and baobab. Many of these plants also provide construction material—coconut fronds, for example, are used in housing, and the jackfruit is particularly prized for the construction of outrigger canoes. There are some areas of mangrove on the smaller islands, particularly Mayotte; the wood was formerly widely used in house construction. There are also stands of giant bamboo on Mayotte.5   A number of species introduced in the colonial period were commercially exploited, and the presence of some of these plants has given the islands their nickname, the Perfumed Isles: ylang ylang (an essential ingredient in perfumes), spices such as cloves, pepper, vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon, and crops such as cocoa, coffee, sisal and sugar cane were all cultivated with varying degrees of success; several remain important today. Other species imported following European contact with the islands include New World plants that now form an essential part of the local diet: cassava (manioc), maize, potato, papaya, pineapple and tomato have either replaced former subsistence crops, such as varieties of African millets and sorghum, or supplemented them; the mung bean and the pigeon pea are both still widely eaten, as of course are taro, rice, coconuts and bananas, these last-mentioned all Asian crops introduced by early settlers. In addition to utilitarian and ornamental plants there are a number of introduced species now recognised as noxious, in particular the (edible) strawberry guava, found on all islands and sold in hand-woven baskets by children on the roadsides in summer; the Indian laurel, introduced to Mayotte for firewood in the sugar industry; and vigne marronne, a bramble related to the blackberry and also introduced to Mayotte.   One food plant that is symbolic of, if not unique to, Ngazidja is the palmlike cycad, Cycas thouarsii, known locally as ntsambu. The origins of this plant are somewhat enigmatic—the only naturally occurring populations elsewhere appear to be in northern Madagascar, and since the plant’s closest relatives are found in India and Indonesia it is thought that it was brought to the region by Austronesian seafarers. The tree’s golf-ball-sized nut contains neurotoxinproducing cyanobacteria which need to be destroyed by a time-consuming process of washing and fermentation before the ntsambu is fit for human consumption. Once processed, the nut is cooked with fish and coconut and a little seasoning, producing a dish that generally has a characteristic pungent odour—a particularly strong (and ripe) French cheese is a common compari14

THE CONTEXT

son—and which is generally only appreciated on Ngazidja. Indeed, the plant is culturally symbolic on the island, particularly in the northeast: oral traditions recount how it was the cause of a war at some point in the distant past between the kingdoms of Washili, said to be the traditional home of ntsambu, and Hamahame, whose people came and stole seeds. Today ntsambu remains symbolic of Washili identity, despite claims over the plant by the inhabitants of Hamahame, even if other Comorians also eat it; it is less pungent when ground into flour and baked or boiled in water to make a gruel.   If the islands’ flora is particularly rich, the fauna (as befits young volcanic islands) is correspondingly poor, particularly among vertebrates, although there is a higher level of endemism among the archipelago’s fauna than among the flora. It is estimated that as many as two-thirds of the 1200 insect species so far enumerated are endemic, but apart from the butterflies the most visible invertebrates are the large and ubiquitous Golden Orb Web Spiders that spin their webs from telephone lines and power cables; there is also a Black Widow spider, fortunately less commonly encountered. The islands are visited by numerous migratory bird species, and non-migratory bird species include a variety of sunbirds, flycatchers and owls; a commonly seen bird is the bright red fody.6   The waters around the islands are reasonably well stocked with fish, although given the lack of reefs there are, except around Mayotte, fewer reef fish than around other Indian Ocean islands. Fish commonly seen by divers and snorkellers, and many of them also commonly eaten, include parrotfish, angelfish, butterflyfish and emperors; the puffer fish and various members of the Scorpaenidae family (stonefish, scorpionfish and lionfish), all poisonous; and groupers, sea bass, snappers and breams. Sardines, known locally as simsim, are particularly abundant in the summer in shallower waters and attract crowds of fishermen in their outrigger canoes in places like Itsandra bay on Ngazidja. In deeper waters there is a range of species common to most tropical waters: trevally, bonito, wahoo, various tunas and mackerel, as well as the big game species: marlins, swordfish and barracudas. Few of these fish, with the exception of some of the tunas, are in any way endangered and all of them are eaten. A number of sharks and rays are found in Comorian waters and many of the sharks are relatively common, although shark fin harvesting for the Chinese market—now illegal in Comorian waters—has been responsible for a decline in shark numbers over the past three decades.7   One fish that is relatively well known outside the islands is the coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), one of the few living members of the Sarcopterygii 15

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

class of lobe-finned fish and something of a national symbol in the Comoros— the national football team is nicknamed the Coelacanthes. These fish are distinguished from the majority of fish species (the ray-finned fishes) by the possession of bony, limb-like fins that are the precursors of the limbs of terrestrial animals: they are therefore considered to represent an evolutionary stage between the fishes and other vertebrates. The fish is a shiny dark-blue colour in its natural habitat and mature specimens (the female is generally slightly larger than the male) can measure 180 cm and reach 80 kg in weight. Their lifespan is estimated at sixty years, and they are ovoviviparous, giving birth to live young.   The first contemporary coelacanth recorded by science was caught in December 1938 by a trawler off the South African coast, near the estuary of the Chalumna River. The trawler’s captain, intrigued by the curious fish that had turned up in his net, asked a friend who worked at the East London Museum to have a look at it. The friend, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, was unable to identify the fish but, recognising its uniqueness, had the specimen preserved by a taxidermist while she searched through the reference books. She finally concluded that it was a coelacanth, a fish thought to have been extinct since the Mesozoic Era some 65 million years ago, but her identification was dismissed by the museum’s staff, who believed it to be a rock cod. Undaunted, she sent a sketch to Professor J.L.B. Smith, an ichthyologist at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, who confirmed Courtenay-Latimer’s identification, immediately and correctly recognising the fish as a coelacanth, which he named in her honour.   The taxidermic process had destroyed all the internal organs of the fish and a second specimen was essential to a full description of the species, but it was not until 1952 that one was finally caught and offered to Eric Hunt, a British ship’s captain, in Mutsamudu on Ndzuani. Hunt, alert to the search for the fish, contacted Smith, who flew to the Comoros, took possession of the specimen and returned to South Africa with it. The rarity of the fish was largely due to the inaccessibility of its habitat—the coelacanth is a nocturnal cave-dweller that lives at depths of between 100 m and 500 m—but Comorian fishermen had long been familiar with it: known locally as gombesa, they caught it regularly if infrequently even though it is poor eating. Several more fish were subsequently caught in Comorian waters in the 1960s and 1970s, although attempts to maintain an individual specimen alive have systematically failed due to the low pressure at sea level. Observation in the natural habitat has assisted in the study of the fish, and the first film of a coelacanth in its natural  

16

THE CONTEXT

habitat, including the characteristic ‘head dance’, was made in 1986 by a team led by Hans Fricke of Germany’s Max Planck Institute.   Apart from the first fish, however, no further specimens were caught elsewhere until the mid-1990s, when two further specimens were trawled off Madagascar. Since then coelacanths have been located off South Africa as well as off the coasts of Kenya and Tanzania; a second species (Latimeria menadoensis) was identified off the northern coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia, in 1997. Nevertheless, the coelacanth remains associated with the Comoros, where the population has been estimated at 500 individuals.   Of the other marine vertebrates, both the green turtle and the hawksbill turtle are found in Comorian waters: both are endangered, the latter critically so. The green turtle nests on Mwali, where it is protected—and may be seen— within the Mohéli National Park; fifty or so hawksbills also nest on Mwali. Terrestrial vertebrates include a variety of reptiles, among them two species of Phelsuma, brightly coloured day geckos, both exported for the pet trade. Some of the smaller lizards are under threat from the now-ubiquitous common agama, introduced from Madagascar in the colonial period.   There are several species of bats present in the archipelago, and visitors will certainly see the large Comoros flying fox, common on all the islands and often active during the day, particularly in summer when the mangoes ripen; the smaller and nocturnal insectivorous bats are less easily seen but are not rare. Less common is the Livingstone’s flying fox, which, with a wingspan of up to 140 cm, is the world’s largest bat. Considered endangered, it is endemic to the Comoros, where there are an estimated 1200 individuals in seventeen colonies on Ndzuani and five colonies on Mwali: it is not found on the other islands. They are active both day and night, their principal foods being figs and kapok flowers. In the early 1990s it was thought that their numbers were as low as 150 individuals and the British NGO Action Comores established a research, monitoring and education plan to save the species. Their greatest threat is the loss of habitat, particularly on Ndzuani. Breeding programmes have been established at the Jersey and Bristol zoos and the Comorian government has established a conservation plan, although it is hampered by a lack of funding.   All other mammals found in the Comoros seem to have been introduced. The mongoose lemur, from Madagascar, has certainly been introduced to the three westernmost islands, although it is not found on Mayotte, where the common brown lemur is found. Once considered to be a subspecies of a similar species in Madagascar, the lemur found on Mayotte is no longer reckoned sufficiently distinct from populations on the larger island to warrant taxo 17

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

nomic differentiation, and both species of lemur found in the Comoros would therefore appear to have been introduced by humans. The tenrec, a small hedgehog-like animal, also of Malagasy origin, was probably introduced for food and, despite being prohibited to Muslims, is still eaten today. Among the recently introduced mammals, the small Indian civet is rarely seen but the domestic mouse, the black rat and the mongoose are ubiquitous. The mongoose was introduced to deal with the rat problem (and, allegedly, snakes) but appears to have had little success. There are also more common domestic animals—dogs, cats, cattle, sheep and goats, and pigs, now feral.   In addition to the land mammals there are a number of marine mammals, not in any sense endemic but seen with varying degrees of frequency in Comorian waters. The dugong, once relatively common around Mwali, seems to have been over-hunted and the population, while stable, has been significantly reduced. There appear to be no significant numbers of dugong around Ngazidja or Ndzuani and only a handful around Mayotte. Various species of dolphins are often seen around the islands, including the killer whale, and there are several species of true whales in Comorian waters: humpback whales are a common sight during the winter migration season.   Environmental degradation and over-exploitation of resources combined with a high level of endemism have caused some concern both locally and internationally, and the islands are, together with Madagascar, considered one of the world’s ‘hottest’ hotspots for conservation initiatives. As a result there are now legal frameworks in place for the protection of the environment in the independent islands, where the first protected area to be legally gazetted was the Mohéli Marine Park. Created in 2001 and originally covering 404 km2 of coastline, waters and islands south and east of the island of Mwali, the park includes the green turtle nesting areas. It was a winner of the 2002 Equator Prize, awarded by the Equator Initiative and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to recognise outstanding community efforts at conservation and the sustainable use of biodiversity. In 2015 the park was extended to become the Mohéli National Park, and now includes a large part of the centre of the island. In 2016 the government established a further five protected areas which are also now styled national parks: the coastline in the north of Ngazidja around Mitsamihuli; the Coelacanthe park, in the south of Ngazidja, where there is a coelacanth visitors’ centre; most of the upper slopes of the Karthala volcano; the coast of the western tip of Ndzuani; and Mount Ntringui, also on Ndzuani.   It remains to be seen whether these initiatives will be developed since the government rarely has the resources for more than a token funding of environ18

THE CONTEXT

mental management. Turtle poaching remains a serious problem on Mwali and has occasionally led to violent confrontations between poachers and villagers, while foreign fleets overfish the Comorian economic zone with impunity since the government lacks the boats to patrol the waters. Likewise, on land, the development of a consumer society has not been accompanied by a parallel development of waste treatment facilities, and littering and the random disposal of waste, often over the sea walls in the larger towns, are inevitable in the absence of effective waste collection and disposal mechanisms. Much environmental work is carried out by local and international NGOs and by volunteers rather than by the state.   Since it is part of France, the legislative framework is more extensive on Mayotte and there are a number of managed protected areas. By far the largest of these is the Parc Naturel Marin de Mayotte, created in January 2010, which comprises the entire exclusive economic zone of Mayotte, some 68,381 km2 of the Mozambique Channel, including the lagoon and most of the islands within it. Mayotte also has a network of six forestry reserves, covering 5545 hectares on the island.   Given the lack of more obvious tourist attractions in the archipelago, ecotourism has become one of the strategic elements in contemporary economic development plans and is supported by the prefecture on Mayotte, the Comorian government, and international bodies such as the European Union and the UNDP. In 2007 several Comorian sites were added to the Tentative Lists for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List: the various marine parks; the ecosystems of Karthala, Mwali and higher-altitude landscapes of Ndzuani; the historic town centres of Mutsamudu, Domoni, Itsandramdjini, Ikoni and Moroni; and the cultural landscapes of the perfume plantations on Ndzuani. Whether any of these sites have the requisite value and status to be listed is debatable and there has been no progress on any of these listings.  

* * * The problems faced by the Comoros in the twenty-first century—and by Mayotte as much as by the independent islands, even if the French island is fortunate enough to be the beneficiary of significant French and European investment—are the product both of the islands’ physical characteristics and of their histories. Small volcanic islands have limited natural resources and often suffer from their isolation: the movement of islanders is difficult and requires effort, and while life for mainlanders may not always be easy, migra 19

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

tion to better places, with perhaps more fertile soils or higher rainfall, is less complicated. Islanders needed to build boats, seek destinations and, these days, obtain visas. Of course, as we shall see, Comorians have done this too over the years, just one of their strategies in the struggle for economic security. Nevertheless, until the twentieth century not only were the islands generally able to support their populations (periods of conflict excluded), but they produced food and other agricultural products for export. As we observed above, and as we shall see in the following chapters, Comorians were skilled at developing their networks not only within the wider region but, following the European arrival in the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century, with the wider world. Far from being forgotten outposts of a foreign colonial power, in centuries past the Comoros were well known to Arab navigators, English civil servants and American whalers while Comorians themselves travelled to places as far afield as Barbados, Siberia, London and Penang. The ruling classes were educated in Mauritius, Zanzibar or Egypt and could discuss the American War of Independence and nautical navigation with visitors, often in English or Portuguese if their visitors were unable to speak Arabic.   If the islands might not have been wealthy, they were certainly no worse off than their neighbours, on the mainland or in Madagascar, and they survived by exploiting a niche as purveyors of goods—whether locally produced or, in the case of slaves, imported for resale—until the opening of the Suez Canal and the era of steamships and, later, aviation finally put an end to their trading activities. A century of economic exploitation and colonial neglect was followed by the development of a consumer society coupled with rapid population growth, and culminated in the chronic economic crises—or perhaps a single, enduring economic crisis—that the islands have grappled with since independence. Today the economy is based on a small handful of niche crops whose prices are chronically unreliable and the remittances of a large diaspora, most of them in France. The development of other sectors of the economy— whether manufacturing, tourism or services—is all but impossible given the high cost of labour, the lack of raw materials, the distance from markets, poor communications and poor infrastructure.   More than this, however, the country is chronically mismanaged. Daily life is often chaotic, and often seems to be getting worse: electricity and water supplies have not been reliable since the 1980s; roads are rarely maintained and are regularly impassable; air and sea services between the islands are frequently suspended; and even the internet connection with the outside world was cut for two days in late 2016. Salaries in the public sector often go unpaid 20

THE CONTEXT

and foreign private investors frequently turn out to be unreliable at best, conmen at worst. The country’s leaders lead mendicant lives, travelling to Europe and the Arab states in quest of funds, while visitors who arrive from neighbouring countries are taken aback by the absence both of facilities taken for granted elsewhere and of the state of daily life generally. The paradox here is that the population, well-travelled and well-educated, are well aware that things are different elsewhere and are certainly capable of managing the country. Indeed, the surprise lies in the fact that at a local level life goes on, and does so reasonably smoothly, even in the absence of the state.   Mayotte is somewhat different, but some of the differences are superficial. The economy is, if anything, in even worse shape than that of the other islands since French labour laws render even the harvest of cloves or ylang ylang unprofitable, and the island survives on massive subsidies from the central government and the European Union. The acquisition of the status of French department in 2011 has undermined many customary social and cultural practices and, to the consternation of many, particularly the older generation, Islamic and customary laws have been abolished, replaced by French laws and, more significantly, the French judicial system and all that it implies: the impersonal character of the courts, the seemingly arbitrary activities of the police force, the need for lawyers, and the abandonment of the processes of negotiation and mediation that characterised the pre-existing systems. Income and land taxes are now ubiquitous; customary practices such as collective working parties are no longer legal—legal minimum wages and taxes regulate labour, and building codes mean that building one’s own house is no longer permitted; Islamic marriages are no longer officially recognised, and polygamy is banned: the social effects of all these changes are as disruptive as the economic ones.   The high cost of living on Mayotte—almost everything is imported—has led to social unrest on several occasions while the higher incomes and better social services on the island—health and education in particular—attract migrants in their thousands from neighbouring Ndzuani, irregular under French immigration law but, since the Comorian government does not recognise the French occupation of Mayotte, not from a Comorian perspective. It is now estimated that as many as 40 per cent of Mayotte’s inhabitants are undocumented, and French mismanagement of these migrations has exacerbated an already difficult situation. Twenty thousand people are deported annually, and those who remain are held responsible for the growing crime rate on the island. Bands of youths—said to be immigrants despite the evidence that most are locally born—roam the streets of the towns and barricade  

 

21

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

the roads in rural areas while the rest of the population are afraid to go out at night. Members of the French administration, almost all of whom are career civil servants from Europe, apparently either fail to recognise the specificities of the local context or pursue the line that Mayotte is now fully part of France and that the population should be treated and should act accordingly. While there is no easy solution to the problems that Mayotte faces, ignoring the fact that Mayotte is socially, culturally, economically and geographically part of the Comoros does not seem to be helpful.

22

2

FROM THE ORIGINS ARCHAEOLOGY AND TRADITIONS

The contemporary obscurity of the Comoros belies the fact that they were once deeply involved in regional networks: the islands attracted visitors from around the Indian Ocean, and Comorians themselves travelled widely, trading and studying, undertaking pilgrimage or seeking allies. In order to understand the place of the islands on the world stage, and the development of their culture and social structures, we need to return to the beginnings, tracing their role in the settlement of Madagascar, for example, and in the development of trade in the western Indian Ocean—the trade in slaves to be sure, but also in other goods that the islands either produced or re-exported, as Comorians carved out niches for themselves both as middlemen and as producers in these trading networks. Some of this very early history remains obscure. For a long time the islands were neglected by archaeologists, who preferred the more fertile hunting grounds of the Swahili coast, or of the cradle of humanity further inland in East Africa, and funds were as limited as the interest for a small cluster of volcanic islands that seemed of little importance. This is now changing, as historians and archaeologists recognise the role played by the islands in regional history, as a fulcrum rather than an outpost.   The Comoros lie at the southwestern end of one of the world’s oldest and greatest trading networks. Since antiquity, navigators and merchants have travelled from one shore of the Indian Ocean to another, from India to East

23

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

Africa and from the Persian Gulf to Southeast Asia, carrying gold and ivory, slaves and spices, ceramics, glass, iron, timber, dates and fish: carrying, in fact, almost anything that could be traded somewhere else. These networks even stretched beyond the shores of the Indian Ocean in what was the first ‘world system’: to east Asia and, through the Red Sea, to the Mediterranean and Europe, linking India and China to Egypt, Greece and Rome. Although trade was the primary motivation for these voyages, as these people travelled from port to port they also carried ideas, technology, diseases, cultures and religions, often settling among the local inhabitants or, in some cases, colonising uninhabited lands.   These maritime movements were made possible by the monsoon wind system. In colloquial language the word monsoon conjures up images of torrential rains in India, but in the Indian Ocean the term, from the Arabic mausim, season, refers specifically to the seasonal wind systems described in the previous chapter. In the western part of the ocean they blow regularly and reliably: from north to south between November and April, permitting ships to sail from India to Arabia and East Africa; from south to north between May and October, allowing ships to make the return journey, from East Africa back towards Arabia and on to South Asia. This wind pattern, said to have been ‘discovered’ by the Greek navigator Hippalus at the end of the first millennium BC, had probably already been long known to, and exploited by, people living on the shores of the Indian Ocean, and it was these winds that allowed people to discover and settle the Comoros.   It is impossible to say with any precision when the islands’ first inhabitants arrived or, for the moment, who they were, but it is clear that as a result of these journeys the islands attracted immigrants from various regions of the Indian Ocean: the African mainland, of course, but also the Indian subcontinent, particularly Gujarat, the Arabian peninsula—many Comorians trace their origins back to Hadramawt, in eastern Yemen—and the Malay archipelago. The lastmentioned may seem surprising, but it has long been recognised that migrants from insular Southeast Asia settled in Madagascar, some time in the first millennium, and they seem to have passed through the Comoros on their way. If we are to make any suggestions about when, how and by whom the islands were settled, we need to look at the history of the wider region. A speculative history The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, something of a traders’ guide probably written by a Greek merchant in the late first century AD, describes in some 24

FROM THE ORIGINS

detail the trading routes of the Indian Ocean, providing information and advice for the travelling salesman of antiquity. Emerging from the Red Sea, these trading networks stretched across South Asia to the Bay of Bengal and along the East African coast as far as a town called Rhapta—yet to be located but undoubtedly in what is today Tanzania—where there were great quantities of ivory and tortoiseshell, in exchange for which the people of Rhapta obtained worked metal—axes and knives—as well as glass beads, and grain and wine, the latter two apparently luxury goods for the consumption of the local elite. Interestingly, the Periplus tells us that Rhapta was ‘under the rule of the governor of Mapharitis, since by some ancient right it is subject to the kingdom of Arabia’, and that these Arab merchants were responsible for collecting local taxes: not only were there trading links between Rhapta and Arabia, but Arabs had settled in Rhapta and were exercising a degree of authority over the people of the town. An outpost, perhaps, but Rhapta was clearly a prosperous and cosmopolitan place, attracting Greeks and Egyptians as well as Arabs and Indians.1  The Periplus stops at Rhapta but Ptolemy’s Geography, probably completed in about 150 AD, mentions the Rhapton promontory, just beyond Rhapta; the Prason promontory, beyond which lies unknown land; and the island of Menouthias. Although the Periplus also mentions Menouthias, it says that it comes before Rhapta (and has been tentatively identified as the Tanzanian island of Pemba), while Ptolemy’s Menouthias appears to be much further south: since it is very likely that Prason was Cape Delgado, on the present border between Tanzania and Mozambique, Ptolemy’s Menouthias may have been Madagascar. Although his coordinates have been subject to some criticism, he finishes by saying that the lands south of 16° South—the approximate latitude of the medieval trading port of Angoche—were unknown, implicitly suggesting that northern Mozambique was known. Taken between them, these writings hint at contacts between the southern part of the East African coast, and possibly Madagascar, and the rest of the Indian Ocean world, but since none of these sources mention the Comoros it is difficult to know for certain whether they formed part of these networks, or even if they were inhabited.2   Any early history of the islands must therefore necessarily be constructed somewhat speculatively, with reference to what we know of both Madagascar and the East African coast. East Africa had of course long been inhabited, initially by hunter-gatherers, later by pastoralists and finally by Bantu-speaking settlers, farmers who, in a wave of migrations, emerged from their homeland 25

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

somewhere around the Bight of Biafra three thousand years ago and spread across eastern and southern Africa, probably reaching the East African coast around the beginning of our era. Although there are uncertainties over the details, the broad chronology of these migrations has been accepted; however, there is as yet no consensus on the sorts of seafaring skills these Bantu farmers possessed and whether (or when) they would have been capable of sailing to the Comoros or Madagascar. Although they certainly possessed dugout canoes, the technology to build larger ships might not have been available until the arrival of the navigators referred to in the Periplus.   There have been suggestions that humans were present in Madagascar prior to the Christian era: cut marks on the bones of a sloth lemur that would appear to be human inflicted, and pollen and charcoal in lake sediments, both indicate a human presence on the island, possibly as early as 2200 BP; the bones of a hippopotamus, found in a cave at Anjohibe near Mahajanga in northwestern Madagascar and similarly bearing possibly human-inflicted cut marks, may be more than 4000 years old; two sites in the north of the island again suggest a human presence at a similar period. However, these findings have been contested, and, as has frequently been pointed out, such evidence sits uneasily with the fact that no further evidence of settlement appears until the fifth century AD. It also raises questions of how visitors may have arrived, since the prevailing currents are such that vessels are not likely to drift to Madagascar from the African coast.3   The fact that some of these sites are a reasonable distance from the coast suggests that not all these people were temporary visitors or shipwrecked sailors and the implication is that the earliest settlers of Madagascar were hunter-gatherers or pastoralists from the adjacent East African mainland, who did not live in fixed settlements and direct traces of whom have thus yet eluded researchers. These early settlers may have been speakers of a Southern Cushitic language—some linguists see archaic influences on Malagasy—who crossed from Mozambique to southwest Madagascar, and finds in the northwest of the island, not uncontroversial, place these inhabitants closer to the few remaining Southern Cushitic-speaking populations in contemporary Tanzania. This hypothesis is also a tenuous one, but it makes the possibility of settler arrivals via the Comoros very real, since there are also traces of Southern Cushitic influences on Shingazidja.4   These settlers, if that is what they were, do not appear to be the ancestors of today’s inhabitants of Madagascar, the Malagasy, who are descended from Bantu-speaking Africans and Austronesian-speaking Southeast Asians. The  

26

FROM THE ORIGINS

presence of the latter is one of the great mysteries of the Indian Ocean, indeed of human migrations generally. Early European visitors to Madagascar were quick to notice similarities between the Malagasy language and the languages of Southeast Asia: Malagasy is an Austronesian language, a member of the East Barito group of languages, whose other members are all spoken in a fairly restricted area of southeastern Borneo. We know that it came to Madagascar with Austronesian migrants who arrived during the first millennium AD, but little more: the exact dates of these migrations are unclear, although linguistic analysis suggests that the language left the Malay world after the Indianisation of the archipelago and the emergence of the Srivijaya empire in Sumatra in the seventh century. This does not preclude the arrival of earlier migrants whose language was replaced by or added to that of later arrivals and there is evidence that the migrations continued for some time—perhaps for several centuries— making precise dating even harder.5   If the dates of these migrations are vague, there is a similar uncertainly regarding the routes taken by the migrants. The direct route across the Indian Ocean on the southeast trades is, although possible, fraught with dangers and it is unlikely that sailors would set off across an ocean on a journey of several thousand kilometres without knowing if there was even a destination to be reached.6 The alternative, coasting slowly along the northern shores of the ocean, is more likely; but, despite the presence of items of Austronesian origin in South Asia and East Africa, such as the outrigger canoe and bananas, the evidence is curiously sparse: continual migrations over a period of centuries would surely be expected to have left people and linguistic traces, never mind (in the literate areas of the ocean) a textual record. Still, there are clues that Austronesians arrived in Madagascar via East Africa: the Malagasy word for lemur, komba, is derived from the Bantu word for bushbaby, in Swahili you also have komba, which suggests that Austronesians sojourned on the East African coast before arriving in Madagascar and applying a term already acquired to the animals they found there.7   Research into the spread of food crops and animals across the Indian Ocean has complicated the picture. While the food crops found at early archaeological sites on the East African coast are of African origin, those found in the Comoros are largely Asian. While this does not provide any conclusive evidence as to the route that the Austronesians took, it does suggest that the Comoros were first settled by Austronesians, arriving not via Africa but either via Madagascar or directly from Southeast Asia. The latter hypothesis is supported by a suggestion that the Comorian word for the tenrec, landa, is closer 27

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

to the Malay word for porcupine, landak, than it is to the Malagasy word, trandraka. This does pose certain problems, however, not least of which are the logistics of Austronesians sailing to the Comoros from Southeast Asia without stopping either at Madagascar or in East Africa.8 The archaeological evidence The evidence from the archaeological sites so far explored in the Comoros themselves suggests that the human settlement of the islands took place well into the first millennium of the present era, although pieces of pottery found at a site at Male in the south of Ngazidja have tentatively been identified as Early Iron Working tradition (known as Kwale ware on the mainland) and dated to 200 BC–AD 500. The people who made this pottery may have been Bantu-speaking Africans, farmers who would have been living on the East African coast at the beginning of the millennium. Although as yet there is no proof of their having undertaken voyages of any distance at such an early date, the Periplus says that the people of the coast possessed sewn boats, a reference to locally constructed dhows whose planks were sewn together with ropes rather than being nailed. For centuries these dhows were ubiquitous in the Indian Ocean, sailing between Arabia, India and East Africa, and although no longer used on long voyages, similar vessels are found today throughout the region, even if sails have largely given way to motors and nails have replaced the ropes. People with such boats would certainly have been capable of sailing to the Comoros, and further archaeology is required: as we have suggested, these dates are certainly not impossible.9   It is not until the late first millennium that we have uncontested evidence of a human presence in the archipelago, and from a number of sites on all islands: Bagamoyo and Dembeni on Mayotte; Old Sima and Domoni on Ndzuani; Mwali Mjini and Mro Dewa on Mwali; and Mbashile, Membeni and Nyamawi on Ngazidja, among others. These sites represent the Dembeni phase of settlement, so named for the first site excavated, which began possibly as early as the mid-eighth century and lasted until the end of the tenth century. The settlements range in size from one to five hectares, all on or near the coast. One of the largest sites is at Old Sima on Ndzuani, which lies on a sloping ridge above the shore, where a gap in the fringing reef may have served as a harbour. It was discovered in 1966 when a midden layer exposed by a road cutting was noticed by a French archaeologist, Pierre Vérin, who removed a piece of shell that was carbon-dated to about AD 500, causing some excitement. However, in the 28

FROM THE ORIGINS

light of new knowledge of carbon-based dating in the southern hemisphere, this date has now been revised to the mid-tenth century.10   The Dembeni culture buildings were rectangular wooden-framed, mudplastered houses undoubtedly similar to the poorer type of rural housing still found today. There is no evidence of stone being used as a construction material during this period and although there are similarities across the archipelago, some of the sites on Ngazidja were low-lying, beachfront sites, whereas on the other islands most sites were on hilltops set back slightly from the coast—whether this was for defensive purposes is not clear. Across the islands, however, the material remains are similar. Food crops included rice and millet and a bean or pea, possibly the pigeon pea so commonly eaten today, as well as coconut; unsurprisingly, fish was the principal source of animal protein, particularly on Mayotte, with its large lagoon, and turtles also seem to have been eaten in some quantity; ducks, tenrecs, and sheep or goats also formed part of the diet. Chickens, which are originally from Asia, appear to be absent in this early period, as are cattle, perhaps understandably if these early settlers were from farming communities rather than of pastoralist origin and arrived in small boats.11   The inhabitants of these sites possessed ironworking technology and there was extensive ceramic-making activity as well as weaving of cloth. While most of the pottery was locally made, there were imported goods, too, clear evidence of trade: soapstone vessels and rock crystal came from Madagascar, glass was imported from the Middle East, as were ceramics such as coarseware jars, blue-green Sassanian-Islamic ware and Chinese (Song dynasty) white glazed stoneware bowls, the last-mentioned probably being brought to the islands from India or the Middle East by Arab traders rather than coming directly from China. These items can be dated from their occurrence elsewhere in the Indian Ocean and, if none are earlier than about AD 750, they nevertheless indicate that the islands were well integrated into trading networks, and apparently swiftly so, for imported pottery accounts for four per cent of all fragments, more than at any other East African site, with the exception of Manda (Kenya) and Unguja Ukuu (Zanzibar). Similarly, locally made pottery existed in a number of variants, but some styles are almost identical to those of East Africa, while others would appear to show affinities with Malagasy or even Southeast Asian types. The Comoros were clearly part of a cultural area that included both the East African coast and Madagascar.12   Although it is possible, as suggested above, that African settlers arrived of their own accord, it is likely that many of the islands’ inhabitants were brought  

 

29

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

there, probably as slaves, by a dominant class of Arab, South Asian or possibly Austronesian seafarers; although there is as yet no clear evidence of social stratification during the Dembeni phase, it is likely that imported pottery (and the goods that some of these vessels undoubtedly contained, probably oils or grain) would only have been accessible to the wealthier members of the community, those who had accumulated their own goods to exchange and had the requisite contacts with traders. In addition to ceramics, there is evidence of a Malagasy influence on ironworking technology, and although most of the population would have spoken a Bantu language, there may well have been sustained contact with Malagasy speakers: many of the phonological shifts that distinguish Comorian from Swahili also distinguish Malagasy from its Malay ancestors. Most of the islands’ inhabitants were probably not Muslim: two non-Islamic graves have been found at Membeni on Ngazidja, and lemur, tenrec and pig, all forbidden to Muslims, appear to have been eaten.13   Absence of Islamic influences does not rule out the presence of Arabs, of course, since, as we have seen, Arabs were trading in the region long before the advent of Islam. Oral traditions refer to settlement by Jews, and although there are social reasons for this claim, many pre-Islamic Arabs, particularly in what is today Yemen, were either Jewish or Christian and this is not as fanciful a supposition as it might at first appear. Both groups were involved in the Indian Ocean trade, particularly to India, and would also have been present in East Africa. Nevertheless, this period is one of expansion of the Islamic presence in the region: East Africa’s oldest mosque, at Shanga in northern Kenya, dates from the late eighth century, and there is evidence for mosques in the Comoros in the tenth century. A burial at Bagamoyo on Mayotte, possibly tenth century, is clearly Islamic.14 Society and culture: kinship, age systems and language This period was one in which the foundations of Comorian culture and social structures were laid, and although there have been changes, due to both internal dynamics and external influences, some of these practices continue to shape daily life in the islands. Oral traditions can be used to make inferences about society and many confirm what we know from the material record, bearing in mind that it is the nature of such narratives to present a socially acceptable history, emphasising the prestigious and glossing over or ignoring the undesirable, in order to provide a society with coherent and positive narratives of the past. Several tales would have the islands settled at the time of 30

FROM THE ORIGINS

Solomon, who exiled wicked djinns to them and whose wife Bilqis, the queen of Sheba, lost her ring in the crater of the volcano. References to Jews apart, however, pre-Islamic inhabitants of the islands occupy little space in oral histories, being rapidly brought within the Islamic fold as Comorian narratives of origin attempt to reconcile the ideal of Islamic humanity with the fact that the earliest inhabitants were probably not Muslims. These traditions largely agree that the early settlers, generally characterised as washendzi, ‘savages’, came from the African coast, either of their own accord or, more often, as slaves, with others, either Arabs or Portuguese, the latter term often a prolepsis for non-Muslim foreigners; while some traditions attempt to moderate their paganism, suggesting that they were familiar with the Old Testament, others recognise that they were not Muslim, admitting that they were uncircumcised and drank wine.15   Great care should be taken in attributing the origins of contemporary or recently attested practices that are apparently non-Islamic to a pre-Islamic era, and many beliefs found in the Comoros today, or reported in the recent past, are as likely to have been brought from the African mainland or from Madagascar by nineteenth-century slaves as they are to be indicative of archaic culture. Nevertheless, early settlers of the islands clearly had beliefs of some sort, and beliefs that are not obviously Islamic, even if they are today inscribed within an Islamic context, probably reflect non-Islamic origins. Spirit possession is widespread, particularly among women, and many spirits, or djinns, are said to have Malagasy origins. Spirit possession has long attracted the attention of anthropologists, who explain it as a social phenomenon that provides ways of ordering life and resolving issues that may not be easily dealt with in the daily course of events; spirits may allow individuals, and women in particular, to articulate concerns about the world and their relationships that they would not otherwise be permitted to express. This may particularly concern relationships with men, be they husbands or fathers: if their spirit is a man, then this spirit may speak on their behalf. Often an individual will have a particular spirit who possesses them throughout their life and with whom they develop a strong relationship. These spirits may demand alcohol and generally display un-Islamic behaviour, thus removing the possessor of the spirit from her social context, and may speak in an incomprehensible language, which needs to be translated by a mediator. Whether spirit possession is pre-Islamic or whether it has developed in response to social problems that Islam is unable to resolve is impossible to say.16   Certain individuals, known as mwalimu, have specific knowledge and competencies that enable them to intercede between humans and the supernatural 31

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world. A mwalimu will generally be called upon, often even before a medical doctor, in the case of illness or misfortune, particularly if it is suspected to have been caused by spirits, and will be able to prescribe the required course of activity to attenuate the symptoms and placate the djinns. The existence of spirits— and spirits may exist independently of humans, residing in various liminal places and requiring the recital of prayers as a cleansing ritual in order to appease them—seems more likely to be testimony to ancestral non-Islamic beliefs. Lakes in particular have tales or beliefs of some sort attached to them: Nyamawi, or Lac Salé, on Ngazidja, is said to be the site of a village that was flooded when the inhabitants refused hospitality to the Prophet Muhammad; and, according to several early European visitors, sacred ducks at Dzialaoutsounga, a crater lake on Ndzuani, could, with the intermediary of a priest, foretell the future.17 These and other places, features of the landscape known as ziyara, may be associated with djinns and are treated with respect: there may be taboos on cutting trees, building in stone or mistreating animals, and while infractions of these rules may bring malediction, these places may also be powerful forces of benediction. There are other vestiges of pre-Islamic ceremonies, often linked to the agrarian cycle. All the islands have in the past practised a variety of rites intended to ensure a bountiful harvest or an auspicious year; one of them, the trimba ritual, a three-day procession that took place in the southern Nyumakele region of Ndzuani, is still occasionally performed.18   It is equally difficult to deduce much about historical social structures from the archaeological record, apart from making a few inferences about wealth and hierarchies, but using oral traditions, and some deductions based on contemporary practice, we can construct a profile of early Comorian society and make some suggestions about how people organised their lives and interacted with one another. There was once a man who built a dhow. When it was time to launch the boat he followed the traditions and asked for the blessing of the mwalimu. The mwalimu consulted the stars and warned the man that if he wanted the dhow to be seaworthy, as it was launched it would have to pass over the back of a human being. Worried, the man asked his wife if she would volunteer. ‘No,’ she replied. So the man went to see his family, and he explained his problem to them. Without hesitation his sister offered to help. They went to the beach, where the sister was buried in the sand. The dhow passed over her back, but without causing her harm. Since that day a man has always considered his sister over his wife.19

  This tale explains why Comorians have a matrilineal kinship system, invoking a specific (and almost certainly imaginary) event that led a man to prefer 32

FROM THE ORIGINS

his sister’s family over that of his wife. It is probably a retroactive explanation of matrilineality, since a society that knew no other system would not need to justify it; on the other hand, particularly when confronted with Islam and patrilineal peoples such as Arabs, and possibly Austronesians, Comorians would have needed to explain why they do as they do, whether to themselves or to others; this came later. Given that the bulk of the Comorian population is of Bantu origin, and that many Bantu-speaking societies in eastern and southern Africa are matrilineal, it is not unreasonable to assume that the first immigrants, and the original Comorian society, were matrilineal.20   Matrilineal principles of descent and inheritance mean that certain rights and obligations are transmitted in the female line, that is, from a mother, and her brothers (since men usually hold power), to her children; from her sons and daughters to the children of her daughters, and so on. On a practical level, this strengthens the bond between a man and his sisters, and their children, who are his heirs, to the detriment of the bond with his wife and his own children, who will inherit from their own family and who will feel affinities for their own uncles, their mothers’ brothers. This does not mean that a man has no interest at all in his own children, although in some strongly matrilineal societies the link is weak indeed, but it does mean that a man will be more concerned with the well-being of his sister’s family than is the case in (for example) most contemporary European societies.   The matrilineal system in the Comoros is today found in its most developed form on Ngazidja, and to a lesser extent Mwali, and although there have certainly been changes in social practice over the past millennium, the underlying structures in the past are likely to have been much the same as they are today. The basic social unit is the hinya, lineage or clan, membership of which is acquired maternally, and this is the primary point of reference for the individual. In addition to clan membership, matrilineality determines marriage preferences, the inheritance of customary titles, residence, and the inheritance of property, particularly houses and land. The matrilineage was the basis for transmission of power for much of the pre-colonial era: the ruler (or mfaume, king) was selected from the ruling matriclan, and therefore inherited the title from his mother’s brother or someone in a similar classificatory relationship, not from his father.   As is common in matrilineal societies, residence after marriage is uxorilocal: a man moves to live with his wife, partly because his children will belong to his wife’s hinya and so they should live in the house of their hinya: if they are daughters they will inherit the house, or have another house provided for 33

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them on land nearby, and continue to live there after their own marriages. The corollary of this is that in the case of divorce the man will leave the nuptial house and his children will remain with their mother. A man does not automatically have the right to use his wife’s land, although this is usually possible, but he does have rights of usage of cultivable land belonging to his hinya, that is, his sisters’ land. This land, as well as the family home, constitutes a category of land known on Ngazidja and Mwali as manyahuli. Manyahuli belongs collectively to the matrilineage, not to any single individual, and is generally inalienable; however, by agreement of all the members of a hinya, it may be sold, and in the past such a sale would be intended to finance an important life-cycle event such as a wedding or a pilgrimage to Mecca.   The chronology of the political development of the islands is reasonably consistent across the various traditions and reflects both a growing hierarchisation of the political structures and the growth of political units.21 The first rulers of the Dembeni phase were known as mafe, and were probably little more than heads of families, exercising authority over a lineage and its slaves. Society was reasonably egalitarian and there were no larger political units, although the different mafe of a village would have cooperated in matters that were of mutual concern. At some point—possibly following Islamisation of the free classes—leaders known as bedja on Ngazidja, and as fani on Ndzuani, emerged as rulers of towns; the mafe continued to function as lineage chiefs and the mafe of the principal lineages of each village constituted an assembly known as the maferembwe. This was a sort of legislative body that established the corpus of customary law known as mila na ntsi, literally ‘custom and land’. These changes almost certainly reflected economic and demographic growth that produced a more complex social system requiring different political structures; as villages came to include a growing number of clans and kinship ceased to be a viable basis for political organisation, the age system, certainly imported from Africa, emerged as the dominant village political institution.22   Once again, oral tradition helps us to sketch out a social history: a man called Mdjongwe, chief of the Shambara, brought his people to the islands, many of whom settled and accepted matrilineality as they took local wives.23 The Shambara (or Shambaa) today live in the Usambara hills of northern Tanzania and although it is unlikely that these arrivals were actually Shambaa—if the Shambaa even existed at the time—they were probably from the same region, and it is likely that they were, or were in contact with, Nilotic- or Cushitic-speaking peoples whose descendants—such as the 34

FROM THE ORIGINS

Maasai—still live in the area. Many of these groups, who are patrilineal, have age systems, a distinctive form of social organisation whose most elaborate manifestations occur precisely in northeastern Africa. Age systems are not typical of Bantu-speaking peoples and most Bantu groups that do have age systems are found in the same area and have presumably acquired them from their neighbours: the Gikuyu of Kenya, for example.24   Age systems provide a framework for managing the lives of men (women’s age systems are rare) as they progress through the various stages of life, known as grades: adolescence, warriors (young men), political power-holders (married men) and, finally, the elders of the community. An age system is analogous to the progression of children through school, whereby a group of children (a ‘set’) move collectively through a series of grades, and may well maintain a collective sense of identity even after leaving school (‘the class of 82’). The age system in the Comoros has undergone changes over time but the system still in place on Mwali has maintained what appears to have been the original structure. A boy’s entrance into the system occurs when a group of perhaps twenty boys are recruited to an age set, usually known as a hirimu, at some time prior to puberty, and this hirimu is given a name, perhaps that of a prominent personality, or an event—a hirimu formed during the Second World War was called Lagera, from the French la guerre. With time these boys become men, progressing collectively through the grades, each set moving one step up the ladder as the men in the oldest set die and boys are recruited into the youngest set. The passage from one grade to the next is marked by a collective meal and the granting of increasing responsibility: the management of daily life, upkeep of the environment, assistance in the preparation of ceremonies and rituals for the young, the exercise of authority for the older men and, eventually, retirement. Although these principles still underpin the system, there have been significant changes in the way this system operates, particularly in the colonial period, and particularly on Ngazidja: we will discuss these changes in later chapters.   Finally, language also gives us clues about settlement. The principal languages of the Comoros belong to the Bantu language family, a group of several hundred languages spoken across much of Africa south of the equator and all descended from an ancestral proto-Bantu language spoken in what is today Cameroon. The Bantu-speaking peoples were farmers, and adapted their technologies as they passed through the equatorial rainforests of central Africa to the open grasslands further east, displacing or assimilating the (possibly Khoisan-speaking) hunter-gatherers and the Cushitic-speaking pastoralists 35

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

who preceded them. Over time, as the Bantu speakers settled, their languages evolved and differentiated into a number of sub-groups; those spoken on the coast between Somalia and northern Mozambique, including Comorian and Swahili, are known as the Sabaki languages.25   Historical linguistics suggests that Comorian speakers arrived on the islands towards the end of the first millennium—whether they were the first settlers is not yet clear, but if they were not it seems likely that any earlier inhabitants would also have spoken a Bantu language—and over the centuries the language has evolved into four variants, one on each island. These can be divided into two groups: a western group, Shingazidja and Shimwali, and an eastern group, Shindzuani and Shimaore. There is mutual comprehensibility between languages within each group, but the situation between the two groups is more complicated, for even though some 80 per cent of the lexicon is shared, there are grammatical differences that can render comprehension difficult. Those who understand languages of the other group generally do so through a learned familiarity rather than through any inherent inter-comprehensibility between the languages; many people are familiar with the two principal variants, Shingazidja and Shindzuani, because this familiarity is required in order to interact both with the state and with people from other islands.   Although the majority of the population speak one of the Comorian dialects, approximately one-third of the population of Mayotte claim Kibushi, a Malagasy language, as a mother tongue, but how long this has been so is unclear. There are two varieties of Kibushi spoken on Mayotte, Kisakalava and Kiantalaotsi, the latter spoken in just two or three villages in the south of the island and no longer spoken in Madagascar, suggesting that it is the older of the two; although it is unlikely to have been introduced to Mayotte by early Austronesian settlers (since if that were the case it would presumably be quite different from other Malagasy dialects), it has probably been spoken on the island for some time. Kibushi Kisakalava on the other hand probably arrived on the island in the nineteenth century.26  

 

The spread of Islam and the arrival of Shirazis Comorian society is profoundly Islamic and oral histories are particularly insistent on the early arrival of Islam in the islands. One tradition tells how Mtswa Mwindza, ruler of Mbude on Ngazidja, heard of the new religion from passengers in an Arab dhow who had been cast ashore near Ntsaweni and decided to travel to Arabia to hear the teachings of the Prophet. He arrived in 36

FROM THE ORIGINS

Mukalla, on the coast of Hadramawt, to learn that Muhammad had died; he nevertheless continued on to Mecca and Medina where he spent several years as a student. When he finally returned to Ngazidja he was accompanied by Muhammad ibn Uthman, son of Uthman ibn Affan, the third caliph; they proceeded to convert the population and they built several mosques including that at Ntsaweni, said to be the island’s first. This narrative insists on the precocity of Islam: it is socially unthinkable for Islam to exist and not be accepted in the Comoros, and so, as soon as the religion appears in Arabia, emissaries bring it to the islands. Whether or not Mtswa Mwindza actually existed, as we have seen it is likely that even if Islam (or perhaps more accurately Muslims) arrived at an early date, conversion of the population would have been limited to the elite.27   The history of the spread of Islam on the East African coast, and by extension in the Comoros and even on Madagascar, has been the subject of much discussion for a very long time,28 but the dilemmas are, at least in part, false. On the one hand, given the links between East Africa and the Arabian peninsula and the expansionist character of early Islam, it is highly likely that Arab traders visiting the coast counted converts to the new religion among their number almost as soon as Islam appeared in the ports of Yemen in the seventh century; at the other end of the timescale, a significant proportion of the population of the islands—slaves imported from the African mainland—was still not Muslim in the nineteenth century. At what point the Comoros ‘became’ Muslim is therefore several questions that have different answers: when did the first Muslim arrive, when did the ruling (free) classes adopt Islam, and at what point was the entire population effectively Muslim—as it is today?   Given the social strategies that early inhabitants of the islands would have drawn upon—presenting themselves as ‘civilised’ trading partners to visitors, some of whom were now Muslim and some of whom settled—it seems likely that the ruling classes would have been encouraged to convert to Islam early on, even if they remained a minority. The first building on the site of the mosque at Old Sima was a wooden structure that has been dated to the late ninth century, although the first Shirazi Mosque at Domoni would appear to have been built no earlier than the eleventh or twelfth century; likewise for those at Ntsaweni on Ngazidja and at Acoua on Mayotte.29 If the islands were inhabited and visited by Muslims in the seventh century, then it seems that several centuries passed before there were enough Muslims among the local population to warrant the construction of a mosque. A mosque presupposes 37

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

an established congregation of a certain size (individuals would pray at home), and we can assume that this would be an Islamic ruling class, which with time came to include not only Arab immigrants but the descendants of marriages with Africans and Austronesians. However, in a society that depended on slaves not only for labour but for trade, it would have been in the interests of the ruling classes not to encourage conversion among the local population so that they could remain enslaved: Islam prohibits the enslavement of co-religionaries and converts to Islam should in theory be manumitted.   The Dembeni period lasted until the end of the tenth century, and was marked by changes that were also felt on the coast, represented in the Comoros by a noticeable growth in the size of the settlements and the construction of mosques; this may have been linked to the arrival of Shirazis and an expansion of the Islamic influence. Shirazi traditions are ubiquitous in East Africa and Shirazi identity—that of a Muslim elite who trace their origins to Shiraz, in southern Iran—has been claimed by the Swahili upper classes for centuries.30 The narratives are fairly standard, telling of seven brothers, or a father and his six sons, who set out from Shiraz and, upon arriving on the African coast, each settled in a different town. The list of towns varies according to the tradition, but it usually includes Shanga, Mombasa, Kilwa and Ndzuani. In some places (such as the Comoros and Kilwa) the local ruler was already a Muslim, in others they were not, but, regardless of the beliefs of the locals, the new arrival claimed to be socially superior and generally married the daughter of the ruler, thus acquiring political power from the indigenous people and establishing a new dynasty.   The migrants on whom these traditions were based were probably Shias, possibly Arabic-speaking, from the Persian Gulf who may have been fleeing religious conflict in tenth- and eleventh-century Persia, and references to Zaydis—a Shia sect still found in northern Yemen—in the historical texts as well as dates based on the Kilwa Chronicle, a sixteenth-century history of the town, would seem to confirm this. There was certainly contact between Shiraz and East Africa: the tenth-century Arab geographer and traveller al-Masudi, who visited the coast, says ‘the people of Siraf ’—Siraf was Shiraz’s port— made the voyage. That said, however, these narratives need to be interpreted judiciously in order for us to be able to make sense of their relevance, particularly in the Comoros where it is likely that the local telling of this particular tale has been shaped by the social and political context.31   If the arrival of the first Shirazis was based on a historical event, the migrations that the traditions refer to may be deconstructed as two movements: an 38

FROM THE ORIGINS

original (and real) movement of people around the eleventh century, a date that agrees both with religious conflict in the Gulf and with that calculated from the Kilwa Chronicle, and that has left traces in the Comoros as the Dembeni phase ended; and a more diffuse movement of people already settled on the African coast whose claims to status and power were based on genealogies that accorded them an Arabised Shirazi elite identity, and who intermarried with the local ruling families, establishing new dynasties. These latter migrations seem to have occurred sporadically between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries.   The picture is further complicated in the Comoros by the matrilineal character of Comorian society. Traditions that trace the origins of a ruling lineage to a male founder who married a local woman have little traction in the Comoros since the children of this union would belong to the mother’s lineage and not that of the father, thus undermining the whole project of establishing Shirazi legitimacy for the ruling family. We therefore find, on both Ngazidja and Mayotte, somewhat different tales: those of the Shirazi princesses. In the Ngazidja versions, two Shirazi princesses arrived on the island and married local bedja; in accordance with matrilineal principles of descent, the succession followed the female line and the descendants of these two women formed two opposing lineages who, between them, eventually consolidated their control over most of the island. There is some symbolic sleight of hand involved here in order to allow a local man to transfer his title to the children of his daughter, but the outcome is similar to that elsewhere: the lineage obtains a Shirazi identity. This tradition would appear to correspond to the first Shirazi migration, one which has been seen as being contemporaneous with Mtswa Mwindza—in the traditional sense, if not literally—a thesis that would seem accurate if this migration corresponds not to the arrival of Islam in the islands but to the spread of Islam among the free population. As noted, we begin to find evidence of more mosques being built in the islands, including the Shirazi Mosque in Domoni, at the end of the Dembeni phase, so there were certainly changes both in religious practice and in material culture at the time.32   Whether or not Shirazis actually arrived in the Comoros, there are certain cultural practices that suggest that these stories of migration had a basis in historical fact, most notably the presence of the Nairuz calendar, of p­ re-Islamic Persian origin, on the East African coast, from Somalia to Mozambique, in the Comoros and in Madagascar. It is a solar calendar: the year is subdivided into 400-day periods (hundreds)—known in the Comoros as jana la handa (liter 39

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

ally, the first hundred), jana la hari (the middle hundred), jana la hwisa (the last hundred), and jana nkoudrwe (the incomplete hundred), the last so named because it counts only 65 days—and each hundred is further subdivided into decades, weeks of ten days. Although the Nairuz year has no intercalary day, and therefore regresses by one day every four years, in agricultural societies it is of more practical use than the Muslim lunar calendar. As late as the 1960s the Nairuz new year, ntwsa maha, which usually falls in early August, was marked by a swim in the sea at dawn followed by dances around fires lit on the beach. Religious leaders, recalling the Zoroastrian origins of the Nairuz, saw these scenes as vestiges of ancient fire worship, and effectively banned them, but the truth may be more pragmatic: in the Comoros ntswa maha falls in mid-winter and the fires are simply an effective way to warm up after a dawn swim. Perhaps ironically, the Nairuz calendar has been replaced by the Gregorian (and therefore Christian) calendar, as the Islamic calendar still does not suit the needs of fishermen and farmers.33   The dates proposed for the Shirazi migrations are followed closely by the first unambiguous textual reference to the islands.34 A twelfth-century work known as the Tabula Rogeriana, written by Muhammad al-Idrisi, a geographer at the court of King Roger II of Sicily, includes a detailed description of the East African coast, referring to a number of islands, among which Madagascar, known to the Arabs as al-Comor, is clearly identifiable and, significantly, named ‘Qumr island or Malay island’.35 Al-Idrisi also provides a description of the islands of Zanedj, whose inhabitants he said understood the language of those of the African coast. One of the islands of Zanedj was called Andjuba, and although some have interpreted this as referring to Zanzibar or Pemba, the description (and the name) corresponds better to Ndzuani: the inhabitants are Muslim; the island is densely settled and fertile, producing crops, including rice, both for local consumption and for trade; and, in an echo of later reports, ‘vagabonds driven from the town’ live on a mountain in the interior, descending from time to time to attack the town. Furthermore, a neighbouring island is dominated by a high mountain that burns all who approach it: this can only be Ngazidja, since there are no other volcanic islands anywhere in the region.36   Drawing upon all these details we can imagine what life in the islands may have been like at the turn of the millennium. There were a handful of villages on each island, on or near the coast at places where an opening in the reef and a beach provided access for arriving dhows. Many of these villages—such as Sima, Domoni, Dembeni and Membeni—were on the leeward shore during 40

FROM THE ORIGINS

the northwest monsoon, which would be logical since they would thus provide shelter from the winds for the dhows of traders from the north. The better houses were built of mud-plastered wood, with a thatched roof, and belonged to free settlers and their descendants, Muslims, of Arab and possibly Austronesian origin, traders and merchants who maintained relationships with partners and kin elsewhere. They would have owned the slaves who constituted the bulk of the population. These slaves lived in huts made of palm fronds and were put to work cultivating the fields, producing rice and other foodstuffs for export as well as for local consumption; they also fished, made pottery and worked iron, and wove cloth. The islands exported food, skins, cowries and slaves to towns on the mainland, from Angoche in the south to Mombasa, Lamu and Arabia in the north, and even to India. In exchange they obtained various manufactured goods.   The slaves would have been brought from the nearby African coast or from Madagascar, either by the local free classes or by foreign traders. While some remained on the islands, working for the locals, others would have been sold onwards to the Arabs from the north; still others managed to flee and lived on the forested higher slopes inland, forming an ‘indigenous’ population who would later be called Bushmen. Over time the children of Arabs or Austronesians and slave women came to constitute an intermediate, locally born free class of Muslims who would have cultivated land on their own account and who eventually acquired a few slaves themselves, and perhaps even engaged in some trade. Some of the Muslims were literate, and one of their number would not only have undertaken the teaching of Islam, basic literacy and arithmetic to the free children, but also served as imam in the central mosque that each village had now acquired. Some of the islanders travelled regularly—usually annually, given the winds—to the African coast and Madagascar on business.37 The classical period The period between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries has long been seen as the golden age of the Swahili coast and this prosperity also touched the Comoros: trade developed, populations increased, both naturally and through immigration, and the ruling classes grew wealthy. In the late thirteenth century the Mongol sack of Baghdad and the rise of the Egyptian Mamluk empire saw the trading networks in the northern part of the ocean, formerly centred on the Persian Gulf, shift their focus to the Red Sea. The southern Yemeni and 41

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA

Hadrami ports—particularly Aden, one of the largest ports in the region at the time, and Shihr—prospered, and trade between the Red Sea and both East Africa and India expanded significantly; direct links between India, Gujarat in particular but also the Malabar coast, and East Africa were also developed.38 The Indian Ocean networks were extensive: Arab navigators sailed regularly to Southeast Asia and China—where there was a substantial Arab community—as well as to East Africa, where Mogadishu was undoubtedly the most prosperous port, but the string of settlements southwards to the gold-exporting town of Sofala, near Beira in present-day Mozambique, and to various outposts in Madagascar as well as the Comoros all felt the benefits of this prosperity. Ibn al-Mujawir, writing in the early thirteenth century, speaks of ships arriving in Aden from Madagascar, and if knowledge of the techniques that had allowed the voyage to be carried out on a single monsoon had been lost (they now took three), in 626 AH (AD 1228–9) it was reported that a ship had indeed made the trip in a single year; it is possible that in the early part of this period at least, the Malagasy were still sailing to Indonesia. This was truly a global world.39   Excavations at Acoua, on the northwest coast of Mayotte, provide evidence of integration into these networks in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: Chinese Longquan celadon, Yemeni red and yellow ware, Indian glass beads and soapstone vessels from Madagascar have all been found on the site.40 The increase in trade was naturally accompanied by increased social contacts, and migrants continued to arrive on the islands, both traders and religious leaders. An oral tradition collected on Ndzuani speaks of the arrival of Arabs—possibly Shirazis from the mainland coast—at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and this corresponds to a change in pottery types around AD 1300, when a type similar to a ware found in Kilwa appears in Acoua; Malagasy styles have been found in the same context, indicating that these renewed links with East Africa also extended to Madagascar.41   By the fourteenth century a number of smaller settlements had developed on Ndzuani, clustered around the larger towns of Domoni and Old Sima, which had themselves grown: Old Sima had an area of about six hectares in the tenth century but double that by the fifteenth. By the late fourteenth century the large central mosques were being replaced by smaller but more elaborate structures, and both the stone mosque at Old Sima and the present Shirazi mosque at Domoni appear to date from this period, in both cases replacing earlier structures on the same site. At the same time, as these rebuilt central mosques became smaller, undoubtedly as a result of being reserved for 42

FROM THE ORIGINS

the upper classes or for the central quarter of the town, new mosques in other parts of town were being built to serve lower-status inhabitants. This shift from single-mosque settlements to multiple-mosque towns is representative of economic and demographic growth as towns developed quarters, structured and interacting according to the status of their inhabitants. There is further evidence for social differentiation at Acoua, also from the late fourteenth century, where stone-built houses start to appear in one of the town’s quarters, indicative of an upper class and possibly the residences of rulers— traditions say that the fani of Domoni, Fani Othman, built the town’s first stone palace at about this time, and similar changes would have been occurring on Mayotte. Finally, there are burials at Acoua that were clearly of wealthy individuals, for their tombs included mother-of-pearl and thousands of glass beads.42   These changes seem to have been contemporary with another migration of Arabs or Shirazis (depending upon the variant), which appears to have been responsible for further changes to the political systems. Kilwa, one of the most important towns on the coast, was at the peak of its prosperity at the time, and the wider region prospered by association: trade boomed and people moved the length of the coast. For most sources, this period is the first in which individual immigrants can be identified and linked to the political history of the islands; although this migration is also characterised as Shirazi, it seems rather to have involved Hadramis, who were increasingly ubiquitous upon the coast.43 Hadramis have long had an influence disproportionate to their numbers and the size of their homeland, trading and teaching across the Indian Ocean south into Mozambique and east as far as Indonesia. There was a strong Hadrami presence in Mogadishu and the Kilwa Chronicle states that the rulers of Kilwa at the time were also of Hadrami origin.44   The traditions tell how Mohammed bin Issa brought his people to East Africa. His son Hassan settled on Ndzuani where he built the mosque at Sima, at the time the capital of the island; he married Jumbe Addia, the daughter of the fani of Mutsamudu, and inherited her father’s title to become sultan of the island, founding the al-Madoua clan; he then moved to Domoni, where he established a new capital. Hassan took advantage of the prestige that attached to his identity as an Arab and a Muslim to extend his influence over the neighbouring islands, sending his own son, Mohammed, to Mayotte, where he married the daughter of the fani of Mtsamboro. Upon Mohammed’s death, Mohammed’s son Issa claimed the title of sultan of Mayotte—through his membership of his mother’s lineage, and usurping the 43

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ruling sultan—and moved to Tsingoni, the island’s capital, where he built a mosque. The mosque still stands, possibly on the site of an older structure, with an inscription that dates its construction to the year 944 of the Hegira, 1538 in the Gregorian calendar.45   This tradition exists in various versions, each slightly different, but it is clear that the individuals concerned were historical figures and that, more importantly, this is seen as a significant moment in the social history of the island: the African rulers—who despite being Muslim, and perhaps even Shirazis, are nevertheless not Arabs—are finally replaced by sultans, members of an Arabised ruling class who clearly enjoy prestigious links with the Arab families on the coast, upon whom they can call from time to time to reinforce their status.46 The three smaller islands are, finally, politically unified, and the sultan of Ndzuani even claims suzerainty over Mayotte and Mwali, where he delegated his powers to the fani. Although this authority was frequently contested, the other islands sought the assistance of the rulers of Ndzuani when it suited them to do so, such as when Mayotte was attacked by raiders from northwestern Madagascar in the early sixteenth century.47   Whether the newcomers managed to seize power on Ngazidja is unclear, but if they did it would only have been in one or two of the island’s polities— possibly Itsandra or Mitsamihuli; there is no clear reference to Hadramis marrying into reigning families in oral traditions, and the Hadrami ancestry of the ruling family of Bambao is of more recent origin. Unlike the other islands, Ngazidja was never politically united, being divided instead into a number of kingdoms or sultanates—ten sultanates were established by the bedja at the conference of Mzalia in the early sixteenth century—and even though ultimate control was held by a sultan known as the sultan ntibe, this was a largely honorific title that only granted the holder the power to enthrone the sultans of the other sultanates on the island and, theoretically at least, the power to depose them too. The title of sultan ntibe was more often than not held by a member of one of the two great clans that came to dominate the island, the Hinya Fwambaya, based in Itsandra, and the Hinya Matswa Pirusa, based in Bambao, and much of the history of Grande Comore is marked by a constant struggle between these two clans both for the title of sultan ntibe and for control over the other sultanates.48   It is worth emphasising that these new political systems were hybrid ones, fusing elements of the pre-existing power structures, based on kin and age groups and links to the land, and the newer monarchies, in so far as they can be so described, less fluid and more formally constituted, of foreign inspira44

FROM THE ORIGINS

tion. Local political structures probably remained much as they had been: pace the terminology often applied to the polities of the mainland, they were not states, city or otherwise. Islam in the Comoros This period was one of consolidation of the Islamic character of the island, or at least of the ruling classes, and the dissemination of the accompanying benefits of ustaarabu, ‘civilisation’. The title ‘sultan’ seems to have been at least partially adopted at the time, clearly in imitation of contemporary Egyptian and Ottoman rulers and equally clearly intended to confer a new aura of power and respectability upon these new rulers, reinforcing their links with the Arab hierarchies of the Swahili coast.49 These links were invoked regularly as the new ruling classes reasserted not only their political legitimacy but their social legitimacy, and this is also represented in oral tradition. Thus when illness broke out on the island of Ndzuani in the mid-sixteenth century, Sultan Mohammed was advised that if the people were to be cured he would have to bring a descendant of the Prophet—a sharifu—to the island.50 He sent an emissary to the mainland and in response Alawi bin Abdallah Al Ahdali, a sharifu born in Pate, arrived on Ndzuani.51 He married Mohammed’s daughter, Halima, who subsequently succeeded her father as ruler of the island, and founded the al-Masela clan. Alawi is buried in Domoni.   Comorians are, almost without exception, Sunni Muslim, and follow the Shafi’i school of jurisprudence, which is, thanks to the Hadrami influence, ubiquitous in the Indian Ocean region.52 For centuries Islamic practice has pervaded daily life in the islands and the five pillars of Islam are universally respected: the declaration of faith, known as the shahada; regular prayer (salah); zakat, the obligation to charity; the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca; and the observation of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. The call to prayer is heard five times a day, calling the faithful to one of the hundreds of mosques scattered throughout the islands. Every village and every quarter in the towns will have a mosque, and any village that claims the social status of an independent village, or mdji, will have a Friday mosque where the entire male population will gather for the Friday noon prayer. This is not only the occasion for prayer: prior to the prayer there will be a sermon, and announcements will be made that concern the community. The Friday prayer is an important social event, and villagers who live or work in the islands’ capitals will generally make the trip back to their native villages for the day, if not for 45

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the weekend. At other times prayers can be said collectively, either at the closest or most convenient mosque, or perhaps at a favourite mosque, or they may be made individually at home. The mosque also serves as a gathering place outside prayer times, particularly during the hour or so between the two evening prayers, either for quiet talk and socialisation or for religious teaching.   The most important event in the life of a Muslim is undoubtedly the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every able-bodied Muslim is required to perform at least once in his or her lifetime and which takes place over five days in the Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah, the last of the Islamic lunar year. The Hajj is not only a religious duty: it has long been instrumental in bringing Muslims together and it is hard to overestimate the role of the Hajj both in establishing a sense of the ummah, the global community of Muslims, among individuals from around the Indian Ocean and beyond, and in driving the physical movement of people on a scale not known in Europe at the time: in the fifteenth century pilgrims to Mecca came from Spain and Senegal, Indonesia, China and central Asia, as well as from East Africa and Madagascar—most of the known world. Although most inhabitants of the islands were not yet Muslims, those who were would have tried to make the trip north at least once in their lifetime, undoubtedly stopping at various places on the coast along the way and returning with news from the rest of the Islamic world as well as a few souvenirs, luxury goods or even goods for trade from the Arab heartland. Likewise, Muslims from Madagascar would probably have stopped in the Comoros as they made their way to Mecca. There was therefore a widespread familiarity with the local world among the free population, and this is reflected in the material record.   The Hajj is only one of several events that mark the Islamic year. Ramadan, the month of fasting, is widely respected in the Comoros and is a time during which families tend to come together, particularly for iftar, the evening meal that ends the day’s fast. In common with Muslims elsewhere, at the end of Ramadan Comorians celebrate the festival of Eid al-Fitr, a family event that is also an occasion for the exchange of gifts and is today a public holiday marked by official ceremonies. Although a number of other festivals punctuate the Islamic year, some remain particularly celebrated in the islands. Miraj, the commemoration of the Prophet’s ascent into heaven, is also a public holiday, while Maulid, the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, is widely commemorated. Throughout the month of Maulid (the Islamic month of Rabi’ alawwal) a celebration of the life of the Prophet, likewise known as a maulid and usually the Maulid Barzanji, is recited at gatherings across the islands. 46

FROM THE ORIGINS

Although the unity of God is never called into question, the Prophet Muhammad is granted a particular importance in the Comoros, and this is also reflected in the social status accorded to his descendants and in the faithfulness with which the Comorian pilgrims continue to visit his tomb in Medina while undertaking the Hajj. * * * By the end of the fifteenth century the islands had found a niche trading slaves and foodstuffs with partners from Madagascar to Mecca and beyond, in exchange both for goods for their survival and for the occasional luxury. Traders, using rutters such as those of the navigator and poet Ibn Majid, were quite familiar with the islands, and if Ibn Majid says that Ngazidja was the best known, the others were also frequented, with some regularity.53 The political structures now in place would not change again until the colonial era, the sultanates had been established, the religious leadership were members of the prestigious sharifu families of the Hadramawt, and even if all the archipelago’s inhabitants were not Muslims, the free population were. The Comoros were therefore, like the towns of the Swahili world, part of a cosmopolitan cultural complex, outward-looking and well informed on goings-on in the western Indian Ocean, and both in terms of learning—Islamic knowledge in science and mathematics—and technology not so very different from the European societies of the time. Things were about to change, however, and quite profoundly, as these Europeans arrived in the Indian Ocean—although for the Comoros, unlike many places around the ocean, the changes would generally be positive. But before we turn to the Europeans, brief mention should be made of some other visitors, who arrived from the East, and who may also have visited the islands.   Between 1405 and 1433, at the initiative of the Ming emperor Zhu Di, a number of expeditions under the leadership of the admiral Zheng He sailed from China into the western ocean. Referred to today as the Ming voyages, these seven fleets visited much of insular and mainland Southeast Asia as well as India, Sri Lanka, south Arabia and the coast of East Africa. We know that the fleets visited Mogadishu and Malindi (where, eighty years later, the locals told the Portuguese about other light-skinned visitors, just like them, but who had come from the east) and may even have visited the Comoros. A tradition from Hamahame, on the northeast coast of Ngazidja, tells how the fifteenthcentury king Inyehele was born of the rape of his mother by a Portuguese sailor, but, as we have seen, the description ‘Portuguese’ is often applied to 47

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non-Arab (or non-Muslim) foreigners. Inyehele died in 1470—an inscription at the mosque in the town of Mbeni records the date—rendering his Portuguese paternity impossible, but had he been born in the second or third decade of the fifteenth century, a Chinese father would certainly have been within the realm of possibility.54

48

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WRITTEN HISTORY THE EUROPEAN ENCOUNTER

In the 908th year of the Hegira the month of Ramadan fell towards the end of the Comorian wet season. This is a season when the monsoon is shifting, the winds are unreliable and the days are often still altogether. The equinoctial mornings are calm, the ocean flat and motionless, a light mist lies over the water. One particular morning towards the end of the month, as the sky lightened and the mist dissipated, as the inhabitants of Ndzuani—or at least those who were Muslim, since many slaves still held different beliefs—finished a meal before sunrise, they would have been surprised to see a fleet of ships lying offshore. This fleet—exactly how many ships it comprised is not certain, but possibly as many as a dozen—had an unusual aspect: rather graceless, they sat high in the water with two main masts bearing large square sails, very different from the sleek, low-slung, lateen-sailed dhows of the Arab traders that usually visited the island. The ships were a fair distance offshore, and they were clearly becalmed, their sails hanging limply in the warm morning air.   The islanders had already heard tales of the Franks and had probably realised it would only be a matter of time before they arrived in the Comoros. Five years earlier, in 903 of the Hegira, 1498 in the Christian calendar, the Franks had sailed the nearby African coast, stopping at Mozambique, Mombasa and Malindi, attacking the two former towns before sailing on to India. They had returned half a dozen times since, stopping at places such as Sofala and Kilwa as well as Mozambique and Malindi; they had left behind men to trade and,

49

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no doubt, to spy, and they clearly intended to establish their domination over the coastal towns. The Wandzuani were therefore likely to have been somewhat ambivalent about this encounter, and during the ten days this fleet was becalmed they seem to have made no attempt to contact the newcomers. Occasionally a fire was lit, but whether this was a signal or just a coincidence, part of the Eid celebrations, is not known. They sent out no boats to the ships, waiting apprehensively, perhaps, to see whether the Franks would make the first move. In the event, and for whatever reason, the foreigners appeared uninterested in visiting the island. Eleven days later the wind finally rose, their sails filled and they disappeared into the proverbial sunset. The Portuguese encounter The Franks were the Portuguese and the fleet in question was the fourth Portuguese India Armada under the command of Vasco da Gama, returning from India. They would appear to have sighted the Comoros on 25 or 26 March 1503, and made slow progress before being becalmed on the 28th (29 Ramadan, a couple of days before Eid al-Fitr). To the best of our knowledge these were the first European visitors to the Comoros; the fact that it was a failed encounter says much about both parties. If the Wandzuani were apprehensive, the Portuguese, on their way home, were quite simply afraid of being robbed of the booty that they had plundered during their voyage to India. In retrospect the Comorians would have been grateful that da Gama’s men did not land. Da Gama had proved himself to be a particularly barbaric individual: his exploits on this, his second voyage to India, included burning a ship full of pilgrims on their way to Mecca (women and children included); on his outbound voyage—and Comorians would certainly have been aware of this— da Gama had forced the sultan of Kilwa to pay a tribute of 1500 meticals of gold to the Portuguese king.1   The history of the Portuguese voyages into the Indian Ocean is well documented. Vasco da Gama’s rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 is seen as a watershed moment not simply in the history of the Indian Ocean, but in world history generally: hitherto European contacts with the Indian Ocean systems had been either highly limited or mediated by the Ottomans, Mamluk Egypt and the peoples of the Indian Ocean themselves, Arab and Indian traders in particular. Indeed, it was largely the result of a widely felt frustration with the Venetian monopoly of the spice trade, supported by Muslim middlemen who shared an interest in maintaining it, that prompted other European  

50

WRITTEN HISTORY

powers, particularly the Spanish and the Portuguese, to seek alternative routes to the Indies. However, while this event certainly ushered in an era of new configurations of power in the region, this was a gradual process and initially the arrival of the Portuguese was a minor event in the overall pattern of movements and trade in the ocean. The Portuguese, much to their dismay, found that although they now had direct access to the spices of the East, they themselves had little in the way of items to exchange: hence the gunboat diplomacy that ensued.2   The Portuguese encounter did not affect the Comoros the way it did parts of the mainland even if the arrival of Europeans was to have a profound effect on the islands’ economies. The Portuguese endeavour was aimed at controlling trade with the Indies, initially in pepper, later in other spices, and finally in a range of commodities from horses to ivory. The Portuguese swiftly realised that the items they had previously used for the barter trade on the West African coast, often little more than trinkets, were of no interest to Indian Ocean merchants, who insisted on payment in gold. This in turn required a source of gold, which they found, or thought they had found, in southern Africa: gold produced in Monomotapa (centred on the Zimbabwe plateau) entered the Indian Ocean trading networks through the towns of Sofala and Angoche, and thence to Kilwa, whose rulers exercised control over the trade. Portuguese appropriation of the gold trade was essential to the success of their primary mission in the ocean, the trade with India, and they rapidly established their domination, not without resistance, over the towns of the coast.   Forts were built in Sofala and in Kilwa in 1505 and in Mozambique in 1507, but while Kilwa and Sofala were nodes in the gold trade, Mozambique was more important as a supply post and way station on the route to India. The voyage from Lisbon to India was too long to attempt without a stop and Mozambique, with its sheltered harbour and lying at the southern end of the monsoon system, was ideally suited, located just far enough north for ships to sail to India with the following monsoon. However, the procurement of supplies was a chronic problem. Mozambique island is small and not particularly fertile; since Portuguese relationships with the often hostile peoples both on the coast and in the hinterland were poor, it was difficult for the settlement to rely on locally produced food. In 1510 uprisings in Angoche and Mozambique interrupted the supply of food from the mainland, and relations between the Portuguese and the locals also degenerated at Sofala where the Arab elite were particularly opposed to the Portuguese presence. By 1512 the Arabs of Sofala decided that, united, they could probably drive 51

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out the Portuguese; although they never did quite manage to expel them, they did prevent the locals from supplying them, and it became impossible for the Portuguese to secure food between Sofala and Kilwa.3 Although a mixture of force and diplomacy eventually quelled the Arab opposition, it became clear to the Portuguese that they would have to ensure alternative sources of provisions, either from Madagascar or the Comoros. The Comoros, a short distance offshore, were fertile and productive and the inhabitants were prepared to trade.   Following their encounter with the Comoros, da Gama’s fleet reached Mozambique where, upon enquiring about the islands they had seen, they were told ‘that these islands produce much meat, much ginger and sugar cane, that they have very good waters and that it is a fertile land’.4 Three years later the captain of the Portuguese fort at Kilwa twice wrote to the king describing the Comoros, reporting how they produced large quantities of water, cattle, goats, chickens, millet, rice, ginger, sugar and fruits, and ‘stones which are worth much; because they are rare’, adding that it was from the Comoros that Kilwa and Mombasa obtained supplies, and proposed that the Portuguese do likewise, ‘because in the islands of Comoro, Sire, there are enough supplies to provide for a great number of people’. He names six islands, ‘Lyna, which is a very large island’, Zoane (Ndzuani), Ouzija (Ngazidja), Maotoe (Mayotte), Acymae and Molale (Mwali), says that they all have Moorish kings, and suggests that the islands could submit to the Portuguese and pay tribute. His advice seems to have gone unheeded since there is no record of the Portuguese attempting to impose their authority over the islands.5   This also seems to have been the moment when the archipelago assumed (or was granted) its contemporary name. Until the arrival of the Portuguese, Arab navigators referred to Madagascar and the surrounding islands collectively as Kumr, from the Arabic qamar, ‘moon’; Madagascar itself was also known as Kumr while the islands of the Comoros were known by their individual names. In 1500 the Portuguese christened Madagascar ‘St Lawrence’, for the day on which they first landed, 10 August, and the name Kumr thenceforth referred only to the Comoros. Interestingly, this transfer of name would appear to be reflected in a rutter of Ibn Majid, where he states that ‘Dumuni [Domoni, i.e. Ndzuani] is one of the islands of Comoro, islands of the land of Kumr’.6   Although reconstructing the Portuguese encounter is difficult, trade was of some importance to the settlement at Mozambique, even if initially there were setbacks. According to the Turkish admiral Piri Re’is, the Portuguese had  

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(inadvertently) left men on Mayotte, possibly as early as the first decade of the century, when 15 ships attacked the island’s principal town, Tsingoni: following divine intervention the fleet had been wrecked on the reefs that surround the island and their crews marooned.7 By the middle of the century the islands were sufficiently well known for Balthazar Lobo de Sousa to provide a description that accurately named and described all four of them. Ngazidja, divided into twenty chiefdoms that were constantly at war with one another, was ruled by Arab Moors from the coast of Malindi, while Mayotte was said to be ruled by a single king and have 30 cities of 300 to 400 inhabitants. While this is likely an exaggeration, the islands were said to be healthy, fertile and prosperous: de Sousa suggested that the Portuguese could easily take over the main commerce, which was with the Moors of Mecca, and wondered why they had not settled. Despite de Sousa’s wondering, it is likely that some did: since the Portuguese crown held the monopoly on trade on the mainland coast, private individuals were only permitted to trade with the Querimba Islands, the Comoros and Madagascar. They certainly took advantage of this opportunity, trading and probably settling too. In addition to the trade in foodstuffs and other goods, and quite possibly in slaves, too, for their own use, the Portuguese would also have traded many commodities onwards. Thus in the 1580s Jorge de Menezes was granted a licence to ‘bring every year from the Comoro islands two hundred bars of ginger of four quintals to the bar, and send them to Ormus’.8   The Comorians would undoubtedly have resisted any attempts at Portuguese domination and the Portuguese may well have decided that there was no need: the Comoros had no gold, and the Portuguese would have realised that food was more likely to be obtained through trade than through coercion. The relationship between the two peoples was therefore less marked by the hostility that framed Portuguese activities on the mainland, where the newcomers had sacked, one after the other, almost every settlement of importance from Sofala to Mogadishu and beyond, and it accorded the relationship between Comorians and Portuguese a particular character, reflected in the way that the Portuguese have been incorporated, generally positively, into local discourse and oral tradition. On Mayotte the villages of Tsimkura and Karoni are said to have been settled by Portuguese while on Ngazidja people still tell rumours of remote villages said to be inhabited by blond-haired, blueeyed descendants of Portuguese navigators. A ruin in Ikoni is said to be a Portuguese fort, and mysterious tombs, some bearing crosses, in the north and east of Ngazidja are also attributed to the Portuguese, and although this may 53

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well be so this claim is inscribed within a wider attribution of all things foreign but non-Muslim to the Portuguese. As we have seen, the Portuguese are represented symbolically in a positive light: they were either the first settlers of the island, or subsequently contributed to the development of island society. Despite the paucity of written evidence, and pace de Sousa’s wondering, it is clear that there was indeed a Portuguese presence on the islands, and there would have been individuals who traded and settled, taking local wives, Comorian or slave. Thus, for example, in 1620 the French general Beaulieu wrote his letter to the king of Mitsamihuli in Spanish, so that if there were any Portuguese living in the town the king could have it translated.9 A trading economy on the route to the Indies For almost a hundred years the Indian Ocean was, as far as Europeans were concerned, a Portuguese lake, but at the end of the sixteenth century ships of other nations started to arrive.10 The first English ship to visit the islands, the Edward Bonaventure under the command of Sir James Lancaster, called at Ngazidja in 1591 but the encounter was a tragic one: in the course of taking on water a dispute arose between the ship’s crew and the locals, and 30 of Lancaster’s men were killed. It is likely, given that this event occurred at the very end of the dry season, that the water was at the origin of the dispute since Ngazidja has very little, neither wells nor surface water. Although Lancaster warned those who followed to avoid the island, in 1608 a ship of the newly formed East India Company, the Ascension, called, anchoring off Ikoni, where they found the locals to be ‘civil, kind and honest’. The king instructed his subjects to give them water but the English declined, feeling that it would not be politic to take water when the islanders themselves had so little: this, again, was at the end of the dry season.11   But reports from the island were equivocal. The survivors of a Portuguese carrack wrecked on Ngazidja in 1616 reported that many of their number were killed, others robbed, and some apparently forcibly circumcised,12 and in 1620 the king of Mitsamihuli, presumably unaware of their contents, showed General Beaulieu letters written by previous visitors containing advice to those who followed, warning them that, while friendly, the islanders were to be treated with caution. However, other reports—including one from Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador to the Mughal Empire, who pointed out that Wangazidja would have met Europeans on the other islands—are more positive, and Ngazidja was certainly able to offer a range of supplies: in par54

WRITTEN HISTORY

ticular, the island’s extensive pastures were ideal for raising cattle, highly sought after by passing fleets. Indeed, the Comoros were ideally situated from the perspective of the European fleets: it could take four or five months for ships from England to reach the Indian Ocean, by which time they were badly in need of both food and water. As we have seen, the African mainland, which in any case was under Portuguese control, could not be relied upon for supplies, and nor could Madagascar—for a while St Augustine’s Bay, where the city of Toliara now stands, was also visited, but the locals were frequently hostile. The Comoros, productive, Muslim (and therefore at least not complete savages in the eyes of the English), eager to trade, lying astride the inside passage to India, as the Mozambique Channel was known, and effectively the last port of call before ships struck out across the ocean for Surat or Madras, were perfect. But if reports of the Wangazidja’s attitude towards visitors were ambiguous, the lack of fresh water and lack of a safe anchorage were unavoidable disadvantages, prompting the Europeans to seek another haven.   Mwali was their next choice. The island was well integrated into regional trading networks, its people relatively open towards outsiders, and they were clearly accustomed to dealing with the Portuguese: the islanders professed great friendship for them and many spoke the language. The island possessed a ­number of reasonably safe anchorages: occasionally the south coast off Nyumashuwa, particularly in the early years before the wind systems were properly understood and ships arrived during the northwest monsoon; later, off the villages of Miringoni and Domoni on the northwest coast, in the lee of the islands during the dry season; and finally at Fomboni, the island’s capital.   Mwali was, by all accounts, a prosperous place, producing foodstuffs—cattle, fruit and coconuts—as well as cowries, re-exporting sandalwood, rice, millet, ambergris and slaves from Madagascar, and trading at Mozambique for cotton, gold, ivory ‘and such like things’ and in Arabia for various types of cloth and opium; the islanders also imported pottery, ironware and glass as well as selling their goods for coin.13 Comorians, Portuguese, Swahili, Arabs, Gujaratis and Malagasy all traded through the island, and the trade with Mozambique, mostly in foodstuffs, was particularly lively: Wamwali sailed to Mozambique just as the Portuguese, many of whom would have been locally born and of mixed descent, came to Mwali.14 In 1620 Beaulieu encountered Arab traders, one ‘from Mecca’, whose pilot spoke Portuguese, as well as two Lamu dhows sailing home from Mayotte with a cargo of rice, smoked meat and slaves and a few years later Sir Thomas Roe came across a dhow carrying slaves from Madagascar.15 Traders came from Gujarat with cloth—known as 55

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Cambay cloth for the town where much of it was made—to sell in exchange for rice and slaves, and the people of Socotra, off the coast of Somalia, made annual voyages to the islands to buy slaves.16 Slaves were probably the most profitable business, sourced from both Madagascar and the mainland as well as being bred locally; in the early seventeenth century they fetched nine or ten dollars a head on the African coast and in Arabia, but could be sold to the Portuguese for as much as 100 dollars each.17 Mwali therefore had plenty to offer, and in addition to local produce, cattle and fruit were imported from Ngazidja for sale to passing ships.   The trade items most requested from the Europeans were iron, knives and other weapons, in addition to cloth and articles of clothing. Spanish dollars, also known as reals, were always welcome, serving to purchase goods from Arab and Gujarati traders, although the wreck of the Portuguese carrack referred to above also had economic repercussions: in 1617 it was reported that the islanders had ‘good store of rials of eight, which are melted together in lumps, being taken out of the carrack’ and preferred other goods in trade.18 The trade was regulated by the island’s rulers: Sir Thomas Herbert, who anchored at Miringoni, met a ‘shabandar’, or portmaster, by the name of Alicusary (described by Herbert as ‘a blacke big bon’d knave’, so possibly not a member of the ruling family), who oversaw dealings with the foreigners; on occasions the king’s permission was required to trade.19 Despite the commerce there was occasional conflict and in 1625 the English gave the king of Mwali a ring ‘to seall passes of his vessels, whearby our nation might not molest them, for he much complayned that the Fleet of Deffence took one of his vessels at his door’.20   This complaint is unusual, since the English rarely bothered native vessels, although between 1580 and 1640 the union of the two kingdoms of Spain and Portugal led to a deterioration in relations between Portugal and England, formerly (and subsequently) allies of long standing. During this period Portuguese ships, including locally based dhows, were considered fair game and in 1629 the English ‘surprized a small Portugal junk trading from St. Lawrence [Madagascar] to Mozambique with 3,280 sticks sandal wood of mean value, paddy or rice, and 126 slaves’.21 This dhow was undoubtedly owned by and probably crewed by locally born Portuguese of mixed descent, and such vessels may have been considered ‘one of ours’ by the local rulers.22   Mwali was frequently a dependency of Ndzuani. Piri Re’is confirms that Mwali had no king but was ruled by a sheikh (fani), one in each of the three towns; in the early seventeenth century these three sheikhs were all sons of the 56

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queen of Ndzuani, members of the al-Masela lineage, the local name adopted by the Ba Faqih sharifu lineage.23 In 1602 the Dutch Admiral Spilberg met one of them (whom he called the ‘king’) and reported that he spoke Arabic and reasonable Portuguese and was well travelled: he visited the African coast every year and had been to Mecca.   Within a couple of decades of the English arriving in the Indian Ocean, the Comoros had been firmly established as their preferred port of call. The East India Company began to refer to them, without ambiguity, simply as ‘the islands’, and English ships often spent several weeks, if not longer, in the archipelago, either waiting for other members of their fleet to catch up or, if, as sometimes happened, they had sailed too late in the season, ‘wintering’ there, waiting until the winds shifted to the south so that they could continue their voyage to India. The islands also served as a convenient place to drop off letters, leaving advice or instructions for those who would follow. But Mwali’s days were counted. During the northwest monsoon, when dhows from the north visited, Nyumashuwa on the south coast provided a well-protected harbour for the Arab and Swahili traders, undoubtedly one reason why the island had become a trading centre in the first place; during the southeast monsoon Nyumashuwa was exposed to the prevailing winds and the north coast of the island was little better. The roadstead at Mutsamudu on Ndzuani, although not always easy to enter, was far safer, lying in the lee of the island during the peak European visiting months of July and August, and by the 1630s the East India Company had abandoned Mwali for Ndzuani, ‘the healthier island, though yielding less supplies’.24 The island of Johanna Ndzuani, or Johanna as the English called it, was to remain the preferred port of call on the route to the East for two centuries, and from the 1630s until they finally relinquished any claims to influence over the island in the late nineteenth century the English were to have a profound effect on Ndzuani, socially, politically and economically.25 As a result of their repeated and often lengthy sojourns on the island, many locals acquired a familiarity with the English, their ways and their language, and kept themselves informed about current events, both in England and in the wider world. The English preference for Mutsamudu was to be a determining factor in the shift of power locally from Domoni—the preferred port for Arab dhows since it was in the lee of the island during the northwest monsoon, but windward and thus 57

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impractical in July and August—to the former town, and by the end of the eighteenth century the sultan had chosen Mutsamudu as his capital and residence. He, his entourage and the townspeople generally profited handsomely from the business of supplying passing ships.26   By the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, the prosperity that Ndzuani had enjoyed in earlier centuries had waned. Peter Mundy, who visited in 1634, reported that the towns, built at the beginning of the previous century, were largely in ruins since the Arab settlers had died and ‘their offspring fallen to poverty’; other visitors made similar observations, and this would have been at least partly due to the Portuguese disruption of the local trade on the coast.27 Nevertheless, there was still trade, the locals using their own ships—Mundy noted a 100-tonne dhow under construction—and this grew rapidly over the course of the century once the English had established their preference for the islands. The local traders both imported goods, particularly from the other islands, for sale to the English, and traded with their historical partners with the money and goods they thereby obtained. The English had free use of a piece of land called Brown’s Garden, located just west of Mutsamudu, where they could relax, collect firewood and take on water;28 some of the fleets that called were substantial—in 1671 a fleet of ten English ships was found at anchor off Mutsamudu—and they could spend significant sums of money on supplies. In 1631, during a famine in India, an East India Company fleet purchased 1,700 dollars’ worth of foodstuffs; since a dollar bought 100 lb of rice or 175 lb of gravances (a type of pea) and cattle were two dollars a head, these were significant cargoes and much of it would have come from the other islands or even from Madagascar.29   Prices fluctuated somewhat in response to demand, or according to whatever the locals thought they could charge. Cattle were one dollar a head in the first decade of the seventeenth century, four dollars by the middle of the century but only two again in 1690.30 Increasingly, however, prices stabilised and by the eighteenth century the trade was well organised. There were fixed port fees at Mutsamudu, generally accepted by the captains of foreign ships, and a fixed price list for supplies:31 to the Sultan   a barrel of powder of 100 lb   a barrel of pitch, or 10 Spanish reals to the Governor   a half-barrel of powder of 50 lb   a half-barrel of pitch, or 5 Sp. reals   plus, for the delivery of provisions, 5 Sp. reals

58

WRITTEN HISTORY to the Crown Prince   ten Spanish reals to the Purser   twenty ps. Sp. reals to the Secretary and the Mufti, each   one flintlock to the pilot   four ps. Sp. reals For middle-sized slaughter cattle: five Spanish reals For twelve baskets of purslane: one ps. Spanish real For 100 pieces of cut firewood: one ps. Spanish real

  Several accounts state that fruit was for the taking and that only coconuts and livestock needed to be paid for, so clearly the latter, and particularly cattle, were traded in some quantity; despite these claims, however, other provisions, such as chickens, goats, eggs and fruit, were also purchased, presumably because, despite the king’s directives, the local population, eager for income of their own, had no desire to give their produce away. The revenue was clearly important to the local economy, and one account suggests that the king earned upwards of 500 dollars from each ship.32 Although this may seem like an exaggeration, the ships were often so eager for provisions that they paid more than the going rate and large sums of money certainly changed hands. In 1783 William Jones discussed trade with the governor’s brother Prince Said Alwi. Alwi was an educated man, knowledgeable about European politics, and he even translated one of Jones’s Arabic manuscripts into English. He explained their desire for money rather than ‘toys’, saying that it facilitated their trade with the other islands and with the mainland. They imported arms and cloth from Bombay and traded them on to Madagascar where the Malagasy had dollars, obtained from the French, to buy cattle, honey, butter and so on. With their gold they bought ivory in Mozambique, where there was also a barter trade for ammunition and iron; they also sent commodities to the Portuguese, who paid in cloth. These cloths they ‘dispose of lucratively’ in the other islands, whence they obtained cattle, rice, ‘a kind of breadfruit’ and slaves: all this trade was in their own ships. These trading networks were ocean-wide: some included Europeans, others did not, but in both cases there was a constant circulation of goods on a significant scale and across a wide area.33   As it had been on Mwali, trade with the foreigners was the responsibility of a senior local official. In 1750 this was a man by the name of Purser Jack; in 1773 the above-mentioned Said Alwi was in charge but by 1776 he had been 59

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replaced by another purser called Ban Hassannji Majombee. By 1781, however, either Purser Jack had returned or someone else had assumed his name:34 They have an officer stiled Purser Jack who seems to be at the head of the finance-department; of dukes they have a prodigious number, who entertain us at their hotels for a dollar per day and give us for dinner very good rice and curry; these noblemen, together with a numerous tribe of others of all ranks, make the earliest application to every one to solicit the honor of his company and custom, even before the ship has let go its anchor they come along side in their canoes and produce written certificates of their honesty and abilities from those who have been here before, the purport of which is to inform you that the bearer has given them good cheer, washed their linen well and supplied their ship punctually with all sorts of refreshments.35

  Many of those who serviced the British ships held British titles, often borrowed from illustrious visitors to the island: in addition to Purser Jack and the Prince of Wales (who was, of course, the son of the sultan), there was Admiral Lord Rodney, Commodore Blankett and Duke Drummond, among others. Many wore items of European clothing—hats, vests, jackets with epaulettes— and some even sported name tags. Although these titles may have been intended to impress the English, it is more likely they were simply trading names, and possibly bestowed by the English themselves: it would have been much easier for an English traveller to pass on a recommendation for Commodore Blankett than to try and explain exactly which Mohammed bin Ahmed among several he had employed to wash his clothes; some of these names were inherited as one individual took over from his predecessor, whether master or kin.36   The affinities that the Wandzuani felt for the English were both developed during and expressed through the increasing contacts between the two peoples. Most visitors commented on how many of the islanders spoke some English, and the Wandzuani were fond of telling visitors ‘Joanna-man and English-man all brothers’.37 In 1704 they informed John Pike that upon the death of their king they had chosen a queen—this was Halima II—in order ‘to be like the English’: Queen Anne had acceded to the throne in 1702, so news clearly travelled fast.38 This anglophilia reached a zenith towards the end of the eighteenth century, and although there were plenty of disparaging remarks from British visitors, they generally appreciated the Wandzuani, describing them as welcoming, intelligent and cheerful, if not always scrupulously honest, and there were never suggestions that the British might find a better port of call. 60

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  The other islands occasionally competed for the custom of passing ships— in 1708 the king of Mwali tried to persuade a passing French ship to stop for supplies—but in vain: Ndzuani was indeed the preferred port of call and the other islands were obliged to send their produce there for onward sale to the Europeans. It was only the European trade that was confined to Ndzuani, however, since local traders were able to beach their dhows rather than anchoring, exposed to the winds, and could therefore trade at any town with a beach. The customary trade with Indian Ocean partners also complemented the European trade, since local ships arrived on the northern monsoon in December or January and sailed again in April or May while Europeans arrived with the southerly winds in June–August,39 and together they afforded a reasonably steady income to the islands. Despite William Jones’s statement that the trade was in locally owned ships, foreigners were certainly involved: Swahili and Arabs, either from the African coast or from Yemen, Hadramawt and Oman; Portuguese mestizos, be they based on the mainland or in the islands; and Gujaratis, among others.40 A cosmopolitan people Identifying all these people was long a preoccupation of European visitors to the islands, undoubtedly part of the process of choosing how to deal with them, deciding whether they were Arabs, and thus perhaps a little closer to the Europeans by the standards of civilisation at the time; or whether they were Africans, savages to be treated with caution and firmness. In the seventeenth century the rulers of the islands were recognised as being of Arab origin, even if ‘little whiter than the ordinary people’, and they dressed in the Arab manner. Covert says that the king of Ngazidja wore sandals, ‘a white net cap on his head; a scarlet vest with sleeves, but open before; a piece of cloth around his middle; and another which hung from his shoulders to the ground’.41 John Davis described the king of Mayotte, who wore ‘long silk garments embroidered after the Turkish manner’; and likewise the king of Mwali wore ‘a white Cotten coate, a Turbant upon his head, and a Guzerate Pintado about his middle’.42 On Ndzuani the king also wore ‘a large white turban, and had as good a white shirt on his back; from his girdle half way his legs, a blue silk vest fringed with purple’, although Fryer added that he was, for all that, ‘a woollypated coffery’.43 The king’s entourage and the ‘priests’ were similarly dressed, further confirmation of the existence of an Arabised elite,44 and although they were sometimes described as ‘Turks’, ‘all richly dressed in the Turkish fashion 61

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with turbans’, they were descended from Arab or Hadrami migrants and most of them would have been born in the islands or on the nearby mainland.45   The rest of the population were of various origins, ‘a mixture of several races’ according to Pyrard, variously described as Moors, Arabs, Persians, Ethiopians, Turks, Caffres and Mulattos, as well as Negroes, but apart from some of the slaves and a few traders they too would have been locally born, and differences in dress and physical appearance would have been a reflection of social status rather than origins or ethnicity. If the island’s slaves were not yet converts to Islam—Herbert says that ‘the inhabitants are a mixture of Gentiles and Mahomitans’—the free population were devoted Muslims.46 There are repeated references to the islanders keeping Ramadan, and much panic was caused when one of Roe’s party unexpectedly approached a village before the women could be concealed. They were not, however, averse to a little wine.47   The bulk of the population were indeed slaves, or the descendants thereof. Sir Thomas Herbert said of the people of Mwali that ‘[they] are cole black, have great heads, big lips, are flat nos’d, sharp chind, huge limbd, affecting Adams garb, a few Plantaine leaves girding their wasts, vailing their modest parts’48—presumably people of African origin. Robert Challe, on the other hand, also reporting from Mwali, says that the people did not have ‘frizzy’ hair like the Africans but had long hair and only differed from Europeans in their skin colour: these people may well have been Malagasy.49 Few of them would have been Muslim and most wore nothing more than a simple piece of cloth: with their shaved heads, the women could apparently only be distinguished from the men by the piece of cloth worn over their breasts.50   The importance of slavery, and the fact that slaves must often have constituted a majority in centuries past, led to different strategies on the different islands. The slave trade was of great economic importance. Piri Re’is’s observation that the islanders bred slaves ‘like lambs and sheep’ is apt, for while some slaves would have been shipped out fairly swiftly, others would have remained there, and would have become locally productive, as either domestic or agricultural slaves, eventually integrating into Comorian society, marrying and producing children who then themselves either worked locally or were sold.51 Slaves were not Muslim, and historical texts appear to refer to their having been branded as such: Beaulieu reported that some of the people he saw on Ngazidja had clearly not been Muslim for very long, for they were all branded on the temples and in the middle of the forehead, and although this may have been a customary practice among the groups of origin, it is also possible that these marks indicated their former slave status.52 Since Muslims could not be 62

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enslaved, slaves would have had a strong incentive to convert whenever possible, and in the nineteenth century, and undoubtedly earlier, this also implied adopting matrilineality and local ritual practices as well, allowing for these people to be incorporated into Comorian society, to become Comorian. This was particularly true of Ngazidja, where there is a remarkable degree of social homogeneity, largely due to the incorporative functions of ritual practices.   Ndzuani is somewhat different and is marked by a strong urban–rural divide. The towns were the fiefs of the Arab or, more accurately, Arabised elite, descendants of Shirazi and Arab immigrants and known, in recognition of their genealogies, as makabaila, from the Arabic for ‘tribes’. The rural areas were occupied by people descended from immigrants—many of them slaves— from Madagascar or from Africa. Quite why these people were not incorporated in the same way as their counterparts on Ngazidja is not clear, since presumably in the past social practice on Ndzuani would have more closely resembled that on Ngazidja than it does today. It is possible that the more productive land, the development of a mercantile economy, which was based on organised agricultural production and a labour system that sustained a nascent plantation economy, and the difficulty of access to some parts of the interior of the island, where slaves were settled, hampered integration of the two groups; it is also true that the ruling classes were less ‘Comorian’ than their counterparts on Ngazidja, and incorporation of slaves into an Arabised elite was not desirable.   There are further internal distinctions among the rural populations, some of whom are recognised as being of recent African origin—today the descendants of nineteenth-century slaves are often and pejoratively referred to as Makua, a reference to the Makua ethnic group of northern Mozambique whence many hailed—while others, known as Wamatsaha or Bushmen, claim to be the descendants of the island’s original inhabitants, probably of mixed Malagasy and African origin.53 Certainly there is a recognised difference between the two groups, and the Wamatsaha enjoy higher status than the Makua. They are, however, all Wandzuani.   Finally, Europeans also settled on the islands. In addition to the Portuguese mestizos—and there was still a Portuguese factory on Ndzuani in the mid-seventeenth century—ships would regularly abandon sick or miscreant crew members from a variety of nations, while others were survivors from shipwrecks or pirate attacks; still others deserted. If many of these individuals eventually found onward passage on another ship, some would have stayed, possibly finding life on the islands more to their liking than that on board a ship.54 63

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Comorian spaces Comorian urban spaces are socially structured, and although they have evolved over the centuries, the basis for socio-spatial organisation would have been established as soon as the islands were settled, originally separating the free classes from the slaves. As we saw in the previous chapter, an urban culture was developing on the islands. In the early sixteenth century Piri Re’is reported that Mwali had three towns, presumably Fomboni, Nyumashuwa, and Domoni on the northwest point. It seems likely that towns were distinguished from villages by having houses built in stone, and although a century later Sir Thomas Herbert is somewhat disparaging about the ‘poore built mosques’, others compare the houses to those of Portugal, stone-built, using a lime mortar and plastered likewise with lime, with wooden rafters and roofs of coconut fronds.55 The Queen’s house, also of stone, was built ‘like a cloister’, with an internal courtyard as was common in the houses of the upper classes. In 1615 Domoni, evidently a more prosperous place than it is today, was a town of 100 stone houses.56   The built environment was similar on the other islands, and by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries social spaces had assumed configurations that were probably not very different from those we find today, based on the principles of social organisation we have discussed: matrilineality, social hierarchies (free or slave), age and religion. Urban architecture shows a Muslim and Arab influence: it is a Swahili style. Townhouses are typically constructed of lime-washed basalt blocks, with carved wooden doors and shutters, of which fine examples can still be found at the restored Ujumbe, the sultan’s palace, in Mutsamudu. Walls are solid and the windows often small, keeping the house cool in the tropical heat, and the larger ones were built around a courtyard, often walled off from the alleys outside. Inside the houses of well-to-do families there are niches (zidaka), which serve as shelves; exposed beams support the ceiling, and are often adorned with magico-religious inscriptions, such as verses from the Koran, protecting the dwelling and its inhabitants. Although today many houses have flat roofs, in the past this was the exception and most had peaked thatched roofs. The poorer dwellings were wood-framed, mudplastered on the three smaller islands but more usually made of coconut fronds on Ngazidja where mud is scarce. Many of these modest dwellings were also built around a courtyard where family activities took place, and all but the largest houses were usually only of two rooms, a front room where guests were received, and where the children slept, and a rear room for the woman of the house and her husband. 64

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  A particular category of housing, indistinguishable physically from the poorer family home but playing a specific social role, was the vala (on Ngazidja) or banga (on the other islands), the bachelors’ hut, and they still exist today. They are a reflection both of the need to separate the young men of the family from their sisters, eliminating the risk of unacceptable sexual contact, and of the social cohesion, a sense of fraternity, established by the age system. Leaving the family home at puberty, the adolescent boy will build a hut, often on his hinya’s manyahuli on the outskirts of the village, where he lives surrounded by friends, kin and age mates. Although he continues to eat with his mother and his sisters, the banga will be his ‘home’ until the time of his marriage, when he will move in with his wife. The banga is often decorated, and some have a garden where the boys grow flowers to attract the girls.   The mosque is the most important building in any Comorian village, and every settlement will have one; larger towns may have a dozen or more, scattered through the quarters and establishing a sense of cohesion within the quarters as the men gather to pray several times a day. Externally the smaller mosques may be mistaken for houses, but the larger ones are more substantial and several old mosques have minarets, such as the Badjanani Mosque in Moroni (formerly the town’s Friday mosque), the Friday mosque in Mutsamudu and the Shirazi mosque in Domoni. The existence of a Friday mosque grants a settlement a particular status as a town, or mdji, establishing its independence since villagers are no longer required to go elsewhere on a Friday to pray, and today a Friday mosque is generally permitted in any village with a congregation of 80 men.   The plan of the mosque follows the Arab tradition that dates back to the era of Muhammad himself: at the front is the mihrab, the niche that indicates the quibla, the direction of Mecca, towards which the faithful pray, and larger mosques may have a mimbar, pulpit, from which the sermon is delivered. The prayer room itself is generally wider than it is long, allowing the faithful to pray next to each other, and in the larger mosques the roof may be supported by columns, which create a space that is both open and dark: cool inside and diffusely lit, the mosque is a place for reflection, prayer or reading, far from the noise, heat and dust of the secular world. Some mosques are of historical interest. In addition to those mentioned, the fourteenth-century Dalao mosque in Ntsaweni, built on the site of Ngazidja’s first mosque, the ‘miraculous mosque’ in Bangwa Kuuni on Ngazidja, said to have been built overnight, the Friday Mosque of Mutsamudu and the mosque at Tsingoni, on Mayotte, are all of historical interest. 65

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  All but the very smallest villages are divided into at least two quarters, often based on the distinction between free and slave (or, as they are now called, servile) even if it is no longer explicitly invoked, and this separation is often the basis for both community cooperation and some rivalry. In coastal towns such as Moroni, Mitsamihuli and Fumbuni on Ngazidja and Mutsamudu and Domoni on Ndzuani, there is a fishing quarter in addition to the free and servile quarters, fishermen being neither one nor the other. The larger towns are often further divided into sub-quarters, generally reflecting further social divisions, perhaps based on differences between the founders of the settlement; in addition to (or occasionally instead of ) a servile quarter, some of the towns in the interior, such as Kwambani and Mbeni on Ngazidja, may have autonomous servile villages, known as itreya, associated with them. This distinction between free and servile remains formal on Ngazidja, but there are villages and quarters whose inhabitants are recognised as being the descendants of slaves on all the islands, particularly in the rural areas of Ndzuani.   Every village is structured around a public square: a bangwe (on Ngazidja), mpangahari (on Ndzuani) or trengwe (on Mayotte), where customary activities take place and public meetings are held. Larger towns will have several, each corresponding to an age class or a quarter. Entrance to a bangwe is often by way of a monumental gate, and some served a particular purpose, such as the goba la salama (peace gate), of which examples still stand in Fumbuni, Ntsudjini and Kwambani. Warriors who passed through these gates as they went to war were assured of victory. The bangwe remains the preferred meeting place for men, whether to deal with village affairs (settlement of a public conflict, for example, or the dissemination of a decision made by the elders) or simply to pass the time, and in the past women and children were not permitted to enter the bangwe when it was being used by the men of the quarter. The bangwe itself has often moved, socially if not physically: if in the past sitting at the junction of several alleys in the middle of a village allowed men to keep track of comings and goings, today they prefer to sit by the side of the road that runs past the village, where they can keep an eye on passing traffic and note who is heading for Moroni. The ruling classes and internal conflict During the sixteenth century there were various migrations in the region and at least some of them were due to the Portuguese. In the early part of the century the Portuguese fought with the Ottoman empire in the Arabian pen66

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insula as well as attacking Hadramawt, prompting a wave of emigrations of Hadrami.57 Later in the century, and partly due to the Portuguese presence in their homeland, the Zimba from the Zambezi River valley moved northwards through eastern Africa, eventually reaching Kilwa, which they sacked in 1588, and Mombasa the following year; at the same time the Turks under Mir Ali Beg sailed southwards, attacking Portuguese-held towns on the coast.58 As a result of these decades of unrest on the mainland, settlers, including Shirazis and Hadramis, arrived in the Comoros from various parts of the coast.59   As we have seen, the ruling classes, on three of the islands and in at least some of the sultanates on Ngazidja, were of Arab or Shirazi origin. The regular arrival of Arabs reinforced the legitimacy of the ruling classes, with whom they sought alliances, and some of these newcomers were men of some means: in the late seventeenth century the king’s daughter married an Arab trader who paid a brideprice of 500 dollars and an unspecified number of slaves and cattle.60 In 1685 an uprising against the Portuguese at Shihr, in Hadramawt, triggered off more migrations, among whom was a Hadrami by the name of Ahmed, a member of the Abu Bakr bin Salim lineage, sharifu like the Ba Faqih. Ahmed travelled south along the coast, finally arriving in Mozambique where, while purchasing some slaves, he quarrelled with and killed a Portuguese trader; forced to flee, he settled on Ndzuani, winning the confidence of the islanders, apparently at least in part by teaching them techniques of war.61 Ahmed eventually married Queen Halima II; pious, and imbued with the prestige of his ancestry, the couple restored the mosques in Domoni and Mutsamudu. Ahmed established the Abu Bakr bin Salim ruling lineage on the island, although they only produced two rulers: their son Salim, also known as Trundra Lampevoni, inherited the throne from his mother; and Salim’s successor, his sister’s son (Halima and Ahmed’s grandson) Sultan Ahmed bin Saleh bin Omar, who ruled the island for some fifty years from about 1743 to 1792. Despite their Arab ancestry, their patrilineal descent from the Prophet and, later, colonial-era claims that the Abu Bakr bin Salim lineage ruled, both of these men ruled by virtue of their membership of Halima’s matrilineage.62   Although matrilineality does not mean matriarchy, women frequently held positions of power. Halima was only one of a number of women, whether queens or regents, who ruled in the islands, and the repeated (and sometimes conflicting) reports of Ndzuani being ruled by kings and queens would seem to reflect a struggle to impose different principles of succession on the island—the pre-Arab matrilineal system and an Arab patrilineal one brought 67

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by the Hadramis.63 It is likely that prior to the arrival of the latter in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, rules of succession and inheritance on all the islands would have been matrilineal, and Jones speaks of an elective monarchy, which probably reflects a process of negotiation over the office rather than a real election. This was the system in place in Ngazidja into the nineteenth century, where any male member of the ruling matrilineage was potentially a ruler: there was no rule of primogeniture. On Ndzuani, Arab principles of patrilineal descent seem to have been established by the end of the eighteenth century although rule was not absolute. Several observers reported that the king of Ndzuani ruled with the assistance and approval of a council of the aristocracy, who restricted the powers of the king; in particular their authorisation was required for war, and they expected a share in the profits from any such undertaking, particularly if they had participated in financing it.64   By the eighteenth century Ndzuani was already feeling the pressures on land that would become so acute in the twentieth century, both through population increase and through the appropriation of land by the makabaila. In the middle of the century the population was reported to be 25,000 to 30,000, and in 1776 a Dutch party described how ‘the country swarms with inhabitants’, and that there were 30 ‘kraals’ where the locals lived, most of them presumably in Bambao Mtuni, the fertile central region of the island.65 The concentration of power in the hands of the makabaila reinforced the rural–urban divide and led to increasing resentment on the part of the wamatsaha, who considered themselves to be the original inhabitants of the island— traditional landowners and former rulers who had been marginalised and dispossessed by the newcomers.66 Occasionally this resentment led to violence, the most famous episode being the late-eighteenth-century uprising of the wamatsaha led by a charismatic descendant of the island’s sheikhs from Bambao Mtuni by the name of Tumpa. Tumpa raised an army of 7000 men against 3000 supporters of the makabaila, and occupied Domoni, Said Ahmed’s capital, although he apparently did not dare harm the sultan. This done, he returned to Bambao Mtuni and sent a delegation to Mutsamudu demanding that the governor, Abdallah, come to Bambao and recognise his authority. Abdallah refused, upon which Tumpa’s army attacked Mutsamudu; Abdallah appealed for help from the commander of an English ship at anchor, and obtained the assistance of a detachment of Englishmen, one of whom apparently shot Tumpa. This prompted the rebels to flee and, admitting their defeat, they once again submitted to the authority of the Arab makabaila. The rebellion was over.67 68

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  There seem to have been several reasons for this uprising. Zaki suggested that they sought to be recognised as the equals of the makabaila, to the point of being permitted to marry their daughters, and the response of the makabaila—that if defeated, the wamatsaha would be considered as their slaves— supports this. But it is equally likely that access to land was already an issue on the island. Much of the land had become the property, either collectively or individually, of the ruling classes and the island’s original inhabitants were increasingly suffering from lack of cultivable land, particularly as they were expected to produce food on behalf of the landowners for export.68 The alternative to cultivating their own land would have been some form of sharecropping on makabaila land, which they would have been unwilling to do. Finally, the makabaila taxed the original inhabitants: levies, in cattle, fruit and rice, were imposed on 200 villages, which provided a substantial part of governmental revenue; the three towns—Mutsamudu, Wani and Domoni—were exempt, and even though the inhabitants of these towns (including the aristocracy and the king) paid a fortieth of moveable property to the chief mufti, the favourable treatment reserved for the makabaila would certainly have created resentment and been a cause of unrest.69 Mwali and Mayotte By end of the seventeenth century the rulers of Mwali had apparently lost the close kin ties that bound them to Ndzuani and no longer paid tribute. In an effort to reimpose their authority over the island, the Wandzuani appealed to the English for help and in the 1670s the latter obliged by providing a ship with which to transport Ndzuani troops to Mwali.70 Despite an official position of neutrality in local conflicts, the importance of Ndzuani to English shipping meant that it was in their interests to cultivate their relationship with the rulers of the island, and for a number of years they came to the aid of the sultans in their quarrels with their neighbours. In 1689 Mynea Shaw, the king of Ndzuani, told John Ovington that he was again having trouble with Mwali and requested weapons; ten years later James Littleton, commander of the Anglesey, again took a party of Wandzuani over to Mwali.71   Despite superior firepower, these expeditions did not always turn out well for the English. In 1704 Ndzuani yet again engaged the services of the Royal Navy, and for the sum of 2000 dollars, two ships, the Severn and the Scarborough, carried the king and a contingent of 300 men to invade Mwali; they burned Nyumashuwa and ten other villages before marching on 69

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Fomboni. There they met with defeat, however, and of the 300 Wandzuani and 22 English, 100 Wandzuani and 7 English were killed, others wounded and 10 taken prisoner. After negotiating for the return of their prisoners, and undoubtedly regretting their intervention, the English returned to Ndzuani, finished taking on supplies and sailed for Surat.72 Presumably at some point following this episode, Ndzuani again managed to impose its authority over Mwali since in 1743 Mwali had ‘recently’ shaken off the Ndzuani yoke, defeating a force of 1800 men carried over in 40 boats.73   By all accounts Mayotte was, like Mwali, agriculturally productive and eager to trade, and could also have provided supplies to the Europeans. The island’s lagoon, protected by its extensive barrier reef, provided a safe harbour in all seasons and the people appear to have been well disposed towards foreigners. In the early seventeenth century, prior to their establishment of a settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, the Dutch used the island as a supply point. In 1601 a Dutch fleet purchased a wide range of provisions, reporting that although the water was not good, there were large numbers of cattle and fruit; in 1607 another Dutch ship was able to take on board 366 head of cattle, 276 goats and ‘an extraordinary quantity of fruit’. The Dutch were such frequent visitors that when John Smart, leader of the Assada colony, a failed English settlement in Madagascar, visited Mayotte in 1646, he was at first taken for a Dutchman and treated well by the king.74 However, the reefs that provided shelter in the lagoon were ultimately too great a hazard, and more than one ship foundered before the Dutch finally abandoned the island in favour of the Cape.   As with Mwali, the rulers of Mayotte were kin to the rulers of Ndzuani and in 1599, when the king of Mayotte gave the Dutch a letter of introduction to the queen of Ndzuani, they were presumably on good terms.75 But, again, these links weakened with time and a century later the king of Mayotte was launching attacks on Ndzuani: the town of Domoni had lost many of its inhabitants through raids from the neighbouring island, who were presumably then sold as slaves.76 By the middle of the century Ndzuani appears to have re-established its authority over Mayotte, but in 1781 the latter island was once again in a state of rebellion—‘Mayotta like America’, or so the Wandzuani said—an uprising apparently occasioned by the refusal of the ruler of Mayotte to pay a tribute of rice to Ndzuani. As a result Ndzuani mustered a fleet of ships and invaded. Armed only with stones and spears against the guns of a force of Wandzuani 2500 men strong, the Maorais fled. The island’s prince sent a present to the king of Ndzuani, begged his pardon 70

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and promised to pay tribute once again, upon which the Wandzuani withdrew, taking a number of prisoners; these were enslaved and either put to work on the land or sold overseas.77   These inter-island incursions were an important source of slaves, and hostilities between islands were often more about economics than about power and sovereignty. Ten years later, in 1791, following a request for slaves from a French ship, Abdullah I of Ndzuani promptly sailed for Mayotte with a fleet of 35 boats and 1000 men. The French, with a further 300 men, accompanied them, but this time they found themselves outnumbered. In the ensuing fighting the Wandzuani were thoroughly routed and, retreating in disorder, they lost half their number and control over Mayotte in the process. Furious that his men had failed to secure slaves, and faced with being unable to fulfil his order, Abdullah sold 300 of them to the French, who sailed with them to Mauritius.78 Ngazidja As for Ngazidja, it is unlikely that Ndzuani ever managed to impose its authority upon the island, despite suggestions that Ngazidja once paid tribute.79 Occasionally troops were sent to assist the local rulers in their wars, some of whom were related to the rulers of Ndzuani, presumably in the hope of returning with a few slaves, but generally this period seems to have been one of relative peace and prosperity on the larger island, particularly in Itsandra, where the ruling clan was the Hinya Fwambaya.80 Oral tradition tells of a Sultan Mahame Said, renowned as an astrologer, who may have reigned in the sultanate for fifty years, probably in the mid-seventeenth century, and one of his successors, Fumu Mvundzambanga, who built the Friday mosques in Itsandramdjini and Ntsudjini and died while on pilgrimage to Mecca. But it was the latter’s sister’s daughter, Wabedja, who is particularly remembered in local traditions. In the absence of a male heir, she took the throne, moved into the Singani palace in Ntsudjini and ruled until one of her sons came of age. However, although she had three sons, each of whom inherited the throne in turn, none survived for long, and upon the death of the last of them, Wabedja moved back into the royal palace, eventually ruling for the best part of half a century.   Wabedja was particularly skilled at forging alliances, and established a relatively stable peace, marrying her daughters, Nema Feda—who was already ruling the sultanate of Hamahame—and Mmadjamu, to ruling members of 71

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the Hinya Matswa Pirusa, the other major clan on the island, which controlled the important northern town and port of Mitsamihuli as well as Ikoni and Moroni. During this period Ngazidja prospered: Wabedja encouraged trade and commerce, the development of agriculture and the establishment of crafts and small industries in the sultanate. Trade with the East African coast boomed as Itsandramdjini became the island’s premier commercial centre; port duties and income from taxes created wealth while goods, both local and foreign, passed through Itsandra to and from all parts of the island. Itsandra also became a centre of learning—Wabedja’s own daughter, the royal princess Mmadjamu, was renowned as an expert in matters of theology and law as well as being an accomplished poet; her poems are still recited today.   In 1743 the elderly Wabedja finally handed over power to her young grandson, Mmadjamu’s son Fumnau, an event that in itself marked the end of Itsandra’s golden age and the beginning of a period of conflict. Nema Feda, sultana of Hamahame, appears not to have been informed of the enthronement of her nephew; whether she was simply offended or whether she intended to claim the throne herself is not known, but she raised an army and marched on Ntsudjini. She was met and defeated by the combined forces of Bambao and Itsandra, but the peace was over.   The alliance between the two hinya, the Matswa Pirusa and the Fwambaya, was beginning to crumble: it finally fell apart altogether with the outbreak of war over the succession to the sultanate of Washili, the dispute over which dated to the foundation of the two clans by Fe Pirusa, the son of the first sultan of Washili. Since he was the son, and the succession passes through the female line, neither clan in fact had a claim to the sultanate and the succession itself had been alternating between two other clans for many years. However, the threat of a lack of an heir was looming since neither of the two designated heirs belonged to either of these two clans: one was of the Hinya Fwambaya and the other of the Matswa Pirusa.81   Legal advice was sought; and after much deliberation a verdict was pronounced in favour of the Hinya Fwambaya, their candidate being the son of the most recently deceased sultan. On hearing the news, Trambavu, sultan of Mitsamihuli and husband of Nema Feda, invaded his wife’s sultanate. An advance party of his army was met in the hills above Mbeni by the army of Itsandra, led by the sultan Fumnau, and slaughtered to the last man. In response Mlanau, the sultan of Bambao, marched on Washili, occupying the southern portion of the sultanate and the coastal plain, while Fumnau moved down to take the north and the capital, Kwambani. The ensuing war lasted 72

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seven years and completely laid waste to the area. Hostilities finally ended when Bambao’s two most valiant warriors took it upon themselves to attack the Itsandran town of Tsidje; word of their plan got out, however, and they were ambushed and killed. Hearing that he had lost his two best men, Mlanau gave up the fight and returned to defend Ikoni, leaving the sultanate of Washili to the opposition. However, the claimant to the throne had by this time died and the new sultan was none other than Mlanau’s own son Trambwe.   Encouraged by his victory, Fumnau went on to reinstate Wabedja’s husband as sultan of Mbadjini, defeated the new sultan of Bambao, the son of Mlanau, to win the title of sultan ntibe, fought a brief war against the northern sultanate of Mbude, in which he was victorious, and undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca. When he returned in 1797 he was immediately called upon to deal with the first of a series of raids by Malagasy slavers. Recognising the threat to his subjects, he oversaw the construction of the fortifications of Itsandramdjini, which were copied by several other towns on the island, but, weary of war, Fumnau abdicated in favour of his son Fe Fumu in about 1800; he died in 1804 and is buried in Ntsudjini.82 European powers and pirates The different islands had very different relationships with the outside world. Europeans had never frequented Ngazidja and the island’s ties were almost exclusively with the African coast and the Arab polities further north. The ruling families developed relationships with the various ports of the Swahili coast, from Mozambique to Lamu, where they traded and, later, provided religious leadership, but the depth of these relationships and the lack of contact with Europeans created a suspicion verging on hostility towards them that became particularly marked in the nineteenth century. Mwali and Mayotte, too, maintained relations with the African coast, but they also traded with Madagascar, a source of slaves in particular, at least until the mid-eighteenth century; although the smaller islands were also forsaken by the Europeans, the contacts of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as well as the links that both islands, for better or for worse, maintained with Ndzuani were sufficient to establish a familiarity with Europeans that was absent on Ngazidja.   Of all the islands, Ndzuani was the one most familiar to the Europeans, particularly, as we have seen, the English, and the familiarity was reciprocal. The Wandzuani were quite conversant with English habits, presumably having 73

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observed them closely over the years; as we have noted, they regularly received news from Europe and were surprisingly well informed, such as about the accession to the throne of Queen Anne or the progress of the American War of Independence—Prince Alwi had a long conversation with William Jones about the war, and if he was able to translate an Arabic document into English, then he clearly had a good command of the language; he was also unlikely to have been the only one. Ndzuani very much considered itself part of the English world, and the islanders undoubtedly awaited the annual arrival of the Company fleets with some anticipation, since they brought not only business, but news of the mother country and the wider world generally, as well as, presumably, some animated conversations. The months of July and August in Mutsamudu would have been busy.83   These relationships often took on a political character. In 1662 the king of Ndzuani sent an emissary to England to offer his island to King Charles II;84 the offer was repeated in 1676 when the king, Mynea Shaw, sent his brother Abdallah Shaw to London with a letter offering to cede both Ndzuani and Mwali to England. Abdallah’s voyage is an interesting one, indicating how people moved, possibly unexpectedly, in what was now a global world. Abdallah sailed from Mutsamudu with an East India Company captain by the name of South, who had agreed to take him to London. However, South had other plans and instead sailed for the Caribbean, where he sold several of the Wandzuani on board, including members of Abdallah’s embassy, into slavery and abandoned Abdallah himself in Barbados. At something of a loss as to what to do, Abdallah was finally obliged to sell one of his own slaves to pay his passage to London, where he arrived in June 1676. He presented his brother’s request to the court through the East India Company, and although they appear to have given it their consideration, it is unlikely that the English ever seriously entertained the idea of assuming control over Ndzuani, and they declined, stating that it would not be in the best interests either of the Wandzuani to be drawn into European affairs or of the English to assume responsibility for them. Nevertheless, the Company paid Abdallah’s board and lodging while he was in London and provided passage back to Ndzuani on one of their ships, accompanied by a selection of gifts for the sultan and a letter assuring him of their friendship. It was during this embassy that Abdallah formally presented Brown’s Garden to the English.85   This type of offer was to be repeated several times over the centuries and was clearly a response to local threats to the island, either from the other islands or from the African mainland or Madagascar.86 Thus, for example, in 74

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the mid-eighteenth century two Omani dynasties, the Mazrui of Mombasa and the Bu Saidi of Muscat, were engaged in a struggle for supremacy on the East African coast and, as each side recruited allies to their cause, the Mazrui of Mombasa attempted to claim sovereignty over the Comoros. This prompted Salim, the son of Sultan Said Ahmed, to again write to the English, saying that Ndzuani belonged to them, and asking for help.87   The islands also attracted a less desirable category of European visitor. For a period of several decades in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, European pirates frequented the islands. Although a pirate ship under the command of William Cobb was wrecked on Mwali in 1635—the crew spent the best part of a year there constructing another—it was towards the end of the century that pirates, driven out of the Caribbean both by increased anti-pirate patrols and by a cessation of hostilities between England and Spain, and attracted by the potential for large profits in the increasingly busy Indian Ocean, began to establish bases in the region. Madagascar was a particular favourite, and there were pirates on the east coast and the island of Sainte-Marie, but some also made their way to the Comoros. In 1694 Henry Every, a slave-trader turned pirate, visited Ndzuani, and he was followed by the likes of William Kidd, John Bowen and Edward England. Although most seem to have been content to trade and remain on good terms with the islanders, largely because they relied on the islanders for provisions—two of them, Misson and Caraccioli, were said to have married the sister and niece of Halima II respectively while ten of their men also married and settled on the island—this was not always the case. Nathaniel North sacked a town on Ngazidja but found only some silver chains and some cloth, and then did likewise on Mayotte, presumably at Tsingoni, taking the king and the town’s inhabitants hostage; the king paid a ransom of 1000 dollars’ worth of silver chains. Returning to Mayotte some time later, he anchored at a port called Sorez and captured an English ship whose captain was unable to pay an adequate ransom. This so infuriated North that he sold the crew into slavery and then took revenge by burning a large town.88 Likewise, it is hard to imagine a ship full of pirates not enjoying their shore leave as they pleased, and in 1704 Pike reports that the Wandzuani had complained about being molested by pirates even though the islanders had afforded them assistance. This may have been a case of the islanders acting in their best interests: in the same year the king of Mayotte built a boat for the pirates John Pro and David Williams so that they could sail to Madagascar, the better to be rid of them no doubt.89 75

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  Pirate activity around the Comoros as well as Madagascar certainly dissuaded visitors to the islands. In 1720 Henry Cornwall advised against stopping at Ndzuani and warned those who did choose to call at the island not to say where they were going, although by the time his advice was published the threat was largely over. The threat to shipping—of all the European powers—and the decline in trade had led to a concerted effort to stamp out piracy in the Indian Ocean, and by the 1720s the pirates had gone and ships were beginning to return to Ndzuani.90   If the pirates of the early eighteenth century generally caused the Comorians little trouble, the same cannot be said of the Malagasy, who began to raid the islands at the end of the century. These raids, which lasted for a quarter of a century, were to have a devastating effect on the archipelago, socially, economically and demographically. They seem to have been prompted by an increased demand for slaves in the Mascarene Islands and facilitated by Malagasy involvement in the civil wars on Ndzuani that opposed Sultan Said Ahmed and his cousin Abdallah, governor of Mutsamudu, in the 1780s and 1790s. In 1792, following the assassination of his son Salim and the refusal of Abdallah to punish the culprits, Said Ahmed sent a force to attack Mutsamudu; defeated, they were pursued back to Domoni where Said Ahmed himself was put to death and Abdallah took the throne as Abdallah I.91 In an attempt to reclaim the throne, Bwana Combo Abubakar, the grandson of Said Ahmed, recruited an army of Malagasy mercenaries and laid siege to Mutsamudu. Unable to take the town, the Malagasy nevertheless sacked the surrounding countryside before leaving.   This episode was not the cause of the raids, however, although it certainly drew the Malagasy’s attention to Ndzuani’s vulnerability. The instigators seem to have been the Betsimisaraka, an ethnic group on the east coast of Madagascar whose leaders were the descendants of pirates who had settled in the region a hundred years earlier. Madagascar had long been a source of slaves, in the pre-colonial period for the Arabian peninsula and, following the French settlement of the Mascarene Islands, for the plantations that were developing on both Mauritius and Réunion.92 The supply of locally sourced slaves was no longer adequate to meet the demands of the French—partly because the consolidation of the Merina kingdom in central Madagascar under Andrianampoinimerina in the 1780s had cut off the supply of slaves from the highlands of Madagascar—and so both the Betsimisaraka and the Sakalava, who occupied much of the west coast of Madagascar and were also eager for slaves, looked elsewhere. They found a source in the Comoros. 76

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  The fleets, which sailed at five-year intervals from about 1785, were substantial. The instigators of the raids gathered on the east coast of Madagascar and were joined by others as they sailed north and around Cap d’Ambre towards Nosy Be, by which time a fleet of several hundred ships, large outrigger canoes carrying thousands of men (estimated at anywhere between 6000 and 30,000) had assembled, and they then sailed to the Comoros and, in some years, on to East Africa. The raids lasted several months, during which time they would besiege the towns and lay waste to the surrounding countryside.   In 1798 they occupied Domoni, prompting Abdallah to request of Commodore Blankett that a fleet of which he was in command at anchor at Mutsamudu bombard Domoni. This they did, forcing the Malagasy to leave the town, but apparently the Wandzuani failed to take advantage of the opportunity to counter-attack and, as soon as the English left, the Malagasy returned.93 The Malagasy appear to have returned to the islands perhaps half a dozen times, but at four or five years’ interval, presumably in order to allow the people to recover from the previous attack. In 1808 they managed to penetrate the walls of Mutsamudu, prompting 200 of the town’s women, who had sought refuge in the arsenal, to blow themselves up rather than fall into the hands of the raiders.94   Thousands of lives were lost during these raids, and thousands more carried off into slavery, and although in the early years the Wangazidja seem to have succeeded in repelling them—the fortifications of the island’s major towns, vestiges of which are still in evidence today, date from this period—a number of towns were nevertheless sacked. As on the other islands, death was probably a better fate than falling into the hands of the Malagasy, and local tradition relates how, when the raiders took Ikoni, the women of the town threw themselves from the fortified summit of a crater that overlooks the town rather than let themselves be captured.   The Malagasy raids incited Abdallah to seek protection from several European powers: the French, the Portuguese and, once again, the English. In 1796 he sent his eldest son to Bombay with an offer of cession of the island in return for protection from the Malagasy. The English turned him down, but provided transport back to Ndzuani and a quantity of arms. In 1800 Abdallah wrote to the East India Company again asking for help and offering them half his island, and in 1803 he decided to make the journey to Bombay himself, this time offering the entire archipelago to the English who, once again, refused.95 In 1808 they finally received supplies from Bombay, although the ship carrying them was surprised by a French corsair which relieved it of most 77

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of its cargo, and only 80 rifles and six barrels of powder made it to Mutsamudu.96 In 1812 Abdallah’s successor, Alawi I, sent an emissary by the name of Bombay Jack to the Cape of Good Hope, once again to solicit British assistance, and Bombay Jack returned with a supply of munitions.97 In 1814 there was a final appeal to Sir Robert Farquhar, the governor of Mauritius, but by then, thanks to British pressure on Radama I, the Merina king, the raids were effectively over. By then Radama had almost completed his conquest of Madagascar, establishing his authority over the east coast and extending it to the west, and in 1820 he finally signed an anti-slavery treaty with the British, effectively putting an end to the slave trade to the Mascarenes and thus any incentive to carry out further raids on the Comoros.   Alawi’s emissary Bombay Jack, whose real name was Mbaraka Combo, appears frequently in the travel narratives of the time and he seems to have been a man of some intelligence and amiable personality. He was a member of the royal family, and thus probably a sharifu, and may have been the grandson of Abdallah I;98 if he was the same person as the second Purser Jack, then he was probably born around 1760. He was something of a fixture in Mutsamudu in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, acting as interpreter and intermediary for British ships and styling himself ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer’, although foreign minister might have been more appropriate since he devoted much time and energy to soliciting assistance from various European powers on behalf of Ndzuani in its struggles against the Malagasy. He spoke excellent English, some French and possibly even some Portuguese, as well as Arabic, and travelled widely: his nickname was acquired when he accompanied the sultan’s son to Bombay in 1796; over the subsequent two decades he travelled to Cape Town, Mozambique, Mauritius, Bourbon, Madagascar and other places no doubt, negotiating with the English, French and Portuguese. In addition to trying to obtain protection from Britain and France, in 1808 he wrote to the authorities at Mozambique, informing them that the Malagasy had again raided the Comoros and ‘reminding’ them that the sultan of Ndzuani was vassal of the king of Portugal.99   In 1802 he showed great kindness towards a party of French Jacobins who had been exiled to Ndzuani, helping them to escape to Ngazidja and providing them with letters of introduction to the sultan of Bambao; then, when the Jacobins were betrayed on Ngazidja, he sailed over from Ndzuani to save them once again.100 A small man—Fescourt says he was four foot six, or less than 1.4 m—he was by all accounts a shrewd individual with ‘an ingenious mind’ and possessed ‘more knowledge of the world than could possibly be expected’. He 78

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seems to have earned a reputation for acts of bravery against the Malagasy raiders, going so far as to bombard their camp one night with a cannon that he had mounted in a longboat, leaving the beach scattered with bones. By 1821, then probably in his mid-sixties, he was being described as the prime minister, and was said to have governed Ndzuani for many years; he would probably have died shortly thereafter since there are no further references to him in the literature.101 * * * Bombay Jack left a rather different world from the one into which he had been born. The mid-seventeenth century was still the age of sail and the trading companies, the Comorian world was still based on the local trade and the provisioning of European ships, and the islands were still enjoying the benefits that had accompanied the arrival of the European powers in the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century: increased economic prosperity and cultural exchanges, which were probably to the advantage of all. There had been no threat to the Islamic character of local society, and the islands’ customary links with the African coast and the wider Indian Ocean world were maintained; the Wandzuani in particular were drawn into a European sphere of influence, which encouraged the development of a cosmopolitan society. Wandzuani familiarity with the English and their ways was not a fad but lasted for two centuries, and, as we have seen, the learned classes were perfectly capable of conversing with their visitors on a range of topics, from religion to world affairs, science and navigational techniques, and the English learned from them as the Wandzuani did from their visitors: it was a mutually beneficial relationship, even if the visitors were somewhat patronising in their astonishment that these people could be interested in the progress of the Napoleonic Wars or whether George III had been reconciled with the Prince Regent. It is perhaps indicative of the cosmopolitan nature of the Indian Ocean world that the Wandzuani seemed to be much better informed about Europe and America than Europeans were about Ndzuani.102   Towards the end of this period, however, the negative aspects of the regional trading systems, and particularly the demand for labour from the French settlements in the Mascarenes, spelled disaster for the Comoros; although the Malagasy slave raids eventually ended, the devastation they inflicted upon the islands effectively ended their role as a supply point for ships heading east. The islands were no longer swarming with inhabitants, and both Mwali and Mayotte seem to have particularly suffered: the former island 79

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was said to be uninhabited and the population of the latter was reduced to perhaps 500 individuals, most of whom sought refuge on Dzaoudzi, but the other islands were also significantly depopulated. The dozens of villages, the productive economies and the commercial activities of the islands were all but wiped out in little more than two decades, and by 1820 the vastly reduced population were barely capable of producing enough food for their own consumption, never mind a surplus to sell to foreigners. At the same time, the configurations of power and the region’s economies had shifted; Mauritius was developing into a major regional hub and was becoming the preferred port of call for the British, and other ports on the Indian Ocean rim were likewise attracting European attention. A few ships continued to put in at Mutsamudu, most notably the American whalers who had arrived in the Indian Ocean, but the bustle, commerce and intellectual life that had characterised Mutsamudu in the second half of the eighteenth century were gone and things would never be quite the same again.103   By the early nineteenth century Britain had become the dominant power in the Indian Ocean, if not the world, and the Industrial Revolution in Europe was about to transform quite radically, not simply the region, but the global economy. The abolition of the slave trade, and then slavery itself, in the European colonies would threaten the Comorian economy, and the arrival of steamships, accompanied by the opening of the Suez Canal, effectively put an end to the islands’ business of supplying ships. Although the slave trade, somewhat disguised, continued to supply labour to the French possessions until the late nineteenth century, it faced increasing opposition from British anti-slavery patrols, and the islands saw their roles shift to become little more than pawns in the European power struggles in the Indian Ocean.

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4

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY FROM SULTANATES TO COLONIES

The nineteenth century was a period of unprecedented change, both in the Indian Ocean and globally. The French Revolution was part of a wider shift in ideas following the Age of Enlightenment, which, in the Indian Ocean as elsewhere, led to the abolition first of the slave trade, later of slavery itself. A decline in French influence followed defeat in the Napoleonic Wars and Great Britain began to dominate the ocean, politically and commercially, a process that reached a peak towards the end of the century as the British consolidated their political hold from the Cape, through East Africa and South Asia, to Malaya and Australia. Concurrently the Industrial Revolution ushered in radical technological changes that transformed the economies of the region. Some of these changes would have a profound influence on the Comoros. The British occupation of Île de France (Mauritius) and the Cape Colony, confirmed by treaties in 1814, gradually led to British ships forsaking Ndzuani for their new possessions; the arrival of steamships and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 were the final nails in the coffin for any role that Ndzuani might have played as a port of call. The 1847 decree abolishing slavery in Mayotte, however, did not immediately affect the Comoros since the demand for labour in the French colonies saw French recruiters of indentured labourers (‘engagés’) turn a blind eye to the sources of these people: many were slaves in all but name.   At the beginning of the century both the British and the French were circumspect about becoming involved in Comorian internal affairs, but by the

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1840s both powers were showing greater interest in the islands. The loss of Mauritius had been a significant blow to France: the island is fertile and possesses an excellent port while Réunion, which was returned to France at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, was a poor substitute, with no port worthy of the name. France therefore began to search for other footholds in the Indian Ocean. The island of Sainte-Marie off the east coast of Madagascar had been ceded by its queen to France in 1750, and although this act of cession does not seem to have been acted upon, it did allow for France to return in 1821, this time with settlers. Britain’s relationship with the Merina kingdom was strong under Radama I, and although his widow and successor, Queen Ranavalona I, was hostile to Europeans, Britain and France both maintained an interest in the island. France was particularly anxious to obtain a secure port in the region and in 1841 they took possession of the island of Nosy Be, off the northwest coast of Madagascar; they had also identified Mayotte as a potential base: its large lagoon was, in theory, ideally suited to serve as a naval base, strategically placed at the entrance to the Mozambique Channel; and the land was fertile, ideal for a plantation colony. Andriantsoli and Ramanetaka: the Malagasy rulers of Mayotte and Mwali The islands were never isolated, never free from external influences, and the end of the Malagasy slave raids was not the end of Malagasy involvement in local politics. As we saw in the previous chapter, these raids were at least partly driven by political changes in Madagascar as the Merina kingdom of the central highlands expanded, growing in strength and cutting off the supply of slaves to the coastal peoples (and thence to the French). The Merina would eventually seek to extend their control over the entire island, and in the early nineteenth century they reached the west coast, where they attempted to impose their hegemony over the Sakalava.1 These conflicts, and political intrigues within both the Merina and Sakalava kingdoms, led to a number of Malagasy seeking refuge in the Comoros. One of them was a Sakalava ruler, a king of the Boina kingdom named Tsy Levalo. Under the influence of the Antalaotes of his kingdom, a group of mixed Malagasy, Comorian and Arab origin, Tsy Levalo had converted to Islam and taken the name Andriantsoli. He was to profoundly influence the history of the Comoros; indeed, he is ultimately responsible for the contemporary conflicts surrounding the status of Mayotte and its relationship with the rest of the archipelago. This period also marks a shift both in the history of Mayotte and in its social narratives of 82

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identity and origins. Cultural points of reference, and the rulers of the various islands, had hitherto largely been found to the north: the Swahili coast and the Arab world. But Mayotte was soon drawn into a Malagasy sphere of influence and, more widely, the French colonial world of the Indian Ocean, parting company with the other islands, at least for a while.   In 1826 a Merina army commanded by a member of the royal family by the name of Ramanetaka finally conquered the Sakalava kingdom of Boina and put Andriantsoli to flight. Andriantsoli sought refuge in Mayotte, where he was welcomed by the sultan, Mawana Mmadi, but following the death of Radama I and the subsequent purges pursued by Ranavalona, Ramanetaka himself was forced to flee, in his case to Ndzuani, where he was welcomed, perhaps reluctantly, by Sultan Abdallah II. Abdallah granted Ramanetaka land on the south coast of the island at Pomoni, where he settled with 200 Sakalava followers and established a plantation. Ramanetaka’s sojourn at Pomoni did not last long. William Owen, who was conducting a survey of the East African coast for the British Admiralty, had persuaded Abdallah to outlaw the slave trade; Ramanetaka, undoubtedly in need of revenue, owned a dhow with which he engaged in it. The differences between the two men drew in both the French and the British, and the former assisted Ramanetaka in deposing Abdallah, who fled to Mozambique. Three years later the British restored Abdallah to his throne, by which time Ramanetaka was ruling Mwali.   Mwali had previously been governed by one Moukdar bin Abubacar. Moukdar had rejected the sovereignty of Ndzuani and declared himself sultan, prompting Abdallah to immediately recall him to Mutsamudu. Abdallah replaced him with a brother of the sultan of Sofala named Othman bin Muhammad, but in 1832, while Abdallah was in exile, Ramanetaka overthrew Othman and assumed the throne of Mwali himself. There seems to have been little opposition from the local population, who would probably not have objected to seeing a Malagasy usurper remove yet another puppet sent from Ndzuani, and in the event Ramanetaka proved to be an equitable and judicious ruler. One of his first acts upon arriving on the island was to convert to Islam, taking the name Abderrahman, and he insisted that his entourage do likewise. He established an equilibrium between the interests of the local population and his Malagasy followers, making sure that his advisers and ministers were drawn equally from both parties; although he granted lands to his followers, mostly in the south of the island around Nyumashuwa and Wala, he also encouraged them to marry local women and to assimilate with the local population. Although the Malagasy origins of the  

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children of these marriages were recognised, the process of assimilation was facilitated by the matrilineal character of Mwali society: they were Wamwali, Shimwali speakers, with full rights to the lands of their lineages. This is also undoubtedly one reason why, unlike Mayotte, there is no longer a Malagasyspeaking community on Mwali. Although Ramanetaka ruled for only nine years, he founded a dynasty that remained in power (if often only nominally) until the end of the century.2   Meanwhile, from his refuge in Mayotte Andriantsoli sought assistance from Sayyid Said ibn Sultan Bu Saidi, the Imam of Muscat, who was on the point of moving his court to Zanzibar and who, in the process of establishing his control over the East African coast, appears to have recognised an opportunity to extend his influence to Madagascar. In 1827 Andriantsoli travelled to Muscat to meet Sayyid Said, and the latter agreed to support Andriantsoli’s claim to Boina. However, when Radama died, Andriantsoli abandoned his talks with Sayyid Said, returned to Boina and reclaimed his throne on his own. He did not last long: incompetent and ruthless, he was overthrown in favour of his sister, and by 1832 he was back in exile in Mayotte, now ruled by Mawana Mmadi’s son, Bwana Combo. Conflict between the two was not long in coming: the Maorais did not appreciate the presence of the large numbers of Sakalava who had arrived with Andriantsoli, and Bwana Combo attempted to expel him. Since Andriantsoli had no intention of leaving, Bwana Combo called upon Ramanetaka for assistance but, far from helping him, Ramanetaka formed an alliance with Andriantsoli. Together they overthrew Bwana Combo; Ramanetaka granted Andriantsoli the governorship of Mayotte and the two made plans to conquer Ndzuani. They soon fell out, however, and Andriantsoli instead crossed to Ndzuani alone, where he joined forces with Abdallah II, recruited a group of mercenaries from Madagascar and returned to invade Mayotte. Ramanetaka’s garrison was slaughtered and, tired of the continual fighting, the aristocracy of Mayotte formally ceded the island to Ndzuani in November 1835. Bwana Combo was restored to power and Andriantsoli resumed his place as governor of the island.   Ramanetaka had not given up, however, and once again made plans to take Ndzuani, but with support from their allies on Mayotte, Ndzuani now had the stronger force and Abdallah pre-empted Ramanetaka by assembling a fleet and, accompanied by Bwana Combo, he sailed for Mwali. Ramanetaka, besieged in his capital Fomboni, appealed to Sayyid Said to intercede and negotiate a peace. Sayyid Said sent an emissary, a member of the Bu Saidi royal family by the name of Said Muhammad ibn Nasser Mkadara, but as he was 84

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attempting to negotiate a truce, a violent wind cast the ships containing the invading force onto the beach in front of the town. Scarcely believing his luck, Ramanetaka threw the lot of them into prison; both Bwana Combo and Abdallah were swiftly executed. Mayotte, France’s Gibraltar of the Indian Ocean Despite the formal cession of Mayotte to Ndzuani, an act whose authenticity is today much contested,3 Ndzuani sovereignty over Mayotte was probably only nominal and was certainly short-lived, since upon the death of Bwana Combo in 1836 Andriantsoli assumed the title of sultan of the island. Unlike his compatriot on Mwali, however, Andriantsoli was not well appreciated by the Maorais. Establishing himself on Dzaoudzi, surrounded by his officers and ministers, he granted large tracts of land on Grande Terre to his Sakalava followers, who established settlements quite apart from the Maorais villages, and the poor relations between the two communities frequently degenerated into conflicts. By all accounts Andriantsoli was opportunistic, incompetent and lazy, and an alcoholic to boot; his Maorais subjects were hostile and the threat of invasion from Ndzuani remained constant. In 1841, therefore, well aware that his hold over the island was tenuous, he took advantage of a visit to the island by a French naval commander by the name of Passot, and offered to sell Mayotte to France.   The French had already taken possession of Nosy Be but were still looking for a more suitable regional base for both their political and their economic activities. Mayotte seemed ideal: the lagoon, well protected by the encircling reef, provided a large and protected harbour, and the island was closer to the African coast, a source of labour for the plantations on Réunion. Ignoring complaints from the Wandzuani and the sultan of Zanzibar, as Sayyid Said now styled himself, and with the acquiescence of the British, Commandant Passot therefore accepted Andriantsoli’s offer and in 1843 French possession of Mayotte was formally ratified. In return Andriantsoli received an annual pension of 1000 piastres and the promise of a French education for his two sons. Having renounced his throne, he was excluded from any further participation in the political life of the colony and settled on Dzaoudzi, where he owned most of the houses. Although he continued to complain about his treatment at the hands of the colonial authorities, his complaints met with little sympathy from the Maorais, who viewed him as a usurper who had sold them out, and he eventually gave up. He withdrew from public life and 85

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appears to have devoted himself to spending his pension on alcohol. He died in 1845, probably of cirrhosis.   France took possession of a largely depopulated island, still recovering from the Malagasy slave raids of forty years earlier and the ensuing conflicts between the islands. Half of the island’s 3300 inhabitants lived on Petite Terre, while on Grande Terre the only Maorais village with a significant number of inhabitants was Tsingoni. Otherwise only a few dozen individuals lived scattered among several ruined villages; a couple of settlements near Mamoudzou were occupied by Sakalava followers of Andriantsoli, and a number of runaway slaves lived in the interior. Despite having inherited a deserted and unproductive island, the French were initially optimistic, and politicians and administrators alike waxed enthusiastic about the island’s potential to become a military and commercial hub in the Indian Ocean, comparing it to Gibraltar, Hong Kong or Malta. The reality was very different, however, and the initial ambitious projects including fortifications, a shipyard and a town of 8000 inhabitants were rapidly discarded as it was realised that, far from being a strategic entrepôt, Mayotte was an isolated island with few advantages and fewer resources that would be costly to maintain.4   Passot, who served as commander of the island from 1846 to 1849, nevertheless tried to salvage something from the project, and once Andriantsoli had died the government took over much of the land on Dzaoudzi and began to develop the islet, overseeing the construction of various buildings for the administration and the military as well as the causeway that links Dzaoudzi to Petite Terre. Recognising that agriculture would probably be the only possible economic activity on Mayotte, he encouraged settlers from Réunion and from Sainte-Marie to take up land, and extensive grants of land were made on Grande Terre; since the island was largely empty, there was little resistance from the local population, who had themselves no real claims over most of the island. Most of the concessions were on the north coast and in the centre of the island although a few smaller concessions were granted along the coasts in the south; sugar would be the principal crop. By 1864, 36 concessions had been granted, almost a third of the island and all but two to Europeans or creoles. They were slow to be exploited—in 1856 only 10 per cent of the lands granted were under sugar, both due to a lack of labour and a lack of enthusiasm, and the government was forced to threaten to revoke unused concessions in order to encourage their exploitation. Many of the plantation owners were absentee landlords, and even those who were in Mayotte rarely set foot on Grande Terre, preferring to leave the management of their plantations to their overseers, local or foreign.5  

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  The lack of a labour force was the most pressing problem, however. The 1847 decree abolishing slavery would in theory provide the new settlers with a free workforce; regrettably for Passot’s plans, however, of some 2000 slaves that were offered freedom, almost two-thirds of them chose instead to remain enslaved and follow their owners into exile on one of the neighbouring islands. Labour was to be a chronic problem on Mayotte for the rest of the century: an already small population, further reduced following the abolition of slavery, was unable to meet the demands of the sugar industry. The administration did its best to encourage immigration, but with little success, and was ultimately obliged to import ‘free’ indentured labourers from the other islands. In reality, these people were anything but free, and the principal economic activity of the other islands was now slave trading. Although the slave trade had been abolished, both by the European powers and, if under pressure, by local powers such as Zanzibar, it nevertheless continued. Some rulers, such as Salim, the new sultan of Ndzuani, even engaged in it themselves, with some impunity. Although ships carrying slaves were liable to seizure by British anti-slavery patrols if sailing under the flag of a nation that had signed a treaty with Britain, the profits involved were such that the risk was worth taking; France had signed no such treaty, thus exempting French-flagged vessels from search and seizure. More than one Arab slave trader took advantage of this loophole in the law, and in 1877 there were an astonishing 144 dhows registered at Dzaoudzi.6   Slaves were therefore purchased on the African coast—in the 1850s they cost between $12 and $30 a head in northern Mozambique—and brought to one of the other islands, where they were ‘freed’ before being sold on to the French, and there were substantial profits to be made. The sultan of Ndzuani received an ‘exit tax’ of five dollars a head, while the middlemen were also handsomely rewarded, receiving up to $150 per labourer. William Sunley, the British consul on Ndzuani in the 1850s, regularly came across slave traders in the waters between the islands: in one of his dispatches he reports that while crossing to Moroni he encountered a French-flagged dhow carrying 93 Africans and three Europeans, one of whom he recognised as the chief of police on Mayotte. Although the Frenchmen assured him that the Africans were free labourers engaged on Ngazidja, a crew member told him that they had in fact been brought to Mwali from the African coast a few days earlier.7 Other slaves may have been locally born on one of the other islands, but in either case the French were under no illusions as to the origins of their workforce; as to the slaves themselves, whether being legally free on Mayotte was a 87

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more attractive proposition than remaining in slavery on one of the other islands was moot: they had little choice in the matter.   The treatment of the labourers on the plantations was generally harsh. The working day was sunrise to sunset, and although the law prescribed a two-hour lunch break, this was often not granted. Wages were low—fixed at five francs monthly in 1862—and often late in being paid, and although the engagés received rations, these too were meagre. Violence against workers was routine and rarely effectively punished, and when the engagement finally ended, the bonus to which the engagés were legally entitled was also often not paid. That such abuse was possible was partly due to the fact that the island was woefully under-administered. The European population was small and most lived in Dzaoudzi, fearing both the inhabitants and the unhealthy climate on Grande Terre, which members of the administration rarely visited, effectively leaving the plantation owners, abetted by their local overseers and the garde indigène, to do as they pleased.   In April 1856 the labourers revolted. The brutality exercised by the indigenous employees, representatives of the administration, finally led to two of them being murdered, and this seems to have immediately prompted the majority of the workforce to abandon their plantations and seek refuge in the hills. Whether this was a precursor to organised resistance or simply from a fear of reprisals is not clear, but the island’s commander, Vérand, was absent in Nosy Be at the time, suggesting that there was some premeditation. The few Europeans on Grande Terre fled to Petite Terre and one of the settlers sent a delegation to meet with the rebel leaders at Combani, who listed their grievances. The settlers’ apparent willingness to negotiate was probably only a delaying tactic, since as soon as Vérand returned from Nosy Be he assembled a force of 300 men, who crossed to Grande Terre and confronted the rebels. The resistance collapsed: not only had the rebels few arms, but rumours (unfounded) circulated of a larger force being sent from Réunion. Most of the rebels returned to their plantations while others fled, either to one of the other islands or to Madagascar. The ringleaders, among whom was one of Andriantsoli’s former generals, a Sakalava named Bakari Koussou, were captured: two were executed and several others imprisoned.8   In response to the rebellion, the administration undertook a reorganisation of the island, moving the population into a smaller number of villages where they could more easily be controlled; although an arrêté was issued requiring the plantations to respect their obligations regarding the distribution of rations, this was the extent of the concessions granted to the workforce, and 88

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it does not seem to have had much effect. Nevertheless, in 1858 the island was divided into four districts, each headed by a cadi, an Islamic judge, who would administer local justice, the better to provide for the administration of the population, in theory at least. Although this was little more than an administrative reorganisation, it suggests that the administration accepted that the local population had real grievances—and was possibly worried that they might rebel again.   The majority of the island’s inhabitants were still of foreign origin, and would remain so for much of the colony’s history. In 1851 Commandant Bonfils ordered a census be taken, which counted a total non-European population of almost 6900, of whom 1780 (26 per cent) were Malagasy (including Antalaotes), 1196 (17 per cent) were Maorais, 1593 (23 per cent) were from one of the other islands, and almost 2200 (32 per cent) from Mozambique.9 Maorais constituted less than a fifth of the population and it was therefore slaves and free settlers from the other islands who reconstituted the population of Mayotte in the nineteenth century. The evolution in identities can be seen in another census fifteen years later, in which Maorais numbered 4673 out of 11,731 inhabitants, almost 40 per cent: clearly many from the previous census were now considered Maorais, and even if still in a minority their numbers were growing far in excess of natural increase.10 This process of ‘Maorisation’ was both socially and demographically the principal means of population increase, and it remains true today: the great majority of Maorais are descended from immigrants who arrived on the island in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.   Most of the African population, the engagés, were of course men: according to the census of 1866, only a quarter of them were women. This imbalance on occasion worried the administration, who believed that these women engaged in prostitution, and attempted both to find suitable occupations for them and to encourage the immigration of single women from the other islands, to establish a healthier equilibrium. They had limited success with the former and virtually none at all with the latter: young, single Muslim women were no more likely than their Christian counterparts to emigrate alone to an island full of male labourers. On the other hand, among the Maorais and the Malagasy—the free population—women slightly outnumbered men, reflecting the socially cohesive character of these groups: individuals presumably felt able to describe themselves as Maorais if they were married and settled as a family. Note that the same census reveals that there were only 53 Europeans in Mayotte, mostly administrators and their wives, and 84 creoles, plantation owners and their staff mostly from Réunion or Sainte-Marie.11  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  Although there had been some resistance to the cession of the island to France, the Maorais themselves were largely loyal to the French administration. They had remained so during the revolt of 1856, and continued to express their fidelity in moments of crisis. In 1864 a new administrator arrived on the island, one Joseph Colomb, who seems to have assumed a more positive view of the colony and its inhabitants—he remarked with satisfaction that in 1870, when funds were being raised to support the war effort in France, almost all of the local population contributed, even if only a few centimes— and attempted to include, if only informally, both the notables and the religious leaders in the daily life of the island.12 But the island remained peripheral to the French colonial empire and resources were lacking: in 1868 there were still only 39 civil servants in the colony, most of whom were biding their time until they could return to Réunion or France. Hopes that the island would become a prosperous port came to nothing—the hazards of the lagoon and scant profits dissuaded shipping from even calling to load sugar—and as the slave trade finally succumbed to the British anti-slavery patrols, the labour supply also dried up.   Although as a colony the administration was in the hands of the French, as noted above provision was made for the appointment of cadis to administer civil justice and some of the office-holders were of aristocratic lineages. Omar Abubakar al-Shirazi, cadi of Pamandzi, was a member of an old Maorais family and had served as cadi under Mawana Mmadi; when the latter died, he had attempted unsuccessfully to seize the throne himself, and had briefly served as governor of Mayotte following the cession of the island to Ndzuani in 1835. For many years following the death of Andriantsoli, Cadi Omar made optimistic claims on the French government, among which was an unsuccessful request for a pension similar to that granted to Andriantsoli. Despite an erratic career, he was largely supportive of France and remained cadi until his death in 1871. He was succeeded by his son Salimou, who sought the role of native governor, a request that was also refused.13   Perhaps the most prominent local—and a Mndzuani, not a Maorais, in so far as such a distinction could be made—was Said Omar bin Said Hussein el-Masela, a grandson of Abdallah I of Ndzuani, one of the makabaila, the Mutsamudu aristocracy. Said Omar was probably born towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars and was educated in Mauritius, by then a British possession. He was fluent in French and English, well travelled and well versed in the ways of the world, or at least his part of it. He rapidly became involved in local politics, usually in favour of the French despite his British education, possibly because British policy at the time was not to intervene in the internal affairs 90

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of the islands. It is not entirely clear why he was so francophile; one explanation is that he saw France as a means of extending Ndzuani hegemony over the entire archipelago, Mayotte merely being a stepping stone. In any case, he appears to have been instrumental in persuading Andriantsoli to hand over Mayotte to the French, and when both the ministry in Paris and the governor of Réunion proposed extending their protection to the other islands of the archipelago, Said Omar travelled to Mauritius and Réunion to sound out the political waters. In the end the French failed—Salim of Ndzuani was firmly pro-British and was recognised as legitimate sultan of the island by the authorities in Port Louis, and the French could not risk the political repercussions of imposing their rule—but Said Omar remained deeply involved in the politics of all the islands. He spent many years living in Mayotte, where he possessed several plantations and three dhows, with which he imported labourers, and at the behest of the French he intervened in various disputes on the other islands, generally acting in their interests. He married several times; among his wives was the daughter of Mwinyi Mkuu of Bambao, Ngazidja, where his son Said Ali would later become sultan. In 1891, with the backing of the French, he finally became sultan of Ndzuani, although by then the title was little more than an honorary one. He died the following year. Mwali: Zanzibaris and Malagasy Once France had formally established control over Mayotte, the administration, with the encouragement both of Paris and Réunion, began to look towards the other islands. Ramanetaka had died in 1841, and the sultanate of Mwali had passed to his daughter and designated heir, a child barely five years old named Jumbe Soudi. Her mother initially acted as regent, but although she remained so officially she was quickly replaced as the child’s overseer by Tsivandini, an ambitious Malagasy who was close to Sayyid Said of Zanzibar. The role of the latter, who sought to arrange a marriage between Jumbe Soudi and his son, caused the French concern and they courted the favour of the regent and, through her, the young queen. Certainly Sayyid Said believed he had influence over the island: he intended to send an agent to assume the reins of government on Mwali, and in a letter he wrote to the British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, in 1847 complaining about French interference on Ngazidja—Sultan Fumbavu of Itsandra was also an ally of Sayyid Said—he stated that ‘it is well known to all men that the people of these islands are the subjects of Zanzibar’.14 91

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  The French solution was to send a Frenchwoman, Marie-Alphonsine Droit, to Mwali to act as governess to the young queen. Mme Droit was a Malagasy creole born in Mauritius and raised there by Protestant missionaries; she had married a French arms-maker, Philippe Droit, and accompanied him from Réunion to Madagascar and finally to the Comoros, where she remained following his death in 1840. Well-educated, Christian and fluent in Malagasy, English and French, she was the natural choice, and probably France’s only choice, for a governess for the young queen, and she arrived to take up her post in Mwali at the end of 1847. In addition to giving the girl a French education, and imbuing her with pro-French sentiment, Mme Droit would also act as an agent, and no doubt a spy, of the French government. She seems to have managed her role well, fending off offers of marriage to the young queen from both Fumbavu of Itsandra and Sayyid Said, on behalf of his son, dissuading the British consul on neighbouring Ndzuani from establishing a plantation on the island, and generally maintaining French influence.   In 1849 a French naval officer by the name of Febvrier-Despointes oversaw the formal coronation of Jumbe Soudi, who was now considered to have come of age. It was an extravagant affair intended to display French supremacy: two battleships disembarked two companies of marines, who watched as FebvrierDespointes placed a crown on her head and proceeded to advise the 12-yearold queen to style herself manjaka, ‘queen’ in Malagasy, and to inform her that she could now marry anyone she liked, as long as the French approved, of course. The ceremony closed with a 21-gun salute. Outraged, Tsivandini appealed again to Sayyid Said, but although the latter again sent Said Muhammad ibn Nasser Mkadara, this time to claim the throne, popular opinion on Mwali was now in favour of France, and the Zanzibaris soon admitted defeat. However, the French were only the lesser of the two evils. Increasingly hostile to the idea of a Christian woman exercising authority over their queen, in 1851 the people of Mwali finally forced Mme Droit herself to leave the island. She died in Mayotte a few months later.15   France seemed to lose interest in the smaller island for a while. Many of its interventions had been personal initiatives on the part of the French naval officers Passot or Guillain—the former had been instrumental in placing Mme Droit in Mwali while the latter had paid her salary out of his own budget— and once Mme Droit had left, Jumbe Soudi took the name Jumbe Fatima, an assertion of her Muslim identity; in 1852 she married Said Muhammad ibn Nasser, who was at last able to assume control over the island; but his policies—concentrating both power and the economy in his own hands—proved 92

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to be disastrous: trade with Mayotte effectively ceased, and economic activity was reduced to the export of some foodstuffs to Ngazidja. The harsh conditions forced many Wamwali to flee and the population dropped significantly. Tsivandini died in 1863, Said Muhammad the following year, and Zanzibari influence waned again.   In 1865 a French adventurer by the name of Joseph Lambert arrived on the island. Lambert was an adventurer and a businessman from Brittany who had served in the French navy before settling in Mauritius and marrying a wealthy widow, thus becoming, at the age of 26, one of the wealthiest men on the island. He swiftly invested his wife’s money in sugar plantations and a shipping company and just as swiftly lost most of it again in legal actions, and after some wandering he eventually found himself at the court of Radama II, king of Madagascar. Radama took a liking to Lambert, granting him the title of Duke of Imerina and roving ambassador, and Lambert continued to travel throughout the region, visiting Mwali several times before finally deciding to establish a plantation on the island. At the same time, the administration on Mayotte, attempting to renew the links between Mwali and France, had been trying unsuccessfully to persuade Jumbe Fatima to marry Said Omar elMasela; she repeatedly refused until Lambert arrived in Mwali. Lambert gained the queen’s confidence and, recognising the political advantages of such a marriage, persuaded her to change her mind. That this was a marriage of political convenience was amply demonstrated by the fact that Said Omar almost immediately returned to Mayotte, and as soon as he was gone Lambert became the queen’s lover. In February 1865, once again bringing his powers of persuasion to bear on the queen, Lambert persuaded her to grant him rights over almost all the island’s cultivable land, for a period of 60 years.   This concession naturally met with near-universal opposition. Encouraged by Said Majid, Sayyid Said’s son and successor as sultan of Zanzibar, two sons of Said Muhammad ibn Nasser by a Zanzibari wife, named Seif and Abdullah, arrived in Mwali in an attempt to re-establish Zanzibari influence. Lambert was away when they arrived and they had little trouble in persuading Jumbe Fatima that if she were to abdicate in favour of her son, Muhammad, the latter could then revoke the agreement made with Lambert. This she did, leaving the throne to the boy, barely ten years old, and Lambert returned to Mwali with a shipment of machinery for his new plantation to find the queen no longer speaking to him—she had taken Seif as a lover in his stead—and his concession under threat: he appealed to Colomb, the commander of Mayotte, who sent two ships to bombard the island’s capital, Fomboni. 93

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  The queen nevertheless refused to reconsider, so France sent a delegation to Zanzibar, where they sought the (reluctant) support of Said Majid, who had just dispatched one of his own emissaries to Mwali. Although the French were able to obtain the young Muhammad’s recognition of Lambert’s concession, and the exile of Jumbe Fatima as well as both Zanzibaris and their entourage, Said Majid’s emissary simultaneously received a recognition of fealty from Muhammad. However, this seems to have been quite nominal, and in the absence of political leadership Lambert assumed control over the island and the tutelage of the young sultan. Although they had intervened to counter the Zanzibari influence, the French position was not to support Lambert, who was not acting in any official capacity, but despite various negotiations they were unable to persuade him to leave the island.   In her quest for support in her dispute with Lambert, and accompanied by Seif, Jumbe Fatima travelled to France where she attempted to meet with various politicians, including the president; all doors remained firmly closed to her, however, although she was offered an annual pension of 10,000 francs on the condition that Seif—seen as the principal troublemaker—not accompany her if she returned to Mwali. She refused, and returned to East Africa, where she found Said Majid equally hostile to her projects, and it was not until his death in 1870 that she was finally able to embark for Mwali after an absence of three years.   In the intervening period, Lambert, as the young sultan’s regent, was effectively ruling Mwali by proxy in addition to exploiting the lands he had appropriated. Unsurprisingly, the population was increasingly hostile to his presence and had rebelled against Muhammad’s rule, and when Jumbe Fatima finally returned she found that she enjoyed renewed support, even as her refusal to comply with French requests to hand over the recalcitrant chiefs led to a further bombardment of Fomboni. Muhammad was forced to negotiate, and Lambert seemed conciliatory, but nine leaders of the resistance were deported to Mayotte and later to Réunion. Lambert and Jumbe Fatima reconciled their differences and remained together until Lambert’s death in 1873. The following year her son Muhammad died and Jumbe Fatima resumed the throne, marrying another Frenchman, Emile Fleuriot de Langle, who had been sent to Mwali to sort out Lambert’s estate. They had two children, one of whom, Salima Machamba, would eventually become heir to the throne. Jumbe Fatima died in 1878 and was succeeded by her youngest son, Abderrahman ben Said Muhammad.   As if his father had not been bad enough, Abderrahman proved to be a particularly unpleasant character, an alcoholic who would execute alleged 94

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opponents upon a whim, and the tyranny with which he ruled led to another economic crisis as traders feared even to visit the island. The authorities on Mayotte observed with some bemusement but were reluctant to intervene as long as French interests were not threatened, and it wasn’t until 1885 that the population finally tired of him: they rose up, and both he and his entourage were murdered. His brother Mahmoud claimed the throne, but the local aristocracy finally rejected the Malagasy faction—Jumbe Fatima’s lineage was of course a Malagasy one—and called upon Muhammed bin Sheikh, the son of Ramanetaka’s predecessor, Sultan Moukdar, to return from his exile on Ndzuani and rule. Resistance from the supporters of Mahmoud soon forced him back to Ndzuani, but he was replaced by a cousin, Mardjani. In an attempt to secure his position Mardjani, effectively another Ndzuani puppet, appealed to the French governor at Mayotte for help. France’s response was to formally establish its control over Mwali, and on 26 April 1886 Mardjani and his ministers signed a treaty accepting a French protectorate.  

 

Ndzuani: from British to French While France took an early interest in Mwali and Mayotte, Ndzuani would attract the attention of the British, partly with a view to maintaining a balance of power in the region and preventing the entire archipelago falling under French influence. As we have seen, Ndzuani had a long history of contacts with the British, which had served them well, but as Portuguese power waned and the French came to represent the alternative power in the Indian Ocean, different factions on Ndzuani began to court different European powers. In 1772 Sultan Ahmed’s brother-in-law appears to have suggested to the French that they kidnap the sultan and his ministers and take the island by force. Presumably in response to this plot, the following year the ‘King of Johanna, Mayotta, Mohilla & Cumro’ sent his compliments to the East India Company and asked for protection from ‘the French our enemy’.16 Ahmed’s successor, Abdallah I, also seems to have professed friendship for the French, and this would have been a prudent stance at the turn of the nineteenth century as France was extending its hegemony over Europe. But following the defeat of Napoleon and the British occupation of Mauritius, it became clear which way the wind was blowing, in the Indian Ocean at least, and the Wandzuani resumed their pro-British stance, occasionally expressing their preferences in no uncertain terms. In 1821 Bombay Jack explained to a visiting English­ woman exactly how they dealt with the French: 95

ISLANDS IN A COSMOPOLITAN SEA Long, long time since—(early in 1800)—Frenchmen came here—like Joanna very much; ask no questions, come on shore, build huts, buy food, and then begin plant cotton. I no like this. Frenchmen very civil, but very sly; when cotton grow and money come, they take Joanna, and we go into the sea: no, no, that not do—Bombay Jack too cunning. Cotton planted—cotton coming up well. One dark night, when Frenchmen all sleep, we go very quiet, boil water, and pour it very quiet over all cotton plants. Next morning Frenchmen wake—cotton plants all dead; they come to me; I tell ‘Cotton always do so—a little time good— good, and then all die one night.’ Very well. Frenchmen next day pack up, go on board little ship and go away. Good bye, good bye.17

  Bombay Jack’s story was probably quite imaginary, clearly designed to curry English favour and inscribed within a renewed affection for the British on the island rather than any real animosity towards the French. The Frenchmen were almost certainly the Jacobin rebels exiled to Ndzuani in 1802, towards whom Bombay Jack himself had been so well disposed, and it is quite unlikely that they would have tried to grow cotton—they had enough trouble finding food.   British patronage seems to have been sorely needed. By the 1820s the Malagasy raids and constant civil strife had reduced the population of Ndzuani from the 30,000 observed by the Dutch in the 1770s to fewer than 5000 individuals scattered across the island in two towns—Mutsamudu and Domoni—and a dozen small villages. Large tracts of the country lay empty and formerly cultivated lands were overgrown and abandoned. If the local population were nevertheless producing food, and were able to export some grain to Mozambique, there were insufficient surpluses to supply passing ships, much to the disappointment of at least one visitor, who observed that the rice was excellent and that cotton could also be profitably grown (although presumably not by the French). In an attempt to attract more shipping, Sultan Alawi reduced the port fees, but this seems to have had little effect. British affection for the Wandzuani nevertheless remained constant—‘a kindhearted race of mortals’18 was one description—and the esteem that the British held for at least some Wandzuani prompted the London Missionary Society to send William Elliott to the island to teach the locals English and, hopefully, convert some of them to Christianity.   The circumstances of Elliott’s arrival on the island illustrate well the cosmopolitan character of the Indian Ocean at the time, as well as the Comorian propensity to travel. Said Hamza, a son of Sultan Abdallah I, had some time earlier set off with a small retinue on a voyage of commerce and pilgrimage. Their first port of call was Mahajanga, in northwest Madagascar, where they exchanged their cargo of rice and peas for unspecified goods sought after by 96

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the Portuguese. After selling these latter goods at Mozambique, they sailed north up the coast heading for Mecca; they called at a number of ports including Lamu and Pate before disaster struck and their ship was wrecked at Ras Hafun. Rescued by an Arab dhow, they were carried to Muscat, whence they found passage on another Arab ship that took them to Penang. They appeared to have spent some time in Penang before the East India Company finally found them passage via Calcutta to the Cape of Good Hope. At the Cape they were received by the governor, to whom Said Hamza explained that they had acquired a taste for the English language in Penang and would therefore like an Englishman to be sent to teach English to him and his countrymen. The governor made the arrangements, and in May 1821 they sailed for Ndzuani accompanied by Elliott and some Cape Malay women, whom several of the party had married during their sojourn at the Cape.19   Elliott’s reports provided accounts of the islands and their people, including the extent of their religious zeal, for, although he initially received a warm welcome, he soon found obstacles being placed in his path and the enthusiasm with which his project of teaching English had originally been met dissipated as the chief cadi of Mutsamudu not only forbade the Wandzuani from receiving instruction in English, but also instructed them not to assist him in learning Arabic. He struggled on for a year, but as his health deteriorated and his mission seemed increasingly impossible, he was eventually forced to admit defeat and he left the island in mid-1822: an indication, perhaps, that while the Wandzuani were prepared to court the British, they would nevertheless prefer that they remain at arm’s length. In particular, it seems that Sultan Abdallah II, whose promises to the British to put a halt to the slave trade were forgotten as soon as they were made, was reluctant to have what he assumed to be a British spy in his capital, particularly since he was trading the arms the British were giving to him for slaves on the African coast. Nevertheless, Elliott managed to produce a basic grammar of Shindzuani, the first of its kind.20   Following the death of Abdallah in 1836, the throne of Ndzuani passed to his young son, Alawi Mtiti; guided by Said Hamza, his great-uncle and vizier of Mutsamudu, and Zubeir bin Abdallah, the governor of the town, Alawi rapidly rendered himself unpopular by raising taxes to pay for the incessant wars with Mayotte and Mwali. Alawi’s marriage to a daughter of Andriantsoli, who was nevertheless a Malagasy despite her father’s conversion to Islam, was not well received by the population; opposition to the sultan was led by one of his father’s brothers, Hassan, with support from the governor and people of Domoni, and civil war broke out. For the best part of two years the strug 97

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gles continued; both sides appealed to the British and the French for support, but neither power wished to intervene and eventually Alawi was forced into exile in Mozambique. In 1840 his uncle took the throne as Sultan Salim; Alawi made his way to Mauritius, where he died two years later.   Whereas earlier British interest in Ndzuani had been commercial, the British government was also now eyeing the island in response both to the French occupation of Nosy Be and Mayotte and to the anglophile tendencies of the rulers, even if these were marked by some ambivalence. It was thought in London that British businesses in both Mauritius and the Cape could take advantage of the opportunities offered by Ndzuani, and as a precursor both to formal diplomatic relations and to any commercial activity the British imposed an anti-slavery treaty on Salim, signed in 1844. Three years later an English merchant by the name of William Sunley gathered a group of investors and proposed to establish a business at Mutsamudu, but Salim seemed hostile to their commercial projects—presumably fearing competition—and instead granted them Ramanetaka’s land at Pomoni to establish a plantation, keeping for himself the commerce at Mutsamudu. Although this was not particularly lucrative, anchorage fees imposed by Salim apparently afforded him an annual income of almost 500 dollars, in addition to which he earned income from sales of supplies to ships, by now mostly American whalers, and the supply of indentured labourers to Mayotte and Mauritius. Finally, taxation (15 kg of rice per free adult male annually) added to his coffers.21   In 1848 the British finally appointed a consul to Ndzuani, one Joseph Napier, an associate of Sunley, probably at least partly in response to Sayyid Said’s worries about French interference on Mwali and their possible designs on Zanzibar itself. Although Napier appears to have been welcomed by Salim, the latter nevertheless remained circumspect towards the British and, wary of a handful of pro-British makabaila—including his son, the future Abdallah III—he favoured the British as allies against the French rather than on their own merits. He was particularly uneasy about the prospect of the consul obliging him to free his slaves. Nevertheless, Napier managed to persuade Salim to sign a trade treaty with the British, which included a clause (which Salim undoubtedly would have ignored if necessary) that he cede no part of his territory to another power without the consent of the British government.22   Napier soon died and was replaced as consul by Sunley himself, who had decided to abandon his trading endeavours and develop his plantation at Pomoni, where he produced sugar, eventually exporting up to 400 tons annually. His industriousness and his hospitality were remarked upon by visitors, 98

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including the explorer David Livingstone, who visited Sunley several times and who recruited porters from Ndzuani for his expeditions on the continent. In addition to building his estate, Sunley traced roads on the island, improved the port at Pomoni and attended to the welfare of his employees. Many of them were slaves, and Sunley’s attitude towards slavery appears to have been somewhat ambivalent, for while he assisted the British anti-slavery patrols in the region, he was reluctant to confront the slaving activities of the locals; and if he established a sanctuary at Pomoni where freed slaves could await transport to Mauritius, he also employed slaves on his plantation. Although he paid them a salary, many were the property of the local aristocracy, including the sultan, to whom he also paid a fee, and he was thus unable to free them. These employees were eventually to cost him his official position, since, despite the favourable reports from visitors—including Lewis Pelly, the British consul at Zanzibar—the British government was unable to turn a blind eye and finally forced him to choose between slave labour and his position as consul. He resigned the consulate in 1865.   Salim had died in 1855 and and his son and successor, Abdallah III, was a young man of 18 or 19 years who, like several other members of the local aristocracy, had been schooled in Port Louis and spoke good French as well as English. Much to the consternation of the French, Abdallah was particularly well disposed towards both Sunley personally and Britain generally, even if he remained cordial towards the French, providing labourers (at a profit) for Mayotte and Réunion. Indeed, the provision of labour to the French islands soon became the principal source of revenue for Ndzuani. The demand for free labour on the French islands had grown rapidly following the abolition of slavery in Mayotte in 1847 and Réunion in 1848 and the parallel growth of the sugar industry. Although neighbouring Mauritius was able to source indentured labourers in India, the French colonies were initially prohibited from doing likewise by the British and were forced to look elsewhere; since the Comorian islands had previously been supplying slaves, it was a relatively simple matter for them to supply engagés instead. Despite the French requirement that these indentured labourers be resident on the island in question for at least two years, and free for at least one, they were of course, almost without exception, slaves, and the three islands carried out a brisk trade shipping labourers from the African mainland to Mayotte. Indeed, so attractive were the profits that both Salim and Abdallah seem to have focused their efforts on supplying the French with labour, to the detriment of agricultural production, and the island was no longer able to supply the passing trade. The American 99

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whalers who had hitherto frequented the port increasingly found provisions in short supply, and during the 1850s shipping gradually abandoned Mutsamudu altogether.   Sunley’s influence on Abdallah seems to have been responsible for a period of peace on the island. A minor rebellion by pretenders to the throne shortly after his accession was rapidly quashed, and Said Omar el-Masela, who had lived for many years in exile on Mayotte, was finally permitted to return, even though it was generally recognised that he was a French spy. Abdallah eventually fell out with Sunley, possibly through jealousy of the success of his plantation, although he was prevented in his attempts to force Sunley to leave the island by the British navy, whose protection Sunley enjoyed even after resigning the consulate. Nevertheless, Abdallah recruited a Mauritian by the name of Loumeau to manage his own plantation, at Bambao on the east coast, and although it was never as productive as Pomoni, it provided the sultan with a decent income.   By the 1870s Mutsamudu seems to have recovered and by all accounts was a more prosperous place than it had been thirty years earlier. The population of the island had grown and the supply of indentured labourers to Mayotte and Réunion continued apace; emigrants returning from Zanzibar, Mayotte and elsewhere brought cash, and the wages paid by Sunley and Abdallah’s income from his plantation at Bambao also contributed to the island’s economy. The increasing prosperity of Zanzibar under Sultan Barghash was certainly a factor in the economic growth of Ndzuani, and traders arrived from the former island eager to do business and sell their wares, among them Indians, British subjects, thus maintaining a British interest in the island.   In 1871 an American doctor by the name of Benjamin Franklin Wilson arrived on Ndzuani and was granted a concession of land at Patsy, not far from Mutsamudu on the road to Domoni, where he planted coffee and sugar. As at Pomoni, Wilson’s labour force largely consisted of slaves rented from their owners—the makabaila and Abdallah himself. Initially on good terms, Abdallah also fell out with Wilson, possibly because he expected more of the doctor than Wilson’s dubious medical qualifications allowed him to offer, and the American subsequently complained that the sultan and his agents were obstructing his business. Possibly in response to Wilson’s complaints, the United States imposed a treaty of friendship upon Abdallah which, among its clauses, stipulated that American citizens on the island were to enjoy immunity from the local authorities and to fall within the jurisdiction of the nearest American consulate, which was in Zanzibar. Abdallah could do little to  

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oppose the American, who, like Sunley, was reasonably successful in his endeavours and wielded some influence among the local population.   For ten years the post of British consul had remained vacant. In 1875 John Kirk, the British consul to Zanzibar, with residence in the latter town, was appointed, although his visits to the Comoros were infrequent. In 1882 Kirk was replaced by Frederick Holmwood, who immediately travelled to the archipelago to negotiate anti-slavery treaties with the rulers. Said Ali of Bambao on Ngazidja signed, and although Msafumu of Itsandra refused even to meet Holmwood, a treaty was nevertheless signed in his name. On Mwali, Abderrahman ben Said did likewise, as did Abdallah III, the latter partly prompted by a British promise to recognise and support his son Salim as his heir, but the makabaila were unanimous in their opposition, as was Wilson, and Abdallah himself probably recognised the threat that the abolition of slavery posed to his plantation at Bambao. Despite his reticence, the makabaila, led by his brother Hamza, rose against him and in mid-1884 war broke out. Although the rebellion was rapidly put down, Abdallah feared the intervention of the Americans, who were threatening to bombard Mutsamudu in an attempt to force him to pay an indemnity to Wilson for the loss of his workforce; Sultan Barghash of Zanzibar was also protesting, in his case at the treatment of a number of Indian merchants from Zanzibar who had settled in Mutsamudu and suffered losses during the war. As the British lost interest in the Comoros, and facing hostility from a number of adversaries, both domestic and foreign, Abdallah therefore had little choice but to turn to France. When the French commandant of Mayotte, Gerville-Réache, arrived with his treaty, Abdallah signed it. Ndzuani became a French protectorate on 21 April 1886.  

Ngazidja: the great war Ngazidja remained peripheral to these struggles, having managed to avoid the attention of Malagasy power-seekers as well as the British and the French, both of whom, while keeping an eye on the island, probably found the complications of Ngazidja’s political intrigues and the hostility of some of the island’s rulers, particularly of Itsandra, somewhat daunting and preferred to maintain their distance. Nevertheless, the island was not isolated: there were close ties between the islands, and not only commercial ones. Several of the rulers of Ngazidja, particularly of Bambao, were related to the royal family of Ndzuani: Bakar Hamadi, the ruler of Bambao in 1802, was the brother of 101

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Abdallah II of Ndzuani; one of his successors, Sultan Ahmed, also known as Mwinyi Mkuu, had spent much of his childhood in Mutsamudu and had married the daughter of Alawi I of Ndzuani; and as already noted, Said Ali, the last sultan of Ngazidja, was the son of Said Omar el-Masela.23 Despite the lack of direct contact with Europeans, Ngazidja was well integrated into local trading networks. Many of the commodities supplied to European ships on Ndzuani came from Ngazidja and the island profited handsomely from this indirect trade; Ngazidja maintained its own relationships within the wider region. William Lelieur, who visited the island in 1819, said that Ngazidja had more trade than the other islands, ‘having, besides coconuts and oil extracted from them, a great deal of coir, which they export to Zanzibar, as well as cowries which pass thence to India. They send to the coast of Africa a nut which has the taste of chestnut (this nut comes on a tree very similar to the screwpine, and which appears to be happy among the rocks); to Mozambique, turtle shell, and to the adjacent islands, millet.’24   Although there were occasional claims that Ndzuani exercised sovereignty over Ngazidja, these were quite fanciful and it is more likely, given the links between ruling families and the political fragmentation that effectively rendered it impossible for any one ruler to claim to rule over the entire island, that Ndzuani and Ngazidja maintained a more balanced relationship than Ndzuani did with the other islands. Ngazidja had a large population, unlike Mwali and Mayotte, and although Ngazidja had also suffered from the Malagasy raids, the island’s size, its distance from Madagascar and possibly even the lack of ports meant that it was not involved in the political intrigues that embroiled the other three islands. The rulers of the sultanate of Bambao in particular maintained links with Ndzuani, but other polities on the island looked towards Africa, which is understandable given the island’s proximity to the continent. The rulers of Itsandra were not receptive to Europeans, and had close links with Zanzibar, Lamu and Kilwa, while the learned classes—the sultanate’s capital of Ntsudjini was the local home of the Jamal al-Layl sharifu lineage—enjoyed respect as scholars on the African coast, from Mogadishu in the north to the Querimba Islands and even Angoche in the south.25 Nevertheless, claims that Zanzibar exercised sovereignty over Ngazidja were also rejected: although the majority of Zanzibaris were, like Comorians, Shafi’i Sunnis, the Bu Saidis, the ruling dynasty of Oman and Zanzibar, were Ibadhis, adherents of a branch of Islam quite distinct from the Sunni Islam of the Comoros. At the time it was customary to invoke the sultan’s name at the Friday prayer and, as the Wangazidja put it, they would never have invoked the name of a heretic in their mosques. 102

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  The nineteenth century is particularly noted for being a period of internal conflict on Ngazidja, both between lineages and within lineages, and sultans won and lost their titles at a considerable pace depending on who was sultan ntibe at the time: when one sultan gained the title, he replaced the other sultans of the island with his allies; when his rival took over, he substituted his own allies. Some sultans were in and out of power half a dozen times or more. One of the more notable of these rulers was Sultan Ahmed, better known as Mwinyi Mkuu, the ‘great lord’, of the Hinya Matswa Pirusa, who took the throne of Bambao in about 1813; he would remain there, with occasional hiatuses, for more than sixty years. Out of all the minor and not so minor conflicts, the great war (nkodo nkuu) of 1848–52, led by Mwinyi Mkuu against Fumbavu of Itsandra, was significant in that it marked the end of a period of relentless expansion of Itsandra’s ruling clan, the Hinya Fwambaya. The conflict involved all of the island’s rulers, and occasionally there were appeals to outsiders for assistance. Fumbavu, who in 1844 had refused to meet Passot, saying he would hear no talk of Europeans, professed great friendship for the British four years later; in 1850 Mwinyi Mkuu offered the whole island to the British, but Napier, then consul on Ndzuani, refused to become involved, describing Mwinyi Mkuu as ‘a man of low character’. There was clearly some manoeuvring for the support of the European powers here, since the French had found Mwinyi Mkuu to be a man of intellect, hospitable and well travelled.26   The war devastated the island, crops were destroyed and the population suffered famine, many of them fleeing to Zanzibar or Mayotte in search of a living: the miserable conditions they were willing to face on Mayotte are indicative of the extent to which Ngazidja had become inhospitable. Fumbavu finally lost the war and was deposed; he died in 1861 and was succeeded as sultan of Itsandra by his half-brother, Msafumu Fefumu, by all accounts a man of some personality, intellect and learning.27 Ahmed was on good terms with Msafumu and, anxious to maintain the peace, offered him his granddaughter in marriage. Such an offer to a longtime enemy did not go down well in Bambao, and Ahmed was deposed and replaced by his son Mohammed. Ahmed quickly gathered an army to win back his throne but was defeated, and Mohammed thus won the title of sultan ntibe from his father. Tensions between the two grew: Sultan Majid of Zanzibar sent a delegation to broker a peace but failed; Ahmed then declared himself a vassal of Portugal, hoping for help from Mozambique, but the Portuguese were unwilling (and probably unable) to interfere in local affairs. Still undeterred, 103

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he called upon the support of the French garrison on Mayotte, who sent a ship and troops. Ahmed and his allies, among them Msafumu, as well as the sultans of Mbadjini and Washili, took Moroni and marched on Mohammed’s army near the village of Mde.   Mohammed’s men had little hope: not only did they have both a detachment of well-equipped French troops and most of the rest of the island ranged against them, but they were being bombarded by a French warship anchored offshore. Mohammed’s army was slaughtered almost to the last man; Mohammed himself managed to escape to Zanzibar (and was later exiled to Mahajanga) while Msafumu did indeed marry Ahmed’s granddaughter. The alliance between Ahmed and Msafumu was short-lived, however, and in 1873 Msafumu deposed Ahmed (who died two years later), assumed the title of sultan ntibe himself, and rearranged the sultanates according to his own preferences.28   After several more years of intermittent fighting Msafumu was himself deposed—as had been predicted by his court astrologers—by Ahmed’s grandson, Said Ali bin Said Omar, who had assumed the throne of Bambao and claimed the title of sultan ntibe. Msafumu refused to give up without a fight, and the culminating battle took place in the hills above Moroni in October 1882, once again involving most of the island: Msafumu commanded the combined forces of Itsandra, Washili and Hamahame as well as men from Mbude and Zanzibar, and mercenaries from Tanganyika, and received supplies from Zanzibar and England. Said Ali led the forces of Bambao and its allies, Mitsamihuli, Mbwankuu, Hambuu and Mbadjini, as well as troops from Ndzuani, Mwali and Mayotte, and mercenaries from Madagascar, and received supplies from France. All but one of the island’s sultans were present. Msafumu was defeated and fled to Ntsudjini, which was besieged for three months, before finally taking refuge in the Gerezani, his fortified palace above Itsandramdjini. Eventually persuaded to surrender by his weary allies, he was imprisoned in Moroni on 29 January 1883 and executed eight days later.   Unsurprisingly, Said Ali’s attempt to impose his wishes upon the other sultanates of the island met with resistance, particularly in Itsandra and in Mbadjini, and he had little choice but to continue to seek French support. In 1884 a young French naturalist by the name of Léon Humblot arrived in Ngazidja and rapidly gained the confidence of the sultan. Humblot was a horticulturist from Lorraine who, in 1878, found himself leading an expedition to Madagascar to collect botanical specimens. When he arrived at Ngazidja he assessed the lay of the land and decided that his future lay in the  

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cultivation of perfume plants. He persuaded Said Ali that he had connections within circles of power in France, and assured the sultan that he could convince the French government to offer him protection; in exchange he signed a commercial treaty with Said Ali that granted him vast tracts of land on Ngazidja—almost half the island, even if much of that land was uncultivated forest on the slopes of Karthala. Humblot returned to France to raise capital for his venture and to persuade the government to establish a protectorate over the island. Whether his powers of persuasion were effective, or whether the French government was more concerned by the prospects of a French company operating outside their sphere of influence, the result was the same: in January 1886, against all the traditions of the established political system, Said Ali signed a treaty with France which recognised him as sultan of the entire island and established a French protectorate over Ngazidja.   Today the memories of this period are somewhat equivocal. The descendants of Said Ali were recognised as royalty by the French colonial government (who clearly failed to understand the local matrilineal principles of inheritance) and constituted the local elite during the colonial period, thus earning the respect of many; deeper memories see Msafumu as the true hero, holding out against Said Ali, and thus defending the independence of Ngazidja: Said Ali’s sale of the island to France, and to Humblot, was tantamount to treason, and in the fiefs of the Hinya Fwambaya he is remembered with less affection. The protectorates The establishment of protectorates over the three westernmost islands of the group had been rendered possible by the Berlin Conference of 1885, which recognised the Comoros as falling within the French sphere of influence and effectively gave France a free hand in their dealings with the archipelago. In theory the status of protectorate recognised the protected state’s internal autonomy, the protecting power limiting its competences to foreign affairs, defence and the like, hence the ‘protection’; in practice many protectorates, British, such as Zanzibar, as well as French, were colonies in all but name, overseen by advisers known as ‘residents’ who whispered loudly in the ears of the local rulers and generally expected their advice to be followed. However, there were nevertheless restrictions on the protecting power’s intervention, and these restrictions were generally respected.   If the French thought their protection would be welcomed by the inhabitants they were mistaken, and on the two larger islands there was widespread 105

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resistance to the imposition of French rule. Only on Mwali did the population acquiesce: tired of the perpetual conflict between the Malagasy and Ndzuani claimants to the throne, they chose Salima Machamba, the young daughter of Jumbe Fatima, as ruler. Since the girl, raised as a Catholic and living with nuns on Mayotte, was clearly in no position to rule, and there was no longer a French resident on the island, power was effectively conferred upon her halfbrother, Mahmoud, who assumed the title of regent. Salima, quite uninterested in Mwali, married a French gendarme and retired to France on her pension. The only moment of resistance on Mwali occurred in 1902, when, in response to the arrival of several French planters who assumed control over large tracts of land, there was an uprising; it was rapidly put down and the ringleaders deported.29   On Ngazidja Sultan Hashim of Mbadjini, the only sultanate that was not subject to the sultan ntibe, rose up against his former ally Said Ali and his French masters, and sought the protection of Germany. Although a Dr Karl Schmidt, representative of the German East Africa Company, raised the company’s flag, he was not authorised to do so and the German government refused to intervene in what they now recognised as a French protectorate. Hostilities broke out. Said Ali recruited mercenaries from the Antankarana kingdom of northern Madagascar, while Hashim, allied with Itsandra, received arms and men from the Comorian community in Zanzibar and prepared for battle. When France also sent troops, Hashim surrendered without a fight and was exiled to Madagascar. Refusing to admit failure, several months later he returned but was rapidly defeated and died at Nyumamilima on the slopes of Karthala.   Meanwhile Léon Humblot was busy in France. In 1887 he established the Société de la Grande Comore, with offices in Paris, providing himself with a legal framework for his activities in the Comoros, and returned to Ngazidja to find it largely pacified. However, he was not pleased by the appointment of a French resident on an island that he had come to consider his own, and together with Said Ali led a campaign of harassment and obstruction against the resident, Louis Weber, who was eventually removed. After a succession of several temporary replacements, the ministry finally conceded defeat and in 1889 appointed Humblot himself as resident; given his alliance with Said Ali, Humblot was now effectively ruler of the island and, unsurprisingly, dissent continued to grow. In 1890 most of the island’s leaders gathered at Kwambani and vowed to overthrow Said Ali, and the following year opposition was so strong that he was forced to flee to Mayotte while Humblot retreated to his  

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home in the southern village of Nyumbadju protected by a guard of mercenaries from Mozambique. Finally France sent troops and the resistance collapsed, many of the leaders fleeing to Zanzibar, and in 1892 Said Ali signed a second treaty with France abolishing the sultanates and traditional political structures: henceforth the island would be governed by a council of cadis under the authority of the French resident.   Things were not much more straightforward for France on Ndzuani, even though there was only one sultan to deal with. Abdallah had been hoping his treaty with France would free him from the obligations of the anti-slavery treaty signed with the British in 1882; when it became clear that this was not to be, he changed his mind, and it was only the threat of a French invasion that finally persuaded him to accept the presence of a French resident on the island. This was not the end of France’s troubles. Abdallah died in 1891 and a struggle for power ensued between his son, Salim, supported by the makabaila, and his brother, Othman, who had the support of the wamatsaha. Othman gained the upper hand, but this time French troops landed. Both contenders were exiled to New Caledonia and Said Omar el-Masela, whose sympathies had long been pro-France, was placed on the throne. He lived long enough to sign two further treaties with France, one confirming the abolition of slavery, the other recognising the protectorate. His son, Mohammed, who succeeded him in 1892, was little more than a puppet: resistance to French rule was over.30 Plantation economies As the islands came under French control, the economies were radically transformed. The colonial administration encouraged the production of cash crops to the detriment of the production of subsistence crops and export of surplus foodstuffs, while the expropriation of large tracts of land by colonial companies—particularly on Ngazidja and Ndzuani—left little space for local economic activity. The treaty of 1892 that Said Ali signed with France had also established a head tax of two rupees, imposed on every inhabitant over the age of 12. As elsewhere, this tax had a dual purpose: to raise revenue for the government, but also to compel the inhabitants, most of whom had hitherto had little use for money, to engage in wage labour, thus providing a workforce for the plantations. Following the abolition of slavery on Ngazidja in 1904, those of the island’s inhabitants who did not have access to land and who were not already engaged in economically productive activities—effectively the former 107

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slaves—were legally obliged to work as engagés, and the head tax was deducted from their salary at source. It rapidly became clear that the majority of former slaves had no desire to work on Humblot’s plantations, and those that did only stayed long enough to settle the tax. The lack of labour was a constant problem for Humblot’s company as many fled, either to the other islands or to Zanzibar. Emigration to Zanzibar was particularly discouraged by the French administration, and a figure, grossly exaggerated, of up to 15,000 Comorians living in Zanzibar was repeatedly cited in favour of the suppression of emigration to the British protectorate.31 Somewhat paradoxically, despite Humblot’s struggles to find labourers, the French recognised that the vast majority of the population could not be employed in the formal economy and attempted to encourage emigration to the French colonies of Réunion and Madagascar, as well as Mayotte, where labour was in short supply.   The first French settlers had arrived in Mayotte almost as soon as French possession was confirmed and rapidly established sugar plantations: the land was fertile, the climate ideal and the returns swifter than coconuts or coffee, which took several years to start producing on investments. In the mid-nineteenth century growing demand in Europe pushed up sugar prices and the industry boomed, production peaking at 3400 tonnes in 1869. Although the island’s output never reached these levels again, the number of plantations continued to grow and by 1890 the island counted 15 sugar plantations, the largest of which were at Combani and Dzoumonyé. However the boom years were already over. The sugar industry faced competition both from other, more competitive, colonial plantations—Mauritius and the West Indies—and from sugar beet production in Europe itself. In 1898 a cyclone devastated the plantations and labour, no longer available from the other islands—once he became resident, Humblot had strongly resisted any attempt at recruitment on Ngazidja and slaves could no longer be disguised as engagés—had become expensive. By 1903 all but two of the sugar plantations had closed, and while some of the settlers turned to vanilla, cloves or coffee, many left to try their luck on the other islands or in Madagascar, which had become a French colony in 1897.   On Ndzuani the state of the plantations was somewhat healthier, although the fate of the population little better: the appropriation of land by the colonial companies was as ruthless as on Ngazidja, and the inhabitants struggled to grow enough food to feed themselves. The most egregious case of usurpation of land in the archipelago was undoubtedly the purchase in 1900 of all but a handful of hectares of land in the Nyumakele, the island’s southern 108

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peninsula, by Jules Mocquet for the derisory sum of 2000 francs—about £80 sterling.32 Mocquet thereby became the owner of some 12,000 hectares, more than a quarter of the island. His treatment of the local population was abusive, but despite repeated complaints it would be many years before the inhabitants obtained any redress. From the perspective of the settlers, however, affairs were satisfactory, despite the sugar prices. Particularly successful were two Frenchmen, Alfred Regoin and Georges Bouin, who had taken over the estates at Bambao and Pomoni, the former on a 30-year lease from the sultan in 1892, the latter purchased from William Sunley’s nephew and heir, Robert Sunley, in 1895; in 1900 the combined sugar production of these two estates was 1100 tonnes.33 Nevertheless, the subsequent decline of the industry prompted the growing number of plantations on the island to turn to alternatives: coffee, cloves and particularly vanilla. The last-mentioned rapidly assumed some importance, and Regoin and Bouin exported 18 tonnes of vanilla in 1900.34   The twenty years following the establishment of the protectorates were marked by the rapid erosion of any semblance of independence which the status of protectorate in theory recognised. Even if Humblot, by all accounts a despot, was removed from his position as resident in 1896, subsequent residents had great difficulty in contesting his authority on the island and only Henri Pobéguin, who although resident for only 18 months was inclined to both listen and be attentive to the grievances of the local population, offered any real opposition to Humblot’s activities. His successors, few of whom remained in place for more than several months, could but protest in vain as Humblot continued to appropriate the lands of the inhabitants, reducing those who could afford to pay a rent to the status of tenants on their own land, while the remainder faced famine. By the time the administration finally abolished slavery on the island Humblot was supportive since he himself no longer had any need for slaves; the aristocracy, however, faced not only the loss of their workforce, but also what little was left of their land as the freed slaves claimed title to the lands they had been working. Regardless of the power he wielded, and the land he possessed, Humblot’s company was particularly unproductive, and had it not been for the exemption from taxes that he enjoyed under the terms of his agreement with Said Ali and the subsidies that he received from the administration, it would have certainly failed.   By the early twentieth century it was becoming clear, firstly, that the protectorates were increasingly resembling colonies in all but name, and, secondly, that the consolidation of French control over the islands would be the 109

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only way to tackle the worst of the excesses of the plantation owners. In 1908 the islands—officially the Colony of Mayotte and Dependencies—were attached to Madagascar for administrative purposes and the final steps towards full incorporation into the French colonial empire—the formal removal of the legal rulers of the islands—soon followed. Queen Salima of Mwali had never taken office; Sultan Said Mohammed of Ndzuani abdicated his throne in 1909; and in 1910 Said Ali, in exile in Réunion since 1893, also abdicated. In 1912 the four islands became French colonies and in 1914 they became a province of the colony of Madagascar. * * * The nineteenth century was not a time of prosperity for most Comorians. The Malagasy slave raids had depopulated all the islands, to varying degrees, and by the time the populations had recovered, the archipelago had lost its economic niche in exporting goods, whether to the coast or to European ships. Internal strife was fuelled, sometimes actively, by the rivalries of the wider region, and the constant conflicts became increasingly violent as European weapons became available to the islanders, prompting more to flee. As Mayotte became a French colony, the other islands turned to slavery, by now an illegal trade in the eyes of the Europeans: a risky source of income but profitable as long as the French were willing to trade. Whether the islands could have recovered their position as a trading hub is doubtful. The Europeans no longer had need of a supply point on their way east, which, in any case, was now through the Suez Canal, bypassing the Comoros altogether, and by the end of the century the colonial partition of Africa was leading to the establishment of barriers to trade between the colonies of different nations.   By the end of the century the colonial occupation of the archipelago had removed any semblance of political or economic independence that the islands might previously have enjoyed, and even the social activities of the islanders would be increasingly constrained as the French began to impose controls on their movements. Zanzibar, a regional intellectual and economic hub, had fallen within the British sphere of influence and would be viewed with increasing ambivalence by the colonial administration; and while the Comoros were now part of Madagascar, opportunities on the larger island were also limited. Comorians did not share the culture of the Malagasy and would always be outsiders there. More widely, however, shifts in worldviews, linked to the colonial endeavour and increasingly ubiquitous, began to see the 110

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local populations as inferior, in the Comoros as elsewhere. No longer were Comorians people with whom the Europeans could trade on equal terms, but subjects to be dominated, disciplined and eventually civilised: the white man had arrived with his burden. Settlers such as Mocquet and, above all, Humblot—Mshambulo, the ‘sultan blanc’—settled in as quasi-rulers in the absence of an effective colonial administration, completely undermining the local economies and creating divisions between ruler and ruled that have never quite dissipated.

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5

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A peripheral and economically unattractive province of Madagascar, cut off from their historical trading partners, the islands suffered general neglect during the first forty years of the colonial period. For much of this period, French policy was largely absent as far as the Comoros were concerned: if policies established with Madagascar in mind had a positive effect on the islands, then so much the better; generally they were inappropriate, and if they had any effect at all, then it was probably negative. In the early years a handful of plantation companies colluded with an indifferent colonial administration to persuade the central government to impose harsh and repressive laws on an increasingly impoverished population, while locally the administration struggled with a chronic lack of funds that prevented investment in even the most basic infrastructure. Following the Second World War the archipelago was finally detached from Madagascar and established as a territoire d’outre-mer in its own right, and with increasing internal autonomy the local aristocracy began to engage in politics and enter the civil service. Economic development remained elusive, however, and in 1960, as the majority of French African colonies acceded to independence, both France and the ruling classes in the islands recognised that Comorian independence would be premature, and the islands chose to remain a French territory. Although they were granted full internal self-government, political and economic development remained slow and frustration with the lack of progress, accompanied by the growth of a

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secessionist movement on Mayotte, finally prompted a unilateral declaration of independence in 1975. Mayotte, however, did not join the newly independent country. A province of Madagascar Following the decree of 1908, the Comoros briefly enjoyed the status of a colony, although this was a slightly curious state of affairs in that three of the four islands that constituted the colony were not themselves colonies but protectorates, that is, the sultans remained nominally heads of state, responsible for internal administration, while France’s role was largely restricted to foreign affairs and defence. Indeed, this was one of the reasons for a further change in status four years later, transforming the protectorates into colonies and bringing them under a single uniform administration. On the two larger islands both Humblot and Wilson consistently refused to respect French law, particularly regarding their engagement of local labourers, instead claiming rights under the treaties that they had signed with the sultans, Said Ali of Ngazidja and Abdallah III of Ndzuani respectively, and France was unhappy with this refusal to submit. Furthermore, the other French settlers in the islands were equally unhappy with the privileges enjoyed by the two dominant companies and did not seem to have any objections to a further change in status, which would not only have the advantages of regularising the relationship with Madagascar (and formally recognising the de facto status of all islands as colonies) but would see all entitled (in theory) to the same rights in the archipelago.   There were other reasons, too, although some were contestable: the suggestion that the Comoros and Madagascar shared common needs and interests seems difficult to understand; likewise (in the light of repeated complaints about the lack of communications) the suggestion that links between Madagascar and the islands were growing. Madagascar, three hundred times the size of the archipelago, is almost a continent, with a unique culture and speaking a very different language, and in the early twentieth century the economic potential of the island was considerable: a large labour force and promising mining and agricultural sectors would attract French settlers and French investment, and there were even hopes of industrial development. The Comoros on the other hand were a small group of islands, Islamic and part of the Swahili cultural zone, with an economy that was based on trade and a limited number of niche export crops; there were very few settlers and, despite 114

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moments of excitement over the potential for sugar or spices, colonial investment never materialised. Nevertheless, Paris was concerned about making ends meet and the French colonial ministry, excited about the enormous potential of the larger island, cared little for the Comoros beyond making sure they would not be a financial burden. The colony’s budget was increasingly difficult to balance, partly due to the existence of four separate jurisdictions, and it was felt that consolidating the administration and bringing it under the control of Madagascar would, in the long term, allow for economies to be made. The arguments for this were doubtful, however, and the islands long remained underfunded even following their attachment to Madagascar, of which they were to be a neglected and unproductive province. Nevertheless, the law of 25 July 1912 stated that ‘the islands of Anjouan, Mohéli and Grand Comore are declared French colonies’, and that they would be attached to the Gouvernement Général of Madagascar ‘under conditions that will be fixed by a decision of public administration’. It would be two years before this decree would be made. The reason for the delay was due to indecision over the budgetary question.1   Three options were proposed. The first, maintaining the status quo, each island enjoying financial autonomy within the colony, seemed illogical since it would probably have increased administration costs rather than reducing them, and was swiftly rejected. The second proposed a single budget for the islands, which would then be attached to the budget of Madagascar; but this was also rejected in favour of a third option, that of merging the budget with that of Madagascar, as was the case with the other provinces. This had the advantage of reducing the administration costs in the Comoros and allowing the colony as a whole to assume the Comoros’ debts. In the short term this was clearly to Madagascar’s disadvantage and to the Comoros’ advantage; in the long term, however, and contrary to both intentions and expectations, it proved to be to the archipelago’s disadvantage since Madagascar consistently failed to provide the administration with adequate funding. Nevertheless, budgetary unity was established by the law of 1914, which formally established the Comoros as a simple administrative circonscription of Madagascar, thus removing a number of colonial services and their personnel—and their costs.2  

Law and administration With limited means, therefore, and often with little understanding of local conditions, the French administration set about establishing a colonial order 115

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in the islands. An administrative apparatus was gradually put into place, legislation was passed controlling justice and the labour regime, and efforts were made to improve education and infrastructure. Politically the islands were organised into subdivisions, one for each island, each administered by a French chef de subdivision appointed by the administrator of the province on Mayotte; the subdivisions were further subdivided into cantons: four each on Mayotte and Ndzuani, five on Ngazidja and one on Mwali. The cantons were headed by a native chef de canton, responsible for taxation and the maintenance of public order, and, as far as possible, the administration preferred that the chef de canton be a cadi, an Islamic magistrate, who would thus enjoy a certain degree of authority over the population. The chef de canton nominated chefs de villages, who were responsible for their villages, and security was maintained by the garde indigène, composed of 100 men recruited locally and under the command of French officers.3   The administrative structure was thus pyramidal, with several tiers of responsibility separating the villager from the central government in Madagascar. The population itself was growing, although apparently still smaller than it had been in the late eighteenth century: in 1900 Vienne estimated the population of the entire archipelago to be 85,000, but said that a hundred years earlier Ngazidja alone had had 100,000 inhabitants. More than half the population lived on Ngazidja, and although there were several large towns on the two larger islands—Mutsamudu, with about 4000 inhabitants, was the largest town in the archipelago—the islands were still very much a rural society.4 They were also very much an Islamic society, a fact that both worried the administration and shaped their policies, and despite the status of the islands as part of Madagascar, there were local adaptations to the legal system. Although the criminal code was French, civil law was based both on Islam and on custom, and administered indirectly by the cadis (technically a French court, the tribunal indigène, in which the presiding administrator was advised by two cadis) in cases where both parties were governed according to droit local, a specific status that accorded natives in the colonies access to their own legal systems. It also, of course, denied them the rights of full French subjects since full citizenship was dependent upon a renunciation of droit local and the adoption of droit commun, the civil code that applied in France and to European French subjects, although in the early years few Comorians aspired to French citizenship.   If either or both parties were not native, a French juge d’instance dealt with cases based on droit commun; he would also hear cases from natives who could 116

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choose to be heard under droit commun, which led to some shopping around as people attempted to appeal to the system which would best serve their interests. This system dated from 1904, but the administration of justice by the cadis was not properly organised—most cases were heard outside the framework of the French courts—until 1934, when the role of the cadis was formally recognised and a tribunal of cadis was established. The sole admissible text with regard to Islamic law was the Minhaj al-Talibin, a commentary on Shafi’i law written by the thirteenth-century jurist al-Nawawi and long used in the islands. The juge d’instance also served as an appeal court for all, and was expected to have some knowledge of both Islamic law and custom.5 While this was all very well in theory, the population would undoubtedly have felt that in many cases justice was somewhat arbitrary, and collective fines were frequently imposed on villages that were deemed to have infringed one rule or another. Thus in August 1920, ‘a collective fine of 600 francs, being three francs per taxpayer, was imposed on the inhabitants of the villages of Ouela, Mavatsoni, Hadeoi and M’tsongele, for failing to maintain the roads and paths and for untidy villages’.6   The legal structures developed in the inter-war period remain in place today and Islamic sharia is one of the cornerstones of the legal system in the independent islands. Although contemporary criminal legislation is generally based upon French law, civil law—inheritance and marriage in particular— continues to be applied according to the Minhaj although in certain domains, such as land tenure and inheritance, customary law takes precedence. Nevertheless, in matters such as divorce, legal (as opposed to customary) marriage, and inheritance of certain categories of goods, sharia continues to apply. Each village of any size will have a cadi, appointed by the state, who will fulfil the functions of judge and marriage celebrant, as well as offering informal advice on personal and religious matters to the local community. Unofficially he may also resolve minor criminal offences, such as theft, which those concerned, for various reasons including matters of family or village honour, may not wish to report to the authorities. The cadi may also be a teacher, a fundi, taking on individual pupils or, in some cases, holding evening classes either in the mosque or in some other suitable location.7   French and Islamic legal principles were complemented by customary law, mila na ntsi, literally ‘tradition and land’, which governs ritual practice and certain aspects of succession and inheritance—rights over land, membership of lineages, and titles to various offices including, somewhat ironically, the role of hatwib, or preacher in the mosque: in many towns this office is held 117

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by a member of a specific matrilineage, often called the Hinya Mahatwibu, and title is transmitted in the female line. Customary law remains a pillar of the legal system in the independent islands, although not in Mayotte. Beyond being a simple legal system, in the Western sense of the word, mila na ntsi governed all aspects of social life, providing codes for behaviour, and shaping political and economic practice. One element of mila na ntsi that continues to play a significant role in daily life, particularly on Ngazidja, is a ritual system known as ãda na mila, ‘custom and tradition’. In its widest sense, ãda na mila, or simply ãda, refers to the various elements of customary practice that are not Islamic: the rituals surrounding passage from one grade to another in the age system, for example, or the customary legal system that provides for punishments for various infractions, these days usually of a ritual character since French and Islamic law have taken over responsibility for much of what was once ãda. Nevertheless, the collective fines that the French administration were fond of imposing upon unruly villages find an echo in the collective rights and responsibilities governed by ãda, within which a village may fine or even ‘ban’ one of its members for particularly serious offences to the community.   The most notable aspect of ãda, however, and the one that is generally understood when one speaks of one’s ãda, is the costly and ostentatious ritual marriage upon which so many visitors to the islands comment. Customary marriage is onerous on all the islands, but the version undertaken on Ngazidja is the most socially pervasive and seems to have assumed its present form at the beginning of the last century, although the costs associated with the marriage have always been high: the German explorer Otto Kersten says that in the 1860s it was not unusual to slaughter 30–40 head of cattle for a marriage feast while Voeltzkow, who visited in 1904, said weddings could last a month.8 The ãda has its origins in the meal that was prepared by the eldest son of a free family to mark his passage through the age system; it accorded him the status of an elder, and his brothers also benefited by association. Since these movements were collective, the meal was not necessarily linked to a transition between age grades and could be prepared at any time, although the longer a man waited to do so, the more his status suffered. At some point, this meal became associated with marriage, and at the beginning of the twentieth century there was a generalisation of the ãda: following the abolition both of the sultanates and of slavery, the freed slaves began to adopt the practices of their former masters, partly as part of a process of ‘becoming’ Comorian, while at the same time, not to be left out, the younger sons of the noble families, who 118

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saw their privileged status threatened, also began to perform the ãda in an attempt to enhance that status.9  The ãda on Ngazidja—and its counterparts on the other islands, the harusi on Ndzuani and Mwali, the manzaraka on Mayotte—is now inevitably associated with marriage, although the couple in question may well have been legally married for years, if not decades, before they accumulate the requisite savings to perform their ãda. It consists of a long series of events, including dances, prayers and, most importantly, the provision of meals to the various age sets in the village. While today villagers from all over the island (and beyond) may attend an ãda, and undoubtedly be fed, these central ritual meals are essential to the successful conclusion of the ceremonies. An ãda will animate a village for days, if not weeks, as the whole community participates in the organisation of the festivities: the men distribute food, set up stages or place chairs for the various events while the women of the village cook the meals, often to be eaten by hundreds of guests. Ceremonies were generally segregated—there were, and still are, ceremonies for women and ceremonies for men; and although women (and their mothers) saw a change in their status when marrying in the ãda, there were no formal age systems for women; and, of course, women did not participate publicly in village affairs.   On Ngazidja, the ãda grants the man the formal status of elder, or mndru mndzima, ‘whole man’, and various associated rights: the right to speak in public and participate in the political process, the right to enter the mosque by the door reserved for elders, and pray at the front, the right to wear the mharuma, a sash that marks his status, the right not only to eat, but to receive the best cuts of meat at subsequent marriage feasts, and so on. This right to eat, and the fact that when a man marries he enters a new nuptial house, provide a man and, by extension, his wife and family with a degree of social security; more importantly, the ãda is the basis for social cohesion, for although those who do the ãda generally attempt to pay for as much as possible themselves, the costs are such that this is impossible for all but the wealthiest individuals. Instead, others in the village, and beyond, contribute to the costs of the ãda, but these payments are not gifts. Rather, they are contributions that they will expect to see returned when the donor performs his or her own ãda, or they are repayments of debts that they themselves had incurred in the past. This cycle of indebtedness is impossible to close, and binds the entire population into an obligation to perform the ãda, since not to do so would be to renege on one’s debts or, worse, deny others the opportunity to repay debts they have incurred. This is the main reason why the ãda continues to exist 119

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today, despite constant calls for it to be abandoned or abolished: many feel that the tens of thousands of euros that a family spends on such events could more profitably be put to use elsewhere.   The elders created by the ãda constituted the authorities at a village level and participated in the political process island-wide. However, the system was not a formal one: those who wished to participate in local politics did so, others did not. Some intervened when there was a decision to be made that concerned them or their families directly, others were regularly active regardless of their own personal interests. Still others refrained from becoming involved if there was potential for a loss of face or a challenge to one’s honour. The system was therefore flexible and contextual. The French colonial administration, however, failed to recognise this, and in 1915, drawing on the model of the largely successful fokonolona (native village councils) of Madagascar, the administration created the Ouatou Akouba, a council of elders based on these customary structures. Henceforth the chef de village would be the head of this council, and the council itself was to be entirely responsible for village affairs, from policing and the maintenance of public order to overseeing the upkeep of the village, land use and the construction of public facilities such as schools and medical centres. By the same token, the council was also held collectively responsible for infractions of civil or criminal law in cases where the responsible parties could not be identified. As we shall see, the administration was to be disappointed by the Ouatou Akouba.10 Nevertheless, the lack of colonial administrators led the French to allow the customary structures to continue to function, even if not in quite the way they had hoped.   Ãda and Islam are uneasy bedfellows, particularly since the extravagance of the ãda has long been denounced as un-Islamic by some of the country’s religious leaders; but despite the devotion of Comorians to the Islamic faith, ãda takes precedence, and those who criticise the ãda, even on religious grounds, can find themselves ostracised. Nevertheless, as we have seen, Islamic practice permeates daily life in the islands, and in addition to orthodox Islamic practice, there are both practices and observances that are either specifically Comorian or enjoy unusual popularity in the islands. Most notable of these is Sufism, and a number of Sufi orders, or brotherhoods, are present in the Comoros. Sufism refers to forms of Islamic mystical practices through which adepts attempt to establish a direct connection with God. A number of Sufi orders gained popularity in the islands in the inter-war period of the early twentieth century, probably at least partly in response to colonialism, and the most widespread of these orders was the Shadhuliyya, introduced to Ngazidja 120

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by Sheikh Abdallah Daroueche in 1883 and subsequently popularised by Said Mohammed Cheikh Ahmed, more familiarly known as el-Maarouf. El-Maarouf was responsible for the propagation of the Shadhuliyya Sufi order, not only in the Comoros but in much of East Africa, and the annual commemorative pilgrimage, or hauli, to his tomb in Moroni, held on the anniversary of his death, attracts people from across East Africa and beyond.   Shadhuliyya ritual events are known as daira, literally a ‘circle’, and involve dhikr, ritual rhythmic chanting of the name of Allah. Sufi meetings may take place in a mosque or in a special meeting hall known as a zawiyya, and the daira may last all night as the adherents become increasingly animated and enter a trance-like state, which, in addition to the spiritual experience, establishes a sense of fraternity among the disciples. Although the Shadhuliyya order, or twarika, is the most popular Sufi order in the archipelago, Comorians are eclectic in their Sufi practices and often choose to attend an event based on personal affiliations or even a liking for a particular style of music. The Qadiriyya, the Dandarawiyya and the Rifa’iyya all have adherents in the islands—and most were introduced to the islands in the early colonial period—while membership of the Alawiyya, probably brought to the islands in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, is restricted to members of the Hadrami Ba Alawi family, descendants of the Prophet (sharifu).   One of the administration’s ongoing worries—which emerged almost as soon as the Comoros were attached to Madagascar—was the potential for Islamic agitation on the islands. At the outbreak of the First World War there was concern that Comorians would sympathise with the Ottoman Empire— the Ottoman sultan Mehmet V was the caliph of the Sunnis—and thus indirectly with the Germans. Their worries turned out to be groundless. Most Comorians had little interest in events in Europe: on Mayotte and Mwali the population appeared oblivious while the makabaila of Ndzuani asserted that the ‘Turks are not Arabs’. Only on Ngazidja, where the name of the caliph continued to be invoked in the mosques, was there some pro-Ottoman sentiment, but even here religion and the war were understood to be unrelated.11 Nevertheless, in order to counter any pro-Ottoman sentiment the French administration enlisted the aid of Said Ali, who attempted to persuade the islanders to support France, and published a (short-lived) journal, El Haqui, to disseminate pro-French propaganda; for many years thereafter administrators were advised by Paris to keep an eye out for excessive religious zeal.12   Although a handful of Comorians enrolled in the French Army, war in far-off Europe was the least of the islanders’ concerns: other issues were more 121

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immediate, and more prosaic. Land remained a problem on all the islands. Although Humblot had been forced to retrocede some land to the local inhabitants, when he died in 1914 his company, the Société Anonyme de la Grande Comore (SAGC), still owned 47 per cent of the island. While much of this was unproductive land at higher altitude, it included the greater part of the rainforest on the slopes of Karthala, which had long been exploited by the islanders for wood, honey and various wild crops, as well as the bulk of the island’s valuable cattle grazing lands further north, historically held by the island’s rulers for public use. Mwali and Mayotte had also been parcelled out to settlers while on Ndzuani, as we have seen, the islanders had very little land left at all. On Ndzuani it was land that was to be at the root of dissent while on Ngazidja, where most of the productive coastal land remained in local hands, the issues were taxation and perceived attacks on culture. The islands’ annexation by Madagascar was a particular source of conflict.   Indeed, barely had the archipelago been attached to Madagascar, and Malagasy civil servants appointed to the island, than there was a rebellion on Ngazidja. In July 1915 villagers attacked a group of tax collectors in the village of Djomani in the northwest of the island; unrest spread to neighbouring villages and then to the eastern region of Dimani where locals were particularly unhappy with the Malagasy chef de canton, Ratolojanahary. Violence broke out and troops were sent in: the leaders of the revolt, Masimu, Mtsala and Ahmed Pattiar, were killed and 94 demonstrators were arrested and imprisoned.13 This resistance prompted the authorities in Madagascar to replace their representatives in the islands with, hopefully, more culturally sensitive individuals. The new chef de province, based in Dzaoudzi, was Charles Poirier, by all accounts a difficult man, but who was nevertheless interested in the islands’ culture and produced several reports between 1916 and 1919 which were referred to repeatedly by administrators over the subsequent two decades and later formed the basis for several publications.14 He was particularly concerned with religious issues, and scoffed at the idea, widespread among both his superiors and his administrators, that the growth of Sufism was a threat to the colonial order. He appears to have been correct, although it is certainly likely that the rapid spread of Sufism during this period was directly attributable to the colonial presence and the disempowerment of the local population—and, undoubtedly, the administration’s attempts to suppress the practices. Even if not overtly political, Sufi practices subverted the colonial order by their ubiquity, by the sense of fraternity that they encouraged, and simply by virtue of the fact that they prompted concern.  

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  Despite the changes following the annexation, the formal economy remained almost entirely in the hands of the colonial plantation companies. These companies had been forced to diversify, particularly on Mayotte where the sugar industry had collapsed, and planters had turned to other crops. In 1907, flush with the success of their venture into vanilla, Georges Bouin and Alfred Regoin sought to diversify and, in association with Georges Chiris, a perfumer from the southern French town of Grasse, the centre of the French perfume industry, they established the Société Coloniale de Bambao (SCB), planting a variety of crops destined for the perfume industry: vanilla, ylang ylang, orange flower, cloves and lemongrass, in particular.15 As the smaller plantations struggled with the vagaries of commodity prices, they were gradually taken over and the SCB soon became the dominant company. To their original holding in Bambao on Ndzuani they had added the Combani plantation on Mayotte and in 1921 they acquired Wilson’s domain at Patsy; in 1924 they purchased Pomoni and in 1925 Lambert’s old plantations on Mwali. Finally, in 1938 they acquired the SAGC, thus becoming the largest landowner in the archipelago.16   Perfumes and spices were a niche market and the islands soon became major producers. Cloves and pepper were dried and exported either for culinary uses or for the manufacture of Indonesian kretek cigarettes while the perfume oils were distilled locally and shipped to Grasse. Ylang ylang—long a basic ingredient of most perfumes—became a Comorian speciality and the islands were almost the sole producers of the oil for several decades. However, the perfume plantations were (and remain) labour-intensive and the local population was swiftly drawn into wage labour. On the smaller islands, particularly Ndzuani, they had little choice, since the expropriation of their lands left them little space in which to cultivate their own crops—whether for food or for sale—and the requirement that they pay taxes forced them to earn money. On Ngazidja things were slightly better and, if the lack of water made distillation of perfume oils difficult, vanilla grew easily on the island’s lava flows, and the locals turned to its cultivation with great enthusiasm. They were encouraged by the high prices of the 1920s, themselves fed by the growing demand for flavourings, not only in baking and in soft drinks (such as CocaCola), but also in ice cream as refrigeration became more widely available. In the early years most of the harvest went to France, but the American market rapidly came to dominate the vanilla industry and American wholesalers bought all they could grow.   The islands also produced sisal (on Ndzuani and Mayotte), copra and coir, cocoa and coffee. Some of these plants were more successful and more profit 123

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able than others, and although no fortunes were made, the islands often maintained a positive balance of payments in the years between the wars. Thus in 1935, imports—mostly rice, cloth and clothing, and household goods— amounted to 1.2 million francs while exports were worth almost 7.5 million francs.17 Some of the French settlers imported and resold consumer goods—in the early years of the century the SAGC company store in Moroni had a monopoly on European goods (and minted its own tokens which its employees could spend there)—but many of the local businesses were owned by Indian or Hadrami traders, who generally had partners in Zanzibar or, in the case of the former, in India itself, and some of whom would have been British subjects. Local participation in the plantations was as wage labourers, except on Ngazidja where locals planted their own vanilla and sold their harvest to the company. This emphasis on vanilla to the exclusion of almost all other crops led to problems on the island in the 1930s when the price of vanilla collapsed, from some 400 francs per kilo to barely 30, prompting large numbers of Wangazidja to depart for Zanzibar and leaving others in poverty.   Although the other islands became increasingly dependent on cash crops, for much of this period Ngazidja continued to export other goods, both to Zanzibar and, to a lesser extent, to Mozambique. The quantities and the goods varied from year to year, but as in the pre-colonial period they included cattle and goats, skins, shark fins and tortoiseshell. This provided the local population—those who produced the goods, at least—some relief from the demands of the SAGC and also the means to pay taxes. However, these were always on the increase, and by the 1930s taxes on the slaughter of cattle, on top of the rent that natives were required to pay for access to grazing lands owned by the SAGC, meant that cattle were no longer profitable and the high costs saw them increasingly reserved for ritual purposes rather than daily consumption.   As was common practice, the natives were encouraged—often forced—to sell their labour to raise the cash, unavailable from other sources, to pay their taxes. Nevertheless, the administration recognised that the practices of the colonial companies during the protectorates—and the SAGC was again the principal culprit—were abusive, and regulation of the labour market was swift in coming. Two laws, in 1906 and 1907, removed not only the obligation for natives to sign up as engagés but also the obligation to work a certain number of days annually, granting them freedom to work as they chose, either as daily labourers or on long-term contracts. Naturally, many chose to work as little as possible, earning just enough to pay their taxes, and the unreliability of the labour force became a frequent complaint of the companies. On Ngazidja the oversupply of labour 124

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meant that wages were lower than on the other islands, which did little to incite people to work. One administrator complained that ‘the native remains lazy and indifferent, and his only desire is, after nevertheless having paid his taxes, to rest and await better days’.18 Revenue from taxation remained low, particularly given that until 1927, under the terms of the 1885 convention between Humblot and Said Ali, the SAGC was exempt from all taxes, including export duties.19 The nature of land ownership—land was held collectively by lineages—meant that when land taxes went unpaid there was no owner to pursue; likewise, many frequently failed to pay the head tax, either through evasion or simply through lack of cash; and the hut tax was also difficult to collect since houses were the property of women, who generally had no income: although much of the labouring in the field was undertaken by women, rare was the woman who would work for wages for a French settler. Madagascar failed to fill the budgetary holes, and overall the budget for the province was consistently inadequate to allow for much investment in infrastructure.   Education was particularly neglected. Education in the colonies was through native schools, écoles indigènes, in which children were taught the basics of literacy and mathematics, the French language and manual skills, all of which would equip them to serve their colonial masters. In 1915 an école indigène du deuxième degré was opened in Mutsamudu, which provided limited secondary schooling and had a general section and a professional section (carpentry and metalworking), both intended to prepare students either for skilled labour locally or, if they were promising, to compete for a scholarship to go on to further studies in Madagascar. The training lasted three years and all five teachers were Malagasy.20 However, in 1918 there were only seven schools in the entire archipelago, compared to 652 Koran schools, and this situation changed little over the subsequent two decades: in 1931, of 20,000 school-age children only 472 attended one of the ten government schools, and despite some development of the sector in the 1930s, as late as 1939 there were still only about 1000 pupils in the government schools, all of which, except the secondary classes at Mutsamudu, were primary: at the outbreak of war the closest secondary school properly speaking was still in Madagascar. In 1910 provision was made for scholarships to be granted to pupils who wanted to pursue secondary education in Madagascar, and although the budget only allowed for a very small number of students to be funded, this was the path followed by several of those who would later emerge as political leaders.21   Even had there been the funds to invest in schools, most Comorians were reluctant to send their children to what they perceived as being Christian 125

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schools, and administrative reports and Comorians both repeatedly lamented the fact that, unlike Zanzibar, religious education was not part of the curriculum of the government schools, for although the French law of 1905 on the separation of church and state was not applied in Madagascar, unofficial policy was that religion should not be taught in publicly funded schools in the colony. Nevertheless, the French administration encouraged the aristocracy to send their children to the local schools in order to train a pro-French elite who would later, presumably, assist in the government of the colony. Indeed, the French relied heavily on the ability and willingness of the local aristocracy to act as mediators between the administration and the population, and the descendants of the deposed sultans were given jobs and pensions in return for their support; such jobs presupposed an education.   Governors did not leave their mark, and with the exception of Poirier and Avignon, who published articles on the islands’ culture, the names of the others have largely been forgotten.22 Some seem to have had very little interest in the islands—Ange Béréni, who was governor in the late 1920s, appears to have spent most of his time in Antananarivo—but even those who showed some concern for the islands were often not well informed: Francis Mury, who was delegate for Madagascar to the Conseil Supérieur des Colonies, the representative body for the colonies that sat in Paris, and campaigned in favour of the French plantation owners, managed to call the volcano ‘Krakatoa’.23 Most civil servants were Malagasy and thus not Muslims, which, as we have seen, caused some resentment; despite repeated comments in the annual reports— and repeated complaints to Madagascar—that the islands had little in common with Madagascar, that much colonial policy was unadapted to the islands, and that official notices, published in French and Malagasy, were quite incomprehensible to Comorians, there was little change. The Ouatou Akouba was a resounding failure: few Comorians of any stature were prepared to participate in the colonial administration, and most of those nominated to these councils were without power or status in their villages. Most administrators recognised this, and there are repeated references in the annual reports to its failure—‘existing only on paper, this institution based on the fokonolona is not appropriate to the customs of the archipelago,’ said one.24 Surprisingly it nevertheless remained on the statute books until the end of the colonial period: presumably there were still hopes for it.   While funding was always an issue, the lack of understanding of the social and cultural specificities of the islands underlay much of the failure of the administration to engage effectively with the people. The Ouatou Akouba is 126

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but the more egregious of examples, and there was a chronic lack of contact between coloniser and colonised, which seemed to be more pronounced in the Comoros than in Madagascar or indeed in other French colonies; the occasional appointment of a more perspicacious official to the islands only highlighted the deficiencies. A particularly indicative illustration of this can be found in a proposition made in the mid-1930s by Qamar al-Din, an erudite Comorian employed in the civil service in Antananarivo, to publish a local newsletter or journal which, unlike the official notices in French or Malagasy, would be in a local language and thus accessible to the population. The administration was much taken by the idea, observing with no apparent trace of irony that they could at last explain the Ouatou Akouba to the population, ‘in the Swahili of Ngazidja’. Despite the objections of both Qamar al-Din and Prince Said Ibrahim, a son of Said Ali who had been recruited locally to assemble the text, not only was the first specimen issue of the journal in Swahili, a language that few in the Comoros understood, but it was in Latin characters rather than the Arabic script used in the islands, thus ensuring that all but a very small handful of Comorians would be unable to read it. Prince Said Ibrahim informed the administrator that his contributors had only provided articles as a personal favour to him, and they saw no point repeating the exercise since they would be wasting their time. The journal never saw the light of day.25   In 1925 the government finally recognised that the social and economic specificities of the islands were quite different from those of Madagascar and passed a law granting the administrator of the province greater powers, although he remained subject to the governor general of Madagascar, in the hope that greater autonomy would allow the islands to develop at their own rhythm. He was to be assisted by a conseil consultatif which would be consulted on proposed local legislation, public works and grants of land. The council was to have seven members, appointed by the governor general on the advice of the administrateur supérieur, the senior colonial officer, of the Comoros, the latter also being a member of the council; of the remainder, three were civil servants, two were French citizens and one a notable, a French subject of local origin. This was the first time that any provision had been made for local participation in the administration of the islands, even if the role was only advisory.26   This arrangement did not seem to have had the desired results, and the costs—not that there could have been many—appear to have outweighed the benefits. In 1934, citing the ‘disproportionate expenses’ incurred by the pres 127

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ence of an administrateur supérieur in the islands, his status was downgraded again. By 1939 the administration had become moribund—the economic report for 1939 was practically word for word identical to that of 193827— and a number of Comorians who had managed to obtain an education outside the islands began to express their frustration and agitate for greater political participation. There are occasional references in the administrative reports to a lack of respect for the French, particularly among the young— the French noted that the elders of the upper classes were generally attached to the French—and there is mention of a Jeune Comorien movement, based on Ngazidja, whose members were nevertheless dismissed as being of loose morals. More serious resistance came from those who came back from school in Antananarivo, where political awareness was somewhat more developed than in the Comoros, and began to speak out against the colonial administration and the excesses of the plantation companies. Among them was a young doctor—the first Comorian to qualify as such—by the name of Said Mohamed Cheikh.28   By the outbreak of the Second World War little had changed in the Comoros. The plantation companies provided a source of income for those who chose to work for them, and on Mayotte and Ndzuani many did indeed work on the plantations: the cash economy was developing and land shortages on Ndzuani in particular meant that there were few alternatives. But wages were low, and although the companies’ treatment of employees had improved over the years, conditions were far from optimal. The principal crops, ylang yang and cloves, required some investment, and the trees took a number of years to produce; they were generally therefore owned by the plantation companies and locals merely harvested the crops. Only on Ngazidja, where many grew some vanilla, did people have some control over their livelihoods, although the vagaries of the vanilla market meant that this was indeed a supplementary income and not something to be relied upon.   The islands’ infrastructure was pitiful. Health care was largely inaccessible even for those who wanted it, the few hospitals being located in the island capitals, and education was likewise basic. Comorians continued to shun the French schools, and those who did attend one of the colonial schools received an education that did little more than prepare them for life as colonial subjects. Only the fortunate few who managed to win places at one of the schools in Madagascar could aspire to anything more, assuming they could get there. Transport links both between the islands and with Madagascar and East Africa were inadequate. None of the islands had a port worthy of the name and the 128

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Messageries Maritimes service between Mahajanga and Zanzibar, a monthly service that in the early years of the twentieth century stopped at Mayotte and Mutsamudu, was not found to be profitable, and by the mid-1930s the islands were lucky to see two ships annually. Inter-island communications were equally difficult, the administration possessing no boat, although locals had dhows and outrigger canoes. These were as useful for local transport as they were for interisland travel since roads were almost absent and travel on land was by foot or, for lucky administrators, in a fitako, a litter. In the late 1930s airstrips were traced out on Mayotte (at Pamandzi, on Petite Terre) and on Ngazidja, but the first regular services were not established until after the war.29   Comorians therefore generally remained on their own island. There were exceptions, of course, and the twin attractions of Zanzibar and Madagascar exercised a pull on the islanders. The Comorian community of Zanzibar, numbering perhaps 3000, was well established and influential, and by the 1930s they had a school far superior to anything on offer in the homeland, and quite a few Wangazidja sent their children there. The French administration attempted to control the movement of people between Ngazidja (in particular) and Zanzibar, but the requirement that travellers obtain a permit was frequently ignored and stowaways were probably to be found on most ships heading for the British protectorate. Zanzibar must have seemed a very different world for the Wangazidja: prosperous, animated and welcoming, a centre of religious learning, too. Comorians must have enjoyed a sense of freedom, of possibilities and perhaps even of excitement that was absent in their homeland, as well as a sense of belonging in what was a major centre in the Swahili world, of which the Comoros were of course a part. Zanzibar was far more important in the local imagination than Paris or even Antananarivo, and the Comorians living there were often employed in the civil service earning respectable incomes, part of which they remitted to families at home. Madagascar, and particularly the port city of Mahajanga, also attracted Comorian migrants, largely from Ndzuani and Mayotte, and there was a large and influential Comorian community there, too, although they were more likely to be engaged in more menial occupations such as butchers and labourers; however, even there a number of Comorians found positions in the administration, although rarely did those positions take them home again. If Mahajanga wasn’t quite the emporium that Zanzibar was, it was nevertheless also a more prosperous place than Dzaoudzi or Moroni. Both these centres gave Comorians a sense of their place in the world: although the French administrators looked to far-off Paris, the neglected archipelago was neverthe 129

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less connected to the region and the local population was well aware of the fact, moving through networks quite alien to the French colonial office.   The Second World War had a profound effect on nationalist movements in colonial possessions across Africa. Global political changes and contacts between different colonial subjects who had served in the various armed forces—of all the major powers—led to a rapid growth in political awareness, even in the Comoros. Following the German occupation of France the local administration sided with Pétain’s collaborationist government based in the French town of Vichy; in 1942 British forces invaded Madagascar and occupied the Comoros and a small detachment of British troops was briefly based in Dzaoudzi before the islands were handed over to a Gaullist administration. As the war came to an end it became clear that changes, both political and economic, were inevitable. In 1944 a conseil régional was established for the Comoros; among its six nominated members were two Comorians, one of whom was the Maorais Georges Nahouda;30 the following year a conseil représentatif was created for Madagascar and Dependencies, of which the Comoros remained a constituency, this time with 60 members, half of whom were natives and 40 of whom were elected. Barely had these councils been established, however, than the law of 1912 was abrogated and in 1946 the Comoros were granted full administrative and financial autonomy from Madagascar.   The first half of the twentieth century had seen very little change in the islands. Although the plantation owners and the administration attempted to impose some order, political, economic and social, upon the inhabitants, the administrative apparatus was spread so thinly that for many life went on as usual. The reports of the administration, increasingly slender as the years went by, comment on the lack of regard that the archipelago’s inhabitants had for the rules: hiding from the tax collectors, embarking for Zanzibar without permission, and holding customary feasts without paying the requisite taxes when slaughtering cattle. The children continued to frequent the Koran schools, while those adults who did not work on the estates of the SAGC or the SCB continued to cultivate subsistence crops, growing some vanilla or cloves on the side to make enough money to pay the head tax. Although some Comorians enlisted, the war barely touched the islands themselves—the Comorian community of Zanzibar seems to have been more affected, understandably given their status as French subjects in a British protectorate—and even if exports dwindled and there were shortages of imported goods, most of the population lived outside the formal colonial economy. 130

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The Territoire des Comores The new status of the islands called for the establishment of new political institutions. The archipelago would henceforth be endowed with a conseil privé (little more than a new name for the conseil consultatif, although now with two native members) and a conseil général, which extended representation to the population. The latter would have 24 members, four of whom were to be French, the remainder Comorian, elected by universal suffrage even if initially few registered to vote. The conseil général had a mandate to consider a wide range of matters, from education and taxation to infrastructure and land reform, although it remained an advisory body and not a legislative one and had no say in political matters. Although the islands remained under the ultimate authority of the governor general of Madagascar, this arrangement was little more than a formality which would last as long as it required for the Comoros to become self-sufficient, particularly regarding civil servants, most of whom, given the lack of opportunities for education in the islands, continued to be sent from Madagascar. Madagascar granted the new territory five million francs, which was assumed to be sufficient for it to start operating correctly. The first elections for the conseil général were held in January 1947, and its first president was Prince Said Hussein, son of the late sultan Said Ali.   These arrangements remained intact when, later that same year, the French Fourth Republic was established. Among other things, the new constitution created the Union Française under which, in theory, all the constituent parts of the French colonial empire would enjoy equal status with France. This was inscribed within a French perspective that brooked no talk of relinquishing (granting independence to) places that were intended to become integral parts of a Greater France: the colonies would no longer be called colonies, and they would eventually be assimilated to France, politically, economically and socially. Thus the code de l’indigénat, the body of law that had governed ‘natives’ in the colonies, was abolished (although not the status of droit local), all former subjects of the empire now enjoyed full French citizenship and the Comoros were now formally a territoire d’outre mer. The territory was represented in the assembly of the Union Française by a journalist from Réunion named Georges Boussenot, and in the senate by a Corsican-born French settler by the name of Jacques Grimaldi, who had arrived in the Comoros in 1929. Although Grimaldi remained senator until 1959,31 Boussenot realised that his seat would have to be relinquished in favour of a Comorian and he did not seek a second term. In 1953 he was replaced by a member of the makabaila from Domoni on Ndzuani by the name of Ahmed Abdallah. Abdallah 131

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was the son of a plantation owner and businessman, and had taken over his father’s import-export business to build one of the territory’s largest companies, eventually obtaining the lucrative monopoly on the import of rice. He entered politics after the war, had been elected to the conseil général, and assumed its presidency in 1950 following the resignation of Said Hussein, before finally being elected to the Union assembly.   The archipelago was now also entitled to representation in the National Assembly, initially (from October 1945 to November 1946) as one of the electoral districts of Madagascar, subsequently as a territory in its own right. There were two potential candidates for the post. A descendant of Mwinyi Mkuu, Said Mohamed Cheikh was born into a noble family in Mitsamihuli in 1904. His father was from Moroni and his mother of a family originally from the Dimani but which had been in Mitsamihuli for at least two generations and were part of the so-called noble population of the town. Cheikh presumably attended the local Koran school before being sent to primary school in Moroni32 and then to secondary classes in Mutsamudu. At the end of the secondary programme he won a scholarship to Le Myre de Vilers school in Antananarivo, where many of the local elite were trained, and then went on to study medicine. He would certainly have met young, politically minded Malagasy critical of colonialism while undertaking his studies, contacts which shaped his political thinking. He graduated in 1926 and served at various locations on Ngazidja until 1933 when, undoubtedly as a result of his being considered to have ‘a suspicious attitude’, he was suspended from his position and sent to Mwali. He nevertheless continued to practise medicine: presumably the colonial administration could not afford to lose him. In 1936 he was posted to Mahajanga and appears to have ceased whatever political activities he may have been engaged in, devoting himself to his profession. He enjoyed some respect among the Comorian community in the town and in 1940, when a revolt broke out among employees of the Nyumakele plantation on Ndzuani, he was called back to the territory to mediate. At the end of the war he gave up medical practice to devote himself full-time to politics, and during the brief existence of the post-war provisional government, he was elected as one of three deputies for Madagascar. When the Fourth Republic was established, he again put his name forward as candidate for the single Comorian seat in the assembly.33   The second potential candidate was also from Ngazidja. Like Said Mohamed Cheikh, Prince Said Ibrahim bin Said Ali had attended Le Myre de Vilers before entering the civil service and being appointed indigenous gover132

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nor of Ngazidja, which allowed him to build a following among the elders and the aristocracy of the island. Following the decision of his half-brother Said Ahmed Zaki not to run, Said Ibrahim was selected as candidate by the elders of Ngazidja—the other islands apparently had no say in the matter—before being rejected by those same elders in favour of Said Mohamed Cheikh, ostensibly because the latter was the older of the two, but also in the light of the esteem in which he was held on Ndzuani and which also granted him the support of the notables of that island. Said Mohamed Cheikh was therefore elected unopposed.34   The problems confronting the territory were numerous, but the most pressing was the land question, particularly on Ndzuani, where almost all of the cultivable land was in the hands of the SCB and where some villages had almost no land whatsoever. One of Said Mohamed Cheikh’s first acts upon being elected was therefore to put forward a proposition that the government nationalise all the land occupied by the colonial societies, much of which was neither cultivated by the company nor accessible to the local population, and then to call for land thus restored to the state to be returned to local ownership. There had been various initiatives in this direction over the years—most notably the 1926 agreement which had finally resolved the dispute between the SAGC and the government and under which the SAGC relinquished 11,573 hectares on Ngazidja in return for 578,650 francs in compensation— but much of it had been piecemeal, a few hectares here and there. In 1948 a law was passed requiring all uncultivated land to be cultivated and in the 1950s land was returned to villages in earnest: more than 11,000 hectares on Ndzuani—more than a quarter of the island, indicative of just how acute the problem was—was transferred to the local inhabitants in mid-1953, and in 1958 the ‘plantation villages’ of Mayotte were transformed into ‘public villages’, thus paving the way for the inhabitants to own their own land and houses.35 In such cases the land was purchased from the owners, usually the SCB, but sometimes the lands were simply occupied by the local population, in which case the owners would claim compensation from the government. If this was not forthcoming then legal action was a possibility, although Flobert reports that when squatters were sentenced to prison, the entire population of the village would turn up at the prison gates to serve the sentence: since the prison was clearly not big enough, they were turned away.36 Nevertheless, in 1974 the SCB still owned 18,700 hectares across the four islands, although much of this land, particularly on the higher slopes of Ngazidja, was unproductive, at least from the French perspective.37 133

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  Education was also still a problem, although the new status of the Comoros, and its inhabitants, meant the end of the écoles indigènes and the establishment of schools, and curricula, open to all children. If the educational programme was no longer aimed at producing good colonial subjects, it was in theory identical to that in France itself, intended to produce good French citizens; although the cliché of barefooted native children in remote villages chanting ‘Our ancestors, the Gauls’ is not strictly true, efforts to adapt the curriculum to the local context were nominal. Nevertheless, Koran school teachers were recruited to teach Arabic, although not religion, which remained excluded from French government schools. Whether this was an improvement—shifting the focus from producing subservient natives to producing colonial replicas of French men and women—is moot, but certainly more Comorians were able to acquire an education, even if parents remained reluctant to send their daughters to the French schools. Resources remained limited: in 1950 there were still only 34 schools, all primary, and students were still required to compete for scholarships—of which 25 were available annually—if they wished to pursue a secondary education in Madagascar: it was not until 1964 that the collège in Moroni was finally upgraded and gave the islands their first lycée.38 Only 11 per cent of school-age children were able to attend school, and by now competition to do so was lively as the upper classes were well aware that a formal education was essential if their children were to succeed, not only in the colonial system but in an independent state which, if still far off, was nevertheless now a realistic project.39   Although other leaders were beginning to emerge, internal politics during this period were dominated by Prince Said Ibrahim and Said Mohamed Cheikh, each of whom led a political party, the former the Parti Blanc, the latter the Parti Vert, named for the colour of their ballot papers and based on personal affiliations rather than any sort of political programme.40 As we have seen, both men had put their names forward for election to the single seat in the National Assembly in 1946, and when Prince Said Ibrahim withdrew in favour of Said Mohamed Cheikh, it was on the understanding that at the end of his five-year term Cheikh would then stand down in favour of the prince. This did not happen; Said Ibrahim nevertheless attempted to contest the 1951 election, but his candidature was disqualified and Cheikh won easily.41 Over the following years the consensus between the two, and between their supporters, broke down, although in the absence of any real differences in their political projects: the conflicts were largely over access to power and the advantages that went with it. On the contrary, rather than the parties’ follow 

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ers supporting different political projects, the political affiliations of their supporters led to social cleavages, reflected by members of the different factions attending different rituals, marrying each other—or divorcing, if the spouses were followers of opposing factions—and even attending different mosques.42 The conseil général was also split along the same lines. Ahmed Abdallah, president since 1949, was a member of Cheikh’s Parti Vert, and in 1952 Prince Said Ibrahim and Said Hussein both lost their seats and Cheikh supporters dominated the council. When Abdallah was elected to the assembly of the Union Française, he was replaced as president of the conseil général by Daniel Salim, another Cheikh supporter.   In 1956 Cheikh once again refused to stand down from his seat in the National Assembly, and this time the election was much closer. Cheikh won by a few hundred votes, but there were accusations of fraud and relations between the two men, and the two camps, broke down entirely. Cheikh was insulted and harassed in Mbude and in Mutsamudu, while Daniel Salim petitioned the government to have Prince Said Ibrahim removed from the territory altogether. Finally Georges Arnaud, the administrateur supérieur, stepped in and managed to mediate a reconciliation between the two men, and a pact was sealed in the zawiyya of the Shadhuliyya Sufi brotherhood in Moroni.   For various reasons the French Fourth Republic was structurally unstable. Moreover, the colonies were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the Union Française, within which all members were in theory equal but in practice remained under the control of France. In recognition of this, and in an attempt to save the Union, in 1956 the Loi Defferre was passed granting the colonies greater say in their own affairs. In the Comoros this led to the establishment of a new governing body, the assemblée territoriale, the territorial assembly, to replace the conseil général. The assembly would be directly elected by universal suffrage and nominate a conseil du gouvernement, headed by the administrateur supérieur, who remained a Paris appointee and who served as its president; the vice-president was an elected member of the council. Elections to the territorial assembly were held in late 1957. The new system provided for greater local participation in the government of the territory, and it was agreed that the candidates at the first elections should be drawn equally from both parties; the seats in the territorial assembly as well as on the governing council were thereby equally distributed; and the first vice-president was an Mndzuani by the name of Mohamed Ahmed, who was a member of neither faction.43 At the same time each island was granted its own assembly, although these were purely advisory bodies. 135

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  This arrangement was short-lived. In Paris it was becoming increasingly clear that constitutional reform was inevitable; likewise, it was also apparent that, despite the Loi Defferre, the Union Française did not provide scope for the degree of autonomy to which the colonies aspired. In September 1958 a referendum was held in France and its colonies on a new constitution. The changes on offer were intended to lead to a reform of the Union: independence, although technically a possibility, was not seriously offered, and certainly not seriously envisaged, at least not by the French ruling classes, and the new constitution would simply provide for a reorganisation of the relationships between the different parts of a greater France. Some 97 per cent voted in favour in the Comoros, 82 per cent overall, and the Fifth Republic was declared a week later. In the Comoros the principal concern prior to the vote was the status of the territory: the choices were to become a department, to remain a territory, or to become an autonomous state with the French Community.44 Both factions in the Comoros were against independence, which was what the status of autonomous state would eventually lead to, and quite correctly so since the territory was far from prepared to manage its own affairs or to ensure its own development, either financially or technically. French support and investment, meagre though it was, was essential to the maintenance of public services and the development of infrastructure. Similarly, departmentalisation—following the example of Réunion, which had become a French department in 1946—would have been impossible from an economic perspective, and was also undesirable since the majority of Comorians hoped that independence would be granted at some point in the future. The islands therefore opted to remain a territoire d’outre-mer.   The new constitution now allowed for two deputies from the Comoros. Said Mohamed Cheikh and Prince Said Ibrahim, reconciled, stood on a single list and in the elections of May 1959 were elected without opposition. They rapidly began talks aimed at achieving internal autonomy for the archipelago—Cheikh had been pressing for this since his first election to the National Assembly in 1945—and after lengthy negotiations this was finally granted in 1961. The territorial assembly, renamed the chambre des députés, was granted full responsibility for all internal affairs, although France would remain responsible in areas such as foreign affairs, defence and monetary policy. Said Mohamed Cheikh resigned his seat in the National Assembly to become president. He was replaced by Mohamed Ahmed while Ahmed Abdallah was elected senator.45   Although some among the elite had a perspective on wider political currents, those educated in the French system were not exposed to the anti 

 

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colonial discourses, and particularly the currents of socialist thought promoted by Egypt and the Soviet bloc, that were increasingly widespread in eastern Africa. Influences from Zanzibar were muted, particularly given that the Comorian community of Zanzibar was largely aligned with the British administration and the Omani ruling classes; and even if more autonomy for the Comoros was seen as desirable, any evolution in the status of the islands was expected to occur with France’s approval and not in the context of any sort of opposition to the established order. Indeed, most of the population had little interest in or understanding of the issues involved in these changes, simply voting as advised by their preferred leaders—and for once there was in effect unanimity on the matter. Unexpectedly, it would be the decision to move the territorial administration to Moroni on Ngazidja, which accompanied the granting of internal autonomy, that would have the greatest repercussions on the political history of the islands. Dzaoudzi, the colonial capital, was an utterly impractical place—a waterless rock of a few hectares in Mayotte’s lagoon—and while some services had already moved to Mamoudzou, on Grande Terre, others had left Mayotte altogether. In particular, since there was no room big enough to accommodate them on Mayotte, the conseil général already met in Moroni, requiring some movement back and forth between the islands. Although the administration could have remained on Mayotte, the political leaders were from, and had their power bases, on Ndzuani and Ngazidja, and when the colonial administration finally decided to move the capital, it seems likely that Said Mohamed Cheikh had some influence in ensuring that his home island was chosen. Indeed, the formal decision to move only confirmed the de facto status of Moroni as the political centre of the archipelago. This decision was to have significant repercussions almost immediately as the Maorais protested against the loss of income and power that the move represented.   Although the territory was now internally self-governing, Cheikh had managed to negotiate the continuation of French investment and budgetary support, particularly from FIDES (Fonds International pour le Développement Économique et Social) and its successor, the Fonds d’Aide et de Coopération (FAC). This financial support was slow in coming, and in frustration Cheikh began to invoke the idea of independence in an attempt to pressure the French into providing funds, rallying a number of his supporters to his cause. Whether this was a serious proposition on his part is unclear, although for some it would certainly have been. Nevertheless, Yves de Daruvar, the high commissioner, seems to have accepted it at face value and, sympathetic to the 137

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Comorian position, urged Paris to organise a meeting between Cheikh and French president Charles de Gaulle. Cheikh’s demands in his meeting with de Gaulle were that the Comoros be granted all the prerogatives of a state, including diplomatic representation in Madagascar and in Zanzibar, but that France remain responsible for defence, monetary policy and foreign affairs. De Gaulle’s response is not known, but the tenor of it seemed clear, and following a second meeting between the two men in January 1963, the ministry noted that the Comoros had the right to self-determination but that of course this should be submitted to referendum and that if the Comoros were to choose independence, then France would naturally have to reconsider the aid it provided to the new state.46   Independence was of course quite impossible and, his bluff called, Cheikh reassured de Gaulle that the Comoros did not seek independence. He was firmly put in his place and returned to Moroni to find that de Daruvar had been recalled (and warned to stay away from Comorians, even in Paris). However, for a while the beast he had unleashed took on a life of its own. The deputy from Mayotte, Souffou Sabili, was very much pro-independence, and he threatened to create his own party to stand against Cheikh if he returned from Paris without independence, while Ahmed Abdallah was also beginning to reconsider his position. As for Cheikh himself, the revolution in Zanzibar in January 1964 gave him cause to reconsider, even if social conditions in the Comoros were very different.   Even by the standards of France’s much-neglected African colonies, the territory remained significantly underdeveloped in all domains including education, roads and health. Although the territory now had a lycée it was unable to meet demand; in 1964 only 12 per cent of school-age children were attending school—the lowest rate of all French territories—and most of these were from aristocratic families. Teachers were lacking, and several of the few who were qualified abandoned the profession to enter politics. There were hospitals on all four islands (two each on the three larger islands, one on Mwali), but they had limited facilities and were often distant from the majority of the population; in 1964 there were only eleven doctors in the territory, several of whom were French military doctors. Roads were still rudimentary—708 km in the entire archipelago of which only 95 km were paved— there was no deep-water port, and although each island had an airstrip, only Moroni–Ikoni was paved and it was not until 1965 that a local airline was established. In Moroni itself there was a pressing need for buildings to accommodate the government and to house civil servants who moved from Mayotte.  

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  Said Mohamed Cheikh wanted more personal power and was continually frustrated by the fact that the independence he so desired was effectively impossible. He had nevertheless established firm control over the local government; and the principal players at the time, Prince Said Ibrahim, with whom he was reconciled, and Mohamed Ahmed and Ahmed Abdallah, the latter two from Ndzuani, were all generally supportive even if relations between Cheikh and the prince were sometimes tense. Cheikh was able to draw upon his own network of supporters among the aristocracy on Ngazidja while the two Wandzuani did likewise on the second island. However, the smaller islands were frequently sidelined in the political process. Neither Mwali nor Mayotte had a local aristocracy, and the former island in particular, considered too small to carry any political weight, was largely ignored during election campaigns. Mayotte, on the other hand, was another matter. Mayotte The distinct identity claimed by Mayotte is often attributed—by Maorais—to the fact that the island became a French colony in 1841, half a century before the other islands, and was therefore so much more attached to the colonial power, and so much more French. This is not a particularly convincing argument. Not only was Mayotte, Dzaoudzi apart, as neglected as the other islands during the colonial period, but when efforts were finally made to develop the archipelago, it was the elite of Ndzuani and Ngazidja who benefited most from the few advantages provided by the colonial relationship, sending their children to the French schools and then to further education in Madagascar or in France itself, moving into politics and seizing the business opportunities. Until the late colonial period the other islanders were no less (although probably no more) attached to France than the Maorais.   That said, there were certainly differences in the profiles of the population: as a result of the Malagasy slaving expeditions of the early nineteenth century, there were barely 500 Maorais on the island when the French arrived in 1843,47 and the island’s population was largely reconstituted by immigration from the other islands, from Madagascar and from the African mainland, an explicit part of the colonial project. The islanders therefore did not have the same attachment to the land, and to their customary practices, as did those on the other islands: few owned land, being employed on plantations, and questions of appropriation of their lands did not arise even if there were issues regarding land ownership. On the contrary, the post-war granting of lands, 139

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purchased by the state from the plantations or otherwise in the public domain, that had never belonged to them was probably more likely to have created a sense of attachment to the colonial power than anything that had happened in the nineteenth century.   More importantly, perhaps, the French settlers on Mayotte, mostly creoles from Réunion or Madagascar, were, by virtue of the island’s demographic and political history, better integrated than their counterparts on the other islands. The large plantation companies on Ngazidja and Ndzuani had left little space for other settlers, but on Mayotte the colonial settlement of the islands predated the establishment of the large companies and a score of individuals had arrived in the second half of the nineteenth century to establish their own sugar plantations across the island, particularly in the north and east, where the land was unoccupied and there for the taking. Their descendants could therefore claim belonging on an equal footing with other Maorais, and many descendants of the original Maorais inhabitants aligned themselves with the French creoles, and in opposition to the descendants of newer arrivals, as political differences between the islands led to a growing sense of a French identity on Mayotte. These families, Christian and French citizens, later came to constitute a small but influential elite who, in the absence of any local aristocracy, moved into positions of power on the island as the opportunities arose. It should be emphasised that this elite was not numerically significant— suggestions that Christians were a majority on the island are complete nonsense48—and it was in part their status as ‘outsiders’ on the island that prompted them to assume positions of leadership and, when the time came, a pro-French stance. Some of them undoubtedly realised that in an independent Islamic Comorian state ruled by an Arabised aristocracy, their influence would wane.   Prior to 1958, and despite isolated voices, there seems to have been little in the way of a separatist movement on Mayotte, and although there was resistance to domination by the larger islands both politically (Ngazidja) and economically (Ndzuani), this was expressed within the context of territorial unity and in the knowledge that the administrative centre was nevertheless on Mayotte, thus ensuring that the island maintained a degree of influence. When the decision was made to move the capital, however, Mayotte was confronted with losing not only its political influence, limited though this was, but also the economic advantages of hosting the administration. Even so, it seems that initially the Maorais leaders merely sought greater autonomy within the territory rather than outright separation.49 140

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  The 1958 referendum required that the future status of the territory be debated in the territorial assembly, and while the majority were in favour of maintaining territorial status, the four deputies from Mayotte, Abdourraquib Ben Ousseni, Marcel Henry, Madi Sabili and Souffou Sabili, tabled a motion calling for full department status. It was voted down, 25 to 4. On 2 November 1958, therefore, a congrès des notables gathered at Tsoundzou, not far from Mamoudzou. Georges Nahouda, a creole from Sainte-Marie, was one of the instigators of the congress; Marcel Henry, his nephew, was also present. The congress called for the separation of Mayotte from the other islands and swore an oath that was sealed by a recital of a maulida ya shenge, a specifically Maorais religious reading. This congress led to the formation of a group to press for departmentalisation, the Union pour la Défense des Intérêts de Mayotte (UDIM), which in 1963 became the Mouvement Populaire Mahorais (MPM). Its leader was Souffou Sabili, who had taken over following the death of Georges Nahouda. There were nevertheless divergences within the leadership, particularly between Sabili and Henry, the former increasingly feeling that Mayotte’s problems were as much due to French failures as to domination by Ngazidja and Ndzuani; for several years Sabili held a proindependence position and was allied with Prince Said Ibrahim. Henry, on the other hand, was very much pro-French and a separatist.50   While much political activity had been the preserve of the elite, when the capital moved to Moroni in 1963 the implications became clear to the population. Jobs in the civil service moved, and with them a number of Maorais men; the departure of the bulk of the territory’s salaried personnel saw the few small shops that provided consumer goods, many run by women, lose much of their business; ancillary staff who did not move to Moroni also lost their jobs; and infrastructure, never well developed, was left to decay as the administration found that they no longer needed roads on Mayotte or, indeed, the barge, an essential lifeline between Dzaoudzi and Grande Terre, which in the 1960s frequently broke down and which the administration was slow to repair. By the mid-1960s the economy of Mayotte was moribund and the island suddenly seemed very empty, particularly to the women who remained behind, and particularly on Petite Terre.   Initially, Said Mohamed Cheikh seems to have been aware of this. Following his election as president, he received a delegation from Mayotte and promised them that the Maorais would not be excluded. He appointed Marcel Henry to his government and proposed a number of investments in Mayotte in compensation for the loss of the administration, and visited the island a number of  

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times to reassure the population of his support. These investments never materialised, however, and in 1966 things took a turn for the worse when Cheikh visited Mayotte to discuss development projects with the island’s leaders. A group of women arrived at the house where he was staying, requesting to see him, and he agreed to meet the leader, Zaina Mdere, but when the others tried to accompany her, the police intervened. According to witnesses, the women began to throw stones at the house, at which point Cheikh immediately decided to leave the island. He was booed along the road to the airport and, as he prepared to board his flight, he told the assembled Maorais that ‘they could do what they liked’.51 Not only did he never return to Mayotte, he imprudently exacted revenge, taking a number of measures such as transferring 18 civil servants back to the island from Moroni, before allegedly organising an embargo on the sale of rice to the island. His attempts to force the Maorais to fall into line had quite the opposite effect, and the MPM not only continued to recruit members, but those who did not support the secessionist movement were increasingly targeted. The French high commissioner attempted to negotiate an agreement between the two camps, and it seemed that progress was being made when on 13 October 1969 a woman by the name of Zakia Madi was killed during a demonstration in Mamoudzou. Any possibility of a reconciliation between the MPM and Cheikh evaporated.  

Political awareness and the path to independence As we have observed, membership of the two dominant political parties was based on personal affiliation rather than support for any sort of political programme that they might have had, and as a result government remained very much in the hands of the elite. Ministers were chosen not for their competence but for their allegiance to Cheikh, which often meant that they were kin. This state of affairs suited France, since it precluded the rise of the sort of anti-colonial political parties that had developed in the other colonies and dissuaded talk of independence. By the 1960s, however, political awareness had grown sufficiently for opposition to the government, and its pro-French stance, to be voiced. In 1960 most of France’s African colonies, including Madagascar, were granted independence, and although most maintained a pro-French stance, several—most notably Guinea—broke ranks while Algeria was fighting a war of independence.   Although there was political opposition locally, the first formally organised independence movement emerged outside the territory. Independence move142

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ments on the African mainland were far more advanced than those in the Comoros—in addition to the former French colonies, Somalia had been granted independence in 1960, and the four British territories would soon achieve their own independence. It was understandable, therefore, that the Comité de Liberation des Îles Comores, swiftly to be rebaptised the Mouvement de Libération Nationale des Comores (MOLINACO), should be established in Zanzibar in late 1962 by Zanzibaris of Comorian origin, who were more politically astute than their counterparts in the Comoros. The secretary general was Ali Mohammed Shami, while the Dar es Salaam office was run by Ali Mohamed Saghir, a Tanganyikan of Comorian origin. Shami participated in the African-Asian Solidarity conference in Moshi in February 1963, and he or his collaborators visited in rapid succession Addis Ababa, Cairo, Moscow and Beijing, seeking both support and funds. However, it was soon recognised that a ‘Comorian’ Comorian was required, and a teacher at the Franco-Comorian School of Zanzibar by the name of Abdou Bakari Boina was recruited to the cause. Following the 1964 Zanzibar revolution the new government, suspicious of Comorians, forced MOLINACO to move its office to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanganyika, where it remained for the rest of the decade, supported by the Tanzanian president, the socialist and pan-Africanist Julius Nyerere. MOLINACO was to be a thorn in the side of the French administration, broadcasting anti-colonial propaganda on Radio Dar es Salaam in Comorian and in French, programmes that were widely listened to in the islands. MOLINACO also received support and training from the Eastern bloc—a number of its members went to the USSR to study—and was granted observer status at the Organisation of African Unity. However, although its radio programmes were effective in raising consciousness in the islands, MOLINACO was to remain a party in exile and its members were either banned completely from entering the Comoros or followed and harassed if they did.   In the territory itself there had been an Association de la Jeunesse Comorienne, formed in the 1950s, which had provided a vehicle for the younger generation to express dissent (to the point that Said Mohamed Cheikh felt obliged to ban the organisation in 1962), but this was not a political party and it did not press for independence. It was not until the late 1960s—a decade of change in the Comoros as elsewhere—that locally based political movements would see the day. A new generation of young, Frencheducated intellectuals were becoming politically active and were agitating for inclusion in the political process. In January 1968 there was a strike by stu 143

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dents at the lycée in Moroni, the immediate trigger for which seemed banal—a French journalist accused students of looting an aircraft that had crashed nearby—but the underlying dissatisfaction led to the strike lasting almost two months and prompted the resignation of a number of members of the chambre des députés, including Price Said Ibrahim himself. Although troops were flown in from Réunion, the strike was eventually resolved peacefully, thanks to the mediation of the elders of Ngazidja, even if the underlying causes—particularly the inappropriate and underfunded educational system—were not immediately addressed. However, the episode saw new, younger politicians move into the limelight, among them Mouzaoir Abdallah and Ali Soilihi.52   In 1967, just before the student strike, the Association des Stagiaires et Étudiants Comorians (ASEC) had been formed in Marseilles, where there was a sizeable Comorian community, and the changes in the political and social environment in the islands suggested that the establishment of formal organisations would now be possible there, too, and, indeed, following the strike the government recognised that it had little option but to allow the formation of opposition political parties. Thus the Parti Socialiste des Comores (PASOCO), led by Salim Himidi and Mohamed Fazul, and a local arm of MOLINACO, the Parti pour l’Évolution des Comores (PEC), finally permitted, at least by proxy, in the archipelago, were both formed in mid-1968. If ASEC was limited in its expression of dissent (most of its members, students on scholarships in France, could not afford to bite the hand that fed them), the local parties were not so constrained.   The formation of these opposition parties prompted the political leadership to organise themselves in a similar fashion, finally dissolving the old (and largely informal) opposition between Blancs and Verts. The Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Comorien (RDPC) was founded by and presided over by Said Mohamed Jaffar and included Mouzaoir Abdallah and Ali Mroudjae among its members; in response to it, Said Mohamed Cheikh and Ahmed Abdallah created their own party, the Union Démocratique Comorienne (UDC); and Prince Said Ibrahim set up the Umma party, later associated with Ali Soilihi’s Mranda party. Although these parties had little by way of political agenda to differentiate themselves, they did provide for a range of dissenting voices to be heard. In the campaign in the run-up to elections in January 1969, the RDPC attacked Said Mohamed Cheikh’s record on political freedoms, corruption and the question of Mayotte in particular, and won 45 per cent of the vote.53   In 1968 the territory had been granted further autonomy from Paris, effectively the last step before independence, and by the early 1970s it was clear  

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that independence was now firmly on the agenda. Said Mohamed Cheikh died in 1970, marking the end of a quarter of a century during which he dominated Comorian politics, and was succeeded as president by Prince Said Ibrahim, who relinquished his seat in the National Assembly and who, like his predecessor, was of the opinion that the territory was not yet ready for independence. Things changed in early 1972 when Pierre Messmer, minister for Départements et Territoires d’Outre-mer, visited Moroni to be confronted by members of PASOCO brandishing banners reading ‘mkolo nalawe’, ‘colonist leave!’ Messmer was infuriated and declared that if the question of independence was raised, each island would be free to choose its own destiny—a clear reference to Mayotte. In response, members of the RDPC, led by Said Mohamed Jaffar, did indeed call for independence, and they were swiftly joined by several other parties, including Cheikh’s UDC. Said Ibrahim was isolated and removed from office, paving the way for RDPC leader Jaffar to take over the presidency and begin negotiations for independence. In anticipation of a political shift, the RDPC secretary general Mouzaoir Abdallah travelled to Dar es Salaam to meet the MOLINACO leader Abdou Bakari Boina and invite him to return to the islands: in 1974, after an absence of more than a decade, he arrived in Moroni to a tumultuous welcome.54   The sudden shift in the political climate in the territory prompted Ahmed Abdallah, who had succeeded Said Mohamed Cheikh as leader of the UDC, to push through an alliance between his party and the RDPC. As Udzima (‘unity’), and with the support of PASOCO and PEC, they won a decisive victory in the legislative elections in late 1972, and Abdallah replaced Jaffar as president with a clear mandate to negotiate independence. With this aim he led a delegation to Paris, where, in June 1973, it was agreed that a referendum would be held within five years and, if the populations were in favour, independence would follow. However, the wording of the text—the populations, in the plural, would be consulted—reflected the ambiguity of France’s position regarding the unity of the territory: even at this stage it is clear that France, having lost their naval base at Antsiranana in northern Madagascar the previous year, would be prepared to keep Mayotte.   On Mayotte conflict between the two parties, the pro-French MPM supporters, known as sorodas, from the French for ‘soldier’, and the pro-independence faction who supported Comorian unity, the serrez-la-main (from the French ‘to clasp hands’), was growing. With the tacit support of the French authorities, sorodas attacked members of the serrez-la-main and their property, and threatened to exact revenge on those who advocated voting for  

 

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independence in the proposed referendum. In 1973, one of the leaders of the MPM, Younoussa Bamana, was arrested and imprisoned during violence that preceded Abdallah’s visit to the island, while two other MPM leaders, Marcel Henry and Adrien Giraud, travelled to Paris to seek support from the right wing, among them the French royalist Pierre Pujo. Amid all this, the referendum on independence was held in December 1974 and the results, counted island by island and not globally as the Comorian leadership had wanted— this a victory for the MPM—indicated that almost 95 per cent of the population were in favour. However, while 99 per cent were in favour on the three westernmost islands, on Mayotte the result was 63 per cent against, albeit with an abstention rate of almost 25 per cent.55   France was required to decide on the appropriate course of action within six months of the results being announced, but in the light of the protests from all sides—not only from the Maorais but from members of the opposition, particularly Mouzaoir Abdallah, who were wary of Ahmed Abdallah and his increasingly dictatorial manner—hesitated until finally, on 3 July 1975, they passed a law requiring that, prior to independence being granted, any proposed constitution be submitted to a referendum and that each island was required to approve it. Abdallah, clearly aware that Mayotte would never approve such a document, took matters into his own hands. Announcing that ‘Comorian independence will happen with or without France’, on 5 July 1975, and with the backing of the chambre des députés, Ahmed Abdallah unilaterally declared independence.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * * The colonial period was one of stagnation in the islands. There was little to attract investors, who preferred the more fertile opportunities on offer in Madagascar, and only a small handful of settlers dedicated themselves either to the production of perfumes and spices or to trading, or both. The bulk of the population were neglected; infrastructure scarcely improved over the sixty years of colonial administration; education and health care were basic in the extreme. The elites—the royal family of Bambao on Ngazidja, the makabaila of Ndzuani and the creoles of Mayotte—played out their struggles for power, while in the villages things continued according to custom. Sufism grew in popularity, partly as a response to colonialism but also in a reaffirmation of the basic Comorian principles of social life and cultural practice.   Despite the circulation of people between the archipelago and Zanzibar, on the one hand, and Madagascar, on the other, where they engaged in busi146

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ness or sought employment and received an education (secular in both places, religious in the former), the archipelago had never been so isolated from its social and economic environments. If one of the implications of this was that the Comoros avoided the turmoil that characterised the post-independence search for identity and a political programme in a number of other African states, it also meant that they were quite unprepared for independence when it finally arrived.

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The unilateral declaration of independence left the islands in a precarious position. France appeared to accept the fait accompli, indeed ‘welcomed it with serenity’ according to one source,1 and prepared to withdraw, despite announcing that French law would continue to apply in Mayotte, at least until the differences between the new Comorian government and the Maorais leaders could be resolved. Nevertheless, France would not formally recognise independence, and the unilateral character of the act meant that the ritual symbols of independence—a formal handing over of power, the official raising and lowering of flags, and so on—were absent. If Guinea and Algeria immediately recognised the new Comorian state and other African states soon followed—the new country was admitted to the Organisation of African Unity, the precursor to the African Union, on 18 July 1975— outside Africa recognition was slower in coming: only China was swift to establish diplomatic relations, opening the first foreign embassy in Moroni in late 1975.2 Although not unexpected, this lack of clarity, opposition on Mayotte, and the ambiguous stance of the colonial power did nothing to boost Abdallah’s popularity, and on 3 August, barely a month after the declaration of independence, Abdallah was overthrown in a mercenary-led coup d’état organised by Ali Soilihi.  

 



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The Comorian Revolution Ali Soilihi Mtsashiwa was born in Mahajanga on 7 January 1937. His mother was from Shwani in the Hambuu region of Ngazidja while his father, Soilihi Mtsashiwa, was of a noble family from Ntsudjini and had served for a period as a member of the conseil général. Ali Soilihi himself had been educated at the Lycée Gallieni in Antananarivo, although he was unable to complete his secondary education, and then studied agriculture before returning to Ngazidja and joining the agricultural service. He subsequently travelled to France, where he studied at the Centre National d’Études Agronomiques Tropicales and at the Institut d’Études du Développement Économique et Social, both in Nogent-sur-Marne near Paris, where he met other students from the former French colonies and was influenced by the Marxist ideas in vogue in Paris at the time. In the late 1960s he emerged as one of the leaders of the new younger generation of political activists, and in an attempt to countermine his opposition, Cheikh placed him on the list of candidates to the chambre des deputés at the 1967 elections. He won his seat and was appointed minister of public works but, despite his political orientation, he displayed no particular antiFrench leanings; subsequently, and perhaps curiously given their different stances, he aligned himself with Prince Said Ibrahim’s Umma party and served in his government until 1972.3   In 1974 Ali Soilihi was among those who founded the Front National Uni (FNU), a grouping of opposition parties that was established to contest the programme of Abdallah’s Udzima party. Increasingly vocal in his opposition to Abdallah, in June 1974 Soilihi led a delegation to Paris in an attempt to negotiate a settlement that would postpone a decision on independence and allow sufficient time to develop a proposal that would satisfy all parties. He was unsuccessful, but the FNU continued to oppose Abdallah and, following the coup, it was widely assumed that Ali Soilihi had acted with the support of France. Certainly the new leadership, and the new president, Said Mohamed Jaffar, were initially conciliatory towards the former colonial power, seeking a solution that would allow for the incorporation of Mayotte into the new state. In this spirit of conciliation Jaffar appointed two Maorais, Christian Novou of the MPM and Abdoul Wassion, a member of MOLINACO, to positions in his government, but resistance on Mayotte itself seemed insurmountable.   Now minister of defence and justice, Ali Soilihi rapidly assumed the role of de facto leader of the country and began to extend the new regime’s control over the islands, suppressing opposition, sometimes brutally: on Ngazidja there was strong resistance to Soilihi in the town of Mbeni, fief of Mohamed  

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Taki, Abdallah’s minister of the interior, and a dozen people were shot, three fatally, when Soilihi’s mapinduzi, or revolutionaries,4 arrived to arrest him. In September a detachment of mapinduzi, led by a French businessman named Yves Lebret and accompanied by a handful of mercenaries, including one Bob Denard, was sent to Ndzuani to arrest Abdallah.5 Abdallah had been visiting his family in Domoni when the coup occurred and was imprisoned before eventually being permitted to leave for exile in France. In the same month a delegation led by Mouzaoir Abdallah travelled to Paris for more talks with the French government, but their discussions, particularly with the French minister for overseas territories, Olivier Stirn, met two stumbling blocks: the refusal of the Comoros to withdraw its application for membership of the UN, and the insistence by Stirn that a further referendum be held on Mayotte before any agreement be reached. Mouzaoir returned to Moroni empty-handed.6   If Ali Soilihi had been counting on the support of the Maorais leadership, many of whom were also opposed to Abdallah, he was mistaken. It rapidly became clear that the MPM were further than ever from joining the new Comorian state and submitting to the hegemony of Ndzuani and Ngazidja, and they occupied the offices of the local administration on Mayotte in protest. Younoussa Bamana, a fervent separatist, was elected ‘prefect’, and the pro-French sorodas began to target supporters of Comorian unity.7 In October 1975, following the French announcement that a referendum would be held on Mayotte’s future status, some 2000 serrez-la-main were forced into dhows and expelled from the island while others—those who were Maorais and could not be sent ‘home’—were fined by their villages.8 On 12 November a Comorian state of four islands was admitted to the UN; this event seems to have been highly symbolic to Soilihi, sealing international recognition of the independence of the entire archipelago in the face of France’s reluctance to do so, for he declared that the problem of Mayotte was now an internal affair. Despite clear hostility towards him on the island, on 21 November he flew to Mayotte for talks with separatist leaders. His delegation—known as the Marche Rose, the ‘Pink March’9—was met at the airport by a crowd of hostile demonstrators; the police intervened to prevent violence but made no attempt to assist the delegation to proceed, and they were forced to return to Moroni without leaving the airport. This event effectively marked the end, in the short term at least, of any attempt at reconciliation with either France or the Maorais, and on his return to Moroni Ali Soilihi immediately requested that France withdraw its military personnel from the country. The French representative in the Comoros, Henri Breaux, recognising that the situation was  

 

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untenable, declared that if the military withdrew, then all French civil servants would also leave, since they could not remain in the Comoros without protection. All bar a very small handful of French government employees, civil and military, therefore immediately left all islands except Mayotte.   On 30 December 1975 the French Constitutional Council ruled that there were no legal obstacles to three of the four islands acceding to independence and the next day France formally recognised the independence of a Comorian state composed of Ngazidja, Ndzuani and Mwali. On 2 January 1976 Ali Soilihi replaced Jaffar—who had never been more than a figurehead—as head of state.10   The departure of French technical and administrative staff left an irreplaceable void in the governmental services, while the end of French budgetary support meant that the country could barely afford to pay for food imports. Indeed, the young country was in dire economic straits. Per capita GNP was approximately $190 and the agricultural sector—the islands had no industry to speak of—was not healthy. Population growth was continuing to put pressure on land. In the 1958 census the population of the islands had been 183,000, more than half of whom were under 20, and the annual growth rate was well over 3 per cent: by the mid-1970s the population was estimated at 330,000.11 Average life expectancy was 46, barely half of the country’s schoolage children were in primary school and only 7 per cent were in secondary school. Doctors were few and far between, electricity was confined to the capitals, and although there was a radio station, there was neither television nor a local newspaper.   The economy, such as it was, was almost entirely based on agriculture. Land was a scarce commodity, particularly on Ndzuani, where the population density per square kilometre of agricultural land was 229; and if the colonial societies were to blame for much of the expropriation of land, the local aristocracy was not innocent. The Ndzuani politicians Mohamed Ahmed and Ahmed Abdallah both owned extensive estates, not only on their home island but also on Mayotte, and they exploited their workforce as ruthlessly as any colonial master. Agricultural techniques remained rudimentary and food production had long been insufficient to meet local needs, and while a variety of cash crops—perfumes and spices, particularly vanilla, ylang ylang and other essential oils, pepper and cloves, and copra—were exported, these were the country’s only exports and prices were subject to the vagaries of international markets. Agricultural development programmes in the post-war period had been explicitly oriented towards cash crops: French policy was, as in so many  

 

 

 

 

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of its former colonies, to maintain the plantation economy of the colonial period at the expense of self-sufficiency, thus providing the colonial power with food and raw materials for its industries. Resistance to this grew until in 1962 there was finally a shift in orientation towards providing greater support for food production, manifested in the Société de Developpement des Comores (SODEC). SODEC was intended not only to provide training to farmers and attempt to transform customary methods, for example by introducing new crops and by encouraging anti-erosion techniques, but it would also develop the national infrastructure, providing credit and ensuring access to markets. Funding would be provided by FIDES.12   The results of the programme were disappointing. There was resistance to new crops, lack of access to land forced farmers to cultivate erosion-prone slopes, often much against their better judgement, new techniques were either inappropriate or not adopted, management was lacking, either through a shortage of trained personnel or through corruption, there were political and social conflicts, distribution networks and storage facilities were inadequate, and the programme itself was not cost-effective. Mechanisation was virtually impossible, either because too costly or because the land did not lend itself to the large-scale undertakings required, while the fisheries sector remained entirely underdeveloped through lack of refrigeration facilities and access to markets. Food production was therefore mostly limited to subsistence crops: bananas (26,000 tonnes in 1971), cassava (20,000 tonnes) and some rice (3700 tonnes, compared to some 15,000 tonnes imported); there were some 43,000 head of cattle in the islands in 1974, half of them on Ngazidja, and a similar number of goats, although the former were generally reserved for ritual purposes and even eating the latter was a luxury reserved for special occasions. Only chickens were raised for daily consumption.13   If yields and methods of food production remained largely unchanged, in the plantation sector there had been numerous developments in response to world markets. Sugar production ceased with the closure of the last factory, at Dzoumonyé, on Mayotte, in 1955; sisal, which had been introduced in the 1930s to replace sugar both on Mayotte and on Ndzuani, was initially profitable but was unable to compete with the artificial fibres that were developed in the 1960s, and the last plantation, in the Nyumakele, closed in 1969. Coffee and cocoa were never really successful, and while copra (from which coconut oil is extracted) continued to be produced in small quantities, largely for the Madagascar market where it was used for cooking and lighting, coir (the fibres extracted from the husk of the coconut), like sisal, had been 153

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replaced by artificial fibres. Several perfume essences had moments of glory. Lemongrass was popular for a while but eventually was unable to compete with the Indian product, while jasmine was a niche crop. By early 1970s, in addition to copra, only ylang ylang, vanilla and cloves were being produced in commercial quantities.   At independence these four crops accounted for almost all export revenues and in 1974 they were earning the territory two billion Comorian francs.14 The largest markets were France (two-thirds of the total including all the ylang ylang, which went to the perfumers of Grasse) and the United States (15 per cent, almost all of it vanilla for ice cream flavouring); exports also went to Madagascar (copra) and Germany (cloves and cinnamon). Unstable prices meant earnings were unreliable, and there was competition from artificial substitutes. The development of vanillin had caused the price of vanilla to drop dramatically in the post-war period, and although it eventually recovered, harvests could vary significantly from year to year depending on the weather, and incomes were correspondingly precarious. In return, the territory imported foodstuffs (2.75 billion million francs in 1974, almost half of all imports, and of which two-thirds was accounted for by rice) as well as virtually all manufactured goods; and as the territory developed, and the population grew, so the balance of payments suffered. Once again, France was the most important trading partner, supplying 45 per cent of imports; another quarter came from Madagascar and 17 per cent from China; rice came from Thailand and Pakistan, and a number of other goods from Kenya. If until the 1960s the cost of imports had generally been met by export revenue, by 1974 the trade deficit exceeded four billion francs. In order to bridge this gap, in 1974 the territory received some 6.72 billion francs in aid, most of it from France.   Following the French withdrawal—and the loss of 80 per cent of the national budget—Ali Soilihi was forced to appeal for international aid. He received $10 million each from the Special Arab Aid Fund for Africa and from China, followed by further funds or technical support from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Tanzania, Senegal, Belgium and Canada, the latter three sending French-speaking teachers to replace withdrawn French staff. This assistance (mostly in the form of loans) would only serve as a stop-gap, however, and he realised, quite correctly, that the economy required restructuring, although perhaps not quite as radically as he proceeded to do. Whether his radical turn reflected the loss of the restraining influence of his mentor, Prince Said Ibrahim, who had died while on pilgrimage in Mecca in December 1975,  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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or perhaps even the loss of legitimacy that Said Ibrahim’s support had conferred upon him, is unclear, but if his first government included individuals from a variety of backgrounds—Mouzaoir Abdallah and Mohamed Hassanaly, the latter, from Mwali, appointed vice-president, as well as the former PASOCO leader Salim Himidi, but also aristocrats such as Tadjidine ben Said Massounde from Ndzuani, and the Frenchman Yves Lebret—more moderate voices were soon sidelined.   Soilihi’s programme was therefore intended to achieve economic self-sufficiency. As he observed, the country could not live on handouts forever, and only by reducing imports—particularly through increased food production— and increasing exports could a balance of payments be achieved. In order to encourage the population to contribute to the development of the economy he began to attack the privileges of the aristocracy and excesses of religious zeal that he saw as unproductive uses of time, and he set about decentralising the state to place power in the hands of the people. Building on his experience of establishing agricultural cooperatives in the 1960s, he undertook a radical reorganisation of the administrative apparatus, and by a decree of 20 February 1976 he abolished the colonial-era structures. He divided the country into four wilayas, one for each island (the wilaya of Mayotte was destined to remain fictive), each headed by a mouhafidh; these wilayas were further subdivided into bavus, three each on Ngazidja and Ndzuani, one on Mwali, each headed by a liwali; and the bavus were composed of 55 mudiriyas, each headed by a mudir. Each mudiriya served a population of approximately 5000 and their centres—often sited between villages so as to be within a similar walking distance for everyone—would function as distribution points for state services: school, dispensary, court, foodstore and technical services were all in theory to be housed in the mudiriya. In practice few mudiriyas were ever built, and although those that were built managed to offer some of these services, the national budget was insufficient to pay salaries. In a spirit of socialist cooperation, villagers were expected to offer their services for free, but where this occurred it was often with reluctance. Soilihi’s terminology was borrowed from a variety of sources and was intended to reflect his alignment with socialist African and Arab states rather than any particular association with Islam: he looked to Algeria, revolutionary Zanzibar (despite its ambivalence towards the Comorian regime) and Nasser’s Egypt as well as China and, perhaps unfortunately, Kampuchea.15   In mid-1976 the revolution began in earnest. As we have seen, social changes during the colonial period had been minimal. The aristocracy and  

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noble classes remained in power, and the potential for those without the requisite connections to participate in the political process was limited—Soilihi himself was of a noble family, if only through the paternal side—and for the lower classes and the descendants of slaves virtually impossible. Further, despite repeated attempts to reduce both the expense and the social importance of the ãda on Ngazidja, any man who had not performed it was quite simply not permitted to speak in public forums. Customary practice was therefore extremely influential in determining who participated in the formal political process and the management of the state; at the local level the hierarchies established and played out in the rituals of the ãda were the only basis for political practice.16 Unfortunately for those who sought change, those who opposed the ãda were generally among the religious leadership, while those who opposed the interference of religion in matters of custom were likely to be men—women had no voice—of high-status clans who had performed particularly extravagant ãda. Any attack on social privilege had to take place on both fronts. Ali Soilihi was anti-clerical (and allegedly an atheist, derided as a kafir, an unbeliever, by the elite) and opposed to inherited privilege; he had not performed his ãda and was ideally placed, in theory at least, to banish these centuries-old traditions.17   On 6 July, in a now-famous speech on Radio Comores, Ali Soilihi, now known as Mongozi, ‘guide’, attacked a range of customary practices, most particularly the ostentatious and expensive marriage rituals but also funerary expenses, the ritual use of cattle—which he felt could be better used for feeding the population—and the veiling of women, which, although not universal, was a widespread practice among the nobility and the sharifu. A week later he published two laws, one banning all ostentatious customary rituals, the other regulating marriages: reducing the ritual to a civil one; prescribing the minimum age for marriage at 18; fixing the maximum duration of festivities at 24 hours, for which only one cow could be slaughtered; and limiting the bride payment to eight grams of gold or silver.18 In challenging the power of the elders and the elite, Ali Soilihi intended to mark a break with the past, paving the way for a truly democratic state in which the working classes, the young and women would be empowered to participate. Although he did not attack Islam itself—this would have been impossible—he prohibited lingering in mosques outside prayer times, forbade non-Islamic practices which he described as ‘charlatanism’, banned Sufism, and decreed that sermons in the mosques be in Comorian and not in Arabic, as had hitherto been the case. Finally, he attacked the privileges of the aristocracy by contesting the feudal  

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system that he claimed characterised the political and economic structures through which the country had hitherto been ruled. It was the young in particular to whom Ali Soilihi turned, since they were not only (in theory) untainted by the undesirable social practices of their elders, but, given that most of the country’s schools had ceased to function following the French withdrawal, they had the free time to put the revolution into practice. A comité populaire was therefore established in each village to watch over the population, maintain order and oversee public works, while internal security was in the hands of a popular militia known as the Commando Moissi, trained by Tanzanian military advisers.19   As the revolution got under way, events conspired to render Ali Soilihi’s task more complicated. The first occurred outside the country, in the northwestern Madagascar town of Mahajanga, home to a sizeable Comorian community, where, on 20 December 1976, a banal quarrel between two children, one Comorian, the other Malagasy, erupted into violence. In a desire to exact revenge against his playmate for an unspecified slight, the Malagasy child defecated in the courtyard of the Comorian house, presumably thinking himself unseen; but the father of the Comorian child caught him and smeared him with his own excrement. This was a particularly insulting act in Malagasy culture, but the two communities nevertheless negotiated the payment of compensation of some gold and an ox. But before the payment could be made, news of the affront spread and bands of Malagasy began attacking Comorians, initially throwing stones, then using knives and machetes.   The violence rapidly spread through the town and continued into the night: a curfew was imposed, but to little effect as houses were burned, Comorian women were raped, and men and women butchered. The local police force seemed incapable of mastering the situation—some reports suggest that they even participated in the violence—and troops were sent from Antananarivo. By the time calm was restored two days later as many as 1500 Comorians had lost their lives and many more were injured.20 Given the tensions between the two communities—and though the massacre was prompted by a banal event, the underlying causes were rooted in long-standing tensions between Malagasy and Comorians in Mahajanga—Ali Soilihi immediately decided to evacuate all Comorians who wished to leave Madagascar. During the month of January 1977 some 16,000 Comorians returned to the islands, initially by boat, later by air: an aircraft, chartered from the Belgian airline Sabena, operated 56 evacuation flights, which repatriated some 10,000 Comorian refugees between the 14th and the 30th of the month, most of them to Ngazidja.21 The costs of the  

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operation were considerable—122 million francs (almost half a million dollars) for the Sabena flights alone—added to which were the costs of reintegrating the refugees once back in the Comoros; were this not enough, on 5 April 1977 an eruption of Karthala destroyed the southern Ngazidja town of Singani, again requiring the intervention of the state and the provision of housing and food to those evacuated.   On 12 April 1977, obliged to do so perhaps by the state’s empty coffers, Ali Soilihi announced that he would dissolve the ‘féodo-coloniale’ administration. He abolished all but three of the government ministries, replacing them with a new ruling body, the Conseil National Populaire; he sacked 3500 of the country’s 5000 civil servants; and he undertook a largely symbolic burning of part of the national archives, mostly court records and files from the civil register but including a selection of the colonial administration’s records. The country’s civil servants were told to go home (‘to their mothers’) and, in a symbolic gesture intended to underline that a new phase of the revolution was beginning—the transition to socialism—he himself went home to his maternal village of Shwani. Upon his return to Moroni he then drew up a new constitution (in fact the country’s first) which he called the ‘Loi Fondamentale’, the fundamental law. This established the Comoros as a democratic, secular and socialist republic; powers were highly decentralised and explicitly in the hands of the working classes and the young, the voting age having been lowered to 15; the president and vice-president were to be selected by the Congrès National, the ‘supreme instance of popular power’, composed of all the members of the comités populaires. It was a partyless system, and Ali Soilihi was head of state.22   Soilihi’s appeals to the international community met with mixed results. China provided aid, managed through its embassy in Moroni, but this was contingent on the Comoros purchasing Chinese goods to carry out the projects. Relations with the Eastern bloc, and particularly the USSR, were strained, partly because of differences between the USSR and China and partly because of Soilihi’s fear of swapping one colonial power for another. His 1977 application to join the Arab League was turned down, undoubtedly because of his attacks on religious practice and declaration of a secular state, although he did maintain relations with individual Arab countries. Only Tanzania seems to have remained a constant supporter, although proposals for federation of the two countries (as ‘Tanzaco’) were never realistic. Relations with Madagascar, uneasy despite that country’s own socialist ‘revolution’ in 1975, disintegrated altogether after the Mahajanga massacre. At the OUA and the UN there was  

 

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increasing ambivalence towards the regime as tales of abuses began to emerge even as Soilihi continued to enjoy support for his claim to Mayotte.   Reunification with Mayotte seemed increasingly unlikely, however. Two referendums had been held on the island following French recognition of Comorian independence. The first, held in February 1976 with a view to determining exactly what popular opinion was, asked simply whether Mayotte wanted to remain French or join the Comorian state; the answer was a resounding ‘remain French’. The second, in April, asked whether or not Mayotte wanted to remain a French territory. This was a slightly ambiguous question, since there was no alternative on offer to remaining a territory, but the population were quite clear about where their desires lay: only full incorporation within the French Republic could remove any possibility of being annexed by the Comorian state. Although the majority of those who voted correctly (16 per cent of the electorate) were against remaining a territory, 80 per cent of the ballots were invalid: they were locally printed papers that ‘voted’ for a third option, becoming a French department. On 24 December 1976 Mayotte therefore ceased to be a territoire d’outre-mer and became a French collectivité térritoriale, a somewhat curious status that was intended to be temporary, although at this point no one was willing to suggest what might be next. Clearly the island was neither sufficiently developed economically nor sufficiently French, legally or socially, to become a department and it would not be for many years to come—if ever.23   For several months Ali Soilihi ploughed on, although he was obliged to recall 300 civil servants to ensure the smooth functioning of whatever state apparatus was left. But his projects were over-ambitious: constructing the mudiriyas and paving the country’s roads was going to take more than the six months he had allocated, even if the population were required to supply their labour free, never mind reforming the agricultural sector and undermining the traditional hierarchies, and the treasury could no longer afford the subsidies on food. When the country finally ran out of money altogether, Ali Soilihi apologised to the people and on 28 October 1977 held a referendum, requesting that the electorate grant him further time to carry out his projects. This was effectively a vote on his leadership and it went badly wrong: only 55 per cent of the votes cast were in favour, and on Mwali, where the revolution was viewed as having failed completely, only 3 per cent were favourable. Although there had been opposition to his policies, this was the first sign of widespread dissent, and he exacted his revenge on the smaller island, sending the Commando Moissi to sow terror among the people and imprisoning dozens of his opponents.24  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  It was clear that Ali Soilihi was losing his grip on the country. He uncovered repeated coup plots, real or imagined: in August 1975, again in February 1976, and a third in April 1976, this last one leading to the arrest of a number of political figures, including former members of the government Mohamed Taki, Ali Mroudjae and Said Bacar Tourqui. In October 1976 Ahmed Abdallah was accused of plotting to overthrow Ali Soilihi with French backing, and more plots were uncovered throughout 1977 and into early 1978, the last one allegedly backed by one of his erstwhile supporters, Abbas Djoussouf. Meanwhile, the increasingly difficult conditions within the country were prompting Wandzuani to flee to Mayotte, and even members of official delegations overseas were refusing to return home. The Commando Moissi were becoming uncontrollable, carrying out indiscriminate attacks on perceived anti-revolutionaries, beating and torturing not only those suspected of opposing the regime but, for example, men lingering in the mosques or women refusing to work. Punishments, in addition to beating and imprisonment, famously included being forced to stand in a cistern with water up to the shoulders for 24 hours or more. The extreme decentralisation of the state meant that Ali Soilihi had little control over the activities of these youth brigades, although he was certainly not unaware of them. The final straw seems to have come in March 1978 when the fishermen of the town of Ikoni objected to the low prices paid for their fish; the town rallied behind them as the episode became a general protest against the government. The Commando Moissi arrived, and in the violence that followed the Moissi opened fire on the crowd, killing nine and wounding dozens. This event effectively marked the end of any last vestiges of popular support that Ali Soilihi might have had.   On 25 March 1978 a trawler left the small Breton port of Lorient, ostensibly on a geological expedition, but on board was a group of mercenaries led by Bob Denard, who had participated in the coup d’état of 1975. In the early hours of the morning of 13 May they landed on the beach at Itsandramdjini, 5 km north of Moroni and not far from Ali Soilihi’s residence at Ntsudjini. They rapidly seized the key installations on the island, including the radio station and the military camp at Vwadju, and took Ali Soilihi into custody. Ahmed Abdallah and Mohamed Ahmed returned to assume the roles of co-presidents, Bob Denard was appointed to the provisional government, and on 29 May Ali Soilihi was executed, although the official announcement stated that he had been shot while trying to escape.25 The Comorian revolution was over.   With hindsight, the revolutionary project seemed doomed from the start. Ali Soilihi’s attacks on customary practices, whether religious or the ãda, were  

 

 

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both too abrupt and too radical for the population to accept; he overestimated the level of popular support and the will of the population to participate; the question of Mayotte remained a thorn in the national side and hindered any normalisation of relations with France; the chronic budgetary problems, exacerbated by Mahajanga and Singani, meant he was unable to afford much of what he proposed to do; and the extreme decentralisation of the state meant that he lost control of the youth whom he had charged with implementing his policies. There were positive outcomes, however, and contemporary perspectives on the period are tinged with nostalgia, undoubtedly enhanced by what followed. His insistence on using the Comorian language rather than French, supported by his great oratorical skills, not only developed a local pride in the national idiom but led to the development of a new political vocabulary, now part of the vernacular. He promoted the use of the Latin script to write Comorian, even if this may only have been for practical reasons since the typewriters generally available were not adapted to produce the diacritics required to write Comorian in Arabic script, and he encouraged its use in schools—it was the language of instruction at the primary level. His educational programme broke with the colonial system as he integrated Koranic and secular education into a single curriculum; and despite the financial difficulties, the government had opened 50 new secondary schools in less than three years.26 More than anything else, however, Comorians today remember this regime as the only one since independence that had a political project, and one that promoted a sense of national identity and true independence. As we shall see, subsequent governments had little in the way of policies or programmes, and for many years the country would remain firmly tied to France.   In a sense Ali Soilihi was also a product of his times, both in his inspiration and, ultimately, in his failures. The post-independence leaders he had certainly admired and to whom he had looked for inspiration were gradually being edged out of power. The enthusiasm of the 1960s both for independence and socialism was waning as socialism failed to deliver, and socialist projects in countries such as Guinea, Mali, Ghana and Tanzania were under strain or, in some cases, over; and although most of the newly independent Portuguese colonies now had socialist governments, they were far from stable, and both Mozambique and Angola were to suffer many years of civil war. Neighbouring Zanzibar was facing economic collapse under a repressive government, and a decade after the Arusha Declaration even Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere seemed to be having second thoughts. Although the end of the Cold War was still ten years off, the socialist period in Africa looked like it was coming to an end before Ali Soilihi even got started. 161

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The restoration: Abdallah and the mercenaries If the 1978 coup d’état was not organised by France, the French security services were certainly aware that it was being planned and would have insisted on approving the operation, and it may be assumed that there was knowledge of the coup at the highest levels.27 The leader of the mercenaries, Bob Denard, had strong links to the French military and the secret services, and in the past had acted in France’s interests in a number of actions in Africa and beyond. In the 1960s he was regularly involved in the ex-Belgian Congo as well as in North Yemen and Rhodesia, and in 1977 had led a failed coup attempt in Benin, which had also had French backing; and he had been in the Comoros in 1975, so it was not surprising therefore to find him back in the islands. Reactions to the coup were varied: relief among the Comorian population, who turned out en masse to welcome Abdallah, and undoubtedly in French circles, too; but condemnation among the international community, and particularly from African states, which protested loudly not only at the coup but, in the weeks that followed, at the continued presence of mercenaries in the country, which caused understandable apprehension in several neighbouring countries.   Nevertheless, the new regime appeared to be secure since there was very little opposition locally. Some supporters of the former regime, undoubtedly sensing which way the wind was blowing, had already thrown their weight behind the new one—Mouzaoir Abdallah appears to have been involved in the plot28—while others were set to work sweeping the streets of Moroni, and Abdallah and his entourage immediately set about dismantling the revolution. On 5 October 1978, following a referendum, a new constitution was promulgated and shortly thereafter Ahmed Abdallah was elected president— Mohamed Ahmed, realising he could not win, did not stand, and as the sole candidate Abdallah won 100 per cent of the valid votes cast. The new constitution established the Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoros: the Soilihist unitary and secular state was gone, and along with it the entire socialist apparatus including the wilayas and the mudiriyas. The reasons for a federal state were not entirely clear, although certainly it was the arrangement most likely to encourage the return to the fold of Mayotte, still a hope at the time. Nevertheless, the federal character of the state was largely nominal: each island had an assembly, but they had no legislative powers and were merely advisory; likewise, the governors of the islands, although elected by popular vote, were little more than administrators; and the individual islands had no constitutions or any real source of revenue. At the lower level of the political hierarchy, cantons were endowed with prefects, but these were merely part of  

 

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the administrative apparatus. Nevertheless, this system functioned for several years before eventually being dissolved.29   The reasons for the Islamic character of the state seemed clearer: not only was the population almost entirely Muslim and, despite Ali Soilihi’s attacks on religious practice, devotedly so, but the rupture with many of the states that had supported the previous regime—Tanzania in particular, but Madagascar also broke off diplomatic relations and the OAU suspended the Comoros’ membership—meant that Abdallah, initially reluctant to rely too heavily on France, had to look elsewhere for support, and the Arab world was an obvious choice. The constitution therefore also established Arabic as a second official language, alongside French, and Abdallah appointed as new grand mufti—the office had been vacant since the death of Said Omar bin Sumeit in 1976—Said Mohamed Abderemane of Moroni, who immediately declared Ali Soilihi an apostate. This strategic shift in alignment rapidly bore fruit, and both Saudi Arabia and Iraq indicated that they would support the new regime.   Abdallah also restored the power of the aristocracy and of the elders—Ali Soilihi’s restrictions on marriage practices could henceforth be ignored— appointing many to positions in government and establishing regular meetings with the elders of Ngazidja in order to hear requests and advice. Customary, even Arab dress—Abdallah himself appeared at official functions in Arab robes and a turban—was encouraged: gone were the shirts and trousers of the revolution. Public events gave pride of place to the mufti, the aristocracy and the elders, and ceremonies began with a blessing and a prayer. Practice seemed to return not to that of the colonial era, but almost the precolonial era, the times of the sultanates, and although there was never any serious suggestion that the monarchy be restored, the aristocracy—which effectively meant the French version of the aristocracy, the descendants of Said Ali in the paternal line—maintained a certain influence, both socially and politically, on Ngazidja at least, while the makabaila were once again in control of Ndzuani. Abdallah was also judicious in his distribution of portfolios, including representatives from all islands in his government: Abbas Djoussouf and Said Hassan Said Hachim from Ngazidja, Hadji Hassanaly from Mwali and the Maorais Said Kafe. Abdillahi Mohamed, from Ndzuani, who had served as Ali Soilihi’s prime minister, returned to the post.   The economy was once again in the hands of a small group of wealthy businessmen—Abdallah himself, of course, as well as Mohamed Ahmed and the Kalfane family, of Gujarati origin, the last-mentioned having contributed 163

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substantially to the cost of the coup. While the two former men and their families held virtual monopolies on the trade in food and consumer goods, Kalfane was largely concerned with the nation’s cash crops, the essential oils and vanilla, which had not been one of Ali Soilihi’s priorities.30 But it was Abdallah who had the lion’s share of the market, and his business empire included a real monopoly on the import and distribution of rice as well as a dominant market share in a range of other goods and services. His empire was based in Domoni and, while he was busy with affairs of state, it was run by his family members, particularly his son Nassuf.   Abdallah began to mend bridges with France. His first task was to deal with Bob Denard, whom France did not want to see remain in the islands despite his having resigned from the ruling directorate in July. After some prevarication Abdallah finally accepted that Denard, who, in the hope of remaining in the Comoros, had converted to Islam and assumed the name of Said Mustapha Mhadjou, had to go, and on 28 September 1978 Abdallah personally escorted him to the airport and put him on a flight to South Africa, whence he made his way back to Paris. However, although Denard had left, many of his colleagues remained to run the Presidential Guard, an elite military squad that Denard would set up from his exile to protect Abdallah (in theory) and, more widely, maintain order in the islands more efficiently than the army was capable of doing. Meanwhile Abdallah himself set about asserting his control over the state, and political expression was increasingly constrained. Although the 1978 constitution had provided for a multi-party system, the following year opposition parties were banned and a one-party state was established, with Abdallah’s Udzima party the sole party permitted. Elections were henceforth largely a process for confirming the government’s candidates, and even if on Ngazidja opposition candidates were permitted to stand (with no party affiliation), only one such candidate was ever elected during the Abdallah regime, Ali Bazi of Ntsudjini. One by one those members of Abdallah’s entourage who might have contested or succeeded him either were suddenly removed from office or discreetly withdrew—in 1981 Mouzaoir Abdallah was placed under house arrest for fomenting opposition before being released and allowed to leave for France, while in 1984, realising that his position was also precarious, Mohamed Taki left to join him. There were, of course, numerous coup plots: in 1981 the army arrested 150 people allegedly plotting an uprising, while in 1983 a group of mercenaries were arrested in Perth, Western Australia, accused of plotting a coup on behalf of Prince Said Ali Kemal, a son of Said Ibrahim. In 1985, as Abdallah entered his second term as president (having  

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won 99.5 per cent of the popular vote in the 1984 presidential election), a planned mutiny of the Comorian members of the Presidential Guard was uncovered at the last moment, responsibility for which was placed at the door of the main left-wing opposition party, the Front Démocratique (FD). The extent of the support enjoyed by the FD, revealed by a retired member of the French security services called in to investigate after the plot was uncovered, apparently came as a shock to Abdallah, including as it did Wandzuani close to the president himself; the leader of the FD, Mustoifa Said Cheikh, was sentenced to life and other members of the FD imprisoned for periods of up to 15 years. Many of them were tortured, both before and after the trial. The increasing political repression did not go unnoticed outside the country. Amnesty International noted numerous human rights violations and France, uncharacteristically embarrassed by the activities of its protégé, repeatedly exercised pressure on Abdallah to bring political prisoners to trial or release them, which reluctantly he eventually did.31   Bob Denard had quietly returned to the country in late 1979, this time with the promise of financial support from South Africa—at the time an apartheid state with few friends in Africa—in exchange for which the Comoros would allow Pretoria to use certain facilities, most notably the airport. The South Africans swiftly set up a communications and listening post in Moroni from which they could keep watch over the Mozambique Channel, and reports emerged of a South African-owned 737 painted in Air Comores colours flying sanctions-busting routes to the Middle East, the South African military using the Comoros as a staging post to supply RENAMO rebels in Mozambique, and South African arms shipments transiting the Comoros to Iran.32 Abdallah, initially reticent about developing links with South Africa, finally visited the country in April 1984 and reached a number of agreements regarding South African support for and investment in the Comoros, although he steadfastly refused to establish diplomatic relations. At the same time, South Africa agreed to finance Denard’s Presidential Guard, which was the principal armed force in the Comoros and which, to France’s irritation, Denard maintained as an independent unit, refusing to merge it with the Comorian army and its French military advisers.   Denard and his men, collectively referred to as Les Affreux, ‘the frightful ones’, were effectively running the country, and Abdallah had very little say in the matter. Within the country the two men continued their business activities, Abdallah running his import-export business while Denard had his hand in a variety of activities: a South African-funded experimental farm at Sangani in  

 

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La Grille, the monopoly on the import and sale of meat, and interests in Ngazidja’s two international hotels, the Galawa in the north of the island and the Itsandra, closer to Moroni, both built in the late 1980s. By the end of the decade, however, it was clear that South Africa was facing political change: not only would their activities in the Comoros not stand up to scrutiny, but relations with several other African states were improving and the Comoros were no longer essential to their foreign policy, which itself became more moderate. In 1989 they informed Bob Denard that they would no longer finance his activities directly and that henceforth they would only deal with the Comorian state, insisting that the Comoros establish full diplomatic relations.   Relations between France and South Africa were also improving. French president François Mitterrand, who had taken office in 1981, was a socialist, but by the end of the decade, as it looked like apartheid was coming to an end, his government pragmatically began to court South Africa as an increasingly valuable regional political ally and business partner. Furthermore, the socialists had regained control of the French National Assembly in 1988, sidelining Denard’s supporters in the government, notably Jacques Foccart. Foccart was an old Africa hand who had been responsible for African affairs under Charles de Gaulle and his successor Georges Pompidou, often appearing to run many of France’s former colonies himself, and who had been brought out of retirement by prime minister Jacques Chirac in 1986, much to Mitterrand’s irritation. Once Chirac lost office, however, Foccart’s influence waned and enthusiasm for some of France’s less principled activities in its former colonies declined. Although Denard seemed to continue enjoying the support of Abdallah, who appeared to be playing off France and South Africa with some skill, it was clear that the writing was on the wall. France was becoming increasingly intolerant of Denard’s activities in the islands and would undoubtedly have intervened had Denard’s rule over the islands not come to an end of its own accord; and the end came unexpectedly: on the night of 26 November 1989 Abdallah was shot in mysterious circumstances while in the company of Denard and two of his associates, dying immediately. Whether the shooting was accidental—perhaps during an argument between the men—or deliberate is unclear: according to Denard himself, Abdallah was hit by a stray bullet during a faked coup attempt intended to discredit the army. Regardless of the truth of the matter, it is clear that Abdallah’s death would have been the last thing that Denard wanted: demonstrations immediately broke out across the country demanding the departure of the mercenaries; French troops arrived to re-establish order; and on 15 December Bob Denard left for South Africa.33  

 

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  Ahmed Abdallah was buried in his home town of Domoni, leaving a mixed legacy. Having established a one-party state, and won a referendum on constitutional reform just before his death in late 1989, which would have allowed him to stand for a third term as president, he was effectively a dictator, and only Bob Denard and his mercenaries were free to do as they pleased—the Presidential Guard was little better than Ali Soilihi’s Commando Moissi, ruling by terror, imprisoning and torturing at will, and the opposition remained in exile or in prison. Despite or perhaps because of this, Abdallah managed to run the country reasonably efficiently: basic services and infrastructure were maintained, even improved—the country’s first newspaper, the monthly Al Watwany, appeared to coincide with the tenth anniversary of independence— salaries were paid and the economy grew, although not rapidly enough to keep up with population growth, even if much of this was at the expense of growing dependence on France and South Africa. However, the balance of payments remained negative and was worsening, and corruption was endemic, leading to a conflation of public and private: Abdallah himself often confused his business interests with those of the state.   Politically the regime had been marked by the increasing concentration of power in the hands of the president. The 1982 constitution provided for island governors, hitherto elected, to be nominated by the president, and in 1984 the office of prime minister was abolished, the president assuming the duties of the office. Although generally good, relations with France were constrained by differences over Mayotte, which had been the subject of resolutions in the UN General Assembly since independence, and it was growing clear that Mayotte would not be joining the independent Comorian state in the foreseeable future. Following the 1976 referendums, Mayotte had become a collectivité territoriale à caractère départementale, a status sui generis that recognised both the Maorais’ desire to become a department and the impossibility of this being achieved in the short term. In the early 1980s French president François Mitterrand, who maintained good relations with Abdallah, seemed favourable to the eventual integration of the island within the independent state, and the two discussed the matter during a visit that Abdallah made to Paris in 1984; but in 1985 Jacques Chirac, in the run-up to the 1986 French legislative elections, promised a further referendum on Mayotte’s status before the end of the decade and the following year, newly appointed as prime minister, he visited the island, reaffirmed France’s commitment and promised increased French investment. This led to the establishment of a five-year plan, involving a billion francs’ worth of funding which would trans 167

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form the island. During much of this period the Maorais separatists received support from French nationalists such as Pierre Pujo, the leader of the rightwing royalist organisation Action Française, and Jean-Claude Vallée, another nationalist based in Réunion.   Mayotte’s political scene nevertheless remained heavily influenced by Maorais creoles. Marcel Henry was Mayotte’s sole senator from 1977 until 2004, when he was replaced by Adrien Giraud, another creole, and it was not until the island was granted a second senator in 2004 that a Muslim Maorais, Soibahadine Ibrahim Ramadani, took a seat in the Senate. Things were not much different in the lower house, the National Assembly. Although Younoussa Bamana, who had been ‘elected’ prefect in 1975, represented Mayotte as a député until 1981, when he stepped down he was replaced by a French metropolitan, Jean-François Hory, who was himself replaced in 1986 by Martinique-born Henry Jean-Baptiste. Although Bamana subsequently served as president of the conseil général, holding the position until 2004, and other Maorais were involved in local politics, on the national stage Maorais strategies clearly seemed aimed at asserting their French identity. These strategies seemed to bear fruit, and as France’s commitment to the island grew, so the likelihood of unification receded, even though when François Mitterrand visited the Comoros in 1990, he notably failed to call at Mayotte.34 Djohar and the return of democracy Following the assassination of Abdallah, Said Mohamed Djohar, president of the Supreme Court, served as interim president until elections could be held. The possibility of free and fair elections brought members of the opposition back from exile in France, among them Mohamed Taki, Said Ali Kemal and Abbas Djoussouf, who ran as candidates for the Union Nationale pour la Démocratie aux Comoros (UNDC), CHUMA, and the Mouvement pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (MDP) respectively; Djohar stood as the Udzima candidate. The first round saw Taki win with a small lead over Djohar, but in the second-round run-off Djohar won 55 per cent of the vote and was declared the winner. Although there were some accusations of irregularities, the elections seem to have been reasonably fair and in March 1990 Djohar was sworn in as president.   Said Mohamed Djohar was a sharifu, descendant of the Prophet and, perhaps ironically, a half-brother of Ali Soilihi, born and raised in Mahajanga where he became friends with Said Mohamed Cheikh. In common with many  

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other Comorian leaders he attended Le Myre de Vilers school in Antananarivo, then returned to the Comoros where he worked as a teacher on Ndzuani— where he became close to Ahmed Abdallah—and Mayotte before entering politics, serving on the conseil général and holding various posts under Said Mohamed Cheikh. He was sidelined during the revolutionary period but remained in the country, and after the restoration Abdallah named him president of the Supreme Court, a post he held until the assassination.35   Djohar had little real experience as a politician and even his own memoirs reflect an ambivalence towards his duties. Nevertheless, his term in office marked a shift away from the dictatorial regime of Abdallah as well as involving a younger generation in the political process. Although the ‘dinosaurs’, as the previous generation of leaders were known, were not ignored completely, they were obliged to accept that their time to relinquish power had come, and that the aristocracy was no longer the dominant force in politics.36   In late 1991 Mohamed Taki, who had left for France following his election defeat and had been fomenting opposition, was reconciled with Djohar and returned to the islands. In early 1992 he was named responsable de l’action gouvernementale, a position that replaced that of prime minister, and was charged with organising constitutional reform. A new constitution was submitted to a referendum in June and was approved by 75 per cent of the electorate. It reimposed a two-term limit on the presidency as well as setting up a new bicameral parliament and restoring the multi-party system. The federal state was retained and governors were once again elected by popular vote, as were the deputies to the federal assembly. The fifteen members of the senate, five from each island, were to be appointed by an electoral college. One of the conditions imposed on presidential candidates was that they could not hold citizenship of any other country—many members of the ruling classes had retained French citizenship at independence, and Abdallah himself had been a dual citizen.37   Legislative elections in October 1992 were chaotic: there was widespread violence and several parties boycotted them, including Djohar’s former party, Udzima, which he had left the previous year. When the results were announced at the end of the year, Djohar’s supporters seemed to have a majority, but repeated shifts in allegiances and infighting led to further ministerial reshuffles throughout the first half of 1993 and the dissolution of the national assembly in July. New elections were repeatedly postponed until finally being held in December, once again granting Djohar’s new party, the Rassemblement pour la Démocratie et le Renouveau (RDR), a slender majority. Despite  

 

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retaining a majority, the party, and the president, failed to deliver, indeed failed generally in their task of running the country. In 1994 unpaid salaries prompted repeated strikes by the civil service and in late 1995 relations with the former colonial power deteriorated again as France imposed visa requirements, known as the Balladur visa for the prime minister of the time, on Comorian citizens wishing to travel to Mayotte. Relations between the islands were also suffering, for despite his links with Ndzuani, most of Djohar’s appointees were from Ngazidja and the lack of investment on Ndzuani, growing poverty and the increasing difficulty of travelling to Mayotte, traditionally a source of employment for Wandzuani, did nothing to improve his standing on the island.   Djohar’s presidency was marked by chronic institutional instability. There were ministerial reshuffles every few months—there were five governments in Djohar’s first two years in office and four in the first six months of 1993 alone—ostensibly to allow for greater participation in the political process and the injection of fresh ideas, but fresh ideas were conspicuously absent and in reality these constant reshuffles prevented any sort of continuity in government: eventually those appointed ceased even to attempt to govern, well aware that they would not have the time to accomplish anything at all. Ali Mroudjae, Said Ali Kemal and Mtara Maecha had no sooner been appointed to ministerial positions than they were replaced, and, frustrated by the chaos, the latter two returned to France to plot Djohar’s downfall. There were coup attempts in 1990, in 1991, when Ahmed Halidi, president of the Supreme Court ‘dismissed’ Djohar from the presidency, and in 1992, which involved Mtara Maecha and two sons of Ahmed Abdallah; although these were all unsuccessful, Djohar’s inability either to run the country or to deal with the opposition led to increasing dissatisfaction with his regime, despite its democratic character. Democracy was of course something of a novelty to a younger generation of Comorians, and the popular appreciation of the new political climate was expressed in apocryphal tales of taxi drivers driving the wrong way down one-way streets, claiming ‘But it’s democracy!’ This new-found freedom was manifested in the two dozen or so parties that appeared on the political scene, most of them based around the personalities of their leaders and with no real programme or any aspirations beyond seeking power.   The political and institutional chaos of the Djohar years was matched in the commercial and economic sector. France had made it clear to the Comoros (as it did to other former colonies in Africa) that it would no longer be able to maintain the level of support that it had hitherto granted the country, and 170

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Djohar attempted to encourage foreign investment from a variety of sources. Given the country’s reputation, these sources were not always the most reliable. In 1991 Mtara Maecha and Djohar’s son-in-law Mohamed Said Abdallah Mchangama negotiated a loan from the Italian government for the purchase of agricultural equipment to the value of 265 million French francs from Intertrade, an Italian company. Destined to be distributed within the framework of an agricultural development project, the shipments were intercepted before they left the port of Mutsamudu and forwarded to Durban, where they appear to have been sold. The proceeds were shared among the politicians involved. There was more scandal in 1994 when a Mauritian confidence trickster by the name of Roland Armoogum passed himself off as a British aristocrat named Lord Rowland Ashley and persuaded the Comorian government to appoint him director of Air Comores. Ashley would then proceed to privatise the airline, and proposed selling the company’s single aircraft, a decrepit Fokker, presumably intending to pocket the proceeds and disappear. He was unmasked before he could put his plan into action, but the affair forced the resignation of the prime minister.38 The constant succession of business proposals, some fraudulent, others honest but ill-conceived, were generally seized upon by the government, desperate for investment and apparently prepared to believe almost anything if it looked like there was money to be made. Some of these proposals were fanciful, bordering on the absurd: in 1996 a convention was signed with an American named Forbes who claimed to have $165 million to invest in a fisheries project on Ndzuani.39   These scandals and more reflect an underlying philosophy (if it can be so called) on the part of the ruling classes that sees the state as a source of personal wealth. While there was a sincere desire to attract investment to the country, there was a parallel desire for the kickbacks and ‘pourcentages’ that investments, successful or otherwise, promised. And these opportunities needed to be seized as soon as they presented themselves, hence the reluctance to look too closely at most of these projects. The rapidity with which individuals passed through office in the Djohar years prompted them to accumulate as much wealth as possible, as quickly as possible and by whatever means available, and then acquire ‘the three Vs’ that served as symbols of success: voiture, villa et voyage (car, house and travel); any money left over would be redistributed to kin and clients in return for support in future political endeavours.   The endemic corruption in the Comoros merely served to worsen the reputation of a country already seen as politically deeply unstable, and foreign investors—honest ones, including partner states operating within the terms 171

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of bilateral or multilateral agreements—became increasingly reluctant to aid the country. To cap it all, the relationship with France remained quasi-colonial: although French investment was being reduced, French political influence was not. The French government continued to intervene in Comorian politics, effectively treating the country, and its leaders, as if it, and they, were still French, often calling ministers to account and guiding government policy—such as it was. This regularly dissuaded other countries, which grew weary of the Comorian leadership constantly deferring to France and effectively submitting proposals for cooperation and development projects for French approval before signing agreements.   Only the Arab states, encouraged by the pro-Arab stance of Djohar, continued to support the country. Following Ali Soilihi’s failed attempt, in 1993 the Comoros made a second application for membership of the Arab League. Although the process was undoubtedly less straightforward than some would like to think, the Hadrami ancestry of the president and of several of those in government; the status of Arabic as an official language; the increasingly close ties the Comoros were developing particularly with the Gulf states but also with countries such as Libya and Sudan; and the country’s recommitment to Islamic values—even if this is not a criterion for accession to the Arab League—certainly tipped the balance in their favour and the Comoros were admitted as the League’s 22nd member in September 1993. Several Arab states have continued to support the Comoros, both financially and through health care and education initiatives. The Gulf emirate of Sharjah in particular committed itself to financing a number of projects, including the construction of the new Friday mosque in Moroni, following Emir Sultan bin Muhammad al-Qasimi’s discovery that he had kin on Ndzuani—Salim Ben Ali, who served as prime minister under Abdallah, was of the al-Qasimi family, the descendant of a relative of the emir who had migrated to Madagascar a century earlier.   As the Djohar administration stumbled on, discontent grew and once again a regime change was in the offing. It would have been an optimistic Comorian who thought that the country had seen the last of Bob Denard. Upon leaving the islands in 1989, Denard had returned to France where he was tried for his role in a coup attempt in Benin in 1977. With the support of witnesses from the French security services and Jacques Foccart himself, who testified that Denard had acted with the tacit support of France, he escaped with a five-year suspended sentence. Although he states in his memoirs that he had no particular desire to return to the Comoros, in mid-1995 he finally responded to a call from associates of Taki and decided that his duty lay with his friends in 172

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the islands, in particular Abdallah’s sons and a former associate, Colonel Combo Ayouba, who were all in prison and towards whom he felt a debt of gratitude. On the night of 27/28 September 1995, Denard once again disembarked on Ngazidja with a contingent of mercenaries and rapidly took control of the key installations. Once again resistance was minimal and only at Radio Comores was there any fighting. Djohar was taken into protective custody and Combo, released from prison, was declared president of a Comité Militaire de Transition, but two days later he handed over power to Taki and Kemal. Initially, despite appeals from prime minister Caabi el-Yachroutu, who had sought refuge in the French embassy, France refused to intervene, stating that it was an internal Comorian matter, but on 3 October French troops finally landed. On 5 October Djohar, who was presumably expecting to be restored to power, was flown to Réunion—ostensibly for medical reasons—and on 8 October Denard was escorted to Mayotte, where he was arrested for violating the conditions of his parole.40  

 

 

 

* * * The first twenty years of independence saw several radical shifts, politically, economically and socially, in the Comoros’ internal development and in their external relations. While the emergence of the islands from the French colonial fold held out the promise of a renewal of links with the islands’ historical environment, particularly the mainland states whose socialist policies and anglophone cultures had seen them kept at arm’s length by the colonial administration, initially this was not to be and the Comoros were particularly uncosmopolitan during the Soilihi regime. Despite links with Tanzania, the Zanzibari government still regarded the islands, and their diaspora in Zanzibar, with ambivalence, and this influenced Tanzanian policies. Although few Zanzibaris of Comorian origin were trying to flee, the movement of people between the two archipelagos remained constrained and probably not particularly desirable. Zanzibar no longer had much to offer either economically or intellectually, while the Comoros, under Ali Soilihi, were no more attractive a destination for Zanzibaris. In the opposite direction, the other Indian Ocean islands also maintained their distance. The Seychelles government, immediately post-independence, was firmly capitalist; the socialist government in Mauritius was too moderate to accept the excesses of Ali Soilihi; and while Madagascar was undergoing its own socialist revolution, relations were quickly soured by the Mahajanga massacre. Further afield, France was hostile, the other European powers and the United States uninter 173

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ested, and only China seemed to offer friendship, though even this appeared to be part of a wider political strategy rather than indicative of Chinese support for a Comorian revolution.   With the rise of the Abdallah regime things seemed to get worse. The country was utterly dependent on France—and relations with France were tainted by association with the mercenaries—and South Africa, and in 1980s Africa the Comoros were as much a pariah as the apartheid state. The Arab states remained wary and, once again, to countries further afield the Comoros were remote and spoken for. It was not until the departure of Abdallah, and the radical political and economic restructuring of eastern and southern African states following the decline of both apartheid and socialism, that the Comoros began to renew their ties with their neighbours. The country joined the Indian Ocean Commission in 1986, and although the organisation would increasingly be dominated by Réunion qua France, it did provide a formal structure for the development of relationships with the island states of the Indian Ocean, Mauritius in particular, which was becoming a regional leader. Postsocialist Tanzania was once again becoming an attractive destination and air services between Moroni and Zanzibar were resumed. As France withdrew economically, if not politically, and the relationships with the Arab states evolved, the islands found themselves with the freedom at last to exercise more choice about who their friends might be.

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In the aftermath of the 1995 coup d’état, Caabi el-Yachroutu declared himself interim president and established a government of national unity pending presidential elections while Djohar, from his exile in Réunion and with the support of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and a number of regional leaders, sought to return to the Comoros. In January 1996 at a conference in Antananarivo mediated by the OAU it was agreed that Djohar could return and serve as interim president until the elections on the condition that he would not stand for a second term. This seemed to be a face-saving solution for all, particularly since Djohar claimed, probably sincerely, that he had neither the intention nor the desire to seek a second term. Fifteen candidates stood in the elections that were held in March; Mohamed Taki and Abbas Djoussouf faced each other in the run-off and Taki won with 65 per cent of the votes.  

 

The Years of Darkness Mohamed Taki Abdoulkarim was one of the ‘dinosaurs’ and had long been involved in politics, serving as minister in several governments both before and after independence as well as presiding over the national assembly in the early 1980s. Laconic and somewhat enigmatic (as demonstrated by his repeated shifts in allegiances), he had a strong power base in his home town of Mbeni, capital of the Hamahame region in the northeast of Ngazidja, and seemed to enjoy widespread and genuine support across the islands. If he was

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considered by many among the urban Arab aristocracy as being ‘from the bush’, with his strong Hamahame accent, he was nevertheless from a wellconsidered background and at least initially there were hopes for progress, both politically and economically. France, which had been increasingly worried about the instability of the Djohar government as well as Djohar’s links with Iran and Libya, and had certainly supported the coup that removed him, seems to have accepted Taki’s pro-French stance, despite having visibly favoured Djoussouf—which was possibly itself a factor in Taki’s victory. The French presumably hoped that he would restore their reputation in the islands following not only a degradation of relations after the imposition of the Balladur visa, but also what the population felt was the French kidnapping of their president, however unpopular he may have been.1   Once in office Taki appointed a government, headed by Tadjidine ben Said Massounde from Domoni, and new island governors; he dissolved parliament and began work on a new constitution. However, the federal structure of the country remained nominal, since the islands still had no economic or political autonomy, and power remained in the hands of the central government. Given the proliferation of small parties largely devoid of any political programme, Taki also passed legislation dissolving all political parties with fewer than two seats in the national assembly. Although both well-intentioned and probably necessary, this decision deprived a substantial sector of the population of their political affiliations, even if these were based on clientelism rather than political beliefs, and prompted the opposition, led by Abbas Djoussouf, to boycott the legislative elections that were held in October 1996. The newly constituted Rassemblement National pour le Développement (RND), a coalition of parties aligned with Taki, therefore won and the country was once again a de facto one-party state with power concentrated in the hands of the president.   Although incorrectly accused of being a fundamentalist, Taki nevertheless attempted to Islamise the state, banning alcohol (with no success), adding the inscriptions ‘Muhammad’ and ‘Allah’ to the national flag, and encouraging religious leaders to participate in the political process. At the same time he encouraged the politicisation of customary power structures, not only meeting, as Abdallah had done, with the elders of Ngazidja on a weekly basis but going so far as to appoint a formal elders’ council that would underpin his political programme (such as it was) by providing it with a customary framework that would, in theory at least, grant it social legitimacy and that could be engaged if and when appropriate. Unsurprisingly, this body was no more successful than the Ouatou Akouba had been in the colonial period since, as 176

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in the early twentieth century, the real customary power-holders were not interested in participating in a formal grouping that would both constrain their freedom to act and, ultimately, undermine their authority. On the contrary, there was already—as there always has been—provision within mila na ntsi that allows for the constitution of an assembly of elders of Ngazidja. This assembly, known simply as the Ngazidja (in much the same way that ‘France’ stands for the French state apparatus), wields real power and meets occasionally, for example to impose sanctions at an insular level on a village one or more of whose inhabitants have committed a particularly serious infraction of social norms, whether under civil or customary law.   The punishment of a village usually takes the form of an ulapva, a ritual banishment that forbids villagers to participate in ãda rituals outside the village and, equally, forbids others to attend ãda within the village, which effectively means they cannot be held: an ãda at which the island is not present is socially voided of meaning. This principle of collective responsibility (which was seized upon, formalised but ultimately misunderstood by the colonial administration) is a system that provides mechanisms for the resolution of disputes that a village, for whatever reason, is unwilling or unable to resolve internally. Inflicting a punishment on the entire village in theory encourages the village to find its own solution, either through further punishment of the offender or by requiring reparations, or both. Once the issue has been resolved to the satisfaction of the Ngazidja, sanctions are lifted and the village is socially reintegrated into the wider community, and the social order is restored. This is a very different mechanism from the colonial practice of collective fines, whereby the whole village was punished for the act of an inhabitant and the case considered closed.   Taki’s enthusiasm for and faith in the power of these customary structures therefore led him not only to call upon his elders’ council, but also to wield formal state power in what he considered to be a customary fashion. This most notoriously led to the ‘banishment’ of the town of Shezani in Mbwankuu, northeast Ngazidja, early in his presidency when a dispute during a football match ended in four people being murdered. In addition to arresting and bringing criminal proceedings against the culprits, he punished the town, drawing upon the customary practice of ulapva: for more than six months the town was deprived of all government services and government offices, including the post office, were closed. Furthermore, taxis were forbidden to serve the town and its inhabitants were prohibited from leaving the country. They were also forbidden to hold ãda events and to participate in ãda elsewhere on the 177

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island. Socially, politically and economically the town was ostracised and there was some popular support for inflicting a customary punishment upon a town whose elders had apparently failed to act. However, many also viewed askance the involvement of the government: that the town be forbidden to hold weddings was one thing, but to suspend government services seemed an unacceptable abuse of power and a misinterpretation of mila na ntsi.   But beyond this, Taki’s regime failed badly and disillusionment swiftly set in. Mismanagement of the national budget and chronic corruption saw investment falter and the country’s infrastructure start to fall apart. Export revenues had dropped as the prices of vanilla and cloves,2 the latter mostly produced on Ndzuani, faltered, with a deleterious effect on local incomes; the balance of payments was in deficit and the government’s coffers were again empty. Foreign aid—already disproportionately received by Ngazidja—had also been cut in the light of the country’s failure to put its house in order and negotiate structural adjustment programmes with the IMF and the World Bank, while France was rethinking its aid policies towards its former colonies generally, which meant, among other things, that support for the country’s essential services was gradually being reduced. Taki’s attempts to solicit aid from the Gulf states met with limited success since, unlike Djohar or Abdallah, he had no claims to Arab ancestry and was viewed with some ambivalence in the Gulf capitals. Only with Yemen were any links forged, but of all the Arab states Yemen was the least likely to provide any financial assistance and the only real outcome was the establishment of an air route by Yemenia, the national airline, between Moroni and France, via San‘a’.   In early 1997 the power station on Ngazidja, which had been maintained by French technicians until 1993 and had been gradually deteriorating since then, finally gave up altogether, leaving the national capital without power for the best part of a year—hence memories of this period as les années de l’obscurité, the dark years. At the same time, public sector salaries had accumulated almost a year’s arrears, a situation not helped by the unrestrained recruitment of civil servants by ministers seeking to maintain their clients, and health and education were particularly affected even if staff continued to work despite not being paid. Following demonstrations that turned violent in January and February 1997, Taki managed to obtain a promise of financial support from France; it was slow in coming and, if on Ngazidja the large expatriate community continued to send funds to their families, mitigating the effects of the unpaid salaries, on Ndzuani the lack of income was deeply felt. In mid-1997 dissatisfaction with the central government finally boiled over. 178

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The secession of Ndzuani Resistance to the perceived hegemony of Ngazidja was growing on Ndzuani and in 1995 two organisations were founded to agitate for greater government investment on the island. The Organisation pour l’Indépendence d’Anjouan (OPIA) was led by Colonel Ahmed Mohamed Hazi and initially pressed for greater autonomy within the federal framework while the Mouvement du Peuple d’Anjouan (MPA), whose president was Abdallah Ibrahim, was overtly secessionist.3 The destabilising influence of Mayotte, and of a number of French right-wing agitators, was crucial in the growth of these movements. Mayotte was clearly more prosperous than the other islands, and until the Balladur visa there had been a relatively free circulation of people: individuals would travel to Mayotte, work, even if illegally, and then return to Ndzuani with their savings. This income had long been essential to Ndzuani’s economy. Following the imposition of visa requirements, travel became much harder and was necessarily clandestine, leading to the development of a network of people smugglers who would take passengers to Mayotte in small powerboats that became known as kwasa kwasas, with all the attendant risks of such a journey.4 The French occupation of Mayotte has long been deeply destabilising to the independent islands, not only because of its comparative wealth, but through the interference of French activists, often with the tacit support of the French state, and because the political detachment of Mayotte was seen as establishing a precedent. It is not surprising, therefore, that a secessionist movement developed on Ndzuani.   In early 1997 anti-government demonstrations on Ndzuani were becoming increasingly frequent and increasingly violent, and in mid-March Taki, grossly underestimating the depth of feeling on the island, sent in troops to maintain order: four died and dozens were injured in the ensuing confrontation.5 The mawana flag of the pre-colonial independent sultanate of Ndzuani, a white hand on a red field, began to appear across the island as the situation deteriorated; on 14 July, as separatists tried to celebrate Bastille Day, the French national holiday, violence again broke out, leaving two dead; on 21 July Abdallah Ibrahim was arrested only to be released a few days later; and on 3 August 1997 he not only declared the independence of the État d’Anjouan, with himself as president, but also demanded that the island be reattached to France.6 This development—a call for recolonisation—caused much consternation, obviously in Moroni, but also at the OAU and, at least in official responses, in France. It was one of the most extraordinary episodes of postcolonialism, for while there has often been resistance to independence within  

 

 

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colonies, and nostalgia for the colonial era in some independent states, this was the first time that an independent nation, or part of one, had attempted to return to the colonial fold.   As Ibrahim began appointing a government, the international community took action and negotiations were swiftly opened through the intermediary of the OAU, which sent a mediator, the Ivorian diplomat Pierre Yere, to the islands. The two sides agreed to meet in Addis Ababa in mid-September for discussions, although the leaders of Ndzuani viewed the talks as a forum within which to negotiate an agreement between two independent states, while the position of the Comorian government and the OAU was that this was an internal dispute being mediated by the latter organisation. However, before talks could be held, Taki sent in more troops: on 3 September a detachment of some 200 men of the Comorian army landed on Ndzuani. Clearly expecting little resistance, the army were ill prepared: they met an organised and well-armed defence force and were swiftly repelled, evacuating the island again two days later, leaving behind numerous dead and an estimated 80 prisoners. This effectively put an end to hopes for a rapid resolution to the affair.   The disintegration of the Comorian state now seemed inevitable. Mwali had also declared independence—with Said Mohamed Souef as president— and in September Taki declared a ‘state of exception’, dissolved the government and threatened to break diplomatic relations with France for alleged (and probably real) French interference in the affair. An embargo was imposed on Ndzuani in an attempt to force the island to its knees, but supplies from Mayotte rendered this ineffective at best. A referendum on independence on Ndzuani in October, condemned as illegitimate by both the OAU and the Arab League, won more than 99 per cent of votes, and when talks were finally held in Addis Ababa in December 1997, they failed to achieve anything more than an agreement to hold further talks. There was little progress in 1998 and, ignoring suggestions—never realised—that an OAU peacekeeping force be sent to the island, Ndzuani continued its existence as a de facto independent state, establishing border controls, flying a hybrid flag composed of the French tricolour and the mawana flag, and attempting to encourage investment. Cracks were appearing in the facade, however: former Comorian prime minister Mohamed Abdou Madi, who had been appointed Ndzuani spokesman, fled to Ngazidja before returning in February 1998 to Ndzuani, where he attempted to oust Abdallah Ibrahim. There were armed clashes between the two factions, following which Madi fled again, apparently to the interior of the island.  

 

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  The ruling triumvirate of Ibrahim, the head of the armed forces Colonel Said Abeid Abderemane and a former gendarme named Mohamed Bacar drew up a constitution that was approved by a 99 per cent majority in a referendum on 25 February, and in March a new government was appointed. This prompted Taki to cut all links with Ndzuani, not only transport, but postal and banking services and telecommunications. If Taki had thought this would bring the island to heel, he was mistaken—the government of Ndzuani had already blocked the runway at the island’s airport to prevent any unauthorised landings and Mutsamudu was in any case the country’s major port—and Ndzuani’s leaders began to dream up a range of schemes that would hopefully bring investors to the island, not least of which was establishing an offshore banking sector. Most of these were unsuccessful, however, and most of those who were attracted to the island were of dubious reputation. Ndzuani’s quest for international recognition was equally unsuccessful and attempts to establish diplomatic relations with Madagascar and Mauritius were soundly rebuffed.7 In November 1998 a failed assassination attempt on Abdallah Ibrahim was met with reprisals aimed at supporters of his rival Said Omar Chamassi, whose power base was in Domoni, and the fighting that followed left as many as three dozen dead and many more wounded.8 The two men had very different perspectives on possible future relationships between the islands: Ibrahim, confronted with the failure of Ndzuani as an independent state, was increasingly conciliatory towards Moroni while Chamassi was staunchly pro-independence and continued—quite unrealistically—to press for French annexation of the island.   The leaders of Mwali, meanwhile, realising that independence was little more than wishful thinking, quietly returned to the fold, while on Ngazidja the continued darkness, unpaid salaries and general political inertia led to growing discontent and frequent anti-government demonstrations. These occasionally turned violent, most notably in May 1998 when at least three people were killed during a general strike called in protest at both the arrears in salaries (now approaching 15 months) and the closure of a Moroni radio station, Tropic FM, the culmination of a steady series of attacks on the freedom of the press. Taki finally appears to have realised that he no longer enjoyed much popular support and that action was required, and in July he appointed a new, more diverse government, which included former Ndzuani spokesman Mohamed Abdou Madi and former PASOCO leader Salim Himidi. In October he proposed a government of ‘public health’, intended to reconcile his opponents on Ngazidja as a precursor to presenting a united front in negotia 

 

 

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tions with Ndzuani, but before any progress could be made he died suddenly, on 6 November 1998, on his return from an official visit to Turkey. Tadjidine ben Said Massounde, president of the Supreme Court, assumed the role of interim president and pursued Taki’s project of a national unity government, appointing Abbas Djoussouf to the post of prime minister.   The country remained in a state of disarray. The constant unrest on Ndzuani prompted a steady exodus of refugees to the other islands while those who remained behind were faced with lack of health care, shortages of food, power cuts, and even a shortage of banknotes. Presidential elections could not be envisaged if they could not be held on part of the national territory. France was accused of supporting the separatists and having assassinated Taki9— although there was no proof of the latter—and fighting between different factions on Ndzuani threatened to break out into a fully fledged civil war. Ibrahim, clinging to power and desperate for a solution that would allow him to avoid complete capitulation, called for French intervention, but his request was of course turned down. In April 1999, as the interim government in Moroni extended its mandate, further OAU-sponsored talks were held in Antananarivo, leading to the proposal that a ‘nouvel ensemble comorien’, effectively a confederation of the three islands, be formed in order to preserve the unity of the country; on 23 April Ngazidja and Mwali signed the document but at the last minute the Ndzuani delegation refused, prompting anti-Wandzuani rioting on Ngazidja. The impasse seemed total until on 30 April 1999, after almost two years of anarchy, the head of the armed forces, Azali Assoumani, took power in yet another coup d’état—this time bloodless—and immediately proclaimed himself president.   Although the coup was widely condemned internationally, and particularly by France and the OAU, there was a sense of relief locally that things might finally improve; and Azali was supported by the political classes on the condition, more or less made explicit, that he restore order and then step aside to let them return to power. To his credit Azali acted swiftly to negotiate a solution to the problems paralysing the country and set about persuading the government of Ndzuani to sign the accords. In June Abdallah Ibrahim was ousted as Ndzuani leader by Said Abeid Abderemane, who agreed to meet Azali on Mwali, and it looked like an agreement was in the offing when Azali seemed to change his mind, dismissing a number of Wandzuani civil servants and refusing to let students from Ndzuani sit their baccalaureate exam on Ngazidja. Local elections on Ndzuani in August were won by the secessionists, and in September Said Abeid declared that he would not sign the accords. On  

 

 

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Ngazidja, however, the political classes were almost unanimously united in their support for Azali, and 18 political parties formed a coalition, the Coordination de Salut National. On 8 November 1999 all but one of the country’s political parties signed a declaration backing him almost unreservedly, but on Ndzuani the mood had changed yet again, and another referendum in early 2000 apparently showed overwhelming support for full independence. This prompted the national government, with OUA backing, to once again impose sanctions on the island.10   Just how much support there really was for independence on Ndzuani is unclear. The referendums and elections were far from free and those who spoke out against independence were punished; regardless of the level of popular support, it seemed that the writing was on the wall for the secessionist regime, particularly as it became clear that Ndzuani’s last remaining friend was preparing to abandon it. Despite unofficial sympathy, and possibly clandestine support for the secessionists, France had made it quite clear that Ndzuani would not be recolonised and on Ndzuani it was equally clear that the island could not possibly survive the status quo: the economy was in tatters and political infighting rendered governance all but impossible. Nevertheless, the secessionist episode served France’s interests well, unambiguously demonstrating that returning Mayotte to the Comorian state was not a realistic proposition: the country couldn’t manage the islands it already had. France had drawn up plans for a further referendum on Mayotte, to be held on 2 July 2000 on a change in status from collectivité territoriale to collectivité départementale, and although the difference in status was not entirely clear, it was certainly intended to be a symbolic move towards departmental status and a rejection of Comorian unity. However, if the option of rejoining the other islands was not on offer, neither, to the dismay of many Maorais, was that of becoming a full department. The vote was in favour of the change, although 27 per cent voted no in protest.   Isolated on all fronts, therefore, and faced with the possibility of further military intervention, Said Abeid finally capitulated and on 26 August 2000 signed a peace agreement at Fomboni, the capital of Mwali. Although this agreement—between two unelected leaders—was immediately denounced by the OAU as well as the local opposition, who saw it as potentially leading to the break-up of the country, it was clear that it would be the only agreement on offer. Nevertheless, Said Abeid remained reluctant to participate in further talks until early 2001, when the OAU mediated another agreement, this time between all three islands and sanctioned by the international community. The  

 

 

 

 

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Fomboni Accords, also signed in Fomboni, on 17 February 2001, would pave the way for national reconciliation and the drawing up of a new constitution. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was again opposition to the agreement, and despite having signed, Said Abeid remained ambivalent, wary of a backlash from his supporters. His equivocal stance soon prompted a coup by the more pragmatic faction, and on 9 August 2001 Mohamed Bacar, who was more conciliatory towards the national government than Said Abeid appears to have been, assumed the presidency of Ndzuani. With pro-reconciliation leaders now in place on all three islands, the new constitution was finally submitted to a referendum on 23 December 2001 and approved by 76 per cent of the population. It was particularly welcomed by the population of Ndzuani, 95 per cent of whom, undoubtedly weary of the whole affair and the hardships that it entailed, voted yes. The country would henceforth be called the Union of the Comoros; symbolically underlining the fresh start, the country was also bestowed with a new flag.11  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Union of the Comoros The Comoros entered the twenty-first century with both optimism and wariness. The previous decade had been chaotic and there was much nostalgia both for the independence of the Soilihi years (from the left and the young) and for the security of the Abdallah years (from the older generation and the pro-French factions). While few wanted a return to either, many hoped that the disorder and decline of the Djohar and Taki years could be put behind them and that the country could move forward. The world had changed radically during that decade: the Cold War had ended but Islamic fundamentalism was on the rise; the colonial powers were on the retreat but India and China were showing interest in Africa; and locally, the end of conflict and the liberalisation of economies in neighbouring states—Madagascar, Mozambique and particularly Tanzania, as well as South Africa—had radically transformed the social, political and economic dynamics of the region. If many Comorians were still clinging to French coat-tails, others were slowly rediscovering their social and cultural environment. Things would not change overnight—and Mayotte was a perennial thorn in the Comorian side—but the re-establishment of an internationally recognised legitimate order would at least allow for resumption of normal economic activity, the development of a range of bilateral and multilateral relationships, and the encouragement of investment. The country went back to work. 184

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  The new constitution provided for an even more decentralised state than previous incarnations of the federal republic had, at least in theory, done. The presidency of the country was to be held in rotation by one of the three islands and the two remaining islands would provide vice-presidents.12 All would hold office for a non-renewable term of four years. Candidates for all three posts were first chosen by their own islands’ electorates before proceeding to a nationwide second round. The Union was to be responsible for religion, nationality, currency, foreign affairs, defence and national symbols while other domains were the responsibility of the individual islands, which were granted financial autonomy. The islands also had their own governments, each headed by a president and vice-presidents. There were single-chamber legislative bodies at the national and island level.   The first president was to be from Ngazidja, and Azali resigned from the position in order to be able to stand for office. He was replaced by his prime minister, Hamada Madi Boléro, who served as interim president during the elections, which were held in April 2002 and which Azali won, despite accusations of fraud leading to his two opponents in the run-off, Kemal and Mahamoud Mradabi, boycotting them—the accusations were later judged to be unfounded by an independent electoral commission.13 Born in 1959 in the town of Mitsoudje, Ngazidja, Azali Assoumani was a career military officer who had trained in Morocco and France before joining the Comorian army in 1981, eventually rising to the rank of colonel and becoming chief of staff in 1998. Azali proceeded to form a national government with a reduced team of five ministers, and the island constitutions were also approved and promulgated in early 2002. Three insular presidents were elected, each for a five-year term, among whom were Mohamed Bacar on Ndzuani and Abdou Soulé Elbak on Ngazidja.14 However, Azali repeatedly postponed the planned legislative elections and differences arose between him and Elbak over the division of responsibilities between the national and insular governments on the island of Ngazidja, which had not been clearly defined. Indeed, the new constitution was vague about the details of the arrangements between the islands and the national government generally: the separation of powers and responsibilities—and finances—as well as internal security, and despite numerous discussions it was not until the end of 2003 that an agreement, mediated by South African president Thabo Mbeki, was finally signed.15 Among its provisions, revenues, and particularly customs duties, a major source of government income, would be collected centrally and then proportionally redistributed to the islands. 185

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  The signature of this agreement finally paved the way for the resumption of aid programmes and the normalisation of relations with countries that had condemned the 1999 coup, particularly the United States and France. Although France had resumed limited cooperation in May 2001, in early 2004 both China and France committed to substantial aid packages. Indeed, once the constitutional crisis had been resolved, Azali’s government was able to turn to more productive matters. The University of the Comoros was inaugurated in 2003 (funded by a tax on fuel, which caused some protest); a mobile telephone network was established; and a new Chinese-funded power station was inaugurated. The country’s first publicly owned television station and a new terminal at the country’s main international airport at Hahaya on Ngazidja, both also funded by China, were built; and perhaps most importantly, public sector salaries were regularly paid, thus removing one of the principal sources of discontent among the population. It seemed at last that the country had shaken off the troubles of the past, even if the chronic structural problems that the economy faced remained intractable, most notably the narrow base and unreliability of the export sector. The country had restored its reputation and in 2006 a comprehensive cooperation agreement was signed with France providing for an aid package to the order of €88 million. Despite the resumption of French aid, however, China was now probably the country’s most generous bilateral donor, even though aid came with strings attached, most notably that all work be carried out by a Chinese workforce using Chinese materials.   Although there remained differences between the government of the island of Ngazidja and the Union government, the new configuration of the state seemed to be holding up. Azali abandoned plans to amend the constitution to allow for the president to stand for a second term, and in April 2006 the first round of elections was held to choose a president from Ndzuani. There were 13 candidates, among whom were Union vice-president Caabi el-Yachroutu and Ahmed Abdallah Sambi. The latter was a businessman and charismatic religious leader from Mutsamudu who, unlike his French-educated counterparts, had studied in Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, his sojourn in the lastmentioned country earning him the nickname ‘Ayatollah’ and leading to much discussion about his Shia tendencies. In the 1980s his religious teachings, orthodox but not fundamentalist and attacking the religious hierarchies, had attracted the attention of Abdallah’s government and his school was shut down. He entered politics in the 1990s and was elected to the national assembly in 1996 as a member of the Front National pour la Justice (FNJ), an 186

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Islamist party. Eschewing the separatist cause, he fled briefly to Madagascar before returning to the Comoros to look after his business affairs. By 2006, however, he was positioning himself as a presidential candidate and came first in the first round; on 14 May he won the second round with 58 per cent of the vote; his vice-presidents were Ikililou Dhoinine, a pharmacist from Mwali, and Idi Nadhoim, from Ngazidja. This election marked the first peaceful transition of power upon the expiry of a presidential term since independence. Sambi’s detractors accused him of being a fundamentalist, but upon his election he declared that he had no intention of transforming the country into an Islamic state and stated that he would attend to more pressing concerns such as tackling corruption and developing the economy. His supporters saw him as honest—he seemed innocent of the charges of corruption levelled at so many of the ruling classes—and a breath of fresh air who would restore the moral values by which the country lived.16   The following year elections for the islands’ presidents were held on Ngazidja and Mwali, where they went smoothly, and on Sambi’s home island of Ndzuani, where they did not.17 Mohamed Bacar, the president of the island, was perceived by many as a dictator, and his armed militia maintained a climate of fear among the population. Any expression of opposition was severely repressed, and those who did speak out were accused of being pro-Union and traitors to their island. The economy was moribund, civil service salaries were unpaid, and those who could flee to one of the other islands did so. By 2007 Bacar had served his term and was required by the constitution to step down if he wanted to stand for re-election—island presidents were permitted to serve two terms. He refused to do so, prompting the Union government to send in troops to force his removal; they were repelled by a numerically superior and well-armed Ndzuani security force. Bacar went ahead and organised elections, printing his own ballot papers and prevented his opponents from campaigning. Unsurprisingly, he won easily, even if few bothered to vote. The result was declared null and void by the Union government and by the African Union, as the OAU was now known, but although the latter sent a delegation to help organise authorised and free elections, Moroni refused to negotiate, deeming Bacar’s actions illegal.18   After several months of stalemate, sanctions were imposed upon Ndzuani, this time supported by France, which cut links between Ndzuani and Mayotte; these also failed to break Bacar’s resolve. Finally, in February 2008 the African Union authorised a military intervention and on 25 March a force of some 2000 troops from Tanzania, Sudan and Senegal as well as the  

 

 

 

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Comoros invaded Ndzuani. They met very little resistance and rapidly seized the island’s key installations, assuming control and restoring the authority of the central government. The lack of any real resistance is indicative of how little support Mohamed Bacar really enjoyed, and he fled to Mayotte with a handful of supporters, where he was arrested for illegally entering the country and illegally carrying arms. He was transferred to Réunion where the charges were dropped and he applied for political asylum; this was refused, but despite Comorian requests that he be extradited, he was allowed to leave the country for exile in Benin. France’s reluctance to return Bacar to face trial in the Comoros was seen as an implicit admission of French support for his regime, and led to a diplomatic rift between the two countries. Presidential elections were finally held on Ndzuani in July 2008, and Moussa Toybou was declared the winner by a narrow margin.   Although Bacar’s regime had not been secessionist—Bacar was aware that attempts to secede had proved fruitless and undoubtedly would do so again—there was dissatisfaction with the constitutional arrangements as they stood on all the islands even if they had been particularly forcefully expressed on Ndzuani. Sambi recognised that constitutional reform was needed to deal with the ‘famous article 9’ of the 2001 constitution, which stated that the division of responsibilities between the Union and the island governments would be determined by an organic law; this law, passed in 2005, had given rise to chronic disagreements and it was hoped that inscribing the respective spheres of responsibility in the constitution would go some way towards resolving these differences. There was general agreement that this reform was needed, but constitutional reform was delayed by the insertion of another article that extended the president’s term in office to five years. The reason for this was to provide for an alignment of the terms of the offices of the president and of islands’ governors, as the presidents were henceforth to be called, since Sambi quite correctly recognised that a country with limited resources could not afford to hold repeated elections when all could be accomplished at the same time. However, this was seen by his detractors as a ruse to extend his term in office, and they opposed it. Mwali, which was to provide the next president, was particularly reluctant, since it would delay the island’s turn at office. Nevertheless, the reforms were finally approved by a referendum on 16 May 2009, and although the turnout was a low 45 per cent, 92 per cent voted yes.   Elections to the national assembly were held in December 2009 and Sambi’s Juwa coalition won 20 of the 24 seats, but despite the constitutional  

 

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reform, disputes over details of the presidential and gubernatorial elections dragged on and in March 2010 Sambi pushed them back to November 2011, thus effectively extending his term in office by 18 months. This announcement was met with demonstrations on Mwali that turned violent; Sambi sent in troops just as, perhaps coincidentally, a detachment of Libyan troops arrived to bolster the forces of his presidential guard, but to little avail: the islanders were deeply angry that their opportunity to lead the country, for the first time since independence, seemed to be slipping away from them, and as the other islands expressed doubts about there even being a candidate from Mwali of sufficient stature to lead the country, Mwali feared that the ruling classes would somehow prevent a president from Mwali being elected at all. Protests on Mwali lasted for two months, regularly turning violent and leading to what was described as a ‘state of siege’. Once again, the African Union stepped in and finally mediated an agreement in mid-2010, fixing the elections for the end of the year; the winner was Sambi’s candidate, vice-president Ikililou Dhoinine, with 61 per cent of the vote.19   Sambi had pursued a line that built on Azali’s legacy as much as it diverged from it. Although much of the international community had refused to recognise Azali’s regime pre-2002, and cancelled various aid projects and budgetary assistance, relations with the Arab states had remained cordial—the country was of course a member of the Arab League and had long enjoyed good relations with countries such as Libya and Saudi Arabia—and following his election Sambi continued to develop them. His background did not predispose him to look upon France any more favourably than the country’s other partners, and he was not reluctant to pursue the Mayotte question, although repeated suggestions that he call for an UN resolution—none had been taken since 1994—did not bear fruit. He negotiated several debt-reduction agreements with the IMF and the African Development Bank—the latter had suspended the Comoros’ membership in 1992—and developed relationships with Arab states such as Qatar, later a significant partner, which led to a conference on the development of the Comoros in Doha in March 2010, from which the Comoros emerged with promises of an investment package from the Gulf states to the tune of $540 million. Despite Sambi’s close ties with Iran, which saw the opening of an embassy in Moroni, he was prudent in his relationship with the country since the Arab states were, for much of his presidency, the more generous donors, and although never publicly made explicit, it is likely that Arab generosity would have been contingent upon Iran remaining on the sidelines. For its part, Iran—curiously, given the close relationship  

 

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that Sambi maintained with the country—never provided much in the way of financial support for the Comoros. Nevertheless, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a state visit to the country in early 2009, one of a very small handful of heads of state ever to have done so.   Domestically Sambi reaffirmed a Comorian sense of identity and re-established Islam as the state religion even if stopping short of establishing an Islamic state; he decreed the teaching of the Comorian language in schools in 2010—the first time the national language had ever been on the curriculum.20 If some of his initiatives misfired, it nevertheless remains that his quest for investors and his development projects, particularly of infrastructure, were not unsuccessful—in March 2010 the country was connected to the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) fibre optic network, thus providing the country with high-speed internet access. On the negative side, the Sambi years will be remembered for the rapid disintegration of the nation’s roads (only resolved by a gift of bitumen from Libya), the economic citizenship affair (more of which below), regular and lengthy power shortages, and, once again, arrears in public sector salaries (admittedly reduced somewhat with the help of a gift of €20 million from Qatar).   It was initially feared that Sambi’s successor, Ikililou Dhoinine, would be little more than a puppet, with Sambi pulling the strings, but this proved not to be the case. Although his entry into politics only dated from his 2006 appointment as Sambi’s vice-president, Ikililou rapidly proved that he was his own man (perhaps to Sambi’s annoyance), setting up an anti-corruption committee, promising to collect taxes and drawing up a five-year development plan. He replaced the heads of a number of government companies—Société Comorienne des Hydrocarbures (SCH), Comores Telecom and the power and water company MaMwe, all of which had suffered from mismanagement under Sambi’s government. The development of local government structures, initiated by Sambi, continued apace, although lack of funding meant that many communes, the basic unit of administration, and their mayors, often existed in name only.   Perhaps more irritating to Sambi, given his closeness to Iran, would have been Ikililou’s promulgation of a law that established Sunni Islam as the official religion in the country. This law had been passed by the national assembly in June 2008, and although Sambi had been obliged to sign the law, he never issued a decree rendering it effective.21 Ikililou did, however, and in early February 2013 the law was used to arrest the Shiite leader Mahamoud Abdallah Ibrahim and 17 of his congregation in Mutsamudu. Although they 190

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were later released and never convicted of a crime, this episode prompted a national debate on both the growth of Shiism in the country and the right to freedom of religious expression. As we have seen, Comorians are almost without exception, Sunni Muslims, but struggles between Sunni and Shia had long been present on the East African coast, and in some places, such as Lamu in Kenya, Shiism had gained a significant number of adherents. While geopolitics, and particularly the growing conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, were not irrelevant in these conversions, the real reasons were often more prosaic. On the African mainland, Salafi, or Wahhabi, activists, fundamentalists schooled in Saudi Arabia, were speaking out against practices that they viewed as non-Islamic or bidaa, innovations, among which were Sufism and the veneration of deceased religious leaders. Attacks on Sufism, widespread and extremely popular on the coast, and on the practice of visiting the tombs of prominent scholars, also widespread, were resisted, often by conversion to Shiism, which was more tolerant of such practices: conversion to Shiism was thus a form of resistance against Salafism. In the Comoros, however, the importance of the ãda is such that religious opposition to it, and other practices seen as bidaa, is all but impossible, and Salafis have on occasion even been forcibly ejected from mosques on Ngazidja. Given that Salafis are not a threat, Shiism holds no appeal either, or at least it should not; rather it is seen as more of a threat to Sunni orthodoxy than the Salafis. There is therefore, particularly on Ngazidja, great resistance to it. Nevertheless, if Comorian tolerance has its limits, legal opinion held sway in this particular case, and in the end the Constitutional Court ruled that the practice in private of Shia Islam (or, indeed, any other religion) was permitted as long as it did not threaten the public order.22   The government continued to reinforce ties with the Arab world, and both investment and aid from the Arab states were increasingly important to the local economy. As relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran deteriorated in the context of the Syrian crisis, and particularly following attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran in early 2016, Ikililou finally ended the relationship with Iran. Diplomatic relations were broken in January 2016 and the Iranian embassy in Moroni (ironically located next door to the Saudi embassy) was closed, thus putting an end to the ties developed by Sambi. By a curious coincidence, Saudi Arabia gave the Comoros a gift of $40 million just as the Iranian embassy was closed.   If political stability appeared to have been established in the islands, there was nevertheless dissent and in April 2013 a coup plot was discovered. A 191

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number of foreign mercenaries, most from Chad and the Congo, were arrested along with the instigator of the plot, Mahmoud Ahmed, son of the former president Ahmed Abdallah. This was not the first time that one of Abdallah’s sons had been involved in a coup plot, and this time he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. Although a coup plot was worrying, it did not seem to be the product of widespread discontent, and Ikililou was able to attend to other issues. The first was a need to control the number of political parties, which tended to have little in the way of political programmes, being instead village-based and centred upon a particular individual: despite Taki’s efforts to restrict their numbers, there were now as many as 60 political parties registered in the country. In late 2013, therefore, the national assembly passed a law requiring any party wishing to be registered to have at least four deputies in the assembly representing more than one island.23 Then, as the 2016 presidential elections loomed, a motion was placed before the Constitutional Court calling upon the government to respect the rotating presidency and allow the next president to be from Mayotte. Given the French administration of the island there was of course no question of elections actually being held on Mayotte, but the potential candidates nevertheless held that the next president should be from the island, even if the elections were held on the other islands. In December 2015 the Constitutional Court rejected the motion, citing Article 44 of the constitution, which stated that state institutions would be established on Mayotte within six months of its return to the Comorian fold. Since Mayotte was still under French occupation, the presidency would therefore skip Mayotte and return to Ngazidja.   In a similar vein, in May 2015 Sambi announced his own intention to stand for president, declaring that, although the constitution stated that the primaries would be held in rotation on the different islands, it did not require that the candidates be from the island in question. This also prompted debate on the question of candidates’ identities—since there was no legal definition of a citizen on the basis of island of origin, how could anyone determine the island of origin of, for example, an individual born on Ngazidja of a father from Mwali and a mother from Ndzuani (and, perhaps, raised on Mayotte)? Sambi submitted his candidature in December 2015, but although the argument was not without its merits, the Constitutional Court once again ruled, declaring that the next president had to be from Ngazidja and, regardless of how origins might be determined, Sambi most certainly was not. Sambi therefore retreated into the wings, but did not leave the political stage, and it was becoming clear that politics at the national level were increasingly being reduced to a duel between Azali and Sambi. 192

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  Ikililou’s mandate came to an end in May 2016 and the assessment of his term was generally positive. There were no great leaps forward but he maintained the country’s infrastructure and kept the government ticking over, which is in itself something of an achievement. If much of what he achieved had only been possible thanks to foreign aid, the improvement in the country’s reputation under his regime certainly helped. There was significant investment in infrastructure—a road improvement programme was implemented on all islands and the development of the telecommunications sector, including the granting of a second mobile network licence and the extension of internet access. Salaries were generally paid, although again with the help of gifts from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and in 2013 the government also negotiated a debt-relief package under the IMF–World Bank sponsored HIPC (heavily indebted poor countries) initiative, which greatly improved the country’s ability to service its remaining debts. Having done his duty to the state, Ikililou returned, with some relief, to his fields on Mwali and would have nothing further to do with politics.   Twenty-five candidates contested the first round of presidential elections on 21 February 2016; despite claims of irregularities, Mohamed Ali Soilihi, Ikililou’s vice-president from Ngazidja, Mouigni Baraka, outgoing governor of the island, and Azali Assoumani topped the polling, going on to contest the second round on 10 April. Azali won, with 40.9 per cent of the vote against Mohamed Ali Soilihi’s 39.9 per cent, a margin of just over 2000 votes; the latter claimed that there had been fraud and called for the result to be annulled. The Constitutional Court, while refusing to invalidate the election, nevertheless agreed that there had been some irregularities—there had been violence both prior to and on polling day, and ballot boxes had been destroyed on Ndzuani—and ordered a rerun of the vote at 13 polling stations on that island. In the event Azali increased his lead, winning 41.4 per cent of the vote, and he was sworn in on 26 May 2016.24   Azali’s return to the presidency was not immediately marked by any shifts in policy. He turned his attention to the fisheries sector, whose potential had long been neglected, and obtained Chinese funds to finance a new hospital in Moroni, replacing an old and dilapidated colonial-era structure that was long overdue for demolition; another new hospital, also funded by China, was under construction on Ndzuani, agreed by the previous regime. He also revisited the question of Shia Islam in the country, following the Constitutional Court’s overturning of Ikililou’s ban, and in October 2016 he issued a decree banning the practice of Shiism altogether, whether in public or private. Once  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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again this may have been a political move destined to curry favour with Saudi Arabia, a suspicion reinforced by Azali’s decision six months later to follow Saudi Arabia in breaking diplomatic relations with Qatar, despite the latter state’s record as a generous donor; unsurprisingly, Qatar immediately suspended its projects in the country and all staff were withdrawn. At the same time, Azali continued to develop the country’s relationships with neighbouring African states, partly in response to growing discord with France, and in August 2017 the Comoros were admitted to the Southern African Development Community (SADC).   In early 2018, however, there were signs that Azali intended to strengthen his grip on the country. In February, a meeting of a coalition of opposition parties was banned, and a few days later a national conference on the state of the nation suggested that while the rotating presidency should not be abolished, it required reform since a single five-year term was deemed insufficient for a president to accomplish his programme. It was suggested that the presidential term of office be extended to seven years, and that it be renewable. It was also suggested that the Constitutional Court, an independent body of governmental oversight, be abolished and its functions be transferred to the Supreme Court, whose members were political appointees.   Although it was claimed that these were only suggestions, it rapidly became clear that Azali intended to amend the constitution accordingly, and in April 2018 it was announced that a referendum would be held in late July. The revised constitution, if approved, would allow the president to serve two terms, although rotation by island would continue; as recommended by the conference, the Constitutional Court would be abolished, as would the posts of vice-president; and although the reference to Islam as a state religion was removed, the preamble would refer to ‘a national identity based on … a single religion (Sunni Islam)’. However, the presidential term of office would remain fixed at five years.   Protests against the proposed changes were swift in coming as the opposition foresaw Azali’s tenure being prolonged indefinitely. Members of Sambi’s Juwa party, with its power base on Ndzuani, were particularly outspoken, fearing another ten years in opposition and the spectre of a dictator for life; it was not only the opposition who were fearful: in June one of Azali’s vicepresidents, the former Ngazidja high court judge Djaffar Ahmed, criticised the proposed reforms as illegal and withdrew his support, the highest-ranking member of Azali’s government to voice dissent; he was immediately removed from his post. As the referendum drew near, and resistance continued, dem194

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onstrations and meetings of the opposition were banned or dispersed and expressions of dissent were punished. A number of opposition leaders were imprisoned, among them Ahmed Hassane el-Barwane, the secretary general of Juwa, and even civil servants were targeted. Ahmed Ali Amir, the editor of the state-owned newspaper, Al Watwan, and Moinour Ahmed, secretary general of the ministry of health and sister of vice-president Djaffar, were both sacked for speaking out against the changes. A week before the referendum Moustadroine Abdou, Azali’s vice-president from Ndzuani, was the target of an assassination attempt for which the island’s governor, Abdou Salami Abdou (a Juwa member), was blamed, although there was apparently insufficient evidence to charge him.   Amid the growing violence, the African Union called for the referendum to be postponed, if not abandoned altogether, and in an extraordinary meeting two days before the referendum, the national assembly likewise passed a resolution calling for it to be cancelled, but Azali pressed on regardless. Voting on 30 July 2018 was marred by violence and the elections were widely boycotted, but the changes were nevertheless passed. The turnout was 63 per cent, and 92.34 per cent of the valid votes were in favour; however, more than 20,000 ballots—some 10 per cent—were invalid. Following the referendum, and presumably feeling vindicated, Azali proceeded to suppress any further dissent. An international arrest warrant was issued against Djaffar Ahmed, who fled Dar es Salaam, where he was at the time, and where he had allegedly been the target of an abortive kidnapping attempt, and sought refuge in France. In December Djaffar and six others, including his brother, the lawyer Bahassane Ahmed, received hefty prison sentences for their involvement in an alleged coup attempt, Djaffar himself being sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment with hard labour.   Elections were announced for early 2019 and the candidates, including Azali, were to be from Ngazidja—potentially for two five-year terms. It would have been surprising if there had been no backlash on Ndzuani, and in late October 2018 a group of armed rebels seized control of Mutsamudu. Although they seemed to have neither agenda nor spokesman, and were rapidly pushed out by the Comorian army, the incident is indicative of the potential for unrest that any exclusion of Ndzuani, real or imagined, from the political process might provoke. Azali’s suppression of the opposition and his attacks on Juwa’s leaders—Abdou Salami Abdou was arrested for his alleged involvement in the uprising, and in early 2019 Sambi was under house arrest—may end up backfiring on him. Although Sambi himself could not  

 

 

 

 

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stand, the list of 20 presidential candidates included four members of Juwa, among whom the official candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Soulé; but although the first round of voting, held on 24 March 2019, was marred by violence, accusations of ballot rigging, and a low turnout, Azali won an outright majority and was declared the winner without the need for a second round. The economy: rollercoasters and roundabouts The Comorian economy remains chronically dysfunctional, largely through the lack of a sound basis for economic development. In real terms economic growth was negative for much of the 1990s; in 2002 annual per capita income was about $500, barely double what it had been at independence thirty years earlier, and in 2016 it was still only $760; even these figures are deceptive: in relative terms GDP per capita is somewhat lower than it was in 1980.25 Economic development in the country is seriously hampered by the lack of resources, the isolation of the islands and the high labour costs, which preclude any development of manufacturing for export. France remains the country’s single largest trading partner and the agricultural sector is the principal source of export revenue. After a decline in world prices for the islands’ principal commodities in the 1980s and 1990s, exports picked up towards the end of the century as prices of vanilla, ylang ylang and cloves recovered—the producer price of cloves in particular rose tenfold from a low of approximately 100 Comorian francs per kilo in 1996 to over 1000 francs five years later: this was one possible reason for a softening of secessionist feeling on Ndzuani, the principal producer. Vanilla prices, too, had recovered somewhat, producer prices exceeding 5000 francs per kilo in 2002, up from less than a fifth of that five years earlier. However, despite the significant rise in export income, revenues were still not half of import expenditure, and although costs of imports of basic commodities such as rice and meat remained fairly constant, the cost of petroleum imports tripled between 1997 and 2002, an increase reflected in the growing number of cars (and, equally, the growing number of potholes) on the country’s roads. Although prices of cloves and ylang ylang remained relatively stable, by the end of the first decade of the century the price of vanilla had fallen again, hitting a low of about 750 francs per kilo in 2010, and both producers’ revenues and the national economy suffered accordingly; in 2013 they began to pick up and by 2018 the producer price of vanilla was a record 25,000 francs. These vagaries make it particularly hard to rely on the vanilla industry, and incomes often seem like a lottery.26  

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  Food production remains insufficient to meet local needs and the country is heavily dependent upon imported rice even if local production of cassava and bananas is adequate. Meat is also imported since locally raised cattle and goats are generally reserved for ritual purposes. The fisheries sector remains underexploited for a number of reasons: a lack of suitably equipped fishing vessels, poor preservation and processing facilities, and inadequate distribution networks. Local fishing techniques remain rudimentary in character and most fish is consumed locally and immediately. Although Comorian territorial waters could be profitably exploited, the fishing licences are held by foreign, mostly Asian, fleets, in addition to which the lack of a navy or coastguard means that it is almost impossible to prevent illegal fishing in Comorian waters.   Apart from small-scale local industries there is no manufacturing to speak of. Tourism, often cited as a potential source of foreign income, continues to suffer from a lack of infrastructure and difficulty of access. During the late 1980s and early 1990s the Galawa hotel in the north of Ngazidja saw a regular flow of tourists from South Africa as well as France, the former unwelcome elsewhere in Africa and thus a captive market, and tourist arrivals were well over 20,000 annually, peaking at 27,100 in 1994. The political turmoil following the secession of Ndzuani discouraged visitors however, and with the political changes that followed the dismantling of the apartheid system in South Africa, the Comoros faced competition from a number of other African destinations and numbers dropped. The Galawa finally closed in 2001 and proposals to replace it have yet to bear fruit, although the Hotel Itsandra, just north of Moroni, with a small beach, continues to attract international visitors, if mostly official ones. Tourists therefore remain a rare sight on the islands, and apart from a small boutique hotel on the south coast of Mwali, there is little in the way of accommodation on offer to the higher end of the market elsewhere in the country.   One of the principal obstacles to the development of a tourist industry is the difficulty of access. In 1996 Air France cancelled its long-standing route between Paris and Moroni, and since then access from Europe has been dependent on a number of airlines—including Emirates, Sudan Airways, Yemenia, Kenya Airways and Air Madagascar—none of which provided a direct service. Given the reliance of the country on its links with the outside world and the high mobility of the population, the history of aviation in the Comoros has been a particularly convoluted one. Since the withdrawal of Air France—the company had served the islands since the 1940s—and the demise of Air Comores in the mid-1990s, a number of airlines, real and imagined, 197

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have come and gone, often leaving passengers stranded in various locations. Some carriers, such as Air Bourbon, were genuine business concerns that failed through lack of funding; others, such as Continental Wings Comores, appear to have been quite imaginary. Local ventures which operate interisland and regional routes often face bureaucratic and technical problems that see flights delayed, aircraft grounded or routes rendered unprofitable.27   A significant proportion of national income is provided by aid, both bilateral and multilateral, although at moments of crisis, such as following the 1999 coup, aid programmes have been suspended. France remains the biggest partner, although much of its aid is through multilateral organisations such as the European Union, the Indian Ocean Commission and the various international institutions, and it has several times cancelled debts, most notably of 229 million French francs in 1990; China and the Gulf states, particularly Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, have also provided assistance. Among the multilateral donors, the International Development Association (part of the World Bank), the African Development Fund and, more recently, the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa have been the principal sources of loans to the country. Debt servicing remains a serious problem, and the country is constantly in arrears in its payments, although, as noted above, several large debts were written off in 2013, enabling the country to meet some of its remaining obligations. There have been several conferences aimed at attracting donors, such as a one-day Comoros Donors’ Conference, held in Mauritius in December 2005, which attracted pledges worth $200 million over four years, and the Doha conference in 2010 already referred to. Much of this funding ends up paying civil service salaries, which consume up to 60 per cent of government revenues, well above the average for states of a similar size. This remains a chronic problem and can only be tackled by severely reducing the payroll, something most politicians are loath to do.28   The largest single source of foreign income remains the Comorian diaspora, most of whom live in France (including Réunion and Mayotte). Remittances have steadily increased throughout the years, proving remarkably resilient in the face of economic downturns in the host countries, and now account for more than 20 per cent of GDP, up from about 10 per cent in the mid-1990s. In absolute terms, the diaspora remitted almost €60 million in 2016, up from €34 million, or some 12 per cent of GDP, in 2003. This cash is not equally distributed, however: perhaps 95 per cent of Comorians in mainland France are from Ngazidja, which is thus the principal recipient of the transfers; migrants from Ndzuani are more likely to be found in the other Indian Ocean  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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islands, particularly Mayotte, and tend to remit less per capita. Although most of the funds received are spent on consumption, and particularly on the ritual ãda marriage, there are increasingly attempts on the part of diaspora associations to direct the funds into development projects, such as the establishment of village water supplies or electrification projects, or the construction of mosques, roads, schools and pharmacies.29   Over the years the Comorian state has made various and sometimes desperate attempts to seek alternative sources of revenues. In 2000 a block of Comorian telephone numbers was sold to VeriSign, an American telecommunications company, and in 2001 the country set up a flag-of-convenience shipping register. In 2007 a new player arrived on the scene. Bashar Kiwan was a Kuwaiti-born Syrian businessman who published newspapers in several countries in the Gulf and Middle East and who arrived in the Comoros with a number of business proposals. He rapidly gained the confidence of President Sambi and by the end of the year had set up a company, Comoros Gulf Holdings (CGH), which drew up plans to open a new bank (the Banque Fédérale du Commerce), take over the Hotel Itsandra, set up a new national newspaper, develop small ports to facilitate inter-island travel, and establish a national airline.30 While several of these projects were realised (the Kuwaitiowned BFC now has branches in all three capitals, the newspaper Al Balad was published for a number of years), others, such as the national airline, a new mobile telephone operator (Twama) and the ports, never materialised. But CGH’s ambitions were grandiose: resorts were proposed at several locations around the country while the waterfront in the northern part of Moroni was destined to become a luxury marina development—billboards along the waterfront provided an artist’s impression of what was to come until they finally rotted away and collapsed.   In the mid-1990s there had been a suggestion that the state could raise funds by establishing an economic citizenship programme—essentially selling passports—and a potential market was identified in Hong Kong, where several million residents might appreciate a second passport when the territory was returned to China in 1997. This project never saw the light of day, partly through fears of several million new citizens arriving to settle in the country; the idea was revived by Kiwan, who suggested to Sambi that the government of Kuwait might be interested in purchasing passports, which could then be issued to Bidoon, stateless residents of the country, who would then have formal identity documents, allowing for their status in the country to be regularised. 199

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  Although the agreement with Kuwait never materialised, an agreement was reached with the government of the United Arab Emirates, who agreed to pay $200 million for passports for 4000 Bidoon families, of which $175 million would be allocated for a road-building programme, the remainder absorbed by the national budget. However, this money was slow in coming. Estimates of the sums actually received by the Comoros vary, but the IMF suggested that in 2012 the country had received approximately €20 million, which, while certainly a significant contribution to the state’s coffers, was far short of the $200 allegedly paid by the UAE. In April 2018 an official inquiry into the affair revealed that by the time the programme was finally cancelled, almost 48,000 passports had in fact been issued, in theory earning the country more than one billion dollars, most of which still remains unaccounted for.31   While there is no denying that some of Kiwan’s projects were beneficial to the local economy, much like Bob Denard and even Léon Humblot before him, Kiwan appears to have been attracted by the possibility of being a big fish in a small pond and eventually his ambitious schemes outgrew his ability to fulfil them. By 2012 CGH was in trouble, and when it defaulted on a loan, its assets were seized, somewhat ironically, by the bank he had established, the BFC. Legal wrangles and investigations of the economic citizenship programme, and CGH generally, dragged on for many years. In 2017 a commission was established to investigate, and both Sambi and Ikililou were called to give evidence; although Ikililou was exonerated of any wrongdoing, in mid2018 Sambi was placed under house arrest pending trial. Kiwan, meanwhile, was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in Kuwait for falsifying minutes of a company meeting in 2011.   At the end of the first decade of the century, as oil prices remained high, discoveries of significant gas reserves were made offshore in southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique. This led to hopes that oil or gas might also be present in the Comorian sector, and in April 2012 a licence for petroleum exploration was granted to a Kenyan company, Bahari Resources. Since then several other exploration licences have been granted, and although enthusiasm in the country remains high, interest waned following the 2014 collapse in the price of oil. However, if there appears to be no oil or gas in the Comoros, there is, in Karthala, potential for geothermal energy and in 2015 the African Union’s Geothermal Risk Mitigation Facility (GRMF) awarded the Comoros a grant of $844,680 for the development of a geothermal energy project, the remainder to be provided by the Comorian government, the UNDP and the New Zealand government.32 In 2017 the project received further grants for  

 

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the exploratory phase of the project from the GRMF ($8.3 million), the Global Environment Facility ($6 million) and New Zealand ($4 million). If this project is successful it would go some way to reducing the country’s dependence on fuel oil for power generation.   In the meantime power generation remains dependent on heavy fuel generators but despite repeated attempts to establish a reliable power supply—in 2010 China donated eight generators to be shared between the three islands, in 2015 the African Development Bank gave the country another four generators, and at the end of 2016 a further 13 generators were installed—there are constant power shortages on all three islands. Poor maintenance of the generators leads to repeated breakdowns while electricity theft and financial mismanagement see MaMwe, the power company, regularly failing to pay its fuel bills and thus being denied further supplies. A colonial-era hydroelectric power station on Ndzuani has not functioned for some time.   The nation’s economic problems seem insurmountable. The lack of natural resources—hopes of finding oil or gas reserves in Comorian waters are remote—the high cost of labour, the distance from markets, and the dearth of tourist attractions and of infrastructure leave the country with little to rely upon but the chronically unreliable perfumes and spices sector, foreign aid and remittances. As a result it seems likely that clutching at straws, whether selling imaginary assets or encouraging unrealistic investments, will remain a part of Comorian strategy, for want of a better word, for the foreseeable future. The national economy remains a mendicant economy, and endemic corruption does nothing to help matters. Mayotte, again Despite the highly decentralised character of the Union of the Comoros, designed at least in part with the return to the fold of Mayotte in mind, the political and economic turmoil of the 1990s and a growing French commitment to Mayotte—a vast investment programme saw schools, roads and health centres all being built during the decade—meant that the possibility of the reincorporation of the island within an independent Comorian state was remoter than ever. By 1999 a number of Maorais leaders, among them Adrien Giraud, the senator Marcel Henry and the député Henry Jean-Baptiste, were pressing for immediate departmentalisation while another faction, led by the president of the conseil général, Younoussa Bamana, recognised that the island was not yet ready. The former group split from the MPM to form a new party, 201

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the Mouvement Départementaliste Mahorais (MDM) and campaigned for departmentalisation, but in the event this option was not offered at the 2000 referendum: the territory became a collectivité départementale on 11 July 2001, a status that, while recognising that the island was not ready to become a department, nevertheless indicated France’s commitment to working towards this goal.   While this change in status prompted protests from Moroni, Azali’s policy towards France was conciliatory in tone and negotiations over Mayotte remained informal. On an official visit to France in early 2005, discussions between Azali and French president Jacques Chirac led to the normalisation of relations between the two countries and the establishment of a commission mixte to discuss the Mayotte question, although the commission made very little progress. In September 2007 Sambi raised the question in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, the first time in many years that a Comorian president had done so, but then immediately travelled to France where he met President Sarkozy, who convinced him that the matter should remain a bilateral issue between France and the Comoros.33 In May 2008 a new group was established, the Groupe de Travail à Haut Niveau (GTHN), which held the first of a number of meetings in Paris in June intended to lead to a treaty of cooperation on the circulation of goods and people between the islands; again, little progress was made.   In parallel with the GTHN meetings, France was proceeding with plans to hold a referendum on the departmentalisation of Mayotte in early 2009, which met with protests at all levels. Sambi suspended the GTHN as it became clear that France intended to proceed, and on 13 March 2009 a gungu, a ritual punishment that involved blackening a malefactor with soot and parading him through town to be insulted, was performed in Moroni on an actor representing France. Although this was effectively a piece of theatre, albeit political, it indicates how Comorian practices remain inscribed within customary ways of thinking. The referendum was held on 29 March 2009; if the turnout was only a little over 60 per cent, 95 per cent voted yes: Mayotte would become a French department within two years. Relations between the countries again hit a low, not helped by Sarkozy’s declaration, during a visit to Mayotte, in January 2010, that ‘I will grant no one, no foreign power, the right to decide who will be French and who will not: Mayotte is France, Mayotte will stay French.’34   On Mayotte resistance to the presence of other Comorians had not abated. Despite French (and European) investment, the growing number of  

 

 

 

 

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migrants from Ndzuani was beginning to place a strain on public services— schools, housing and health services—and a rather standard social discourse surrounding ‘illegal’ immigrants saw them as responsible for a range of ills including crime, unemployment and the unauthorised construction of housing on land that did not belong to them. At the same time, however, these same Maorais employed cheap undocumented labourers to do the jobs that locals would not do. Although most of these migrants were not French citizens, the character of relations between the islands meant that many of them had social ties to Mayotte—perhaps having married there, or being the children of Maorais. There were numerous incidents of violence against Wandzuani, notoriously in October 2003 when the mayor of the commune of Bandrele authorised the burning of a group of houses constructed on the beach by a group of immigrants.35   The French response to these undocumented arrivals was to deport them as rapidly as they could, and in 2010 France expelled a record 26,405 Comorians from Mayotte, one in eight of the island’s inhabitants.36 The Comorian government nevertheless maintained its position on the abolition of the Balladur visa, Sambi stating that there could be no discussions between the two countries as long as visa requirements remain in place for Comorians wishing to travel to Mayotte,37 and matters came to a head in early 2011 when the Comorian government announced it would no longer allow travellers from Mayotte to enter the country if they did not possess identity papers—which of course very few did—claiming that many of the deportees were not Comorians, but Malagasy or other Africans who were in Mayotte illegally. France immediately responded by ceasing to issue visas to Comorian citizens, and the two countries remained at a stand-off until an agreement was finally reached, under which France agreed to assist the Comorian government in providing identity documents to Comorian citizens in Mayotte, pay greater attention to the rights of those being deported—such as not separating families or deporting schoolchildren—and review the visa arrangements. In return, the Comorian government agreed to accept deportees without identity papers and to attempt to stem the flow of migrants by kwasa kwasa.   Mayotte became a French department on 31 March 2011, the culmination of more than fifty years of political agitation on the island, leaving the Maorais in something of a quandary: what next? The full incorporation of the island into France implied a number of changes that many Maorais—for whom departmentalisation was merely a means of escaping Comorian hegemony— had not fully understood or expected: the abolition of Islamic civil law, touch 

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ing particularly on inheritance and marriage (polygamy would henceforth be illegal), the imposition of various laws concerning taxation, labour, employment and so on, the loss of customary systems of land tenure: the list was long, and while France promised that changes would not be imposed overnight, it was clear that the implications were that Mayotte would eventually be as French as the rest of France, prompting some social unease. Economically, the island is no more productive than its neighbours, and only survives thanks to subsidies from the mainland; even so, the cost of living is extremely high. Incomes are still only about a quarter of that of metropolitan France while goods are significantly more expensive; in late September and early October 2011 there were several days’ rioting in Mamoudzou over the high prices of food and basic goods.   Slightly paradoxically, the new status of Mayotte was followed by some softening in both French and Comorian positions on the island. The GTHN evolved into an haut conseil paritaire, which held its first meeting in Paris in November 2013, and in mid-February 2014 the two governments signed a convention on cooperation on justice and crime.38 On the Comorian side the government relaxed its policy of refusing to talk to representatives of the government on Mayotte—having deemed them illegitimate—and in July 2016 Azali agreed to meet the prefect, Frédéric Veau.39 While he was not an elected member of the local government, this was nevertheless a first step towards direct dialogue between the islands.   In June 2017 Emmanuel Macron, shortly after his election as French president, made a misplaced joke about kwasa kwasas, comparing Comorians to fish,40 which, if unintentional, gave rise to much criticism; whether this prompted him to review French policy on the Mayotte question or whether events were taking their natural course is unknown, but towards the end of 2017 France appeared to be reconsidering the Balladur visa and proposed facilitating the circulation of both people and goods between the islands. Certainly current policy is extremely costly to Mayotte from a financial perspective, and to the Comoros in terms of human lives. As many as 20,000 people may have died trying to cross to Mayotte in the twenty-five years since the Balladur visa was imposed. These deaths—the numbers are far in excess of those in the Mediterranean—can be laid firmly at France’s door and it remains a shocking scandal, largely unknown outside the Comoros. On 12 September 2017 a ‘road map’ was signed in Paris by the two ministers of foreign affairs stating that visas would be free to Comorians ‘who had already made several round trips between the Comoros and Mayotte [and who could] provide  

 

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guarantees of their return’. This new visa regime was to have been effective from 1 October 2017, but was delayed following protests on Mayotte, and it looks unlikely now to be implemented, at least not in the foreseeable future.41   If French government initiatives aimed at resolving what seems to be an intractable problem might have been expected to meet with local support, the opposite turned out to be true. Opposition to any form of dialogue was widespread, and as positions hardened a civil movement, the Collectif des Citoyens de Mayotte, organised island-wide protests in early 2018 that saw barricades erected on a number of roads across Mayotte. The economy ground to a halt as both children and teachers found it impossible to get to school, commuters were unable to get to their workplaces, and the freight from the island’s port at Longoni remained on the dockside. For six weeks the government and the demonstrators were at an impasse, as supermarket shelfs lay empty and businesses folded. Finally the prefecture sent in the army to remove the barricades but the underlying tensions remain. As the barricades came down, however, the Comorian government, fearing a mass return of Wandzuani, hardened its stance and closed its borders to Comorian citizens arriving from Mayotte. Once again, France retaliated by ceasing to issue visas to Comorian citizens, and the stand-off lasted for six months. In November 2018 an agreement was finally reached, providing for greater cooperation between the two countries, particularly on health and border control, and both sides lifted their bans on travel.  

* * * If the past three decades have seen both radical and repeated changes and chronic inertia in the Comoros, a visitor to the islands today, returning for the first time since the death of Abdallah, would probably notice the lack of change or, perhaps more accurately, would observe by how little change the changes have brought about. Certainly there are more cars on the roads, but many of the roads are potholed and poorly maintained. Electricity supplies are, at the time of writing, reasonably reliable, much as they were in the 1980s, but it would not be pessimistic to suspect that this is unlikely to last. Certainly there are a few new buildings in Moroni, and there are mobile phones and the internet, but public buildings—schools, offices, banks and hospitals—look much as they did thirty years ago, if not worse, and the services they provide are unchanged at best. Those with the means have lost faith in the public sector and have established private or community schools and health centres, and draw on village funds and, increasingly, taxes on ãda rituals to finance 205

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local initiatives such as electrification or paving their roads. A small handful of private investors, locals with business acumen rather than foreigners with a desire for the imaginary, have established small businesses—hotels, food production, small supermarkets, small-scale manufacturing and construction, and so on—but they are few in number and struggle with the economies of scale. Most Comorians are content to rely on remittances and slowly build houses for their nieces, largely indifferent to the political intrigues at the national level, at least until such time as one of their own negotiates his way into a ministry and is able to distribute state wealth to the village.   The political scene is dominated by two related constraints: the French presence on Mayotte, seen as the source of all ills; and the rivalries between the islands, embodied in the rivalry between Azali and Sambi. If the power sharing and decentralisation that emerged from the Fomboni Accords and the 2002 constitution were intended to calm inter-island strife, the effect was much the opposite. The lack of a centralised and unitary state has allowed for the continued expression of insular and regional identities at the expense of national unity, and struggles for power revolve around whose turn comes next. The March 2019 presidential elections may well have ushered in a decade in office for Azali, while Sambi faces a prison term: neither perspective is likely to calm tensions, and Mwali’s hopes for another bite of the cherry are of course rapidly receding. Meanwhile, on Mayotte deep social divisions and chronic but selective hostility towards the other islanders play out on a stage on which metropolitan French migrants and administrators grapple with the paradoxes of a France which is not quite France, but nevertheless have little time for Maorais identities in what is for many just another French department, albeit one scattered with coconut palms. The issue of Mayotte seems insurmountable—there is currently no prospect of the island joining the independent state, but the flow of migrants into the island is putting pressure on resources that is only partly relieved by the equally steady emigration of Maorais to Réunion and the metropole.   It is common in the Comoros to lay all responsibility for the nation’s woes at France’s door; it is equally common, and long has been, to speculate about France’s motives for holding on to Mayotte. Claims that the island is of strategic value are difficult to sustain—the island has little potential for a military facility of any importance, and although there is a listening post on Petite Terre, surveillance of the Mozambique Channel could as easily be carried out from Réunion or by satellite. Likewise the economic advantages of Mayotte seem limited. The potential of the island’s Exclusive Economic Zone does not, 206

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for the moment, seem to justify the costs of Mayotte; the discovery of oil and gas deposits could change that, but they would have to be substantial. Otherwise French policy seems baffling, since from an economic and political perspective maintaining a presence on Mayotte seems quite incomprehensible. Perhaps the steadfast refusal of most of France’s leaders since Comorian independence (Mitterrand was the exception) to even contemplate returning the island to the Comorian state reflects both French hubris—the unilateral declaration of independence was not well received in Paris—and France’s desire to remain a player on the world stage: the more footholds, however tenuous, around the world, the better.

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Most visitors to the Comoros, to the independent state at least, arrive through the rather grandly named Aéroport International Moroni Prince Saïd Ibrahim, located near the village of Hahaya some 20 km north of Moroni. The drive into the capital neatly encapsulates the essential elements of Comorian life, particularly that of Ngazidja, but by extension the other islands, too. The road is frequently in a dilapidated state, although whenever a donor can be persuaded to part with some funds, the holes are filled in and for a while the ride is a smooth one. To the right of the road is the Indian Ocean, where may be glimpsed outrigger canoes manned by fishermen or, on the horizon, a container ship—the Comoros lie at the southern end of the piracy risk zone and security teams (read: ‘heavily armed men’) either board (northbound vessels) or disembark (from southbound vessels) here: the mercenaries haven’t completely disappeared from the islands. On the left, and ahead, rises Karthala, the island’s volcano, the source of the lava fields through which the road runs on the way into town. In between the lava flows are villages, scattered with children, goats and rusting cars, and luxurious vegetation: where there is soil, the land is fertile. On the lava fields there is little greenery—only vanilla grows on the older flows where some of the rock has broken down. Also visible on the slopes on the way to Moroni is a crushing operation, producing manufactured sand from the basalt rock, essential for the local construction industry now that most of the nation’s beaches have been mined bare.   Most of this sand disappears into the marriage houses that, in various stages of construction, also line this road and most others across the archi

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pelago: regardless of the variant of customary practice, marriage is the most important ritual in the life of a Comorian, and the house for the bride is essential to the success of the event. Many men will start building a house for a daughter or niece almost as soon as she is born, the funds to do so generally being remitted by family members in the diaspora, and the age of the child can be judged by the state of the building: a simple foundation and she is probably still a toddler; a few walls rising skyward and she will be at school; a team of young men frantically laying bricks, wielding paintbushes and manoeuvring furniture, and the wedding is next week. The nuptial house is important to both parties, for while the house is the property of the woman, it is increasingly unacceptable for a couple to find themselves in the home of a parent on their wedding day. Social structures: women and marriages 1 The matrilineal character of Comorian society accords women reasonably high status despite contrary Islamic tendencies, even if this status has not been reflected in a high level of participation in public life: formal political power remains in the hands of men. Only on Mayotte have women had a significant role in political events, largely because they were most affected by the move of the capital: women were the driving force behind the MPM and the secessionist movement in the 1960s and 1970s. A group known as les chatilleuses, ‘the ticklers’, were redoubtable adversaries of serrez-la-main politicians—as their name suggests, they were particularly skilled at tickling their opponents, a formidable weapon—but even though the island sent a woman, Ramlati Ali, to the National Assembly for the first time in 2017, women from Mayotte have often been limited to supporting or informal roles. Nevertheless, in 2018 two of the island’s 17 mayors were women. On the other islands women are notable for their business acumen—the flights between Dar es Salaam and Moroni are full of women on purchasing trips—and many are employed both in the civil service and in the private sector. However, the combination of uxorilocal residence—the practice of a man moving into his wife’s house upon marriage—and polygamy means that although a husband or a brother is the head of the household, the fact that the former may maintain several households and the latter will be married elsewhere gives the women of the house a greater degree of control over daily life than might otherwise be the case.   Uxorilocality is an unusual practice in a polygamous society, and particularly in an Islamic one, since a Muslim man is required to spend equal amounts of time with each wife, and if they live in different towns, this may involve 210

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some travelling; by the same token, it allows a man to have a residence in towns where he has interests, be they business or social. It is not uncommon for a man to marry a woman in a town where he has a job, particularly if some distance from his own town, thus providing him with a home close to his workplace, and he may well divorce her again (and return to his home town) if and when he loses his job. If this may seem like a somewhat mercenary nuptial practice, the woman (and it will never be her first marriage) benefits from the presence of a man in the household, who will contribute financially to her upkeep and that of her children.   While the visitor might expect matrilineal customs, and the collective ownership of manyahuli land, to quietly disappear in the face of contemporary practices and individual ownership of land, this is not the case. Manyahuli continues to be constituted from property belonging to the men of a hinya, usually when a father builds a marriage house for his daughter, which she then subsequently passes on matrilineally to her own children and, through her daughters, to her grandchildren. Certainly there are exceptions: the high cost of land and the lack of customary networks in the urban areas around Moroni, where most residents are migrants from elsewhere on the island or from one of the other islands, have seen the disappearance of much of the area’s manyahuli; and, of course, French law now requires that land on Mayotte be legally owned under French law (even if by more than one person) and that ownership be formally registered with the appropriate government department.   This tie to the land is, as we have described, closely allied to the customary marriage known as ãda on Ngazidja, harusi on the other islands. Spatial emplacement is strong on all the islands: an individual belongs to the village, and to the specific quarter in the village, where his or her placenta is buried, and this place will frame his or her ritual life. Women of course do not move, but, ideally, neither do men: a man may marry legally under Islamic law anywhere on his own island and beyond, but his ritual marriage should be with a classificatory cousin in his own village or quarter. We have discussed the development of the ãda and its counterparts on the other islands in previous chapters, but what is remarkable about the Comoros is just how enduring the system is, and if it has reached its most extreme form on Ngazidja, the grip is equally strong elsewhere in the archipelago, precisely because it draws people into a web of social obligations in their home villages from childhood from which it is difficult to escape, and these obligations can reach beyond the grave.   We described the arrival of the age system in the islands in Chapter Two, but it is worth exploring it in more detail since it has, or had in the very recent 211

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past, such a pervasive structuring influence on Comorian life cycles. The system has been retained in its basic form on Mwali, in what are called the shungu villages, seven villages on the northern side of the island whose inhabitants marry each other and who participate in the shungu, literally ‘pot’, a meal that each member of an age set, a hirimu, is obliged to offer to his age mates at least once in his life. If he has the means he will prepare a meal large enough for all the age sets to eat, but he must ensure that his own hirimu eats better than the others. A man will prepare his shungu on the occasion of an important event in his life, usually his marriage.   There is a strongly egalitarian character to the shungu, and at the time of the formation of a shungu group the members agree on the quantities of food which should constitute the shungu. Today the details are written in a notebook, which each member signs, and upon the occasion of each shungu the quantities are scrupulously checked to ensure that no one prepares a shungu that is not exactly the same as the others. The shungu, in various forms, existed on all the islands, although on Mayotte it is largely obsolete—only a few older people continue to discharge their obligations. On Ndzuani it continues to be practised in rural areas, but in the urban areas, and particularly among the makabaila, whose age system was never more than symbolic, it has lost its social significance and has been reduced to little more than a picnic among friends.   On Ngazidja, however, the shungu, or ãda as it is known there, has evolved quite significantly from its original form, and is specifically associated with marriage. The young men of the town are collectively known as wanamdji, literally ‘the children of the town’, and there are generally four age grades in the wanamdji sequence, members of the third of which, known as the wafomanamdji, the ‘kings of the children of the town’, are, as the name suggests, the leaders of the wanamdji. The fourth stage, known as guzi, is generally reserved for those who have not completed their ãda and it is socially expected that they do so as soon as possible: the longer a man remains in this category, the greater the pressure will be upon him to do so.  The ãda marriage—and this event is undertaken individually—is one of the most remarked-upon features of Comorian society, particularly by outsiders, since it lasts for several days and may cost the couple as much as €50,000, and for this reason it is an event that is often undertaken later in life. One of the principal requirements of the marriage is that the couple must be from the same village, precisely because the event is embedded within the age system and meals must be provided not only for the man’s age cohort but for all the men of the village. The marriage is also ideally between cross-cousins—a man 212

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should marry his mother’s brother’s daughter, or a woman who falls within that general category, and although she will not be of his own lineage, she will generally be of a lineage with whom the groom’s lineage has a relationship based upon previous marriages.   The time required to accumulate the necessary funds for the ãda means either that this marriage may not be the man’s first or that the couple may already have been legally married under Islamic law for some time before undertaking the ceremonies involved in the ãda, and it is not unusual for a couple’s grown children to be present at their marriage. The fact that many couples have been living in the diaspora, accumulating the necessary funds, means that these grown children may have been socialised outside the island, and it is common to come across couples who have returned to marry accompanied by ‘French’ children who are quite perplexed by the whole business.   The ceremonies themselves, and they are numerous, generally begin a week before the main events with a ritual distribution of the supplies required for the meals—rice, flour and so on—known as the djeleo: the number of meals to be provided and the sheer quantity of food to be cooked require the participation of the whole village. Preparations then begin in earnest and provide opportunities for the women of the village to dance and raise money for various causes. The ceremonies themselves begin with a madjeliss on the Thursday evening. This is an event of Islamic inspiration, at which various speakers praise the couple, invoking their genealogies and calling for blessings upon their union. The brideprice will be handed over during this event, and in Moroni may amount to as much as 200 gold sovereigns. On Friday after the noon prayer a meal is provided for the wanamdji: this is a formal invitation to an evening dance, the djaliko, a somewhat stately dance in which the groom takes pride of place at the beginning of a procession that leads to the village square, where it ends with a sambe, a vigorous dance clearly of African inspiration. On Saturday evening another dance, the twarab, is held—this one an import from Zanzibar—and on Sunday morning the groom is formally escorted to the bridal residence in a procession called the zifafa, in which he is accompanied by an entourage bearing gifts for the bride, including an elaborate array of gold jewellery. For the following week the groom is not permitted to leave the house—and may be fined if he does so—while a series of meals are provided to all the town’s age classes. Finally, on ntswa shenda (‘ninth day’) the marriage is over.2   The various ãda events are often colourful: the dances, the madjeliss, and particularly the zififa, during which the groom dresses in a richly embroidered 213

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and extremely costly robe known as a dragla in imitation of the sultans of Zanzibar. Competition both between families and between towns has seen expenses grow over the years, and gifts that were formerly of clothes and small items such as toiletries or walking sticks are now as likely to be household goods for the nuptial house—washing machines or dishwashers—and even cars. Indeed, the entire sequence of events involves a constant exchange of gifts between the parties involved, for a key feature of the ãda, and one that is essential to the maintenance of social cohesion, is the establishment and repayment of debts by those involved; if most of the exchanges are between the bride (and her family) and the groom (and his), other kin and villagers are also expected to contribute, both to the groom and to the bride. These gifts— cash sums from perhaps ten euros upward—can contribute significantly to the costs of the marriage, but, crucially, they are recorded and must be repaid, creating an indebtedness that endures over the generations and makes the task of ãda reform particularly difficult.   Ãda marriages are widely attended, and the more important the couple (and their families) the greater the attendance. Both wanamdji and elders travel to ãda all over the island—no invitation is required—the former to dance a twarab, the latter to accord social approbation to the groom and, by extension, the town: the more numerous the elders from elsewhere, and the higher their status, the greater the prestige not only for the couple, but also for the town. The accomplishment of the ãda sees the groom move out of the category of wanamdji and take his place among the elders of the town, the wandruwadzima. He can now speak at public meetings, enter the mosque through the door reserved for the elders (and sit at the front), as well as enjoy the respect of the population not only in his own town but during his travels around the island, and he will be fed at other ãda. His status is outwardly marked by his clothes, particularly the mharuma, a shawl that an elder wears draped over his shoulder.   The status of an elder is negotiated socially. If the costs and ostentation of his ãda count for much, on their own they are not enough. The place of his clan, hinya, in the hierarchy of the village is important, as well as the qualities of the man himself: is he a good orator, is he appreciated by the village, is he involved in village affairs? The elders are the power-holders in the town and, indeed, on the island, and the collective body of elders has long been incorporated into formal political structures: most Comorian presidents have recognised their role in local politics and generally listen to their advice, either informally or, in some cases, at formal regular meetings. The elders’ authority 214

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is not absolute, but they are able to impose sanctions on both individuals and on towns that have committed infractions, be they social or, in certain cases, criminal. Hence the ulapva imposed upon the town of Shezani in 1996 described in Chapter Seven.   The pervasive character of the ãda, and the status it confers, continues to influence politics on Ngazidja, where those who have not performed it are treated with some ambivalence. There were tales of elders walking away from Ali Soilihi when he tried to address them since he was not himself an elder, and while such extreme stances are now rare—Azali has not performed his ãda but manages to maintain power—there is very strong social pressure on individuals to fulfil their obligations if they are to have any hope of participating in village life. Such attitudes have understandably led to resistance, often from the younger generation, to the ãda itself, but so far it has proved impossible to do away with it. The ostentation and expense of the ãda have also prompted opposition from various quarters: the young, who face a life of indebtedness in the pursuit of what appears to them to be an archaic custom; religious leaders, who see such ostentation as un-Islamic; and external development workers, who would prefer to see the funds invested productively. Among a small group of dissenters, only high-status urban sharifu known as Darweshi, found mostly in Itsandramdjini and Moroni, have, for religious reasons, been allowed to perform a reduced ãda that is accepted by the community. There have nevertheless been repeated attempts, some more successful than others, to reform the ãda, particularly by reducing the costs involved—in 1914, for example, when the administration placed limits on the number of cattle that could be slaughtered at marriages; and again in 1966 and 1976, when Said Mohamed Cheikh and Ali Soilihi respectively did likewise. In Moroni there have been repeated attempts to limit the number of gold coins that could be paid as brideprice, but even when agreements are reached, they do not last. Initiatives aimed at diverting some of the spending at ãda for productive purposes have been more successful, and a number of villages have imposed taxes on the ãda, requiring that a certain sum be given to the village for the purpose of public works. But the arguments against the ãda per se ignore the social cohesiveness that results, the economic activity generated by the ãda and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that the large community of Wangazidja in France (and, increasingly, elsewhere) would not be remitting funds were it not for their desire to perform their ãda and prepare for their retirement on the home island.  The ãda is unique to Ngazidja: the shungu or harusi on the other three islands does not accord the individual the sorts of rights and powers held by 215

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the elders on Ngazidja, and if there was, until recently, strong social pressure on individuals to undertake it, given that there are no formal advantages to doing so, the practice has not acquired the compulsory character that it has on Ngazidja. Nevertheless, the practice continues, particularly on Mwali, and if the shungu has disappeared on Mayotte, a new version of the ‘grand mariage’, known as manzaraka, introduced at the beginning of the century, is becoming increasingly costly, ostentatious and ubiquitous, possibly as a result of influences from Ngazidja.3 The development of the manzaraka on Mayotte, and the persistence of these ritual marriages on the other islands, suggest that the development of a Western consumer society is not an obstacle to the maintenance of custom: quite the contrary, the greater the range of goods available, the greater the costs of the marriage as individuals struggle to outdo each other.   Likewise, the marriage does not seem to be disappearing in the face of opposition from the younger generation. As with cultural practices elsewhere, as people age, so they come to embrace practices that they railed against in their youth; the ãda, in particular, provides a degree of security in old age: the security of a house, the right to eat at other rituals, a general embeddedness in the social networks of support. It also of course bestows prestige and honour: what Comorian, labouring for the municipality in Marseilles, could resist returning home to dress as the sultan of Zanzibar and be treated like royalty for a fortnight? Whether the younger generation, raised in France or elsewhere, will maintain this social investment in their homeland remains to be seen. While many will become socialised as French, and gradually loosen their ties with the Comoros, others may cultivate a sense of belonging and seek to maintain a potential retirement home in the islands: retiring to a tropical island where one is ‘at home’, surrounded by kin, is often a more attractive option than ending one’s day in a retirement home in a grey European city. Material culture Food, and the sharing of it, is an essential part of the ãda. The principal meal provided during the ceremonies is a traditional offering of boiled goat or beef, known as ntibe, served on a large mound of rice placed on a platter, which will be shared by half a dozen people. Vegetables (pigeon peas and cassava leaves) are also added, and curdled milk and honey constitutes the dessert. Comorians increasingly aspire to eating rice on a daily basis, if they can afford it, although it is almost entirely imported; the average meal is 216

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more likely to be based on starchy foods such as cassava, bananas, yams or breadfruit, often prepared with coconut and, if finances permit, some meat or fish. Corn, once widely eaten, is now considered a low-status food and is generally only seen grilled at roadside stalls. Dishes of Asian origin, such as pilau and biriyani, are popular in the urban areas, particularly in the restaurants of Moroni, Mutsamudu and Mamoudzou, as, increasingly, is French cuisine, generally with a local flavour.   Until the 1990s Comorians, and particularly men, wore traditional dress in daily life and the streets of Moroni were filled with men in the white nkandu, a long white garment known as a thawb or dishdasha in the Arab world, and a kofia, a small embroidered bonnet, on their heads. Today the nkandu is only usually worn on Fridays, although the Muslim practice of covering one’s head means the kofia is still widely worn. Many of them are still hand-embroidered: a particularly fine kofia may cost €100 or more, and Comorian kofias are highly sought after on the African coast.   Women’s dress is more conservative than that of the men, with many, particularly on Ndzuani, continuing to wear the shiromani, a large cloth with motifs traced out in red and white and worn so that it covers almost the entire body, held so only a slit remains through which the woman sees the outside world. Traditionally the equivalent on Ngazidja is the leso, worn to cover the hair. Some older or more conservative women may still wear the bwibwi, a black cloak analogous to the Arab abaya, first introduced to Ngazidja from Hadramawt in the early twentieth century.   Ceremonial garments are only worn during customary or religious events and are an outward sign of a man’s status, especially on Ngazidja. The wanamdji may only wear a nkandu, but once married the elder is permitted to wear a selection of robes: the djuba, a light-coloured cloak; the djoho, a lightly embroidered coat usually of a darker colour; the bushuti, a heavier cloak, once also worn by the wanamdji; and the dragla, a heavy black or dark blue coat richly embroidered with golden thread, once the symbol of royalty, now the ceremonial cloak of the elder. The dragla is the most ostentatious of men’s garments and only a few tailors possess the skills and the knowledge to make one. A dragla requires several metres of cloth, 65 ‘rods’ of golden thread, 24 reels of orange thread and 25 m of black and golden cord. Three months in the making, a dragla will cost the groom’s family well over a thousand euros. Finally, the groom at an ãda marriage will usually wear a kiemba, a turban of Omani origin that was once the prerogative of the sultans and their ministers. The nuances in the way the kiemba is folded are multiple; kiemba folding is an 217

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art that few men master, and they are well paid for their efforts: a well-folded kiemba at a prestigious ãda may earn the folder €2000.   Women, too, have their dress: the bride will wear the striped sahare, worn with a subaya, or on Mayotte the brightly coloured saluva, while other attendees at the various events will wear a range of clothing styles, African, Arab or even European in inspiration. The bride’s women’s association will also have a ‘uniform’, specially ordered for the marriage, which will mark them out at the ãda events—and which will probably never be worn again. Finally, in the urban areas it is increasingly common for the bride to wear a white European wedding dress for her first public appearance after the zifafa.   Contemporary fashions have gradually replaced customary modes of dress in both urban and rural areas. Men, particularly the young, are more likely to wear jeans and T-shirts, while women, even if they do wear a leso, rarely bother covering their hair these days, and this is as true in the independent islands as it is on Mayotte. While this can be attributed to the influence of France, and the ubiquity of satellite television and its role models, there is also less cause to wear customary dress. On neighbouring Zanzibar both young and old resumed customary dress following the end of the revolutionary period, a tendency largely inscribed within the conflict between Zanzibaris and the largely Christian immigrants from the Tanzanian mainland. Zanzibaris assert their identity through their dress: if a woman wears a bwibwi, then she is certainly a Zanzibari; if she wears a short skirt and leaves her hair uncovered, then she is a mainlander. This opposition does not exist in the Comoros: all are Muslims, and all belong, and no external markers are required.   As elsewhere, music is ubiquitous. From the lullabies that a mother sings to her baby, the fishermen’s songs that attract fish (and repel djinns), the religious songs heard at customary ceremonies, or the twarab that is a feature of Saturday nights in the ãda season, life is rhythmic and melodic. There are both customary and religious aspects to Comorian music, which reflect the Arab– African dichotomy in Comorian cultural influences. Religious songs such as qasidas are of Arab origin: harmonious melodies composed of voices, tambourines and flutes that are performed at the religious ceremonies during the ãda or on the occasion of a maulid. Others dances reflect the African roots of Comorian culture: the shigoma and the sambe, vigorous dances for men, and the biyaya, a dance that represents ritual combat.   Some dances are new, or renewed versions of old dances: the wadaha (the ‘pestle and mortar’ dance), a particular speciality of the women of Mutsamudu, is a new version of an ancient dance, brought back to the island 218

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by Sabenas, evacuated from Madagascar following the anti-Comorian riots in 1977; likewise the bomu, also of Comorian origin but which has disappeared in the islands and is now danced only by Zanzibari women of Comorian origin who return to Ngazidja to perform at ãda marriages. Also from Zanzibar, the twarab—the Arabic word means ‘to delight with music’—has undergone strong modernising influences: gone are the violins and accordions of yesteryear; today’s twarab bands have drum kits, electric guitars and a sound system to wake up the neighbouring villages. Most villages on Ngazidja have musical associations that exist only to play the twarab, and as with so many things associated with the ãda, the rewards can be impressive: a good twarab band can earn several thousand euros for a competent performance.4   Money raised during such performances are part of the cycle of exchanges that underpin the ãda, and this is particularly true of women’s dances, such as the lele mama, which take place on the periphery of a marriage and allow women’s associations to raise money for various causes. Any and all may contribute, and, once again, the contributions are noted in a book in the expectation that they will be repaid at a future dance, either by the individual who has incurred the debt or by another family member: these debts are often inherited, thus maintaining the inter-generational character of ritual obligations. The sums collected belong to the association and may be used to buy chairs and cutlery for social events, bricks and cement for the construction of a clubhouse, if they do not yet have one, or clothes for the ãda. This phenomenon of money collection is ostentatious: participants—whether it be a lele mama or a twarab—dance brandishing banknotes, waving them at performers and spectators, often wiping the brow of the musician before tucking the note into his or her shirt or dress. The takings are publicly announced, and by name, and even in a lele mama the total would often exceed €200.   Contemporary musical styles, in so far as they are characterised as Comorian, also draw from sources in both Africa and Arabia, and while contemporary Comorian musicians tend not to play at an ãda, they perform regularly both in the islands and abroad. Musicians such as Decilove, Salim Ali Amir, Maalesh and Nawal have made recordings and have forged an international reputation. Being Comorian Identifying, classifying and categorising native populations was long a preoccupation of European visitors, and the colonial project maintained this obses 219

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sion, referring to a variety of ethnic groups in their texts—Wamatsaha, Bushmen, Arabs, Makua, Antalaotes and more, just as the navigators did before them; although these descriptions reflect the heterogeneity of the immigrant groups who have constituted Comorian society, on closer inspection they are revealed—to the extent that they even exist—more as social categories than ethnic groups, just as one might expect from the absence of a ‘Comorian’ ethnic group from these lists.5   As we have observed, social and racial differences are reflected in the hierarchies established on the islands, themselves a reflection of origins, real or assumed. On all islands there are groups who claim Arab ancestry, and this ancestry is of two kinds. The first is membership of the sharifu, the descendants of the Prophet, and this group includes families whose ancestors arrived in the islands centuries ago, such as the Ba Faqih, as it does those who arrived in the nineteenth century, such as the Bin Sumeit. Many of these individuals are physically indistinguishable from their fellow countrymen, although those who arrived more recently may be lighter-skinned, particular if they have continued to marry Hadrami immigrants. These light-skinned ‘Arabs’ may also include non-sharifu, such as the Wadaane family of Moroni, many of whose members are successful businessmen and who maintain ties with kin in their home town of Shibam in Hadramawt, often bringing men to marry their daughters. Families of Arab origin are sometimes viewed with ambivalence. If on Ndzuani, and to a lesser extent on Mayotte, the makabaila continue to constitute an aristocratic class, albeit a contested one, on Ngazidja, where the ãda is a stronger influence on social status, those of Arab origin do not necessarily constitute a social elite. That said, the sharifu are widely respected.   At the other end of the spectrum are former slaves, and although slavery has long been abolished, the social distinctions remain. On Ngazidja there are villages, itreya, and in the large towns quarters, whose inhabitants are understood to be of slave or ‘servile’ origin. In most cases ãda marriages between free and slave villages or quarters are highly contentious; in almost all cases the social structures are independent of one another: in towns with servile quarters there will be two age systems, one for the free quarter and one for the servile quarter, and the two will not eat together. The descendants of slaves are considered to be darker-skinned than the free classes, but phenotypical differences are more often imaginary than real, and distinctions generally depend upon personal knowledge rather than observed characteristics. On Mwali and Mayotte there is less physical separation between free and servile, particularly on the latter island where so many are of immigrant origin that such distinc220

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tions are politically fraught. On Ndzuani, however, as on Ngazidja, there are villages whose inhabitants are recognised as being of slave origin.   As one might expect, there remains a degree of social stigma attached to being of slave origin and this stigmatisation was formal as recently as the 1960s. Many alive today can recall when ‘slaves’ were not permitted to build stone houses, sit in the bangwe or pray in the Friday mosque. Somewhat paradoxically, there is a widespread denial that slavery ever existed in the Comoros, and until very recently suggestions that it had existed met with some hostility. In the early 2000s the UNESCO Slave Route Project, as part of its commemoration of slavery in the Indian Ocean, proposed establishing a memorial in Moroni: they were roundly rebuffed by the government, told that there had never been slavery in the Comoros. On Mayotte, owing to the influence of French Caribbean thinkers, the existence of slavery is recognised and the project was able to establish a monument in Mamoudzou. More recently the 170th anniversary of the abolition of slavery was commemorated by the unveiling of another monument in Mamoudzou, tellingly inaugurated by Serge Romana, an activist from Guadeloupe.   The population of Mayotte is rather more homogeneous than that of Ndzuani despite a significant part of the population being descended from nineteenth-century Malagasy, mostly Sakalava, immigrants. While as recently as the early twentieth century many of these Malagasy were not Muslims, they are now firmly Maorais, for political as much as social reasons, although many of them continue to speak a dialect of Malagasy called Kibushi. While some observers have reported that one-third of villages on Mayotte are Kibushi speaking, the situation is not quite as clear-cut as that, and although there are villages where Kibushi speakers are the majority, demographic mobility means that there are Shimaore speakers in the Kibushi-speaking villages just as there are Kibushi speakers in the Shimaore-speaking villages. Most Kibushi-speaking Maorais now also speak Shimaore, which is the lingua franca of the island, and all have a shared, Maorais, culture—there is no ‘Kibushi’ culture in Mayotte. That said, there is a strong Malagasy element to Maorais identity discourse, firmly inscribed within the political position that Maorais are not Comorian. Even the most cursory inspection of Maorais cultural practice casts doubt on this assertion, but over the past few decades it has become as essential an element in Maorais politics as the rejection of an Ndzuani element, despite the fact that a majority of Maorais count Wandzuani among their ancestors. In 2006 Daniel Bacar, a French citizen, born in Mayotte of a Maorais mother and Ndzuani father, was forced to 221

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resign his appointment in the local administration following widespread protests at the job being given to a ‘Mndzuani’; likewise, in 2018, the Maorais député Mansour Kamardine was prompted to publicly deny rumours that his parents were born on Ndzuani.6   The contestation of identities on Mayotte is nevertheless indicative of the diversity of origins of the Comorian population. Malagasy (the colonial ‘Wamatsaha’), African slaves (‘Makua’), Hadramis (‘Arabs’), Shirazis and various combinations thereof (‘Antalaotes’, ‘people of the sea’, generally accepted to be of mixed Malagasy and Arabo-Comorian origin) have all contributed to the Comorian melting pot; while these different groups may remain the basis for social differentiation on Mayotte and Ndzuani, on Mwali and, particularly, Ngazidja many of these differences have disappeared. The ãda is a particularly pervasive mechanism for social incorporation, and most on the island claim to be and, despite occasional remarks about ‘Arabs’, are recognised as Wangazidja. The social elite are not ethnically constituted but are accorded status by virtue of their membership of high-status clans, their adherence to ãda na mila, their command of Shinduantsi, the art of oratory,7 their wisdom and their piety. This is perhaps one reason why the contemporary nation state has little traction in the Comoros: customary processes for attributing power and managing daily life are remarkably tenacious and, in the absence of the state, reasonably effective.   The corollary of this is that there are few immigrants in the islands. There is a small community of South Asian origin, mostly Gujaratis, Bohras, Ismaili or Sunni, and mostly shopkeepers, wholesalers or businessmen. Families such as Kalfane and Dramsi of Ngazidja, Mamadaly of Mutsamudu and Issoufali of Mayotte, despite being recognised as Comorian, nevertheless form a community that has remained somewhat apart. There are also a few descendants of French settlers, many creoles from Réunion or Madagascar, some of whom, such as the Humblot family, are quite Comorian, while others, particularly on Mayotte, have maintained a distinct creole identity; there is of course a growing community of French metropolitan settlers on Mayotte. The diaspora: Zanzibar, Madagascar and France In common with many small island states, perhaps the greatest resource of the Comoros is its people, and Comorians have emigrated to a variety of destinations over the years and for a variety of reasons. Civil unrest as well as economic considerations incited people to leave, and Ngazidja and Ndzuani 222

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have consistently provided most members of the diaspora. Inhabitants of the former island frequently left in response to wars, the colonial system, and particularly its taxation, as well as to accumulate the resources to undertake their ãda. Ndzuani not only suffered from colonial appropriation of lands, but it had long been the most densely populated of the islands, and the scarcity of land has prompted its people to move to the neighbouring islands, Mayotte and Mwali, in search of a livelihood. Wangazidja, on the other hand, generally travelled further afield and in the nineteenth century their preferred destinations were on the East African coast, particularly Zanzibar as it became a regional centre of some importance. In the twentieth century they moved inland, particularly to Nairobi, and south: a number of Comorians settled in Maputo (Lourenço Marques at the time, a stepping stone to the gold fields of South Africa), where there is still a Comorian mosque; and following the attachment of the Comoros to Madagascar, Comorians settled in Mahajanga as well as in other centres such as Antananarivo, Antsiranana and Nosy Be. In the post-colonial period France became the preferred destination; more recently, Comorians have settled elsewhere in Europe as well as in North America.   Although there were Comorians in Nairobi during the colonial period, as well as in northern Mozambique, where they were religious teachers, the largest and most influential community in East Africa was in Zanzibar. Comorians were present in Zanzibar prior to the arrival of Sayyid Said in the 1840s and their numbers were certainly increased by refugees fleeing the civil turmoil on Ngazidja in the middle of the nineteenth century: William Sunley suggested that there were three or four thousand by the early 1860s and this may well have been so. After the French occupation of the islands at the end of the century, followed by the development of the plantations and the imposition of taxes, there was a further exodus, prompting Léon Humblot to repeatedly call for emigration to be banned and Comorians in Zanzibar to return. Estimates of the numbers of Comorians in Zanzibar at the time vary, but figures of 10,000 or even 15,000 cited by Humblot and some of the administrators at the end of the nineteenth century seem quite fanciful. In the first half of the twentieth century, censuses repeatedly returned figures of between 2000 and 3000 Comorians, based on self-identification as a Comorian, and this corresponded with the numbers on the registers of the French consulate. If we take into consideration those who, either for social reasons or through a reluctance to fall under the control of the French, did not claim a Comorian identity, there were probably no more than 5000 of them in the protectorate in the early twentieth century. 223

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  Initially many of these Comorians were hostile to France, but as the advantages of being recognised as a French subject became clear (exemption from British jurisdiction in a number of spheres, and particularly from being classified as a ‘native’) many of the community registered at the French consulate. This was certainly true of those who wished to maintain ties with the homeland, since the possession of French travel documents facilitated movement between the islands. Regardless of their legal status, Comorians rapidly acquired a reputation for being trustworthy and hard-working, and while some worked in domestic service or in the clubs and hotels of the island, many were employed in the Zanzibari civil service. Still others were religious leaders—the chief cadi of Zanzibar for many years was Itsandra-born Ahmed bin Sumeit.8 In the colonial period Comorian women rarely sought paid employment outside the home, but may have worked as tailors or, frequently, run home-based Koran schools. Most of the Comorians in Zanzibar were from Ngazidja.   The Comorian community rapidly organised itself and by the 1920s had established a social club, for the more senior members of the community, and a sports club, intended for the young. The patron of the community was the French consul in Zanzibar, who in addition to serving in his official role was looked upon as something of an arbitrator, regularly called upon to settle disputes within the community. In 1930 the community established a school, which, after some years of difficulty through lack of funding, appealed to the consul for support. The French ministry of foreign affairs, anxious to maintain a French foothold, even one as tenuous as a Comorian school, in British East Africa, agreed to subsidise it, and the costs were shared between the ministry and the government of Madagascar. Although official Zanzibari government reports were ambivalent about the quality of the education that the school provided, the community was (and remains) immensely proud of it and many of its pupils went on to pass entrance exams to the government secondary school. Given the poor state of the educational system in the Comoros, this school also attracted students from Ngazidja—in 1933 more than half the school’s pupils were born there.9   As the community developed, two factions arose. The first, known as the Shimalis, cultivated a strong sense of identity, organising themselves into groups based on their villages of origin, maintaining ties with the homeland and practising rituals brought from Ngazidja, whither they regularly returned to undertake ãda marriages. The second group was the Yaminis, who saw Zanzibar as their home, eschewed costly customary practices such as weddings 224

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and funerals, and identified as Zanzibaris, even if they were Comorian Zanzibaris and French subjects. The two groups were frequently at odds with one another, and these differences were expressed in a variety of contexts: for example, during the Second World War allegiances to Vichy or de Gaulle reflected those of Shimali and Yamini rather than a political stance based on French alliances in the theatre of war.   Although the rituals were costly, the attachment of the Shimalis to their homeland implied an interest in the well-being of their families at home. There was a constant movement of people, money and goods between the two islands: young men moved to Zanzibar to seek employment, young women to join their husbands; people moved back again to retire, and this retirement was contingent upon their having invested economically and socially in their home villages, on having performed their ãda. The French administration, after many years of trying to stem the flow of migrants to East Africa, finally recognised this, and in the 1920s the head of the territorial administration suggested that restrictions on emigration to Zanzibar be relaxed: ‘Experience has shown that the Comorian always returns to his country,’ he wrote, ‘drawn by ancestral customs, and he brings back his savings. I know regions such as Mitsamihuli where entire families survive on the generosity of their relatives living in the British or Portuguese colonies.’10   Following the Second World War political changes in Zanzibar led to nonZanzibaris slowly being excluded from various spheres—access to public education and employment in the civil service in particular—and as the advantages of being French citizens disappeared, many Comorian Zanzibaris chose to naturalise as Zanzibari subjects. Some of these individuals were prominent in public life—Ibuni Saleh and Maulid Mshangama served in the first independent government while Abdulrahman Babu, who served in postrevolutionary governments, was also of Comorian origin, as were the religious leaders Said Omar Abdallah Mwinyi Baraka and Said Omar bin Sumeit. However, for most Comorians, the 1964 Zanzibar revolution marked an end to any formal expressions of community identity. The social and sports clubs and the school were all closed down, travel between Zanzibar and the Comoros became particularly difficult, and remittances effectively ended— the export of cash was, in any case, prohibited by the revolutionary government. By the late 1980s, when the Zanzibar government began its programme of political and economic liberalisation and relaxed restrictions on both travel and expressions of identity, the community had lost many of the links that bound it to the homeland. While there are many Zanzibaris who still have 225

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family in the Comoros, and visit occasionally (and vice versa), the economic contribution of the diaspora in Zanzibar is no longer significant. Nevertheless, the Comorian community of Zanzibar retains a distinct identity today and many prominent Zanzibaris can claim Comorian origins; similarly, many Wangazidja have family in Tanzania, and Dar es Salaam is increasingly seen as the regional metropolis, attracting traders as well as providing more affordable health care than France.   Comorians in Zanzibar were readily integrated, even assimilated, into local society, itself a very cosmopolitan one, by virtue of the cultural closeness of the two islands—the Comorian languages and Swahili are closely related Bantu languages, and both peoples are Muslims—but the same was not true of Madagascar. As on the East African coast there had long been small scattered communities of Comorians in Madagascar, in places such as Soalala and Nosy Be as well as Mahajanga, but their numbers remained small until the French occupation of Madagascar and the annexation of the Comoros by the larger colony. Subsequently the Comorian population grew rapidly, largely for the same reasons that the Comorian population of Zanzibar grew: the appropriation of land by the colonial companies, the repressive character of the colonial administration, and the lack of opportunities in the archipelago, and while emigration to Zanzibar was strictly controlled, emigration to Madagascar was not only permitted but often encouraged. The context was slightly different, of course: while in the early years many Comorians fled to Zanzibar to escape the French, migration to Madagascar was within the colony. This, and France’s early-twentieth-century fear of Islam, may explain why, until the Second World War, Comorians were seen as subversive, delinquent and (in the case of women) resorting to prostitution. There was also a fear that Comorians would proselytise, but it eventually became clear that the Malagasy were not open to conversion to Islam and the perceived threat receded.11   The cultural and religious differences between the Malagasy and Comorians led to Comorians seeing themselves as different, and, as in Zanzibar, they attempted to avoid being classified as indigènes, requesting for example (unsuccessfully) that their children be admitted to the Europeans schools.12 For much of the colonial period Comorians were required to travel to Madagascar to complete their secondary education, either in Mahajanga or in Analalava, or at one of the schools in Antananarivo—the Lycée Gallieni or Le Myre de Vilers technical school. Although the numbers were small, most of the first generation of Comorian political leaders were educated in Madagascar. Those without the requisite education worked in a number of 226

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fields. In the coastal towns they were employed as menial labourers and domestic staff as well as butchers, while in Antananarivo they were often recruited into the civil service and the police, the latter particularly during the 1947 rebellion, by which time Comorians were seen as loyal to France: by 1950 Comorians accounted for one in five of the police force in Antananarivo.13 As political awareness grew in Madagascar, the colonial administration no longer saw Comorians as the enemy but as allies to be cultivated, even if many Comorians first acquired a sense of political awareness associating with their Malagasy colleagues and fellow students. The Comorian community of Mahajanga rapidly became the largest of the diasporic communities, and by 1960, of some 50,000 Comorians living in Madagascar, perhaps two-thirds were in Mahajanga—a larger population than that of Moroni at the time and estimated at between a third and a half of the population of Mahajanga itself. Mahajanga was characterised by the presence of a diversity of groups from other parts of Madagascar as well as Comorians, but most other Malagasy were not Muslim, instead sharing Malagasy social practices and cultural points of reference. From a social perspective, therefore, while in rural areas many assimilated, in Mahajanga Comorians constituted a distinct community and were known as silamu, Muslims. Nevertheless, there was a degree of intermarriage, particularly by those Comorians who wished to avoid the obligations of an ãda marriage, and a number of Malagasy of Comorian origin have served in public office, most notably Saïd Ali Koussay, who was minister of defence in the 1970s.14   Even for those Comorians who might have sought to assimilate, the process was somewhat harder in Madagascar than in Zanzibar. The Malagasy maintain a particular relationship with the land, and with the land of the ancestors, rendering it difficult for those without ancestral lands, such as immigrant groups, to become Malagasy. Comorians born in Madagascar, generally of mixed parentage and often with little knowledge of the Comoros, its culture or its language, were known as zanatany, literally ‘children of the land’, which, despite its resonance, has a slightly pejorative connotation; it is, nevertheless, a more acceptable status for those claiming to belong than that of ajojo, as more recent Comorian immigrants, particularly those from Ngazidja, were called. There was also a distinction, maintained by both the community and the administration, between ‘Comoriens’ (from Ngazidja and Mwali) and ‘Anjouanais’ (from Ndzuani and Mayotte), which was occasionally manifested in conflicts between the two.15   Regardless of appellation, in Mahajanga at least, and despite internal differences, Comorians generally constituted a cohesive community and main 227

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tained their social practices. The town counted 17 mosques and most of the town’s office-holders, even on occasion the mayor himself, were of Comorian origin. As in Zanzibar, the community was organised into associations according to village or island of origin, but, unlike their Zanzibari counterparts, the community was numerically of sufficient importance that some of these associations even performed ãda weddings, although few of these were recognised by the home villages.   Since the massacre of 1976, Comorians have returned to Mahajanga, although not in the same numbers; although there are commercial contacts between the two countries, the socialist experiment in Madagascar was not successful and, unlike Tanzania, the post-socialist period has not seen significant economic growth. Although linguistically Madagascar is perhaps easier to negotiate—French, still an official language, is widely spoken—contemporary migrations to Madagascar are inscribed within a historical context and are often based on pre-existing links rather than contemporary opportunities.   Towards the end of the colonial period, and before immigration restrictions were imposed on former colonial subjects, Comorians who had engaged in the merchant marine settled in France, in ports such as Dunkirk and Marseilles, establishing the basis for a process of chain migration that would see a significant number of Comorians in France by the end of the century: France became the preferred destination after the events of Mahajanga.16 In the early years these migrants were colonial subjects, and therefore French citizens, and even following independence a significant number of Comorians retained French nationality, often with a potential emigration in mind. As in Zanzibar, most Comorians in France were, and remain, from Ngazidja—most studies put the percentage of Wangazidja among Comorians in France at over 90 per cent—and among the first generation at least, few saw their sojourn in France as a permanent one: once they had accumulated sufficient funds to perform their ãda, their intention was to retire to the homeland. Although there are still many Comorians in Marseilles, the largest community now appears to be in Paris, and there is also a sizeable Comorian community in Réunion. There are fewer Wandzuani in France, although a larger proportion seem to settle for good—the social imperatives of customary rituals exert less of a pull on them—and the same seems to be true of Maorais who move to the metropole, although the freedom of movement that they enjoy as French citizens and the sheer numbers involved mean that many residents of Mayotte have spent time in France.   As in Zanzibar and Mahajanga, the Comorian community—or, perhaps more accurately, the community of Wangazidja—in France is highly organised  

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into regional and generally village-based associations that organise collective events, be they customary rituals such as the madjeliss or religious events such as maulid, occasions for reaffirmation of solidarity and the collection of funds which are then sent back to the village for development projects. Although somewhat out of date, the website Mwezinet lists more than 200 Comorian associations in France, and there are certainly many more that are not formally registered.17 As noted in Chapter Seven, the Comorian diaspora remits upwards of €60 million annually, and this includes both collective funds destined for the village and individual transfers, often carried back in cash, and generally intended for consumption: many families on the island are supported by family members living in France.18   The Comorian community in France is a large and particularly visible one, and has been stigmatised on more than one occasion by right-wing politicians, most notably in September 2011 when the minister of the interior, Claude Guéant, accused—quite without foundation—the Comorians of Marseilles of being responsible for ‘much violence’ in the city, a comment for which he later expressed his regrets. It is difficult to estimate the size of the diaspora in France—the French 1990 census figure of 11,568 residents of France born in the Comoros was certainly an underestimate—and the true figure today is probably in excess of 100,000. Many of these are undocumented migrants, and hence understandably reluctant to be counted, and of course many Comorians of the second generation are French-born—the French census does not record ethnicity. If the community was initially composed primarily of men, it is today more balanced as whole families move to France. Participation in the political life of the homeland remains elusive, however, even if many potential candidates return to the Comoros at elections in order to stand; a 2005 law extending the vote to the diaspora in France has never been put into effect, largely through a lack of funding.19   The social and economic influences of the diaspora are substantial. The country would be unable to survive (in so far as it can be said to survive) without the vast sums of money remitted by Comorians resident in France, and on a local level the influence upon kin and communities of the diaspora is equally important. Many of the local development projects are the initiatives of French residents, and the je viens, those who return to celebrate or participate in ãda during the French summer break (so called because when questioned on their intentions they reply, je viens!, I’m coming!), are particularly respected, their largesse essential to the successful enactment of many events. The emigrants, many of whom hold menial jobs in France, are treated 229

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as honoured guests, and by extension France, despite the political conflicts that oppose the two countries, is also seen as something of an El Dorado, a destination for the ambitious and a source of values and wealth for those who remain. The chain character of migration is particularly pronounced in the Comoros—rare is the emigrant who will chance his luck in a destination where he has no family—and it is also characteristic of migrants to downplay the negative aspects of their expatriate experience. As a result it seems likely that France will remain the preferred destination for the foreseeable future. * * * The reader might be forgiven for thinking that daily life in the Comoros is fraught with hardships. The political and economic profiles of the country read like those of some of the worst cases of post-colonial failure: chronic political instability and economic collapse, as one observer put it, would seem to condemn Comorians to a life of misery.20 Yet this is not the case. Daily life on the islands is no harder, and in some cases somewhat easier, than in many other contemporary African states. There is no famine, nor even malnutrition;21 there are no serious health issues: the incidence of AIDS is very low by any standards (0.025 per cent, less than most European and almost all African countries), and despite occasional outbreaks of diseases such as chikungunya or cholera, the most worrying health concerns are high cholesterol and blood pressure, more characteristic of the consumer societies of Europe and North America.22 As befits an archipelago, few of the diseases that are endemic on the mainland are present in the Comoros, and only malaria remains an ongoing concern, unfortunately gradually returning to the islands despite a Chinese programme that treated the entire population with artemisinin in 2013 and 2015 and had greatly reduced the incidence of the disease.   From a formal perspective the islands’ economies are precarious: there is, as we have seen, little scope for industry, services or even tourism—there are very few beaches, essential to the fulfilment of a tourist’s island dream—and the national economy relies largely upon remittances and foreign aid (using perhaps different terminology, this is equally true of Mayotte). However, most Comorians are able to cultivate a small parcel of land—although access to land is uneven across the archipelago and particularly difficult on Ndzuani— and thus produce some food, such as cassava and bananas, for their own consumption. Cash crops—and particularly vanilla, prices of which reached record highs in 2017–18—are generally considered to be extras rather than basic sources of income, precisely because of the fluctuation in prices, and  

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vanilla or clove growers are a minority. But the revenue from remittances allows many to purchase food—rice in particular, the principal import. In 2015 the country imported more than 60,000 tonnes worth more than €25 million, providing for an annual per capita consumption of about 70 kg. But remittances do much more than allow people to buy food. Televisions have long been instrumental in providing a window upon the outside world, whether in private homes or in clubhouses or other public places, while mobile phones (and the internet access they provide) are increasingly ubiquitous; the arrival on the market of a second operator in 2016 saw a welcome fall in prices.   This dependency upon the outside world is an enduring characteristic of Comorian life. As we have seen, the history of the islands is one of a constant ebb and flow of foreign influences: Comorians have always travelled and, with a hiatus (more official perhaps than real) during the colonial period, continue to do so; at the same time they remain at the mercy of the foreigners who provide. The country has no national airline, and despite the existence of local companies, it is dependent upon others for links with Europe, Asia and even most of Africa. The constant quest for funds sees Comorians travelling the world, cap in hand, much as Abdallah Shaw did in the seventeenth century, and while Comorians are indeed well travelled—today Comorians may be found from Canada to Australia, and many places in-between—this travel is often dependent on the goodwill of their hosts and their benefactors.23   Political intrigues, however, rarely touch the greater part of the population. Politics are a favourite topic of discussion, but with the exception of Mayotte—and even there the political conflicts are played out on a wider social stage—the constant tussles for power, generally between the two larger islands and, in the second decade of the century, largely embodied in the conflict between Azali and Sambi, rarely have any real effect on daily life precisely because the state is so absent. As before, life goes on, and if Fatima’s uncle manages to find himself appointed to the ministry and can provide financial benefit to the village, then so much the better. However, like vanilla, this sort of income is not something to be relied upon, merely a bonus that, in the failure of the state to provide, is little more than their due: hardly corruption at all.   The most intractable problem facing the country is undoubtedly the country itself. The chronic instability created by the French presence in Mayotte is deeply destabilising, regularly causing dissatisfaction on Ndzuani, where many rely on remittances from Mayotte to survive; if on Ngazidja, whose emigrants 231

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are in the metropole, Mayotte is a political problem, for the Wandzuani Mayotte is very much an economic problem. It is also an economic problem on Mayotte, where the majority of basic services are provided by undocumented Wandzuni and where those Maorais with French papers are increasingly scarce as they leave the island in droves. The unrest on Ndzuani in late 2018 was indicative of the potential for unrest; not surprisingly, the rebels eventually turned up in Mayotte where they sought political asylum, and where the local population were of course hostile to their presence. If the Comorian state is to survive and to prosper, then the issue of Mayotte, both deeply symbolic and prosaically economic, needs to be resolved.

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NOTES

1.  THE CONTEXT: SOCIAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL 1. See Iain Walker, ‘The Comoros: Strategies of islandness in the Indian Ocean’, in African Islands: Leading edges of empire and globalization, edited by R. Toyin Falola, Joseph Parrott and Danielle Sanchez, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2019. 2. Geology is largely from Patrick Bachèlery and Jean Coudray, Carte Volcanotectonique de la Grande Comore (Ngazidja), Moroni: Ministère français de la coopération, 1993, and Patrick Bachèlery, Jean-François Lénat, Andrea Di Muro and Laurent Michon, Active Volcanoes of the Southwest Indian Ocean: Piton de la Fournaise and Karthala, Heidelberg: Springer, 2016. 3. P. Quantin, Analyse de sols des îles Comores, Série de 1987–88, Laboratoire de chimie, Centre ORSTOM de Bondy, 1988, unpublished report. 4. It should be emphasised here that because of the differences between hemispheres, the monsoons often referred to in the literature as northeasterly and southwesterly are, south of the equator, northwesterly and southeasterly respectively. I use the latter terminology in this book, since it correctly reflects the orientation of the winds. 5. Contemporary texts tend to be somewhat specialised but several authors of the colonial period listed the more useful and common plants. The most compendious inventory of Comorian flora is to be found in A. Voeltzkow, Reise in Ostafrika in den Jahren 1903–1905. Die Comoren, Stuttgart, E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Nägele & Dr Sproesser, 1914. 6. Ian Sinclair and Olivier Langrand, Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands, Cape Town: Struik, 2003. 7. Pierre Opic, François Conand and Philippe Bourret, Poissons commerciaux du sudouest de l’océan Indien, Antananarivo: Commission de l’océan Indien, 1994.  

 

 

 

 



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pp. [25–26]

NOTES

2.  FROM THE ORIGINS: ARCHAEOLOGY AND TRADITIONS 1. Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with introduction, translation, and commentary, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Mapharitis was a kingdom of what is today southwest Yemen. 2. Ptolemy places Prason at 15° south, the latitude of Mozambique Island (which, if we accept his coordinates, makes it difficult to identify Prason with Cape Delgado), and Menouthias at 12°30′ south, the approximate latitude of the northern tip of Madagascar (Edward Stevenson, tr., Claudius Ptolemy: The Geography, New York: Dover, 1991, Book 4 ch. 7, 8). In support of Madagascar is the statement in the Periplus that there are crocodiles on Menouthias, although the remains of a large and now extinct reptile have been discovered on Pemba. For a discussion of Ptolemy’s coordinates, see Mark Horton, ‘The Periplus and East Africa’, Azania, 25, 1 (1990), pp. 95–9; Carl Hughes and Ruben Post, ‘A GIS approach to finding the metropolis of Rhapta’, in Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World, edited by Gwyn Campbell, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 135–5. For Angoche, see Malyn Newitt, ‘The early history of the Sultanate of Angoche’, Journal of African History, 13, 3 (1972), pp. 397–406. 3. Brooke E. Crowley, ‘A refined chronology of prehistoric Madagascar and the demise of the megafauna’, Quaternary Science Reviews, 29, 19–20 (2010), pp. 2591–603; Laurie R. Godfrey and William L. Jungers, ‘The extinct sloth lemurs of Madagascar’, Evolutionary Anthropology, 12 (2003), pp. 252–63; Dominique Gommery, Beby Ramanivosoa, Martine Faure, Claude Guérin, Patrice Kerloc’h, Frank Sénégas and Hervé Randrianantenaina, ‘Les Plus Anciennes Traces d’activités anthropiques de Madagascar sur des ossements d’hippopotames subfossiles d’Anjohibe (province de Mahajanga),’ Comptes Rendus Palevol, 10 (2011), pp. 271–8; Robert E. Dewar, Chantal Radimilahy, Henry T. Wright, Zenobia Jacobs, Gwendolyn O. Kelly and Francesco Berna, ‘Stone tools and foraging in northern Madagascar challenge Holocene extinction models’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 110, 31 (2013), pp. 12583–88; Roger Blench, ‘New palaeozoogeographical evidence for the settlement of Madagascar’, Azania, 42 (2007), pp. 69–82; Roger Blench, ‘Evidence for the Austronesian voyages in the Indian Ocean’, in The Global Origins and Development of Seafaring, edited by Atholl Anderson, James Barrett and Katherine Boyle, Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archeological Research, 2010; Atholl Anderson, Geoffrey Clark, Simon Haberle, Tom Higham, Malgosia Nowak-Kemp, Amy Prendergast et al., ‘New evidence of megafaunal bone damage indicates late colonization of Madagascar’, PLoS ONE, 13, 10 (2018), e0204368. This provides a particularly conservative counter-perspective on the chronology of the settlement of Madagascar. 4. Much scholarly work on the settlement of Madagascar focuses on the Austronesians, who now appear not to have been the first settlers of the island. Tofanelli et al. suggest an early mixing of Southeast Asian and African populations on the East African  

 

 

 

 

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mainland before arrival in Madagascar around 2500 BP, see Sergio Tofanelli, Stefania Bertoncini, Loredana Castrì, Donata Luiselli, Francesc Calafell, Giuseppe Donati and Giorgio Paoli, ‘On the origins and admixture of Malagasy: New evidence from high-resolution analyses of paternal and maternal lineages’, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 26, 9 (2009), pp. 2109–24. It is, in this scenario, hardly credible that the Comoros remained undiscovered (and hence unsettled) for a millennium. Southern Cushitic languages, of which there are today only half a dozen, were presumably once more widely spoken in eastern Africa. Note that some Southern Cushitic vocabulary in Shingazidja (mfukare, seven, for example) is common to some other Bantu languages and is more likely to reflect contact on the mainland before ­migration. 5. These migrations were part of a series of migrations out of Southeast Asia that also led, in the opposite direction, to the settlement of Polynesia. See Père Luis Mariano’s account of a visit to Madagascar in 1613 (Alfred Grandidier and Guillaume Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens concernant Madagascar. Tome II, Paris: Comité de Madagascar, 1904, p. 22) for an early observation that Malagasy resembles Malay. See also K.A. Adelaar, ‘Les Langues austronésiennes et la place du Malagasy dans leur ensemble’, Archipel, 38 (1989), pp. 25–52; Alexander Adelaar, ‘The Indonesian migrations to Madagascar: Making sense of the multidisciplinary evidence’, in Austronesian Diaspora and the Ethnogeneses of People in the Indonesian Archipelago. Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Truman Simanjuntak, Ingrid Pojoh and Muhamad Hisyam, Jakarta: Indonesian Institute of Science, 2006, pp. 205–35; and Pierre-Yves Manguin, ‘The Maldives connection: Pre-modern Malay World shipping across the Indian Ocean’, in Civilisations des mondes insulaires: Madagascar, îles du canal de Mozambique, Mascareignes, Polynésie, Guyanes. Mélanges en l’honneur du professeur Claude Allibert, edited by Chantal Radimilahy and Narivelo Rajaonarimanana, Paris: Karthala, 2010. 6. In 1985 members of the Sarimanok expedition built an outrigger canoe using traditional methods and sailed it from Bali to Madagascar, proving that a direct voyage across the ocean was at least possible. See Bob Hobman, Sarimanok, Paris: B. Grasset, 1989. A similar experiment was carried out in 2003 by Nick Burningham and Philip Beale, see Nick Burningham, ‘The Borobudur ship: Recreating the first trans-ocean voyaging’, Maritime Heritage Association Journal, 16, 4 (2005), pp. 10–13, and Philip Beale, ‘From Indonesia to Africa: Borobudur ship expedition’, ZIFF Journal, 3 (2006), pp. 17–24. 7. Martin T. Walsh, ‘Island subsistence: Hunting, trapping and the translocation of wildlife in the western Indian Ocean’, Azania, 42, 1 (2007), pp. 83–113. Many other words in Malagasy are of Bantu origin but probably arrived in Madagascar with the items they named rather than being applied to items already in place. 8. Alison Crowther, Leilani Lucas, Richard Helm, Mark Horton, Ceri Shipton, Henry T. Wright, Sarah Walshaw, Matthew Pawlowicz, Chantal Radimilahy, Katerina  

 

 

 

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pp. [28–29]

NOTES

 Douka, Llorenç Picornell-Gelabert, Dorian Q. Fuller and Nicole L. Boivin, ‘Ancient crops provide first archaeological signature of the westward Austronesian expansion’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, 24 (2016), pp. 6635–40; Walsh, ‘Island subsistence’. Advances in genetic analysis have also contributed to an understanding of the origins of the Comorian population, and although dates remain elusive, one study indicated that 72 per cent of the genetic contribution to contemporary Comorian populations is of African origin, 17 per cent is of Arab origin and 11 per cent from Southeast Asia. Although there is no significant gender skew in the African contribution, the Arab contribution is largely male, which one might expect from ethnographic evidence, and the Austronesian largely female. See Geraud Gourjon, Gilles Boetsch and Anna Degioanni, ‘Gender and population history: Sex bias revealed by studying genetic admixture of Ngazidja population (Comoro Archipelago)’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 144, 4 (2011), pp. 653–60; Said Msaidie, Axel Ducourneau, Gilles Boetsch, Guy Longepied, Kassim Papa, Claude Allibert, Ali Ahmed Yahaya, Jacques Chiaroni and Michael J Mitchell, ‘Genetic diversity on the Comoros Islands shows early seafaring as major determinant of human biocultural evolution in the western Indian Ocean’, European Journal of Human Genetics, 19, 1 (2011), pp. 89–94. 9. Felix Chami, ed., Zanzibar and the Swahili Coast from c30,000 Years Ago, Dar es Salaam: E&D Vision Publishing, 2009. Unfortunately there are very few archaeological sites on the coast from the first half of the first millennium; intriguingly, one of the earliest settlements excavated to date is Chibuene, on the southern Mozambique coast, where the evidence suggests that traders from the north were visiting as early as the seventh century (see Paul Sinclair, ‘Chibuene: An early trading site in southern Mozambique’, Paideuma, 28 (1982), pp. 149–64; Marilee Wood, Laure Dussubieux and Peter Robertshaw, ‘The glass of Chibuene, Mozambique: New insights into early Indian Ocean trade’, South African Archaeological Bulletin, 67, 195 (2012), pp. 59–74). Sewn boats were still being used in the seventeenth century (See de Melet in Anne Molet-Sauvaget, Documents anciens sur les îles Comores (1591–1810), Paris: Travaux et documents No. 28, Centre d’études et de recherches sur l’ocean Indien occidental, INALCO, 1994); the last dhow to sail from India to Moroni was in 1991, although sails are still used by dhows along the mainland coast. 10. Old Sima was revisited and surveyed by a team lead by Henry Wright in the early 1980s. Wright’s team also surveyed Dembeni itself, and collectively these sites have contributed to the development of an understanding of the Dembeni culture. See Henry T. Wright, ‘Early seafarers of the Comoro Islands: The Dembeni phase of the IXth–Xth centuries AD’, Azania, 19 (1984), pp. 13–59; Henry T. Wright, ‘Early Islam, oceanic trade and town development on Nzwani: The Comorian archipelago in the XIth–XVth centuries AD’, Azania, 27 (1992), pp. 81–128.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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11. Wright, ‘Early seafarers’, although Allibert claims to have found evidence of cattle at Dembeni (Claude Allibert, Alain Argant and Jacqueline Argant, ‘Le Site de Dembéni (Mayotte, archipel des Comores)’, Etudes Océan Indien, 11 (1990), pp. 63–172) and Prendergast has reported chicken bones from Old Sima (Mary Prendergast, Michael Buckley, Alison Crowther, Laurent Frantz, Heidi Eager, Ophélie Lebrasseur et al., ‘Reconstructing Asian faunal introductions to eastern Africa from multi-proxy biomolecular and archaeological datasets’, PLoS ONE, 12, 8 (2017), e0182565, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182565). 12. Wright, ‘Early Islam’; Wright, ‘Early seafarers’; Claude Allibert, ‘L’Archipel des Comores et son histoire ancienne: Essai de mise en perspective des chroniques, de la tradition orale et des typologies de céramiques locales et d’importation’, Afriques, 6, 2015, https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.1721. There are Chinese descriptions of East Africa, probably Somalia, from the late first millennium, and although individual Chinese may have visited, the China trade was largely in the hands of Arabs. See G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, The East African Coast: Select documents from the first to the earlier nineteenth century, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, and Friedrich Hirth and W.W. Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua: His work on the Chinese and Arab trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chi, St Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911. 13. The existence of practices that are in theory forbidden (haram) to Muslims does not preclude the presence of Muslims, and Muslims may even have engaged in them. Comorian Muslims today occasionally eat tenrec, and of course Persians drank wine for many centuries, as do many contemporary Saudis in London. 14. Mark Horton, Shanga: The archaeology of a Muslim trading community on the coast of East Africa, London: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1996; Wright, ‘Early seafarers’; Wright, ‘Early Islam’; Jean-Claude Hébert, ‘Le Premier Peuplement de Mayotte dévoilé par le proto-malgache’, Taarifa, 2 (2010), pp. 9–41. It was long thought that any semblance of civilisation in sub-Saharan Africa could not possibly be the work of local peoples and was therefore evidence of migrations in antiquity of Jews, Phoenicians or the like. This of course was not the case, but neither does this preclude the presence of Jews; it would have served nineteenth-century Comorians well to claim to the French that they were of Jewish origin and not savages from the mainland. 15. See Aziza Aboubakar, ‘L’Histoire d’Angazija (Habara na Angazija): Présentation et traduction des textes arabe et swahili en français’, Etudes Océan Indien, 1 (1982), pp. 5–10; Mohamed Gou Ali, ‘La Fondation de villes d’Anjouan selon le manuscrit de Mouchamou ben Mohamed ben Abdallah ben Soilihi’, in L’Extraordinaire et le quotidien: Variations anthropologiques. Hommage au Professeur Pierre Vérin, edited by Claude Allibert and Narivelo Rajaonarimanana, Paris: Karthala, 2000, pp. 495–521; Claude Allibert, ‘La Chronique d’Anjouan par Said Ahmed Zaki (ancien cadi d’Anjouan)’, Etudes Océan Indien, 29 (2000), pp. 9–92; Sultan  

 

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NOTES

Chouzour, ‘Histoire et sociologie de Ngazidja. Le manuscrit de Saïd Hussein’, Etudes Océan Indien, 1 (1982), pp. 16–53; Guy Cidey (Fou’ndi Kana-Hazi), Histoire des Iles, Ha’ngazidja, Hi’ndzou’ani, Maïote et Mwali: Présentation critique des manuscrits arabe et swahili émanant du grand quadi de Ndzaoudzé Oumar Aboubakari Housséni (1865), St Denis: Editions Djahazi, 1997; A. Gevrey, Essai sur les Comores, Pondichéry: Saligny, 1870; Lyndon Harries, The Swahili Chronicle of Ngazija by Said Bakari bin Sultani Ahmed, Bloomington: Indiana University African Studies Program, 1977; Iain Walker, Becoming the Other, Being Oneself: Constructing identities in a connected world, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. Note that with the exception of the manuscript of Omar Aboubakari, which says that Mayotte was settled by Malagasy, neither the slaves nor those who brought them are ever said to have come from Madagascar: although Zaki’s manuscript suggests that the original inhabitants of Ndzuani may have been Malay, this appears to be based on Jules Repiquet, Le Sultanat d’Anjouan (îles Comores), Paris: Augustin Challamel, 1901, and not on any local tradition. ‘Wine’ presumably refers somewhat generically to alcoholic beverages. 16. Sophie Bouffart, La Possession comme lieu et mode d’expression de la complexité sociale: Le Cas de Mayotte, Paris: Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre la Défense, PhD diss., 2009; Michael Lambek, Human Spirits: A cultural account of trance in Mayotte, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 17. See Anon., ‘Materials of a voyage to the East Indies in 1781’, British Mercury, 3 (9 June 1787), pp. 84–5; Peter Mundy, The Travels of Peter Mundy, London: Hakluyt Society, 1919, vol. 3 part 1, pp. 40–1; Henry Rooke, Travels to the Coast of Arabia Felix and from Thence by the Red Sea and Egypt to Europe, containing a short account of an expedition undertaken against the Cape of Good Hope, London: Printed for R. Blamire, 1783, p. 28. There are similar beliefs at Lake Karihani on Mayotte. 18. Jean-Claude Hébert, ‘Fêtes agraires dans l’île d’Anjouan (Archipel des Comores): Le Koma à Ouani, le Trimba à Nioumakele, le Mudandra à Ouzini’, Journal de la Société des Africanistes, 30, 1 (1960), pp. 101–16. 19. Tradition collected by the author in Mbeni, Ngazidja, 1997. This may be compared with a similar myth of a sister donating blood when a wife refuses to do so, discussed in Walker, Becoming the Other, pp. 47–8. 20. There is also a certain logic to this: it is extremely unlikely that a patrilineal Islamic people would have adopted a matrilineal kinship system. 21. Much of what is related by oral tradition concerns Ngazidja, as yet there is little from the other islands. 22. Chouzour, ‘Histoire et sociologie’; Damir Ben Ali, ‘Approche historique des structures administratives des Comores’, Annuaire des Pays de l’Océan Indien, 11 (1989), pp. 17–42. 23. Damir Ben Ali, ‘Organisation sociale et politique des Comores avant le XVème  

 

 

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siècle’, Ya Mkobe, 1 (1984), pp. 25–31. The matrilineal traditions, such as the one cited above, would appear to be justifications of the matrilineal principle to these later, patrilineal immigrants. 24. See Jomo Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya: The tribal life of the Gikuyu, London: Mercury Books, 1961, for age systems among the Gikuyu; Walker, Becoming the Other, on the historical development of age systems on Ngazidja. 25. See Derek Nurse and Thomas Hinnebusch, Swahili and Sabaki: A linguistic history, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, on the history of the Sabaki languages; see also Mohamed Ahmed-Chamanga, Introduction à la grammaire structurale du comorien, vol. I, le shiNgazidja; vol. II, le shiNdzuani, Moroni: Komedit, 2010, 2017. The Comorian languages seem to have parted company from Swahili sometime in the late first millennium. Support for the hypothesis of contact on the northern part of the coast is found in the fact that the Comorian languages are more closely related to Pokomo and Mijikenda, spoken in Kenya, than they are to Swahili, and thus closer to the areas where age systems are found. 26. Noël Gueunier, ‘Le Dialecte malgache de Mayotte (Comores): Une discussion dialectologique et sociolinguistique’, Faits de Langues, 23–24 (2004), pp. 397– 420. 27. Georges Boulinier, ‘Les Princeses shirazi de la Grande Comore ou un autre visage des Mille et une nuits’, Cahiers de Littérature Orale, 17 (1985), pp. 129–62; Walker, Becoming the Other. Uthman ibn Affan was caliph from AD 644 to 656. 28. Mark Horton and John Middleton, The Swahili: The social landscape of a mercantile society, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 29. See Wright, ‘Early Islam’, for Sima, and Martial Pauly and Marine Ferrandis, ‘Le Site funéraire d’Antsiraka Boira (Acoua, Grande Terre): Islamisation et syncrétisme culturel à Mayotte au XIIe siècle’, Afriques, Varia, 2018 (journals.openedition.org/afriques/2064) for Acoua. The mosque at Ntsaweni, still standing, has been excavated by archaeologists, and although some of the dating is controversial, the earliest structure would appear to be no later than eleventh century (Ibrahim Moustakim, Archaeological Investigation of the Mtswa-Mwindza’s Mosque at Ntsaoueni Stone Town (Ngazidja Island), Dar es Salaam: University of Dar es Salaam, MA diss., 2012). 30. See, for example, Horton and Middleton, The Swahili. The revolutionary party that held power in Zanzibar was called the Afro-Shirazi Party until its merger with the ruling party of mainland Tanzania in 1977. Shirazis also migrated to Yemen, where they had a reputation as tanners, and may have migrated on to East Africa (G. Rex Smith, tr., A Traveller in Thirteenth-Century Arabia: Ibn al-Mujāwir’s Tārīkh al-Mustabssir, Aldershot: Ashgate for the Hakluyt Society, 2008, pp. 121–2. 31. Al-Masudi (Les Prairies d’or, Paris: Société Asiatique, 1861, vol. 1, p. 233); see also the Kilwa Chronicle (G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, The Medieval History of the Coast  

 

 

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pp. [39–42]

NOTES

of Tanganyika; with special reference to recent archaeological discoveries, London: Oxford University Press, 1962). The Buyid dynasty that ruled over much of what is today Iran and Iraq in the tenth and eleventh centuries was originally Zaydi. It is probably also not irrelevant that Siraf was largely destroyed by an earthquake in AD 977. These Zaydis were presumably converted to Sunni Islam since, a few contemporary Yemeni immigrants apart, there are no longer any Zaydis in East Africa or the islands. 32. See Boulinier, ‘Les Princeses’; Damir ben Ali, Georges Boulinier and Paul Ottino, Traditions d’une lignée royale aux Comores, Paris: l’Harmattan, 1985; Walker, Becoming the Other. There is a similar story of Shirazi princesses on Mayotte: see L. Aujas, ‘Notes historiques et ethnographiques sur les Comores’, Bulletin de l’Académie Malgache, 9 (1911), pp. 125–41. See also Freeman-Grenville, The Medieval History. 33. See John Gray, ‘Nairuzi or siku ya mwaka’, Tanganyika Notes and Records, 38 (1955), pp. 1–22, on the nairuz in Zanzibar. 34. There has been much discussion of the identity of the various places in East Africa named in medieval Arab texts and suggestions that both al-Masudi and a tenthcentury text by Buzurg ibn Shahriyar referred to the Comoros: see Gillian Shepherd, ‘The making of the Swahili: A view from the southern end of the East African coast’, Paideuma, 28 (1982), pp. 129–48. 35. There was long confusion between Madagascar and the islands of Southeast Asia, almost certainly due to the links between the peoples but also a result of the fact that many geographers still saw the Indian Ocean as a very narrow, if not closed, body of water. 36. Muhhammad b. Muhhammad Idrîsî, Géographie d’Édrisi, tr. et accompagnée de notes par Pierre Amédée Jaubert, Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1836, vol. I, pp. 59–60. The reference to a mountain (jabal) in the interior supports the identification of Andjuba as Ndzuani. Neither Zanzibar nor Pemba has anything that could remotely be described as a mountain. 37. Wright, ‘Early Islam’; Martial Pauly, ‘Acoua-Agnala M’kiri (Mayotte-976), archéologie d’une localité médiévale (11e au 15e siècles EC), entre Afrique et Madagascar’, Nyame Akuma, 80 (2013), pp. 73–90. 38. Gujarati marble carvings were exported to East Africa (Mogadishu and Kilwa) in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and it seems likely that not only were links sufficiently developed for people to be able to place orders in Cambay but the carvers probably travelled with their works to East Africa to oversee their installation: see Elizabeth Lambourn, ‘The decoration of the Fakhr al-Din Mosque in Mogadishu and other pieces of Gujarati marble carving on the East African coast’, Azania, 34, 1 (1999), pp. 61–86. 39. Tibbetts thinks early voyagers also came from the Comoros to Arabia: see G.R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming of the  

 

 

 

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pp. [42–44]

NOTES

Portuguese, London: The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1971, p. 69; Ibn al-Mujawir distinguished the people from Madagascar from those of East Africa and in Smith’s translation says the ships have paddles; however, while paddles or oars would have been features of Ottoman ships of the time, the word used in al-Mujawir’s text, ajniha, literally means wings and in the context of a ship from Madagascar is more likely to refer to outriggers. These ocean-going ships were of some size, and could accommodate hundreds of passenger (Smith, A Traveller, pp. 137–8). 40. Pauly, ‘Acoua-Agnala’. The Vohémar region of northern Madagascar was one of the principal sources of soapstone (either chlorite-schist or the related steatite) in the western Indian Ocean. Numerous quarries supplied artisans with the stone, which possesses the remarkable property of being soft when underground but hardening when exposed to the open air. Receptacles of all sorts were fashioned from the stone: cooking pots, incense burners, storage jars, and they have been found at numerous sites both in the Comoros and eastern Africa as well as Madagascar. Some of the designs produced show obvious affinities with similar items produced in the Indus valley in present-day Pakistan. 41. Pauly, ‘Acoua-Agnala’; Pauly and Ferrandis, ‘Le Site funéraire’. 42. Wright, ‘Early trade’; Wright, ‘Early Islam’; Pauly, ‘Acoua-Agnala’; Pauly and Ferrandis, ‘Le Site funéraire’; Claude Allibert, ‘Des cauris et des hommes: Reflexion sur l’utilisation d’une monnaie-objet et ses itineraires’, in L’Extraordinaire et le quotidien: Variations anthropologiques. Hommage au Professeur Pierre Vérin, edited by Claude Allibert and Narivelo Rajaonarimanana, Paris: Karthala, 2000, pp. 57–79. 43. For a Mayotte chronology, see Martial Pauly, ‘Société et culture à Mayotte aux XIe-XVe siècles: La Période des chefferies’, Taarifa, 3 (2012), pp. 69–111. According to Serjeant, the historian Abu Makhramah (1465–1540) mentions individual Shirazis who intended to settle in East Africa: see R.B. Serjeant, The Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast: Hadrami Chronicles, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963, p. 9. 44. Freeman-Grenville, The Medieval History; Bradford G. Martin, ‘Migrations from Hadramawt to East Africa and Indonesia, c. 1200 to 1900’, Research Bulletin, Centre for Arabic Documentation, Ibadan, Nigeria, 7, 3 (1971), pp. 1–21; Bradford G. Martin, ‘Arab migrations to East Africa in medieval times’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 7, 3 (1974), pp. 367–90. 45. Allibert, ‘La chronique’; Claude Allibert, Mohamed Ahmed Chamanga and Georges Boulinier, ‘Texte, traduction et intérpretation du manuscrit de Chingoni (Mayotte): Première partie’, Asie du Sud-Est et Monde Insulindien, 7, 4 (1976), pp. 25–62; Cidey, Histoire; Gabriel Ferrand, ‘Les Sultans de Kilwa’, in Mémorial Henri Basset, nouvelles études nord-africaines et orientales, 1 (1928), Paris: Paul Geuthner, pp. 239–60; Gevrey, Essai; Repiquet, Le Sultanat. Al-Maduwa means ‘the healer’ in Arabic, and although there is no particular association with heal 

 

 

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pp. [44–47]

NOTES

ing in this arrival, healing is often a feature of individual movements—see below. In Zaki’s version the fani of Mtsamboro gives his daughter to Othman, another Shirazi, and their daughter marries Mohammed. The inscriptions on the mosque at Tsingoni are reproduced in Martial Pauly, ‘Développement de l’architecture domestique en pierre, à Mayotte, au Xllle–XVIIe siècle’, in Civilisations des mondes insulaires: Madagascar, îles du Canal de Mozambique, Mascareignes, Polynésie, Guyanes. Mélanges en l’honneur du Professeur Claude Allibert, edited by Chantal Radimilahy and Narivelo Rajaonarimanana, Paris: Karthala, 2011, and are available online at http://archeologiemayotte.over-blog.com/article-les-inscriptionsde-la-mosquee-shirazi-de-tsingoni-65812022.html, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. This mosque is the oldest continuously used mosque in France. 46. Allibert, ‘La Chronique’. 47. Gevrey, Essai, p. 206. 48. Damir, ‘Approche’. 49. The adoption of the title ‘sultan’ seems to reflect the strength of contacts with the north and particularly the Ottoman influence. The title was also being used in Hadramawt at the time (Serjeant, The Portuguese). The Comorian term mfaume remained in use, particularly on Ngazidja, until the abolition of the sultanates at the end of the nineteenth century. 50. Sharifs, sharifu in Comorian, are descendants of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima through her sons Hassan and Hussein. Those found in East Africa are almost all members of the Ba Alawi clan, descendants of Ahmad b. Isa al-Muhajir, of Hussein’s lineage, who left Basra to settle in Hadramawt in the mid-tenth century. In most Islamic societies sharifu enjoy prestige and respect, although this is sometimes contested, particularly in Saudi Arabia. On the history of the Ba Alawi in the Comoros, see Anne Bang, Sufis and Scholars of the Sea: Family networks in East Africa, 1860– 1925, London: Routledge Curzon, 2003. 51. This lineage, originally from Shihr, in Hadramawt, appears to have been already present in the islands: one Abubakar bin Hussain Ba Faqih was ruling Mwali in the early seventeenth century (see the narrative of John Saris, in Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others, Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905, vol. 3, p. 364). 52. Ibn Battuta, who visited Mombasa and Kilwa in the fourteenth century, stated that the inhabitants of both towns followed the Shafi’i rite and that sharifs visited from Arabia. Piri Re’is confirms that the people of the coast were Shafi’i. One of the principal centres of Shafi’i learning was, and remains, the town of Tarim in Hadramawt. 53. Ibn Majid served as Vasco da Gama’s pilot on da Gama’s first voyage to India in 1498. His knowledge of the Indian Ocean was extensive, but it also reflected the familiarity of Arab (and presumably South Asian) navigators and traders with the region. See Teodor A. Šumovskij, ed., trs., Tri neizvestnye locii Achmada ibn  

242



NOTES

pp. [48–52]

Madžida arabskogo locmana Vasco da-Gamy v unical’noj rukopisi Instituta Vostokovedenija AN SSSR, Leningrad, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademij Nauk SSSR, 1957; and Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean. 54. On the Ming fleets, see Edward Dreyer, Zheng He: China and the oceans in the early Ming dynasty, 1405–1433, New York: Pearson Longman, 2007; J.J.L. Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa, London: Arthur Probsthain, 1949.  

3.  WRITTEN HISTORY: THE EUROPEAN ENCOUNTER 1. It is not impossible that individuals of European origin had visited the islands prior to this—several centuries of commerce with the Arab world may well have afforded them the opportunity to do so, and we know that some had visited the coastal towns of the mainland, most recently Pêro da Covilhã, an emissary of the Portuguese king João II, who had reached Sofala in or about 1489. See Justus Strandes, The Portuguese Period in East Africa, Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1961. The description of da Gama’s fleet’s pause at the island is in Paul Teyssier and Paul Valentin, Voyages de Vasco da Gama: Relations des expéditions de 1497–1499 & 1502–1503, récits et témoignages, Paris: Éditions Chandeigne, Librairie Portugaise de Paris, 1995, pp. 274, 299; and in Jean Philibert Berjeau, ed., Calcoen, a Dutch Narrative of the Second Voyage of Vasco da Gama to Calicut, printed at Antwerp circa 1504, London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1874; and Malyn Newitt, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400–1668, London: Routledge, 2005. As for the tribute, 1500 meticals was approximately 7 kg, more than €250,000 worth of gold at 2018 prices. The gold obtained at Kilwa on this first visit was used to make the Monstrance of Belém, today on display at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon: see Berjeau, Calcoen, and Gaspar Correa, Lendas da India, Lisbon: Typographia da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1858, vol. 1. 2. Comprehensive overviews are to be found in Newitt, A History of Portuguese, and Michael Pearson, The Indian Ocean, London: Routledge, 2003; for Mozambique in particular, see Malyn Newitt, A History of Mozambique, London: Hurst, 1995. 3. Eric Axelson, South-east Africa, 1488–1530, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940, pp. 120–1. 4. Teyssier and Valentin, Voyages, p. 274. 5. Pero Ferreira Fogaça, captain of Kilwa, to the king, letters of 1506, in Documentos sobre os portugueses em Moçambique e na África central, 1497–1840/Documents on the Portuguese in Mozambique and Central Africa, 1497–1840, Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1962, vol. 1, p. 761; see also Axelson, South-east Africa, pp. 240–3. There was long confusion over the number of islands; ‘Lyna’ is presumably Madagascar, if we read ‘luna’, moon (in Latin, if not in Portuguese); Acymae may be derived from Sima, on Ndzuani. The stones that are worth much are intriguing. If the reference includes Madagascar, this might refer to chloriteschist, or even gemstones, although the lack of subsequent interest tends not to sup-

243

pp. [52–54]

NOTES

port this. Otherwise this might be a reference to basalt, which was presumably valuable for construction purposes, and which does not occur on the coast. Subsequent scattered references in Portuguese documents continue to report on the potential of the islands: in 1521 it was again suggested that trade with the Comoros and Madagascar could profitably be developed (King to Sebastião de Sousa, 25 Feb. 1521, in Axelson, South-east Africa, p. 263) and we have a sketch and a description of Ngazidja (see Image 1), dating from the late 1530s, presumably intended to aid visitors to the island ( João de Castro, Roteiro de Lisboa a Goa, Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias, 1882: facing p. 314). 6. Teodor A. Šumovskij, ed., trs., Tri neizvestnye locii Achmada ibn Madžida arabskogo locmana Vasco da-Gamy v unical’noj rukopisi Instituta Vostokovedenija AN SSSR, Leningrad, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademij Nauk SSSR, 1957. The contemporary Arabic name for the Comoros is Juzur al Qamar, ‘Islands of the Moon’. 7. Claude Allibert, ‘Le Kitāb-i bahriyye de Pīrī Re’īs et l’océan Indien dans le contexte vohémarien: Analyse des versions de 1521 et 1526’, Études Océan Indien, 46–47 (2011), pp. 197–220; Claude Allibert and Said Korchid, ‘Une description turque de l’océan Indien au XVIè siècle: L’Océan Indien occidental dans le kitab-i Bahrije de Piri Re’is (1521)’, Etudes Océan Indien, 10 (1988), pp. 9–51. Based on the absence of any reference in Piri Re’is’s narrative to the Portuguese sack of Sada on the northwest coast of Madagascar in 1506, Allibert believes that this encounter occurred during the first decade of the sixteenth century. If true, this episode may well have discouraged further attacks on the islands, for there are no further references to Portuguese hostility in any of the extant narratives. 8. Malyn Newitt, ‘The Comoro Islands in Indian Ocean trade before the 19th century’, Cahiers d’etudes africaines, 23, 1–2 (1983), pp. 139–65; George McCall Theal, Records of South Eastern Africa Collected in Various Libraries and Archive Departments in Europe, Cape Town: Struik, 1964, vol. 4, p. 21, vol. 5, pp. 268–9. A quintal was slightly less than 60 kg, so this is a significant cargo of ginger. Hormuz Island, occupied by the Portuguese for much of the sixteenth century, lies off the Iranian coast at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. See also the account of Balthazar Lobo de Sousa in Diogo de Couto, Da Asia, VII, iv, 5, pp. 314–18. 9. Beaulieu, ‘Memoire du voyage aux Indes orientales du Général Beaulieu, dressés par luy-mesme’, in Relations de divers voyages curieux: qui n’ont point esté publiées, et qu’on a traduit ou tiré des originaux des voyageurs françois, espagnols, allemands, portugais, anglois, hollandois, persans, arabes et autres orientaux, edited by Melchisédec Thévenot, Paris: Chez Thomas Moette, 1664, vol. 1. There is indirect evidence for fairly sustained interaction with the Portuguese, since numerous visitors in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century report that the people of Mwali and Ngazidja (at least) spoke some Portuguese: see, for example, François Pyrard, Voyage de François Pyrard de Laval contenant sa navigation aux Indes orientales, Maldives, Moluques, Brésil …, Paris: Samuel Thiboust and Remy Dallin, 1619, Part 1,  

244



NOTES

pp. [54–55]

 pp. 43–51; and Walter Payton, who visited in 1613 (in Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others, Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905, vol. IV, pp. 183–4) and 1615 (in Purchas, Hakluytus, vol. IV, pp. 291–3); as late as the end of the eighteenth century Portuguese was still spoken on Ndzuani (Cpt. Péron, Mémoires du capitaine Péron sur ses voyages aux côtes d’Afrique, en Arabie, à l’isle d’Amsterdam, aux îles d’Anjouan et de Mayotte, aux côtes nord-ouest de l’Amérique, aux îles Sandwich, à la Chine, etc., Paris: Brissot-Thivars, 1824, vol. 1, p. 134). Although Portuguese was for a long time the lingua franca of traders in the region, this is also a reflection of a Portuguese presence in the islands themselves. As for the blond, blue-eyed descendants of Portuguese mariners, they never seem to show themselves. For a perpetuation of the myth of people looking like Portuguese, see Jean Martin, ‘Les Notions de clans, nobles et notables: Leur impact dans la vie politique comorienne d’aujourd’hui’, L’Afrique et l’Asie, 81 (1968), pp. 39–63. 10. Although there were sailors of other European origins, particularly Dutch and German, on the Portuguese vessels, none of them seem to have written specifically of the Comoros and the only extant non-Portuguese account is that of the Parmentier brothers, who provide a brief description of Mayotte and Ndzuani: see Jean Parmentier and Raoul Parmentier, Le Discours de la navigation de Jean et Raoul Parmentier de Dieppe: Voyage à Sumatra en 1529; description de l’îsle de Saint-Dominigo, Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1883. It is not until English, Dutch and French ships begin to enter the ocean by the Cape route at the end of the sixteenth century that detailed and useful accounts begin to appear. 11. Robert Coverte, A True and Almost Incredible Report of an Englishman that (being cast away in the good Ship called the Assention in Cambaya, the farthest part of the East Indies) travelled by Land through many unknowne Kingdomes and great Cities, London: Printed by William Hall for Thomas Archer and Richard Redmer, 1612. 12. This ship, the São Julião, captained by Emanuell de Meneses, was destroyed in battle with an English fleet. The survivors were rescued by two Arab dhows and taken to Mombasa, whence they made their way to Goa. See William Foster, ed., The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 1615–1619, as narrated in his journal and correspondence, London: Hakluyt Society, 1899, pp. 116–25. 13. Pieter van den Broeck in Constantin de Renneville, Recueil des voyages qui ont servi a l’établissement et aux progrès de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales, formée dans les Provinces Unies des Païs-bas, Amsterdam: d’Estienne Roger, 1705, vol. 4, p. 349. 14. Pyrard, Voyage; Walter Payton, in Purchas, Hakluytus, vol. IV; Foster, The Embassy. 15. Foster, The Embassy. The pilot, a Somali from Mogadishu by the name of Maalim Ibrahim, spoke Portuguese and had a detailed knowledge of the coast and across to Cambay in Gujarat; he showed Roe his chart, and pointed out numerous errors in Roe’s own chart.

245

pp. [56–57]

NOTES

16. William Keeling in Purchas, Hakluytus, vol. II, pp. 515–16. Jordão de Freitas to the king, stating that Cambay trades with Comoro, in Documentos, vol. 6 (1519– 1537), p. 427. 17. Walter Payton, in Purchas, Hakluytus, vol. IV, p. 292. 18. Martin Pring to the East India Company, 12 Nov. 1617, in Foster, Letters Received, vol. 6, 1617, p. 172. Likewise, in 1620 Beaulieu reported that the Wangazidja had recovered so many reals from the wreck of the Portuguese carrack that they had no further need for money (Beaulieu, ‘Memoire’). The most commonly accepted coin in the Indian Ocean at the time was the Spanish dollar, or piece of eight reals, weighing about an ounce or 28 g. Later coins such as the Maria Theresa dollar and the French five franc piece would be of a similar size. Note that the use of these dollars, also known as piastres, was so widespread that the word real was often used to refer to them, particularly in later years once reals themselves (smaller coins weighing about 3.5 g) had ceased to circulate. Today the riyal is the unit of currency in a number of countries, from Morocco to Cambodia; the name for the Malagasy currency, ariary, is cognate with real; and the word has also passed into Comorian: although now rarely seen, the five franc coin is called a riali and in Comorian prices are cited in rialis: riali jana, 100 rials, is 500 francs. 19. Sir Thomas Herbert, Bart., Some Yeares Travels into Africa and Asia the Great: Travels Begun Anno 1626, London: Printed by R. Bishop for Jacob Blome and Richard Bishop, 1638. 20. William Foster, ed., The English Factories in India, 1624–1629: A calendar of documents in the India Office, etc. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909, p. 104 21. 20 Feb. 1630, Edward Heynes to the East India Company, in Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, East Indies and Persia, 1630–1634, preserved in the Public Record Office and the Indian Office, edited by W. Noel Sainsbury, London: HMSO, 1892, p. 4. 22. Spilberg calls them ‘semi-Lusitanos’, in Gotthard Arthus, Indiæ orientalis pars septima; nauigationes duas, primum, trium annorum, à Georgio Spilbergio, trium nauium præfecto, ann. 1601, ex Selandia in Indiam Orientalem susceptam …, Frankfurt: Wolfgang Richter, 1606, p. 13. 23. Since one of the fanis was called Said Abubacar bin Said Hussein Ba Faqih, we may assume that the queen’s husband, whether king or consort, was Said Hussein. In 1803 Sultan Abdallah I, during a visit to Bombay, informed the East India Company that there had been four Shirazis, one of whom went to Mwali, undoubtedly an attempt to justify Ndzuani’s rule over the island (‘Extract of political letter from Bombay dated 10 August 1804’, in India Office Records [hereafter IOR], F/4/177/3190, Correspondence, Aug. 1796—Aug. 1804, Rejection by the Company of the offer of the King of Baba to cede to them the island of Johanna [Anjouan] and its dependencies (includes a genealogical table of the Anjouan Royal Family). 24. Nicholas Sharp, in Foster, The English Factories in India, 1624–1629, pp. 356–7.  

 

 

 

 

246



pp. [57–60]

NOTES

25. While I try to respect the chronology of British history, to avoid awkward phraseology, I occasionally use ‘English’ where ‘British’ would be accurate. In 1595 the East India Company fleets were English. By 1860, ships were British. 26. Although French and Dutch also continued to visit the Comoros, both nations soon found alternatives: the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope from 1652 and the French at Réunion from the late 1660s. 27. Peter Mundy, The Travels of Peter Mundy, London: Hakluyt Society, 1919, vol. 3 part 1, p. 37. Davis noted that the walls of Domoni were largely in ruins (Davis in Purchas, Hakluytus, vol. II, p. 311). 28. ‘James Birkdale’s Account of the Outward Voyage of the London’ [Marine Records, vol. lxiv. p. 1), 30 July 1639, in Foster, The English Factories in India, p. 170. This piece of land, about 4 km west of Mutsamudu near the modern village of Mjimandra, was given to Captain Christopher Brown of the William when he visited the island in 1626 and was formally granted to the East India Company by Abdullah Shaw when he visited London in 1676. 29. James Slade, Matthew Wills, John Roberts, Humphrey Pynn and William Minors, aboard the Mary [at Swally], to the Company, 9 December 1631, in Foster, The English Factories in India, pp. 177–8. See also Louis August Bellanger de Lespinay, Mémoirs de L.A. Bellanger de Lespinay, vendômois, sur son voyage aux Indes orientales (1670–1675), Vendôme: Charles Huet, 1895, pp. 54–6. 30. John Ovington, A Voyage to Suratt, in the Year 1689, Giving a Large Account of That City, and Its Inhabitants, and of the English Factory There, London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, 1696. 31. Robert Ross, ‘The Dutch on the Swahili coast, 1776–1778: Two slaving journals, Part 1’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 19, 2 (1986), p. 331. 32. Anon., A Letter from a Gentleman on Board an Indiaman to His Friend in London, Giving an Account of the Island of Joanna in the Year 1784, London: John Stockdale, 1789. 33. William Jones, ‘Remarks on the island of Hinzouan, or Johanna’, Asiatic Researches, 2 (1790), pp. 77–107. 34. The latter seems more likely given both his age (in 1750 he was ‘much advanced in years’, John-Henry Grose, A Voyage to the East-Indies, with Observations on Various Parts There, London: Printed for S. Hooper and A. Morley, 1757, p. 28) and the precedent for passing on names (see, for example, Jeremy Prestholdt, ‘Similitude and empire: On Comorian strategies of Englishness’, Journal of World History, 18, 2 (2007), pp. 113–38; Ross, ‘The Dutch’; Ovington, A Voyage). Jean Martin suggests that Purser Jack was Bombay Jack: see Chapter Four. 35. Henry Rooke, Travels to the Coast of Arabia Felix and from Thence by the Red Sea and Egypt to Europe, containing a short account of an expedition undertaken against the Cape of Good Hope, London: Printed for R. Blamire, 1783, pp. 21–2. 36. See, for example, Austin Bissell, ‘A voyage from England to the Red-sea, and along  

 

 

 

 

 

247

pp. [60–61]

NOTES

the east coast of Arabia to Bombay, by a squadron under the command of Commodore (afterwards Rear-Admiral) John Blankett’, in Collection of Nautical Memoirs and Journals: Mostly Published, Originally, at the Charge of the East India Company, Now Reprinted for the Use of the Royal Navy, at the Desire of the Commissioners for Executing the Office of Lord High Admiral, edited by Alexander Dalrymple, London: William Ballantine, 1806; James Prior, Voyage along the Eastern Coast of Africa, to Mosambique, Johanna, and Quiloa; to St. Helena; to Rio De Janeiro, Bahia, and Pernambuco in Brazil, in the Nisus Frigate, London: Sir R. Phillips and Co., 1819. See also Prestholdt, ‘Similitude’. Such names were also used in Madagascar ( Jane Hooper, Feeding Globalization: Madagascar and the provisioning trade, 1600–1800, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017). 37. Rooke, Travels, p. 26. 38. Ovington, A Voyage; Pike in Anne Molet-Sauvaget, Documents anciens sur les îles Comores (1591–1810), Paris: INALCO, Centre d’études et de recherches sur l’ocean Indien occidental, Travaux et documents No. 28, 1994. 39. European ships usually only called on the outward voyage: Ndzuani was cheaper than the Cape, and not French, unlike Île de France. On the return voyage Company ships generally took the outside passage, to the east of Madagascar, rather than the Mozambique Channel; although they occasionally called at the Mascarenes or the Cape, the first homebound port of call was usually St Helena. 40. See Edward A. Alpers, ‘Gujarat and the trade of East Africa, c.1500–1800’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 9, 1 (1976), pp. 22–44. According to Brouwer, the trade with Arabia seems to have been with Shihr and Qishn—in Hadramawt—rather than with Aden or Mokha, a reflection of the Hadrami origins of the traders in the islands; C.G. Brouwer, ‘Non-Western shipping movements in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden during the 2nd and 3rd decades of the 17th century, according to the records of the Dutch East India Company (Part 1)’, Die Welt des Islams, 31, 2 (1991), pp. 105–67, and ‘Part 2’, ibid., 32, 1 (1992), pp. 6–40. Note that some islanders also spoke Gujarati and Hindustani as well as Arabic. 41. Saris, in Purchas, Hakluytus, vol. III; Coverte, in Robert Kerr, A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, Edinburgh: Printed by George Ramsay and Company, vol. 8, 1813, p. 320. 42. Davis, in Purchas, Hakluytus, vol. II; Saris, in Purchas, Hakluytus, vol. III. The ‘Guzerate pintado’ is a cloth today known as a kanga in Swahili. Early forms of this cloth were spotted, and it was so called because of its resemblance to the plumage of the guinea fowl—pintada in Portuguese, kanga in Swahili. 43. John Fryer, John Fryer’s East India and Persia, Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1909, vol. 1, p. 62.  

 

 

 

248



NOTES

pp. [61–63]

44. Fryer, John Fryer’s East India, p. 62. 45. Pyrard, Voyage, 1619; Spilberg, in ‘Relation du 1 voyage de Georges Spilberg en qualité d’amiral, aux Indes orientales’, in Constantin de Renneville, Recueil des voyages qui ont servi a l’établissement et aux progrez de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales, formée dans les Provinces-Unies des Païs-bas, Paris: Pierre Caillous, 1725, vol. 4, p. 44. While ‘Turk’ is often used as a generic term for Muslims of West Asian origin, there may well have been a few Turks in the islands: see Giancarlo Casale, ‘Ethnic composition of Ottoman ship crews and the “Rumi Challenge” to Portuguese identity’, Medieval Encounters, 13 (2007), pp. 122–44. 46. Herbert, Some Yeares. 47. Crosby in Foster, The English Factories in India, 1622–1623; Pyrard, Voyage. 48. Herbert, Some Yeares. 49. This is only supposition and this description may refer to locally born Arabs of mixed Arab and African parentage. The inhabitants from the coastal regions of Madagascar are also largely of African origin and it is only the highland populations who are visibly of Indonesian ancestry. 50. François Martin, Description du premier voyage faict aux Indes orientales par les François en l’an 1603, Paris: Laurens Sonnius, 1604, p. 24. 51. Allibert and Said Korchid, ‘Une description’, p. 27. 52. Beaulieu (‘Memoire’), p. 27. In either case, anyone thus branded would presumably not have been born a Muslim and was therefore likely to have been a slave at some point, regardless of the meaning of these marks. Note that Ibn Battuta observed individuals with similar marks in Kilwa in the fourteenth century (H.A.R. Gibb, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, AD 1325–1354, Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society, 1962, vol. II, p. 379) and Herbert (Some Yeares), Revett (in William Foster, ed., The Journal of John Jourdain, 1608–1617, Describing His Experiences in Arabia, India, and the Malay Archipelago, Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1905, pp. 23–9) and Lobo de Sousa (De Couto, Da Asia, VII, iv, 5) all also commented on these marks. But see also Pires on Abyssinians (Armando Cortesao, ed., The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: An account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512–1515, London: Hakluyt Society, 1944, vol. I, p. 8). 53. The term ‘Bushmen’ is probably an early European misunderstanding of the Comorian word for Malagasy, wabushi; wamatsaha (literally ‘people of the bush’) in turn would appear to be a reverse construction from this European word rather than an original appellation. 54. A factory was a trading post or warehouse established by European traders across the Indian Ocean, see Foster, The English Factories in India, 1661–1664, pp. 129– 30, for reference to one on Ndzuani: there is no record of when it might have been established. On the Portuguese presence generally, see, inter alia, ‘A voyage to the East Indies by the Sieur Lullier’, in William Symson, A New Voyage to the East  

249

pp. [64–68]

NOTES

Indies, London: Printed by H. Meere for A. Bettesworth, 1715, pp. 246–7; La Roque, Voyage de l’Arabie heureuse, par l’océan Oriental, et le détroit de la Mer Rouge, Paris: André Cailleau, 1716; Robert Tindall, Nicholas Read and William Curtis, aboard the Farewell at Johanna, to the Company, 27 May 1647, in Foster, The English Factories in India, 1646–1650, p. 132. 55. Foster, The Embassy. 56. Payton, in Purchas, Hakluytus, vol. IV. This sounds more like Fomboni, although Payton had been to Mwali before and would presumably have known. 57. Martin called the sixteenth century the ‘heroic age’ of the Hadramawt, marked by civil unrest, war, famine and disease: Bradford G. Martin, ‘Arab migrations to East Africa in medieval times’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 7, 3 (1974), p. 371. 58. Newitt, A History of Portuguese; Strandes, The Portuguese Period. 59. Although it seems likely that the more important migratory movements occurred later in the century, suggestions that people fled Kilwa, and possibly elsewhere in East Africa, in reaction to Portuguese aggression, may be supported by evidence of the settlement of ‘Moors’ at Matitana in southeast Madagascar between about 1509 and 1514: see R.K. Kent, ‘Madagascar and the islands of the Indian Ocean’, in General History of Africa, vol. V: Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, edited by B.A. Ogot, Oxford: Heinemann, 1992, p. 851; Newitt, ‘The Comoro Islands’, cf. Martin, ‘Arab migrations’. 60. From Ovington, A Voyage, repeated by Symson (A New Voyage), who had presumably read Ovington. 61. Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, Amsterdam: Gosse fils, 1773, vol. 1, p. 361; Martin, ‘Arab migrations’. 62. Grose, A Voyage; Jones, ‘Remarks’; Capmartin and Epidariste Colin, ‘Essai sur les îles Comores’, Annales des Voyages, de la Géographie et de l’Histoire de Malte-Brun, 13 (1811), pp. 129–70; Bradford G. Martin, ‘Migrations from Hadramawt to East Africa and Indonesia, c.1200 to 1900’, Research Bulletin, Centre for Arabic Documentation, Ibadan, Nigeria, 7, 3 (1971), pp. 1–21. 63. In the early seventeenth century Ndzuani was ruled by a queen by the name of Mollana Alachorra who lived in Domoni, and if the governor of Mutsamudu was ‘Arab by birth’, he was undoubtedly a prince by virtue of being the son of the queen (Van den Broeck, 1705). Later in the century the island was once again being ruled by a dowager queen, although the late king’s brother was acting as her son’s regent— this may have been Manau Idarus, the widow of Alawi al-Masela (Melet in MoletSauvaget, Documents anciens). This would appear to be confirmed by the contradiction between William Jones’s statement that Sultan Ahmed was the sixth king and Zaki’s genealogy that refers to a number of queens, not least of which was Ahmed’s own grandmother, Halima II ( Jones, ‘Remarks’).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

250



NOTES

pp. [68–70]

64. Théophile Frappaz, ‘Extrait de la relation d’un voyage à Madagascar, à Anjouan et aux Seychelles en 1818–1819’, Annales Maritimes et Coloniales, 1820, pp. 229– 73; Jones, ‘Remarks’. These limits on the sultan’s power were also reported by Johnson, who states that the queen required the consent of the nobility in order to provide assistance to the pirates Misson and Caraccioli (Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, Mineola: Dover Publications, 1999, p. 416). 65. Grose, A Voyage; Anne Lombard-Jourdan, ‘Une description inédite des îles Comores (1743)’, Omaly sy Anio, 11 (1980), pp. 177–99; Ross, ‘The Dutch’, p. 311. 66. Rooke says that ‘the original Joanna natives are by no means thoroughly reconcil’d to this usurpation and still look upon their conquerors with an evil eye’ (Rooke, Travels, p. 23). 67. It seems unlikely that an English sailor would have intervened in such a way and there is no record of this in the archives. It is more probable that Tumpa was shot with a gun supplied by the English. The most comprehensive account of Tumpa’s uprising is to be found in the manuscript of Said Ahmed Zaki, who dates this to the 1770s. However, there is no mention of unrest by visitors until the 1780s, by which time both Rooke and Jones suggest that the islanders were not happy with the Arab ruling classes: Jones, who visited in 1783, speaks of ‘civil commotions’, ‘probably occasioned by the insolence of an oligarchy naturally hostile to king and people.’ ( Jones, ‘Remarks’, p. 106). It is not until 1784 that there are reports of a ‘very serious war with the aborigines of the island’ (Anon., ‘A Letter’, p. 7), so this latter date seems more likely. See also Adjmaël Halidi, ‘Comores: Imaginaire social et vide stratégique, ou les Comores postcoloniales’, Paper presented at the Festival d’Arts Contemporains des Comores, Moroni, 2014. 68. Newitt cites an early-eighteenth-century manuscript that recounts how the rulers of Ndzuani would expect the rural population to provide foodstuffs for sale to passing ships but failed to pass on the proceeds of such sales. Newitt, ‘The Comoro Islands’, p. 155. 69. Jones, ‘Remarks’, p. 104. 70. Fryer, John Fryer’s East India. 71. Ovington, A Voyage. On Littleton, see Alexander Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies, Being the Observations and Remarks of Capt. Alexander Hamilton, who spent his time there from the year 1688 to 1723, Edinburgh: Printed by John Mosman, 1727. 72. Foulis on the Scarborough, in Molet-Sauvaget, Documents anciens, pp. 60–1; 2000 dollars from Johnson, A General History, p. 503. The king was clearly wealthy if he could afford to pay this sort of money. 73. Lombard-Jourdan, ‘Une description inédite’. 74. Alfred Grandidier and Guillaume Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens concernant Madagascar, Paris: Comité de Madagascar, vol. 3, 1905. 75. Davis in Purchas, Hakluytus, vol. II.

251

pp. [70–76]

NOTES

76. Symson, A New Voyage. 77. Anon., ‘Materials of a voyage to the East Indies in 1781’, British Mercury, 4 (23 June 1787), pp. 107–12; Anton Pantaleon Hove, Tours for Scientific and Economical Research Made in Guzerat, Kattiawar, and the Conkuns, in 1787–88, Bombay: Printed for Govt. at the Bombay Education Society’s Press, 1855; Jones, ‘Remarks’; Rooke, Travels. 78. Péron, Mémoires. 79. Anon., A Letter. 80. Damir Ben Ali, Georges Boulinier and Paul Ottino, Traditions d’une lignée royale aux Comores, Paris: l’Harmattan, 1985. 81. Damir et al., Traditions. 82. Damir et al., Traditions. 83. Jones, ‘Remarks’. 84. Streynsham Master, The Diaries of Streynsham Master 1675–1680 and Other Contemporary Papers Relating Thereto, Vol. 1, The Diary 1675–1677, London: John Murray, 1911, pp. 233–40; Foster, The English Factories in India, 1661–1664, pp. 129–30. This offer may have been prompted by an incident involving the Portuguese viceroy of India who was travelling to Goa in an English ship and who, upon arrival in Ndzuani, alleged that the islanders had robbed their factory. He tried to take 42 islanders prisoner as compensation but was prevented from doing so by the commander of the fleet, the Earl of Marlborough. 85. Master, The Diaries. See also letter, ‘East India Company to Sultan Shaw Haw Aloharan, Lord of the island of Johanna’, dated 26 Dec. 1676, in IOR, E/3/88, East India Company, Original Correspondence, Letter Book 5, 1672–1678. 86. And not just by Ndzuani: the king of Mayotte had also offered his island to the English. In 1646 John Smart, leader of the Assada colony, visited Mayotte where Sultan Omar, the king of Mayotte, ‘tells us that his desire was to be “son and subject” of the king of England’ ( John Smart to the Hon. Thomas Kynnaston, 23 June 1646, in Alfred Grandidier and Guillaume Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens concernant Madagascar, Paris: Comité de Madagascar, vol. 5, 1907, p. 517). 87. IOR, H/478, H/478 Wellesley Papers No. 22, 1801, and IOR, E/1/37, East India Company, Original Correspondence, ff. 81–85v: 8 May 1752—9 May 1752. He also requested three men of war, five muskets and twenty brass mortars. 88. Johnson, A General History, pp. 516–17, 539. The name Sorez does not seem to correspond to any contemporary localities on Mayotte and may simply indicate a town occupied by Shirazis. 89. Johnson, A General History, p. 503. 90. Presumably following the loss of an East India Company ship, the Cassandra, to the pirates England and Taylor the same year, whose crew was saved by the islanders. In consequence Alexander Hamilton reported that ships had stopped calling at the island. See Clement Downing, A Compendious History of the Indian Wars;  

 

 

 

252

 



pp. [76–78]

NOTES

 with an Account of the Rise, Progress, Strength, and Forces of Angria the Pyrate. Also the Transactions of a Squadron of Men of War under Commodore Matthews, Sent to the East-Indies to Suppress the Pyrates, to Which is Annex’d, an Additional History of the Wars, with an Account of the Life of John Plantain, a Notorious Pyrate at Madagascar, London: Printed for T. Cooper, 1737. 91. IOR, F/4/177/3190, Correspondence, Aug. 1796—Aug. 1804, Rejection by the Company of the offer of the King of Baba to cede to them the island of Johanna [Anjouan] and its dependencies (includes a genealogical table of the Anjouan Royal Family). 92. See, for example, Thomas Vernet, ‘Les Réseaux de traite de l’Afrique orientale: Côte swahili, Comores et nord-ouest de Madagascar (vers 1500–1750)’, Cahiers des Anneaux de la Mémoire, 9 (2006), pp. 67–107; Solofo Randrianja and Stephen Ellis, Madagascar: A short history, London: Hurst and Co., 2009; Gwyn Campbell, An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar 1750–1895: The rise and fall of an island empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, on the history of Madagascar and the slaving raids. On the origins of the Betsimisaraka, see Arne Bialuschewski, ‘Pirates, malata, and the Betsimisaraka Confederation on the east coast of Madagascar in the first half of the eighteenth century’, in Creole Societies in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, edited by Malyn Newitt and Philip Havik, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. 93. Bissell, ‘A Voyage’; Martin, Quatre îles. 94. Martin, Quatre îles. 95. Martin, Quatre îles; ‘Memorandum relative to the offer of King Baba to cede the island of Johanna to the Company’, 16 Aug. 1796 to 25 Feb. 1807, IOR, H/511, Home Miscellaneous Series, Letters, 1807–1813; ‘Letter from King Abdulla of Johanna to Duncan’, 18 July 1800, IOR H/473, Wellesley Papers No. 17 1799– 1800; IOR, F/4/177/3190, Correspondence, Aug. 1796—Aug. 1804, Rejection by the Company of the offer of the King of Baba to cede to them the island of Johanna [Anjouan] and its dependencies (includes a genealogical table of the Anjouan Royal Family). 96. De Froberville, ‘Historique’. 97. Prior, Voyage; W.H. Smyth, The Life and Services of Captain Philip Beaver, Late of His Majesty’s Ship Nisus, London: John Murray, 1829. 98. Fescourt says he was born in Arabia: this is possible, although it seems unlikely. De Froberville says he was the grandson of Abdallah, which is more likely: De Froberville, ‘Historique’; Fescourt, Histoire de la double conspiration de 1800 contre le gouvernement consulaire et de la déportation qui eut lieu dans la deuxième année du Consulat, Paris: Guillaume, 1819. 99. Martin, Quatre îles. 100. These Jacobins were deported, first to Seychelles, then to Ndzuani, after having been convicted of a terrorist attack in Paris in 1800. See Théodore Gosselin  

 

 

 

 

253

pp. [79–86]

NOTES

Lenotre, ‘Les Derniers Terroristes III: Pariahs’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 550 (1930), pp. 846–75; and, on their sojourn in the Comoros, see the account by Lefranc, one of the survivors ( J.B.A. Lefranc, Les Infortunes de plusieurs victimes de la tyrannie de Napoléon Bonaparte, ou tableau des malheurs de soixante-onze français déportés sans jugement aux îles Seychelles, à l’occasion de l’affaire de la machine infernale du 3 nivose an X (24 Déc. 1800), par l’une des deux seules victimes qui aient survécu à la déportation, Paris: Lepetit, 1816) and Fescourt, Histoire. 101. Louis de Chamisso, ‘Une escale aux Comores en 1804’, Historama, 294 (1976), pp. 125–9; Martin, Quatre îles; Fescourt, Histoire; Mrs Erskine Norton, ‘A visit to Joanna’, Dublin Penny Journal, 2, 78 (1833); and Prior, Voyage. 102. Prior, Voyage, pp. 47–8. 103. Edward A. Alpers, ‘Madagascar and Mozambique in the nineteenth century: The era of the Sakalava raids (1800–1820)’, Omaly sy Anio, 5–6 (1977), pp. 37–53; Mervyn Brown, A History of Madagascar, London: Damien Tunnacliffe, 1995; Barbara Dubins, A Political History of the Comoro Islands 1795–1886, Boston: Boston University, PhD diss., 1972; Eugene de Froberville, ‘Historique des invasions madécasses aux îles Comores et à la orientale côte d’Afrique’, Annuaire des Voyages et de la Géographie, 2 (1845), pp. 194–208. Capmartin and Colin (‘Essai’) report that Europeans also participated in the raids.  

 

4.  THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: FROM SULTANATES TO COLONIES 1. Solofo Randrianja and Stephen Ellis, Madagascar: A short history, London: Hurst and Co, 2009. 2. The island’s population had been decimated by the Malagasy slave raids: Elliott says there was only one man left on Mwali—over which he ruled alone for a decade— and that numbers were not restored until the king, who had fled to Ndzuani, returned and migrants started arriving from the other islands. William Elliott, ‘Remarks on the Joannese mission,’ undated, London Missionary Society, Mauritius, Incoming correspondence (hereafter LMS), Box 1 (CWM/LMS/13/02/01/009); see also Claude Chanudet and Jean-Aimé Rakotoarisoa, Mohéli: Une île des Comores à la recherche de son identité, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2000; W.F. Owen, Narrative of Voyages to Explore the Shores of Africa, Arabia and Madagascar, Performed in H.M. Ships Leven and Barracouta under the direction of Captain W.F.W. Owen, R.N., London: Richard Bentley, 1833. 3. If this cession had been legally valid, the subsequent sale of Mayotte to France by Andriantsoli would thereby have been invalid, since Andriantsoli would not have had the authority to cede the island to France, and Mayotte today would, in theory at least, not be French. 4. A. Gevrey, Essai sur les Comores, Pondichéry: Saligny, 1870; Jean Martin, Comores:  

 

 

254

 



pp. [86–97]

NOTES

 Quatre îles entre pirates et planteurs, Paris: l’Harmattan, 1983; Jean Martin, Histoire de Mayotte, département français, Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2010. 5. Thierry Mesas, ed., Patrimoines de Mayotte, Koungou: Éditions Couleurs Métisses, 2014. 6. Martin, Histoire de Mayotte. 7. ‘Sunley to Russell, 18/9/61’, Zanzibar National Archives (hereafter ZNA), Series AA 1/5, Correspondence Outgoing from Johanna Consulate, 1848–1866. When Sunley arrived at Moroni, a local paddled his canoe out to Sunley and, mistaking him for a Frenchman, told him they had 200 slaves ready for him. 8. Barbara Dubins, A Political History of the Comoro Islands 1795–1886, Boston: Boston University, PhD diss., 1972; Martin, Comores: Quatre îles. 9. Martin, Comores: Quatre îles, I, p. 206. Although Martin gives overall figures for men and women, they are not broken down by origins. 10. Of the remainder, 4626 (31 per cent) were Comorian, 1682 (11 per cent) were Malagasy and 3746 (25 per cent) were African. If we add Antalaotes to Maorais in the previous census, we have 864 (14 per cent) Malagasy and 1845 (30 per cent) Maorais. Note that there were no Maorais at all recorded as living on Petite Terre. 11. Gevrey, Comores, pp. 252–4. 12. Martin, Comores: Quatre îles, I, p. 209. 13. Gernot Rotter, Muslimische Inseln vor Ostafrika. Eine arabische Komoren-Chronik des 19. Jahrhunderts, Bayreuth and Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1976; Martin, Histoire de Mayotte. 14. Translation of letter, ‘Sayyid Said bin Sultan, Zanzibar, to Palmerston 19 August 1847’, Public Record Office, FO 54/11, Muscat Consul Hamerton, Foreign various and consular domestic correspondence, 1847. 15. Martin, Comores: Quatre îles, I, pp. 273–5. See also Christophe Grosdidier, Djoumbe Fatima reine de Mohéli, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2004, for a fictionalised version of the story of Jumbe Fatima. 16. Martin, Comores: Quatre îles, I, p. 41; India Office Records (hereafter IOR), E/1/57, ‘Letter 158, King of Johanna to the Court of Directors in Arabic with a translation’. 17. Cited in Mrs Erskine Norton, ‘A visit to Joanna’, Dublin Penny Journal, 2, 78 (1833), p. 206. 18. Letter, 22 July 1821, Roberts, Capt. of Shearwater in Port Louis to Dr Philip, Cape Town, LMS, 13/02/01/009. 19. Anon., ‘A visit to the island of Johanna’, United Service Journal, 1 (1830), pp. 144– 52; IOR G/34/182, ‘Letters received from Prince of Wales Island 1818–1820’; Elliott, cited in a letter, May 1823, C. Parker, Sheffield to Rev. Arundel, Mission House, Austin Friars, London, LMS, 13/02/01/009. See also Letter, 22 July 1821, Roberts, Capt. of Shearwater in Port Louis to Dr Philip, Cape Town, LMS 13/02/01/009.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

255

pp. [97–108]

NOTES

20. Reproduced in Martin Heepe, ‘Darstellung einer Bantusprache aus den Jahren 1821/22 von Elliot. nach einer Handschrift der Grey Library in Kapstadt mitgeteilt von M. Heepe’, Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen an der Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität zu Berlin, 29, 3 (1926), pp. 191–232. 21. Martin, Comores: Quatre îles, I, p. 324. 22. Martin, Comores: Quatre îles; Gary Clendennen and Peter Nottingham, William Sunley and David Livingstone: A tale of two consuls, Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, 2000. 23. Jean Destrem, Les Déportations du Consulat et de l’Empire (d’après des documents inédits), Paris: Jeanmaire, 1885; J.B.A. Lefranc, Les Infortunes de plusieurs victimes de la tyrannie de Napoléon Bonaparte, ou tableau des malheurs de soixante-onze français déportés sans jugement aux îles Seychelles, à l’occasion de l’affaire de la machine infernale du 3 nivose an X (24 Déc. 1800), par l’une des deux seules victimes qui aient survécu à la déportation, Paris: Lepetit, 1816; Martin, Comores: Quatre îles, I, p. 358. 24. William Lelieur, ‘Relation de la campagne de la goélette de S.M. le Lys, commandé par M. Lelieur de Ville-sur-Arce pendant les mois d’août, septembre, octobre et novembre 1819; description des îles Comores, Anjouan, Mohéli et Mayotte’, Annales Maritimes et Coloniales, 2 (1821), p.  662. The nut is ntsambu, Cycas thouarsii. 25. See, for example, Nancy Jane Hafkin, Trade, Society, and Politics in Northern Mozambique, c.1753–1913, Boston: Boston University, PhD diss.,1973; Liazzat Bonate, Traditions and Transitions: Islam and chieftainship in northern Mozambique, ca. 1850–1974, Cape Town: University of Cape Town, PhD diss., 2007, on Comorian links with Mozambique. 26. ZNA AA1/5, Correspondence Outgoing from Johanna Consulate, 1848–1866; Bosse, ‘La Grande Comore’, Revue Coloniale, 8 (1846), pp. 120–7. 27. See Iain Walker, Marie-Aude Fouéré and Nadine Beckmann, ‘Un explorateur allemand à Ngazidja en 1864: Otto Kersten’, Etudes Océan Indien, 53/54 (2018), pp. 349–93, for Otto Kersten’s account of his meeting with Msafumu. 28. Martin, Comores: Quatre îles, 1, p. 294. 29. See Robert Aldrich, Banished Potentates: Dethroning and exiling indigenous monarchs under British and French colonial rule, 1815–1955, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018; Julienne Nivois, A Pesmes, en Franche-Comté …, une reine oubliée par l’histoire, Paris: Éditions Dominique Guéniot, 1995, on Salima Machamba. 30. For details of this uprising, see Jean Martin, ‘Les Débuts du protectorat et la révolte servile de 1891 dans l’île d’Anjouan’, Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 60, 218 (1973), pp. 45–85. 31. See, for example, Nicolas du Plantier, La Grande Comore: Sa colonisation, Paris: Augustin Challamel, 1904; Annet Lignac, Les Scandales de la Grande-Comore, Paris: Imprimerie du Centre, 1908; Martin, Comores: Quatre îles.  

 

 

 

256



pp. [109–119]

NOTES

32. By way of comparison, this was approximately the average annual wage for a labourer in Europe at the time and a fraction of the cost of a house in London or Paris. At today’s prices this would be the equivalent of perhaps 2 euros a hectare. 33. Wilson’s plantation at Patsy produced another 750 tonnes in 1901. In 1896 Robert Sunley also sold his plantation on Mwali, to Humblot, and retired to New Zealand. 34. J.-V. Repiquet, ‘Le Sultanat d’Anjouan, une de nos colonies de la côte de Mozambique’, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie Commerciale, 20 (1901), pp. 579–606.  

5.  COLONIAL NEGLECT AND THE GROWTH OF POLITICAL AWARENESS 1.  Journal Officiel de Madagascar et Dépendances (hereafter JOMD), 14 September 1912, p. 894. Ngazidja had a chronic deficit since the government had assumed the debts owed to Humblot by Said Ali, to which were added the costs of maintaining the political exiles who had been sent to New Caledonia following the 1891 uprising on Ndzuani. 2. Mahmoud Ibrahime, État français et colons aux Comores (1912–1946), Paris: l’Harmattan, 1997. 3. See the JOMD, 17 October 1908, 11 September 1909, 6 February 1915, 17 November 1928, for the various texts organising the administration of the islands. 4. See Edmond Legeret, Etude sur les îles Comores, Paris: G. Camproger, 1897; Émile Vienne, Notice sur Mayotte et les Comores, Paris: Alcan-Lévy, 1900. 5. Thierry Flobert, Les Comores: Évolution juridique et socio-politique, Aix Marseille: Centre d’études et de recherches sur les sociétés de l’océan Indien, 1976; Robineau, Claude, ‘L’Islam aux Comores: Une étude d’histoire culturelle de l’île d’Anjouan’, Revue de Madagascar, 35 (1966), pp. 17–34. 6.  JOMD, 16 October 1920. 7. The works of Paul Guy, a magistrate who served in the Comoros in the 1950s, are essential reading on the legal systems, both Islamic and customary. On the Minhaj, see Paul Guy, Traité de droit musulman comorien: Tome I, Le Statut personnel, Alger: Kœchlin, 1954; Paul Guy, ‘Le Minhadj at-twalibin et les coutumes comoriennes dans le statut personnel’, Etudes Océan Indien, 6 (1985), pp. 7–33. 8. Iain Walker, Marie-Aude Fouéré and Nadine Beckmann, ‘Un explorateur allemand à Ngazidja en 1864: Otto Kersten’, Etudes Océan Indien, 53/54 (2018), pp. 349– 93; A. Voeltzkow, Reise in Ostafrika in den Jahren 1903–1905, Stuttgart: E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Nägele and Dr Sproesser, 1914. 9. At the time only the eldest daughter of a family would expect to have an ãda ­marriage. Since there was a significant imbalance in the population—Voeltzkow suggests that two-thirds of the population were women—most men could expect to marry an eldest daughter.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

257

pp. [120–126]

NOTES

10. See ‘Arrêté portant organisation du village et du Ouatou Akouba ou Conseil des Notables dans la province des Comores’, JOMD, 27 January 1915. ‘Ouatou Akouba’ (watu akubwa) means ‘headmen’ in Swahili (sic). 11. ‘Rapport politique et administrative 1914’, Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Gouvernement Général de Madagascar (hereafter ANOM/GGM), 2D/73, Province des Comores, Rapports 1915–1919. 12. Sophie Blanchy and Noël Gueunier, ‘L’“impossible” Charles Poirier, administrateur et ethnographe aux Comores’, Etudes Océan Indien, 29 (2000), pp. 93–119. 13. Jean Martin, ‘Grande-Comore 1915 et Anjouan 1940: Etude comparative de deux soulèvements populaires aux Comores’, Etudes Océan Indien, 3 (1983), pp. 69–100; Jean Martin, Comores: Quatre îles entre pirates et planteurs, Paris: l’Harmattan, 1983. The event that sparked off the revolt was Ratolojanahary’s arrival in the village of Mtsangadju. The locals assumed he was there to collect taxes, but in fact he was to attend a wedding. 14. Charles Poirier, ‘Mayotte et dépendances’, Bulletin Économique de Madagascar, 18, 3 (1921), pp. 233–45; Charles Poirier, ‘Mayotte et dépendances: Coutumes’, Bulletin Économique de Madagascar, 18, 4 (1921), pp. 231–7; Charles Poirier, ‘Mayotte et dépendances: Documentation sociale et religieuse’, Bulletin Économique de Madagascar, 19, 1 (1922), pp. 141–6. 15. Mathilde Cocoual, ‘De la capitale des parfums aux îles aux parfums: Les Intérêts grassois à Madagascar et dépendances’, Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 92 (2016), pp. 287–304. 16. Mouhssini Hassani el-Barwane, La Société coloniale de Bambao Comores (1893– 1975), Moroni: Komedit, 2015. 17. Jean Manicacci, ‘L’Archipel des Comores’, Annales de Géographie, 47, 267 (1938), pp. 279–90. 18. ‘Rapport politique et administrative 1914’, ANOM/GGM, 2D/73. Province des Comores. Rapports, 1915–1919. 19. A protracted legal battle between the government and the SAGC over the question of the company’s tax liabilities was finally resolved in the government’s favour. 20. ‘Rapport politique et administrative de l’année 1918 de la Province des Comores’, ANOM/GGM, 2D/73, Province des Comores, Rapports, 1915–1919. 21.  JOMD, 15 January 1910. See Damir Ben Ali and Iain Walker, ‘Attempts at fusion of the Comorian educational systems: Religious education in Comorian and Arabic and secular education in French’, in Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography, edited by Iain Walker, London and New York: Routledge, 2017; and Flobert, Les Comores, on education as well as the repeated (and repetitive) comments in the annual reports. 22. Isabelle Denis and Nathalie Rezzi, ‘République et élites locales: Mayotte (1880– 1947)’, Outre-mers, 98, 370 (2011), pp. 125–34. 23. Francis Mury, ‘A travers l’archipel des Comores: Les Viscissitudes des la colonisa 

 

258



pp. [126–134]

NOTES

tion’, Le Courrier Colonial Illustré, 12 June 1936, pp. 15–22. Mury was an unconditional supporter of Humblot in his differences with France. Krakatoa, the site of the famous 1883 volcanic eruption, is not a French colony but an island of Indonesia, almost 7000 kilometres away on the other side of the Indian Ocean. 24. ‘Archipel des Comores. Rapport politique 1940’, ANOM/GGM, 2D/75, Archipel des Comores, Rapports, 1925–1940. 25. Toibibou Ali Mohamed, Culture intellectuelle et colonisation aux Comores, 1895– 1974: Ahhmad Qamar al-Dîn et sa génération, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2016. 26. Ibrahime, État français. 27. ANOM/GGM, 2D/75, Archipel des Comores, Rapports 1925–1940. 28. ANOM/GGM, 2D/75, Archipel des Comores, Rapports 1925–1940; Ibrahime, État français. 29. Work on the first airstrip on Ngazidja began at Dzahani, between Moroni and Itsandramdjini, but this site was later abandoned for Ikoni, south of the capital. Curiously, the first scheduled air service to the Comoros was operated by the British airline BOAC, whose flights between Antsiranana (formerly Diego Suarez) and Mombasa during the British wartime occupation of Madagascar, using a Short Empire flying boat, stopped in Mayotte between 1942 and 1945 (Souef Mohamed el-Amine, Le Transport aérien aux Comores: Entre sécurité et souveraineté, LevalloisPerret: Les Éditions de la Lune, 1999). 30. Georges Colo Hariri acquired the name Nahouda because he was widely travelled: a nahouda is a dhow’s captain. He was a Malagasy creole, and his name suggests a Lebanese or Syrian origin. 31. Grimaldi remained in the Comoros for the rest of his life and acquired substantial interests on Ngazidja, including both retail and wholesale businesses and the Hotel Karthala. He died in Moroni in 2002. 32. This was a curious choice, since there was a primary school in Mitsamihuli. It was possible that, given the unrest on the island at time, his family thought he would be safer in Moroni. 33. Mahmoud Ibrahime, Saïd Mohamed Cheikh (1904–1970): Parcours d’un conservateur. Une histoire des Comores au XXe siècle, Moroni: Komedit, 2008. See Martin, ‘Grande-Comore 1915’, on the uprising on Ndzuani. 34. Ibrahime, Saïd Mohamed Cheikh. 35. Arrêté No. 58–139/DOM of 19 June 1958, ‘Définissant la consistance des domaines de l’état et du territoire’, in JOMD, 19 July 1958. 36. Flobert, Les Comores. 37. Flobert, Les Comores. 38. In the contemporary French system, primary education ends at approximately 11 years of age; children then go to collège for four years and then, for the last three years, to a lycée, at the end of which they emerge with a baccalauréat. 39. Mahmoud Ibrahime, La Naissance de l’élite politique comorienne, 1945–1975, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2000.  

 

 

 

259

pp. [134–149]

NOTES

40. These parties later acquired ‘real’ names: the Blancs became the Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Comorien (RDPC) while the Verts became Union Démocratique Comorienne (UDC). 41. There were two other candidates, Mohamed Ahmed and Mohamed Larif, both from Ndzuani. The former won Mwali and more than 40 per cent of the votes on Ndzuani but lost overwhelmingly on Ngazidja and Mayotte; the latter obtained less than 1 per cent of the vote. 42. Ibrahime, Saïd Mohamed Cheikh. 43. Ibrahime, Saïd Mohamed Cheikh. 44. The fourth option, to reject all three, and thus the constitution itself, and become a fully independent state, was only chosen by Guinea. Guinea was granted immediate independence and all French support was withdrawn from the young ­country. 45. Paul Mistral, Joseph Beaujannot, Raymond Brun, Jacques Gadoin, Victor Golvan and Jacques Marette, Rapport d’information fait au nom de la Commission des Affaires économiques et du Plan (1), à la suite de la mission effectuée par une délégation de cette Commission à la Réunion et aux Comores (16 février—3 mars 1962), Paris: Senat, 2e session ordinaire de 1961–1962, Annexe au procès-verbal de la séance du 17 mai 1962. 46. The threat was clear: the Comoros would suffer the same fate as Guinea. 47. A. Gevrey, Essai sur les Comores, Pondichéry: Saligny, 1870. 48. See, for example, Denis Venter, ‘The Comorian comitragedy: Final curtain on Abdallahism?’, Africa Insight, 20 (1990), pp. 141–50, ‘Mayotte is mainly Christian’ (p. 142); Cédric Saint-Alban, ‘Les Partis politiques comoriens entre la modernité et la tradition’, Revue Française d’Études Politiques Africaines, 94 (1973), pp. 76–91, ‘more Catholic than Muslim’ (p. 76). Saint-Alban was something of a rarity, a Christian Comorian, member of a prominent Zanzibari Comorian family. 49. Rémi Carayol, L’Histoire de Mayotte de 1946 à 2000, St Denis: CRESOI, 2008, available online at https://www.cresoi.fr/L-histoire-de-Mayotte-de-1946-a, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. 50. Ibrahime, Saïd Mohamed Cheikh. 51. Cited in Ibrahime, Saïd Mohamed Cheikh, p. 281. 52. Ibrahime, La Naissance de l’élite. 53. Pierre Vérin, Les Comores, Paris: Karthala, 1994; Ibrahime, La Naissance de l’élite. 54. Mahmoud Ibrahime, ‘Les Comores: La Marche vers l’indépendance (1972–1975)’, Ya Mkobe, 8/9 (2002), pp. 23–33. 55. The results of this referendum are available online at https://www.sudd.ch/event. php?id=km011974, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

6.  INDEPENDENCE, REVOLUTION AND MERCENARIES 1. Hervé Chagnoux and Ali Haribou, Les Comores, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980, p. 66.

260



pp. [149–155]

NOTES

2. This was probably as much a product of China’s conflicts over Taiwan on the international stage as it was of any particular attention to the Comoros. 3. Mahmoud Ibrahime, La Naissance de l’élite politique comorienne, 1945–1975, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2000; Ibrahime, Saïd Mohamed Cheikh (1904–1970): Parcours d’un conservateur. Une histoire des Comores au XXe siècle, Moroni: Komedit, 2008; Emmanuel Vérin, ‘Les Comores dans la tourmente: Vie politique de l’archipel de la crise de 1975 jusqu’au coup d’état de 1978’, Annuaire des Pays de l’Océan Indien, 10 (1985), pp. 19–101. 4. The mapinduzi were apparently so named for their counterparts, the ‘revolutionaries’, in Zanzibar. 5. Lebret was the founder and owner of the first local airline, Air Comores, which, despite his links with Ali Soilihi, was nationalised by Soilihi’s government in 1977. Bob Denard would later become a prominent figure in the islands, as we shall see. 6. Chagnoux and Haribou, Les Comores; Ahmed Ouledi and Mahmoud Ibrahime, Les Comores au jour le jour: Chronologie, Moroni: Komedit, 2007. 7. A prefect is an appointee of the French state who represents the state in a department; they are not elected. 8. Usually in kind—goats and rice—which would then be used to provide a feast for the village’s sorodas: see Jon Breslar, An Ethnography of the Mahorais (Mayotte, Comoro Islands), Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, PhD diss., 1981. 9. So named in acknowledgment of the Marche Verte, the ‘Green March’, by which Morocco occupied the Western Sahara. 10. Conseil constitutionnel, Décision no. 75–59 DC du 30 décembre 1975, Loi relative aux conséquences de l’autodétermination des îles des Comores; Loi no. 75–1337 du 31 décembre 1975 relative aux conséquences de l’autodétermination des îles des Comores, Journal Officiel de la République Française, 3 January 1976. 11. Figures in this section are from World Bank, The Comoros: Problems and prospects of a small, island economy, Washington: IBRD Eastern Africa Regional Office, 1979. 12. Pierre Vérin, Les Comores, Paris: Karthala, 1994. 13. World Bank, The Comoros. Very roughly, the combined figures for bananas and cassava allow for about half a kilo per person per day. In the 1970s, and except during rituals, rice would not have been widely consumed except in the urban areas, and even then only by those with the means. 14. This was the equivalent of slightly more than 8 million US dollars. Of this, copra, cloves, vanilla and ylang ylang were earning the territory 496, 242, 473 and 785 million francs respectively. Other exports contributed another 129 million francs. Following the revaluation of the French franc in 1960, the Comorian franc was fixed at 50 francs to 1 FF—in the mid-1970s this was approximately 240 Comorian francs to US$1. Figures from World Bank, The Comoros. 15. Algeria was divided into wilayas, although the word harks back to the vilayet of  

261

pp. [156–162]

NOTES

Ottoman times, and a liwali was an administrator. Muhafiz is an Arabic word meaning guardian and mudirs were local administrators in Zanzibar. On the revolutionary period, see Youssouf Saïd Soilihi and el-Mamoun Mohamed Nassur, Ali Soilihi: L’Élan brisé?, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2000; and Youssouf Saïd Soilihi, Comores, les défis du développement indépendant, 1975–1978, Paris: l’Harmattan, 1988. 16. In 1966 Said Mohamed Cheikh had passed a law aimed at limiting the costs of the ãda but it had no discernible effect: see Mahmoud Ibrahime, ‘Saïd Mohamed Cheikh, réformateur du âda?’, Tarehi, 9 (2004), pp. 23–7. 17. Prince Said Ibrahim, Ali Soilihi’s mentor, had not performed his ãda either, although in his case it was for religious reasons and through his adherence to the Darweshi, an anti-ãda religious group largely composed of high-status urban sharifu. While the prince was respected as a member of the royal family and for his religious beliefs, no such latitude was granted to Ali Soilihi, and the fact that he had not done his ãda had on more than one occasion led to elders standing up and walking out as the president started to speak. Unsurprisingly, this did not go down well with Ali Soilihi. 18. A British gold sovereign, weighing approximately 8 g, was and remains the coin most often used in marriage payments. This decree limited payment to one coin. 19. The speech is reproduced in Lafon, Paroles et discours, pp. 75–111. See also Jean Charpentier, ‘Le Pouvoir d’Ali Soilihi, Ngazidja, 1975–1978’, Annuaire des Pays de l’Océan Indien, 10 (1985), pp. 103–17; André Vallier, ‘Les Comores indépendantes: bilan en 1977’, Afrique Contemporaine, 92 (1977), pp. 14–22, for perspectives on the revolutionary period. 20. Official figures state that 121 died and 293 were injured, but various sources suggest these figures were far short of the reality: see E. Vérin, ‘Les Comores dans la tourmente’; Chagnoux and Haribou, Les Comores. 21. These returnees are today referred to as ‘Sabenas’: see Chapter Eight. 22. Vérin, ‘Les Comores dans la tourmente’, p. 79. 23. Most French administrative units—territories, departments and regions—are collectivités térritoriales, but apart from Mayotte only Saint-Pierre and Miquelon have ever been established as a collectivité térritoriale per se. 24. Mahmoud Ibrahime, ‘L’Énigme Ali Soilihi’, Tarehi, 1 (2000), pp. 32–5; E. Vérin, ‘Les Comores dans la tourmente’. 25. Nakidine Mattoir, Les Comores de 1975 à 1990, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2004. 26. Damir Ben Ali and Iain Walker, ‘Attempts at fusion of the Comorian educational systems: Religious education in Comorian and Arabic and secular education in French’, in Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography, edited by Iain Walker, London and New York: Routledge, 2017. 27. See Bob Denard, Corsaire de la République, Paris: Robert Laffont, 1998, for a somewhat subjective account of the mission and Denard’s time in the Comoros generally.  

 

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NOTES

pp. [162–179]

28. Mattoir, Les Comores. 29. Mattoir, Les Comores; Vérin, Les Comores. 30. Mattoir, Les Comores. 31. Malyn Newitt, The Comoro Islands: Struggle against dependency in the Indian Ocean, Boulder: Westview Press, 1984. 32. W. Andrew Terrill, ‘The Comoro Islands in South African regional strategy’, Africa Today, 33, 2–3 (1986), pp. 59–70. 33. See Denard, Corsaire. A decade later the French government was finally forced to try Denard for the murder of Abdallah. He and his lieutenant Dominique Malacrino were both acquitted on 19 May 1999. 34. André Oraison, ‘Le Différend franco-comorien sur l’île de Mayotte: Les Avatars de la décolonisation dans le canal de Mozambique’, Annuaire des Pays de l’Océan Indien, 14 (1996), pp. 181–96. 35. Said Mohamed Djohar, Mémoires du président des Comores: Quelques vérités qui ne sauraient mourir, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2012. 36. Djamal M’Sa Ali, Luttes de pouvoir aux Comores: Entre notables traditionnels, notables professionnalisés et politiques professionnels: le cas Azali, Levallois-Perret: Les Éditions de la Lune, 2006. 37. Mady Binty, ‘La Révision et l’élaboration constitutionnelles aux Comores’, Annuaire des Pays de l’Océan Indien, 14 (1996), pp. 57–80. 38. On Ashley, see ‘Roland Armoogum: Un escroc au long cours’, L’Express, 23 May 2004, https://www.lexpress.mu/article/roland-armoogum-un-escroc-au-longcours, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. Details, such as they were, of the Intertrade affair appeared regularly in the Indian Ocean Newsletter. Italy finally wrote off the debt in 2011. 39.  Al Watwan, 28 March 1997. 40. Ouledi and Ibrahime, Les Comores; Denard, Corsaire.  

 

 

 

 

7.  FEDERATION, SEPARATISM AND UNION 1. Soulaimane Soudjay, ‘L’Arrivée au pouvoir de Mohamed Taki: Mécanisme d’un paradoxe. Les Comores, un an après les élections présidentielles des 6 et 16 mars 1996’, Annuaire des Pays de l’Océan Indien, 14 (1996), pp. 581–7. 2. The producer price of green vanilla dropped from 2500 Comorian francs per kilo in 1990 to 550 francs in 1996. Prices paid for cloves halved in the same period (International Monetary Fund, Comoros: Statistical Annex, IMF Staff Country Report no. 97/115, Washington: International Monetary Fund, 1997). 3. Ahmed Ouledi and Mahmoud Ibrahime, Les Comores au jour le jour: Chronologie, Moroni: Komedit, 2007. 4. The name was derived from a Congolese dance and is said to describe the movement of the boats as they cross to Mayotte. 5.  Africa Research Bulletin, 34 (3), 1997.

263

pp. [179–190]

NOTES

6.  Al Watwan, passim. 7. Richard Cornwell, ‘Anjouan: A spat in the Indian Ocean’, African Security Review, 7, 3 (1998), pp. 51–61; André Oraison, ‘L’Obligation de non-reconnaissance de l’état d’Anjouan: Les Problèmes posés par la nouvelle balkanisation de la République fédérale islamique des Comores’, Annuaire des Pays de l’Océan Indien, 15 (1998), pp. 143–64, see particularly the latter on the legal issues surrounding the independence of the État d’Anjouan. See also Al Watwan, passim. 8. The arms used—models unavailable to the local army or police force—suggested that at least some of the rebels were being supplied by well-funded French nationalists. 9. Toibibou Ali Mohamed, ‘La Littérature comorienne en langue nationale (1960– 2010): D’Ahmad Qamar al Dîn à Mohamed Moughny, des relations intergénérationnelles et identitaires’, in L’Afrique des générations: Entre tensions et négociations, edited by Muriel Gomez-Perez and Marie Nathalie Leblanc, Paris: Karthala, 2012. 10. Djama M’Sa Ali, Luttes de pouvoir aux Comores: Entre notables traditionnels, notables professionnalisés et politiques professionnels: Le cas Azali, Levallois-Perret: Les Éditions de la Lune, 2006. The referendum, universally condemned, asked if the population wanted to sign the Antananarivo Accords. The response was no. See also Africa Research Bulletin, 37, 1 (February 2000). 11. Although there was nothing particularly unusual in this—this was the independent country’s fifth flag—the new design was a radical departure from previous flags, incorporating five colours rather than the green and white hitherto preferred. 12. In theory four, although Mayotte was never seriously considered. 13. The latter was possibly the most powerful man in the country at the time, a former French army officer and director of the Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures for 22 years, and owner of a number of other companies. 14. Mohamed Said Fazul was president of Mwali while the vice-presidents of the Union were Caabi el-Yachroutu and Ben Massoundi Rachid, from Ndzuani and Mwali respectively. 15. International Monetary Fund, Union of the Comoros: Selected issues and statistical appendix, IMF Country Report no. 04/233, Washington: International Monetary Fund, 2004. 16.  Kashkazi, 41 (18 May 2006). 17. Mohamed Abdoulwahab was elected on Ngazidja and Mohamed Ali Said won on Mwali. 18.  Kashkazi, 65 (5 July 2007). 19.  Al Watwan, 17 June 2010. Mohamed Ali Said, the opposition candidate, was reelected as governor of Mwali while Mouigni Baraka and Anissi Chamsidine, both aligned with Sambi, won on Ngazidja and Ndzuani respectively. 20. Toibibou, ‘La Littérature comorienne en langue nationale’. During Ali Soilihi’s presidency Comorian had been a language of instruction but it had not been taught  

 

 

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pp. [190–199]

NOTES

as a subject. Islam was declared the state religion in the 2009 revision of the constitution: in 2001 it had merely been an inspiration and a source. 21. This law was passed as Sambi returned from his first state visit to Iran, certainly not a coincidence. 22.  Al Watwan, 19 February 2013, 21 November 2013. Note that although there are a few Christians in the Comoros, who exercise their faith with discretion, Christianity has never been of any significance in the islands and missionary activity was strongly resisted. In the nineteenth century there were attempts at proselytisation that failed entirely: the British consul Pelly reported that ‘[the French] landed a Priest and a Sister or two of Charity, and these were driven on board a French vessel of war by the simple process of starvation’ (Lewis Pelly, HM Consul, Zanzibar, to Forbes, 3 Oct. 1861, No. 2 in Compilation no. 6 Regarding Comoro Islands and Johanna, Zanzibar National Archives, AA 12/8 General Correspondence); and when a small Catholic mission was finally opened in Moroni in the early twentieth century, it was on the express understanding that no attempts be made to convert Comorians. 23.  Al Watwan, 8 November 2013, 22 November 2013. This law was finally applied in 2017 and only authorised six parties: UPDC (Ikililou’s party), Juwa (Sambi), CRC (Azali), RDC (led by Mouigni Baraka of Ngazidja), Radhi and Orange. 24. Gubernatorial elections were held simultaneously, and Hassane Hamadi, Mohamed Said Fazul and Abdou Salami Abdou were elected governors of Ngazidja, Mwali and Ndzuani respectively. 25. See World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/country/comoros, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. 26. Increases in prices of cloves and vanilla were linked to declines in other exporting countries following droughts in Indonesia (a major clove producer) and a cyclone in Madagascar, which destroyed the 2000 vanilla crop. These prices are for green vanilla, 5 kg of which produce 1 kg of dried vanilla, which sells for about ten times the price. In 2002 dried vanilla sold for just under 60,000 francs per kilo (approximately €120). 27. See http://www.comores-online.com/wiki/Histoire_de_l%27aviation_aux_ Comores, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. 28. ‘Donor conference attracts $200 million in pledges’, IRIN, http://www.irinnews. org/fr/node/224893, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. 29. See Chapter Eight on the Comorian diaspora and the social incentives to remit; see also Vincent da Cruz, Wolfgang Fengler and Adam Schwartzman, Remittances to Comoros: Volume, trends, impact and implications, Africa Region, Working Paper Series no. 75, Washington: World Bank, 2004; International Monetary Fund, Union of the Comoros, 2004; and Trading Economics, Comoros Remittances (https:// tradingeconomics.com/comoros/remittances, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018). It is difficult to establish a precise figure for remittances since informal transfers (the  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

265

pp. [199–204]

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envelope full of banknotes entrusted to a family member) are widespread, but receipts of euro banknotes at the central bank provide a good indication of the sums arriving in the country. 30.  Al Watwan, 29 October 2008. 31. Several observers have cast doubt on the accuracy of these figures: see http://www. rfi.fr/afrique/20180821-comores-sambi-president-detention-preventive-citoyennete-economique, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. See also https://www.theguardian. com/world/2015/nov/11/the-bizarre-scheme-to-transform-a-remote-island-intonew-dubai-comoros, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018; Al Watwan, 30 October 2008, 14 June 2010, 28 July 2010, 13 September 2010, 30 April 2015; La Lettre de l’Océan Indien, 1366, 25 October 2013; http://www.comores-infos.net/enquetesur-les-fonds-de-la-citoyennete-economique, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018; and https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/africa-passports-karaziwan, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. Some Bidoon are of Palestinian origin but most are tribal Arabs who slipped through the net when the contemporary states were established in the 1960s and 1970s. The passports that were correctly supplied to the UAE government and issued to Bidoon were used to regularise their situations in the country, but in several cases these travel documents were used to facilitate repression of dissent. In 2012 Ahmed Abdul Khaleq, an opposition activist in the UAE, was issued with a Comorian passport and immediately deported to Thailand. See Al Jazeera, 16 July 2012, ‘UAE deports online activist to Thailand’, https:// www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/07/2012716172114669177.html, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018, and for sales to Iranians, ‘As sanctions bit, Iranian executives bought African passports’, Reuters Special Report, https://www.reuters. com/investigates/special-report/iran-passports-comoros, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. 32. See Al Watwan, 18 May 2015; see also the Geothermal Risk Mitigation Facility for Eastern Africa website, http://www.grmf-eastafrica.org; and Comesaria, ‘Funding sought for Karthala geothermal project, Comoros’, http://www.comesaria.org/news/funding-sought-for-karthala-geothermal-projectcomoros.53718.64.html, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. 33. Pierre Caminade, Comores-Mayotte: Une histoire néocoloniale, Marseilles: Agone, 2003. 34. See http://discours.vie-publique.fr/notices/107000187.html. 35. See Laurent Decloitre, ‘Les Feux de la haine à Mayotte’, http://www.liberation. fr/grand-angle/2003/11/13/les-feux-de-la-haine-a-mayotte_451671, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. 36. Admittedly many deportees are deported more than once, making their way back to Mayotte almost as soon as they land on Ndzuani. 37.  Al Watwan, 3 February 2011. 38. French Embassy, Moroni, ‘Signature de la Convention bilatérale d’entraide judi 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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NOTES

pp. [204–219]

ciaire’, https://km.ambafrance.org/Signature-de-la-Convention, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. 39. The official Comorian position is that this is a dispute between two sovereign states and not between an island and the central government, hence the standing refusal to allow representatives of one of the islands, Mayotte, to engage in discussions with the ministry of foreign affairs. 40. ‘“Kwassa-kwassa”: Les Comoriens exigent des excuses de Macron, qui prône “l’apaisement”’, http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2017/06/05/apres-lespropos-choquants-de-macron-les-comoriens-exigent-des-excuses_5139073_3212. html, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. 41. Anne Perzo, ‘Une feuille de route franco-comorienne qui pourrait être la bonne sur le site d’Africa intelligence’, http://lejournaldemayotte.com/societe/unefeuille-de-route-franco-comorienne-qui-pourrait-etre-la-bonne-sur-le-site-dafricaintelligence, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018.  

 

 

8.  THE COMORIAN PEOPLE 1. See, for example, Iain Walker, ‘Mimetic structuration, or, easy steps to building an acceptable identity’, History and Anthropology, 16, 2 (2005), pp. 187–210; Iain Walker, Becoming the Other, Being Oneself: Constructing identities in a connected world, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010; Sophie Blanchy, La Vie quotidienne a Mayotte, archipel des Comores, Paris: l’Harmattan, 1990; Sophie Blanchy, ‘Seul ou tous ensemble? Dynamique des classes d’âge dans les cités de l’île de Ngazidja, Comores’, L’Homme, 167–168 (2003), pp. 153–86. See Martin Ottenheimer, Marriage in Domoni: Husbands and wives in an Indian Ocean community, Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1985, for some anthropological perspectives on the islands’ social structures. 2. It should be emphasised that this is an example of a specific ãda and that the precise details vary across the island. Indeed, there are probably as many variants as there are villages on Ngazidja. 3. Sophie Blanchy, ‘Matrilocalité et système d’age à Mayotte: Notes pour une étude comparative de l’organisation sociale dans l’archipel des Comores’, Taarifa, Revue des Archives Départementales de Mayotte, 3 (2012), pp. 9–21. 4. On music generally, see H.J. Ottenheimer, ‘Culture contact and musical style: Ethnomusicology in the Comoro Islands’, Ethnomusicology, 14, 3 (1970), pp. 458– 62; Damir Ben Ali, Musique et société aux Comores, Moroni: Komedit, 2012; on the twarab, Werner Graebner, ‘Twarab ya shingazidja: A first approach’, Swahili Forum, 8 (2001), pp. 129–43; on sung poetry, Moussa Saïd Ahmed, ‘La Poésie chantée dans la tradition orale de Ngazidja’, in L’Extraordinaire et le quotidien: Variations anthropologiques. Hommage au Professeur Pierre Vérin, edited by Claude Allibert and Narivelo Rajaonarimanana, Paris: Karthala, 2000; and on fishing songs, see Iain Walker and Moussa Said Ahmed, ‘Two fisherman’s songs from Ngazidja, Comoro Islands’, Wasafiri, 26, 2 (2011), pp. 59–62.  

267

pp. [220–227]

NOTES

5. See, as an example, Jules Repiquet, Le Sultanat d’Anjouan (îles Comores), Paris: Augustin Challamel, 1901. 6. ‘“Je n’ai pas des origines à Anjouan, je suis mahorais,” le député Kamardine’, Comores Infos, 22 Oct. 2018, http://www.comores-infos.net/je-nai-pas-des-origines-a-anjouan-je-suis-mahorais-le-depute-kamardine/, last accessed 26 Oct 2018. Other individuals seen as Wandzuani and appointed to public positions have also been targeted by protests. 7. One of the most revered Ngazidja rulers was the late-eighteenth-century sultanpoet and philosopher, Mbae Tramwe of Washili. See Moussa Said Ahmed, Guerriers, princes et poètes aux Comores dans la littérature orale, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2000. 8. The father of Omar, who would later be grand mufti of the Comoros: see Anne Bang, Sufis and Scholars of the Sea: Family networks in East Africa, 1860–1925, London: Routledge Curzon, 2003. 9. See Mohamed Saleh, ‘La Communauté Zanzibari d’origine comorienne: Premiers jalons d’une recherche en cours’, Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara, 9 (1995), pp. 203–10; Iain Walker, ‘Identity and citizenship among the Comorians of Zanzibar, 1886–1963’, in The Indian Ocean: Oceanic connections and the creation of new societies, edited by Abdul Sheriff and Engseng Ho, London: Hurst and Co., 2014. 10. ‘Archipel des Comores: Rapport économique pour l’année 1925’, Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Gouvernement Général de Madagascar, 2D75, Archipel des Comores, Rapports périodiques des circonscriptions 1925–1940. 11. Didier Nativel, ‘Les Migrants comoriens à Majunga et Diego-Suarez durant l’époque coloniale (1895–1960)’, in Être étranger et migrant en Afrique au XXe siècle: Enjeux identitaires et modes d’insertion, vol. 2: Dynamiques migratoires, modalités d’insertion urbaine et jeux d’acteurs, edited by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Odile Goerg, Issiaka Mandé and Faranirina Rajaonah, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2003. 12. Jean Fremigacci, ‘Autocratie administrative et société coloniale dans la région de Majunga (1900–1940): Les Dominants: appareil administratif, colons français et minorités étrangères’, Omaly Sy Anio, 17–20 (1983), pp. 393–432. 13. Faranirina Rajaonah, ‘La Communauté comorienne d’Antananarivo pendant la colonisation: Entre intégration et marginalisation’, in Être étranger et migrant en Afrique au XXe siècle. Enjeux identitaires et modes d’insertion, vol. 2: Dynamiques migratoires, modalités d’insertion urbaine et jeux d’acteurs, edited by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Odile Goerg, Issiaka Mandé and Faranirina Rajaonah, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2003. 14. R. Delval, ‘Les Migrations comoriennes à Madagascar, flux et reflux’, Migrations, minorités et échanges en océan Indien, XIXe-XXe siècle. Table Ronde 1978 (IHPOM, CHEAM, ACOI), Études et Documents, 11 (1978), pp. 93–110; See also ‘Les Comoriens à Majunga: Histoire, migrations, émeutes’, Etudes Océan Indien, 38–39 (2007).  

 

 

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NOTES

pp. [227–231]

15. Ali Mohamed Gou, ‘Archéologie d’un genocide (1976): Le Massacre des Comoriens de Majunga’, Tarehi, 4 (2001), pp.  8–12; Toibibou Ali Mohamed, ‘Entre Anjouanais et Grands-Comoriens à Majunga (1908–1960)’, in Cultures citadines dans l’océan Indien (XVIIIe–XXIe siècles): Pluralisme, échanges, inventivité, edited by Faranirina Rajaonah, Paris: Karthala, 2011. 16. Youssouf Abdillahi, La Diaspora de la Grande Comore à Marseille et son apport sur le développement de l’île, St Denis: Université de la Réunion, PhD diss., 2012; Karima Direche-Slimani and Fabienne Le Houerou, Les Comoriens à Marseille: D’une mémoire à l’autre, Paris: Autrement, 2002. 17. See https://www.comores-online.com/mwezinet/associations/liste.htm, last accessed 26 Oct 2018, for a list of associations in France. 18. Abdillahi, La Diaspora; Géraldine Vivier, Les Migrations Comores–France: Logiques familiales et coutumières à Ngazidja, Paris: Université de Paris X—Nanterre, PhD diss., 1999; see also special issue of Hommes et Migrations, 1215 (1998), Les Comoriens de France. 19.  Al Watwan, 14 April 2015. 20. Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, ‘The politics of squalor and dependency: Chronic political instability and economic collapse in the Comoro Islands’, African Affairs, 89, 357 (1990), pp. 555–77. 21. In the late 1990s an aid worker sent to Ndzuani to establish a programme to combat malnutrition was somewhat bemused: ‘There isn’t any’, he said to me. 22. World Health Organization, Country Cooperation Strategy at a Glance: Comoros, available from apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/137153/1/ccsbrief_com_ en.pdf, last accessed 26 Oct. 2018. 23. See Silimu bin Abakari, Fragments retrouvés, Moroni: Bilk and Soul, 2015, for the account of a Comorian traveller in Siberia in the late nineteenth century.  

 

 

269

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Although the references in the notes give some indication of the texts available to the reader who seeks to explore the history or culture of the Comoros in greater depth, it is useful to provide an overview of the references that are reasonably accessible—and many of the more obscure texts are now online— and might help in pointing those interested in the right direction for further research.   There are some excellent studies of the region that, while not directly concerned with the Comoros, do provide a wider context for understanding the archipelago’s place in the history of the Indian Ocean. Michael Pearson’s The Indian Ocean (London: Routledge, 2003) and Edward A. Alpers’s The Indian Ocean in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) are both excellent overviews; for those who read French, Philippe Beaujard’s two-volume Les Mondes de l’océan Indien (Paris: Armand Colin, 2012) is the reference work for the history of the ocean prior to the arrival of the Portuguese.   Books on the Comoros themselves are scarcer. The standard text for the English-speaker was for long Malyn Newitt’s The Comoro Islands: Struggle against dependency in the Indian Ocean (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), now out of print; for the late pre-colonial period, Barbara Dubins’s thesis, A Political History of the Comoro Islands 1795–1886 (Boston University, 1972), is still relevant while Martin and Harriet Ottenheimer’s Historical Dictionary of the Comoro Islands (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1994) is a comprehensive reference text for the islands. Gillian Shepherd’s article ‘The making of the Swahili: A view from the southern end of the East African coast’ (Paideuma, 28 (1982), pp. 129–48) is a good synthesis of the early history of the islands. Otherwise most works are in French: Hervé Chagnoux and Ali Haribou’s Les Comores (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980) is still an excellent  



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introduction, although now also out of print. Les Comores by Pierre Vérin (Karthala, 1994) is a somewhat idiosyncratic history and Jean Martin’s Comores: Quatre îles entre pirates et planteurs (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1983) is a difficult read but is certainly complete for the period between the Malagasy raids and 1912. For those with German, Alfred Voeltzkow, Reise in Ostafrika in den Jahren 1903–1905. Die Komoren (Stuttgart: E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Nägele and Dr Sproesser, 1914, vol. 1, part 1), while old, is still informative and well worth reading.   Most of the early travel narratives have been collected (and translated into French, sometimes not entirely accurately) and published in the compendious Collection des ouvrages anciens concernant Madagascar, edited by Alfred and Guillaume Grandidier (Paris: Comité de Madagascar, 1903–1920, 9 vols.), but for a flavour of early English contacts, Anon., A Letter from a Gentleman on Board an Indiaman to His Friend in London, Giving an Account of the Island of Joanna in the Year 1784 (London: John Stockdale, 1789), and William Jones, ‘Remarks on the island of Hinzouan, or Johanna’ (Asiatic Researches, 2 (1790), pp. 77–107) are both worth reading. A good French account, particularly of Mwali, where the author was sold into slavery, is to be found in B.F. Leguével de Lacombe, Voyage à Madagascar et aux îles Comores (Paris: Louis Desessart, 1840); for the first detailed European account of Ngazidja, see Iain Walker, Marie-Aude Fouéré and Nadine Beckmann, ‘Un explorateur allemand à Ngazidja en 1864: Otto Kersten’, Etudes Océan Indien, 53/54 (2018), pp. 349–93. On Mayotte there is little until 1870 when A. Gevrey’s Essai sur les Comores (Pondichéry: Saligny) was published.   On Hadramis and the religious networks, see Anne Bang, Sufis and Scholars of the Sea: Family networks in East Africa, 1860–1925 (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), a history of the Bin Sumeit family; and A. Chanfi Ahmed, Ngoma et mission Islamique (da’wa) aux Comores et en Afrique oriental: Une approche anthropologique (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2002). There have been some excellent anthropologies of Mayotte. Michael Lambek’s Human Spirits: a cultural account of trance in Mayotte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) and Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local discourses of Islam, sorcery, and spirit possession (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993) both deal with Islam and spirit possession, while the more recent Island in the Stream: An ethnographic history of Mayotte (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018) is the product of forty years’ fieldwork on the island. Sophie Blanchy has also written on the anthropology of Mayotte, her first book was La Vie Quotidienne a Mayotte, Archipel des Comores (Paris: l’Harmattan,  

 

 

 

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1990). Jon Breslar’s wide-ranging doctoral thesis, An Ethnography of the Mahorais (Mayotte, Comoro Islands) (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1981) is now available online. Much else on Mayotte tends to be political (and in French); Jean Martin’s Histoire de Mayotte, département français (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2010) is probably the most accessible general history although it is very pro-French in its approach.   There is less for the other islands. Martin Ottenheimer’s Marriage in Domoni: Husbands and wives in an Indian Ocean community (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1985) is the only book on Ndzuani in English; Claude Robineau, Société et économie d’Anjouan (Océan Indien) (Paris: ORSTOM, Mémoires ORSTOM, no. 21) is somewhat dated but comprehensive. For Ngazidja, my own Becoming the Other, Being Oneself: Constructing identities in a connected world (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010) is a historical anthropology of the island; Sophie Blanchy has also written on the anthropology of Ngazidja, Maisons des femmes, cités des hommes: Filiation, âge et pouvoir à Ngazidja (Comores) (Nanterre: Société d’Ethnologie, 2010). For Mwali there is only Claude Chanudet and JeanAimé Rakotoarisoa, Mohéli: Une île des Comores à la recherche de son identité (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2000). For a summary of the marriage systems of Ngazidja, see Gillian M. Shepherd, ‘Two marriage forms in the Comoro Islands: An investigation’ (Africa, 47, 4 (1977), pp. 344–59); and for a flavour of Comorian oral histories, see Lyndon Harries, The Swahili Chronicle of Ngazija by Said Bakari bin Sultani Ahmed (Bloomington: Indiana University African Studies Program, 1977).   Twentieth-century events have received more attention in the Englishspeaking world, and the reader may usefully consult Ahmed Rajab ‘The killing of Ali Soilih’ (New African, July 1978, pp. 78–9); W. Andrew Terrill, ‘The Comoro Islands in South African regional strategy’ (Africa Today, 33, 2–3 (1986), pp. 59–70); Richard Cornwell, ‘Anjouan: A spat in the Indian Ocean’ (African Security Review, 7, 3 (1998), pp. 51–61); and, on Bob Denard, Samantha Weinberg, Last of the Pirates: The search for Bob Denard (London: Cape, 1994). Much of what has been written on the issue of Mayotte is in French: Pierre Caminade’s Comores-Mayotte: Une histoire néocoloniale (Marseilles: Agone, 2003) is particularly critical of the role of the French state in the affair.   For the linguist, Derek Nurse and Thomas Hinnebusch present an analysis of the Comorian languages in Swahili and Sabaki: A linguistic history (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) but the standard reference is  

 

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Mohamed Ahmed-Chamanga’s two-volume work Introduction à la grammaire structurale du comorien (Moroni: Komedit, vol. I, le shiNgazidja, 2010; vol. II, le shiNdzuani, 2017); and, finally, there is a growing body of Comorian literature—but with the possible exception of an English translation, yet to appear, of Ali Zamir’s critically acclaimed Anguille sous roche (Paris: le Tripode, 2017), most are in French. Mohamed Toihir, La Republique des imberbes (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1985) is a fictionalised account of the Ali Soilihi years; Un coin de voile sur les Comores by Hamza Soilhaboud (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1993) tells the story of two young lovers confronting Comorian traditions; Brûlante est ma terre by Abdou S. Baco (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1991) is based on the author’s childhood in Mayotte in the years preceding independence.  

274

INDEX

Ali Soilihi and, 156, 160, 163, 215, 262n Said Mohamed Cheikh and, 215, 262n diaspora and, 224–5, 227, 228–9 Taki and, 177–8 taxes on, 130, 205, 215 administrateur supérieur, 127–8, 135 African Development Bank, 189, 198, 201 African Union, 149, 187, 189, 195 age systems, 4, 35, 211–12 al-Ahdali, Alawi bin Abdallah, 45 Ahmed, Sultan consort of Ndzuani, 67 Ahmed, Sultan of Bambao, see Mwinyi Mkuu Ahmed, Sultan of Ndzuani, 67, 68, 75, 76, 95, 250n Ahmed, Djaffar, 194, 195 Ahmed, Mohamed, 135, 136, 139, 152, 160, 162, 163 aid, 154, 158, 178, 186, 189, 191, 193, 198, 230 Air Comores, 165, 171, 261n Alawi I, Sultan of Ndzuani, 78, 96, 102 Alawi II, Sultan of Ndzuani, 97–8 Alawiyya, 121 Ali Amir, Ahmed 195

Abdallah I, Sultan of Ndzuani, 68, 71, 76, 77, 78, 90, 95, 96, 246n Abdallah II, Sultan of Ndzuani, 83, 84, 85, 97, 102 Abdallah III, Sultan of Ndzuani, 98–101, 107, 114 Abdallah, Ahmed, 131–2, 135, 136, 138, 139, 145, 149–51, 152, 160, 162–7, 174 assassination, 166–7, 168, 205 France, relations with, 160, 162–7, 174 independence referendum (1974), 146, 150 South Africa, relations with, 165, 166, 167, 174 Abdallah, Mouzaoir, 144, 145, 146, 151, 155, 162, 164 Abderemane, Said Abeid, 181–4 Abderemane, Said Mohamed, 163 Abderrahman ben Said, Sultan of Mwali, 94–5, 101 Abdou Salami Abdou, 195, 265n Abu Bakar bin Salim lineage, 67 Acoua, Mayotte, 37, 42, 43 Action Française, 168 ãda na mila, 117–20, 156, 163, 191, 199, 211–20, 222, 257n, 262n



275

INDEX Ali, Ramlati, 210 Andriantsoli, Sultan of Mayotte, 82–6, 88, 90, 91, 97, 254n Angoche, Mozambique, 25, 41, 51, 102 Anjouan, see Ndzuani Antalaotes, 82, 89, 220, 222, 255n Antananarivo, Madagascar, 126, 127, 128, 129, 132, 150, 169, 175, 223, 226, 227 Antananarivo Accords (1999), 182, 264n Antsiranana, Madagascar, 145, 223, 259n Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa, 198 Arab League, 158, 172, 180, 189 Arabic, 20, 24, 38, 52, 57, 63, 78, 97, 156 Ali Soilihi and, 156 education, 134 as official language, 163, 172 script, 127, 161 Arabs, 2, 4, 6, 20, 24, 30, 33, 41, 42, 44, 45, 50, 55–6, 220, 222 descendants of, 47, 57, 62, 63, 67, 78, 102, 121, 156, 168, 215, 220, 222 ruling class and, 63, 67 in Sofala, 51–2 see also sharifu architecture, 64, 65 Armoogum, Roland, see under Ashley, Rowland Arnaud, Georges, 135 Arusha Declaration (1967), 161 Ashley, Rowland, 171 Assada colony (1649–50), 70, 252n assemblée territoriale, 135 Association de la Jeunesse Comorienne, 143 Association des Stagiaires et Étudiants Comorians (ASEC), 144

276

Austronesian peoples, 6, 14, 27–8, 30, 33, 36, 38, 41, 234–6n aviation, 129, 138, 165, 171, 186, 197–9, 209, 210, 231, 259n, 261n Ayouba, Combo, 173 Azali Assoumani, 182–6, 189, 192, 193–6, 206, 231 ãda na mila and, 215 coup d’état (1999), 182, 186, 198 Fomboni peace agreements (2000, 2001), 183–4, 206 France, relations with, 182, 186, 194, 202 Mayotte, relations with, 202 Presidency, first term (1999–2006), 182–6, 189 Presidency, second term (2016–), 193–6, 206 Qatar, relations with, 194 Saudi Arabia, relations with, 194 Ba Alawi, 121, 242n Ba Faqih, 57, 67, 220, 242n, 246n Babu, Abdulrahman, 225 Bacar, Daniel, 221–2 Bacar, Mohamed, 181, 184, 185, 187–8 Bagamoyo, Mayotte, 28, 30 Bakar Hamadi, Sultan of Bambao, 101–2 Bakari Koussou, 88 Balladur visa, 170, 176, 179, 203, 204–5 Bamana, Younoussa, 146, 151, 168, 201 Bambao Mtsanga, Ndzuani, 9, 100, 123 Bambao Mtuni, Ndzuani, 9, 11, 12, 68 Bambao, Sultanate, Ngazidja, 44, 72–3, 78, 91, 101–5, 106, 109, 146 Ban Hassannji Majombee, 60 bananas, 13, 14, 27, 217, 230, 261n Bandrele, Mayotte, 203

INDEX banga, 65 Bangwa Kuuni, Ngazidja, 65 bangwe, 66, 221 Banque Fédérale du Commerce (BFC), 199, 200 Bantu peoples, 25–6, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35–6, 226 Baraka, Mouigni, 193 Barbados, 20, 74 Barghash ibn Said Bu Saidi, Sultan of Zanzibar, 100, 101 Bazi, Ali, 164 de Beaulieu, Augustin, 54, 55, 62, 246n bedja, 34, 39, 44 Ben Ali, Salim, 172 Ben Massoundi, Rachid, 264n Ben Ousseni, Abdourraquib, 141 Berlin Conference (1885), 105 Betsimisaraka Kingdom (c. 1710–1817), 76 bidaa, 191 Bidoon, 1, 199, 200, 266n Bin Sumeit family, 220 Said Ahmed, 224 Said Omar, 163, 225 Blankett, Commodore John, 60, 77, 248 Bohras, 222 Boina Kingdom (c. 1690–1840), 82–3, 84 Boina, Abdou Bakari, 143, 145 Boléro, Hamada Madi, 185 Bombay Jack, 78–9, 95–6 Bombay, India, 59, 77, 78 Bouin, Georges, 109, 123 Bourbon, 78 see also Réunion brideprice, 67, 213, 215 Britain, 54–61, 62, 64, 73–5 Abdallah II, relations with, 83 Malagasy slave raiders and, 77–8

Merina Kingdom, relations with, 78, 82 Mwali war (1704), 69–70 Napoleonic Wars, 79, 81, 82, 95 Ndzuani, relations with, 57–61, 69–70, 73–5, 83, 91, 95–101 Ngazidja, relations with, 54–5, 103 Brown’s Garden, Ndzuani, 58, 74 Bu Saidi dynasty, 75, 102 Barghash ibn Said, 100, 101 Majid ibn Said, 93, 94, 103 Said ibn Sultan, 84–5, 91, 92, 98, 223 burials, 30, 43 Bushmen, see under wamatsaha Buyid dynasty, 240n Buzurg ibn Shahriyar, 240n Bwana Combo Abubakar, 76 Bwana Combo, Sultan of Mayotte, 84, 85 bwibwi, 217, 218 cadis, 89, 90, 97, 107, 116–17, 224 calendars, 39–40 Cambay cloth, 56 Cambay, Gujarat, 240n, 245n Cape Colony, 81, 97, 98 Cape Delgado, 25, 234n Cape of Good Hope, 50, 70, 78, 97 cash crops, 11, 14, 20, 107–10, 123–4, 130, 152–4, 164, 196, 230–31 cassava, 14, 216, 217, 230 cattle, 18, 29, 52, 55, 56, 58, 59, 67, 70, 122, 153 ritual use of, 118, 124, 156, 197, 215, 216 taxation of, 69, 124, 130 Chamassi, Said Omar, 181 chambre des députés, 136, 145, 146, 150 chatilleuses, 210 chef de canton, 116, 122

277

INDEX chef de province, 122 chef de subdivision, 116 chef de village, 120 Cheikh, Mustoifa Said, 165 Cheikh, Said Mohamed, 128, 132, 136, 137–8, 139, 141–5, ãda na mila and, 215, 262n Ali Soilihi, relationship with, 150 Djohar, relationship with, 168 National Assembly elections, 132, 133, 134–5, 136 chickens, 29, 52, 59 China, 15, 24, 29, 47–8, 143, 149, 155, 158, 173–4, 184 Arab traders in, 42 aid to Comoros, 154, 158, 186, 193, 198, 201 exports to Comoros, 154, 158 malaria treatment programme, 230 Chirac, Jacques, 166, 167, 202 Chiris, Georges, 123 cholera, 230 Christianity, 30, 96, 106, 125, 140, 218, 265n CHUMA, 168 cinnamon, 14, 154 circumcision, 31, 54 civil service, 170, 182, 187 French period, 113, 122, 126, 127, 129, 131, 132, 138, 141, 142, 152 Ali Soilihi and, 158, 159 women in, 210 clan, 4, 5, 33–4, 43, 44, 45, 71, 72, 103, 156, 214, 222 see also lineage cloth, 55–6, 59, 124 cloves, 11, 14, 21, 108–9, 123, 128, 130, 152, 154, 178, 196, 261n, 263n, 265n cocoa, 14, 123, 153 coconuts, 14, 29, 55, 59, 102, 108, 123, 152, 153, 154

278

code de l’indigénat, 131 coelacanths, 15–17, 18 coffee, 14, 100, 108, 109, 123, 153 coir, 102, 123, 153 Collectif des Citoyens de Mayotte, 205 collectivité térritoriale, 159 Combani, Mayotte, 88, 108, 123, 108, 123 Comité Militaire de Transition, 173 comités populaire, 157, 158 Commando Moissi, 157, 159, 160, 167 Comores Telecom, 190 Comorian language, 2, 8, 26, 36, 84, 97, 161, 221, 222, 239n Arabic script, 127, 161 Latin script, 161 mosques and, 156 Ali Soilihi and, 156, 161 Comoros Donors’ Conference (2005), 198 Comoros Gulf Holdings (CGH), 199–200 conseil consultatif, 127, 131 conseil du gouvernement, 135 conseil général, 131–2, 135, 137, 150 Conseil National Populaire, 158 conseil privé, 131 conseil régional, 130 conseil représentatif, 130 constitution 1977, 158 1978, 162–3, 164 1982, 167 1992, 169 2001, 184–5, 186, 187, 188, 192 2009 (revision), 188, 265n 2018 (revision), 194–5 Constitutional Court, 191, 192, 193, 194 copra, 123, 152, 153, 154, 261n Cornwall, Henry, 76

INDEX cotton, 55, 96 coups d’état 1975, 149–51, 160, 162 1978, 160, 162 1995, 173, 175 1999, 182, 186, 198 coup d’état attempt (2013), 191–2 Courtenay-Latimer, Marjorie, 16 cowries, 41, 55, 102 creoles, 86, 89, 140, 146, 168, 222 cuisine, 216–17 Cushitic languages, 26, 34, 35 customary law, 21, 156, 160, 163, 191, 199 see also mila na ntsi Cycas thouarsii, see ntsambu Da Covilhã, Pêro, 243n Da Gama, Vasco, 49–50, 242n daira, 121 Dalao mosque, Ntsaweni, 65 dances, 213, 214, 218–19 Dandarawiyya, 121 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1, 143, 195, 210, 226 Daroueche, Abdallah, 121 de Daruvar, Yves, 137–8 Darweshi, 215, 262n Dembeni, Mayotte, 28, 40, 236n Dembeni period, 28–30, 34, 38, 39, 236n Denard, Robert ‘Bob’, 1, 151, 160, 162, 164–7, 172–3, 200 dhikr, 121 dhows, 13, 28, 32, 36, 40, 49, 55, 56, 57, 87, 97, 129 diaspora, 3, 7, 20, 198–9, 201, 206, 210, 215, 222–30, 231 Dimani, Ngazidja, 122, 132 djaliko, 213 djinns, 3, 31–2, 218

Djohar, Said Mohamed, 168–73, 175, 176, 178, 184 Djomani, Ngazidja, 122 Djoussouf, Abbas, 160, 163, 168, 175, 176, 182 Doha Conference (2010), 189, 198 Domoni, Mwali, 55, 64 Domoni, Ndzuani, 9, 19, 28, 40, 43, 45, 52, 57, 70, 96 civil war (c. 1788–92), 76 Malagasy invasion (1798), 77 Shirazi Mosque, 37, 39, 42, 65 Tumpa’s occupation (c. 1784), 68 dragla, 214, 216, 217 dress, 61–2, 163, 213–14, 216, 217–18 droit commun, 116–17 droit local, 116, 131 Droit, Marie-Alphonsine, 92 Dzaoudzi, Mayotte, 8, 12, 80, 85, 86, 87, 122, 130, 137, 141 Dzialaoutsounga, Ndzuani, 32 Dzoumonyé, Mayotte, 108, 153 Early Iron Working tradition, 28 East Barito languages, 27 East India Company, 54, 57, 58, 74, 77–8, 246–8n, 252n Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), 190 écoles indigènes, 125, 134 economic citizenship, 1, 190, 199–200, 266n education Azali period, 205 Djohar period, 172 French period, 125–6, 128, 132, 134, 138, 139, 146 in Madagascar, 128, 132, 150, 169, 226 Ali Soilihi period, 157, 161 in Zanzibar, 126, 129, 224, 226

279

INDEX Egypt, 20, 24, 25, 41, 45, 50, 137, 143, 155 Elbak, Abdou Soulé, 185 elders, 35, 118–20, 177–8, 128, 214–16 Abdallah and, 163, 176–7 ãda, 118–20, 214–16, 262n Azali and, 215 Said Ibrahim and, 133, 144 Ali Soilihi and, 156–7, 163, 215, 262n Taki and 177–8 elections, legislative, 169, 176 elections, presidential, 165, 168, 175, 185, 186–7, 192, 193, 195–6, 206 Elliott, William, 96–7, 254n England, see under Britain England, Edward, 75 English language, 20, 59, 60, 74, 78, 79, 97, 173 essential oils, 152, 164 European Union, 19, 21, 198, 202 Every, Henry, 75 Exclusive Economic Zone, 8, 19, 206–7 fani, 34, 43, 56–7, 242n Fazul, Mohamed Said, 264n, 265n Fazul, Mohamed, 144 Fe Fumu, Sultan of Itsandra, 73 Fe Pirusa, 72 Febvrier-Despointes, Auguste, 92 First World War (1914–18), 121 fishing, 3, 15, 19, 29, 40, 41, 66, 160, 171, 193, 197, 218 flag-of-convenience shipping, 1, 199 flag, 176, 184, 264n Fleuriot de Langle, Emile, 94 Foccart, Jacques, 166, 172 Fomboni, Mwali, 9, 55, 64, 84, 93, 183–4

280

Fomboni peace agreements (2000, 2001), 183–4, 206 Fonds d’Aide et de Coopération (FAC), 137 Fonds International pour le Développement Économique et Social (FIDES), 137, 153 food crops, 13, 14, 27, 29, 52, 55, 130, 153, 155, 196, 230, 261n foreign aid, 154, 158, 178, 186, 189, 191, 193, 198 France, 2, 6, 7 aid to Comoros, 154, 186, 198 Azali, relations with, 182, 186, 194, 202 diaspora in, 228–30 migration to, 7, 20, 198, 216, 228–30 National Assembly, 132–3, 134, 136, 166, 168, 210 right wing in, 146, 168, 179, 229 slave trade and, 71, 76, 80, 81, 87, 90, 107 Ali Soilihi, relations with, 160, 161, 162, 173 South Africa, relations with, 166 Vichy regime (1940–44), 130, 225 withdrawal (1975–6), 151–2, 154, 157 French language, 78, 92, 125, 161, 163 Friday mosques, 45, 65, 71, 172, 221 Front Démocratique (FD), 165 Front National Uni (FNU), 150 Fumbavu, Sultan of Itsandra, 91, 92, 103 Fumbuni, Ngazidja, 12, 66 Fumnau, Sultan of Itsandra, 72–3 Fumu Mvundzambanga, Sultan of Itsandra, 71 fundi, 117 Galawa hotel, Ngazidja, 166, 197

INDEX garde indigène, 116 gas, 10, 200, 207 de Gaulle, Charles, 130, 137–8, 166, 225 geothermal energy, 200, 201 Germany, 17, 118, 121, 130 German East Africa Company, 106 imports from Comoros, 154 Gerville-Réache, commandant of Mayotte, 101 Giraud, Adrien, 146, 168, 201 glass, 24, 25, 29, 42, 43, 55 Global Environment Facility, 201 goats, 18, 29, 52, 59, 124, 197, 216 gold, 24, 42, 51, 53, 55, 223 grand mufti, appointment of, 163 Grande Comore, see Ngazidja Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, 123, 154 Grimaldi, Jacques, 131, 259n Groupe de Travail à Haut Niveau (GTHN), 202, 204 Guéant, Claude, 229 Guinea, 142, 149, 161, 260n Gujarat, India, 24, 42, 55–6, 61, 163, 222, 240n, 245n gungu, 202 Guy, Paul, 257n Hadramawt, 62, 67, 68 Mtswa Mwindza in, 37 Shafi’i school in, 45, 242n trade routes, 42, 61, 248n Hadramis, 24, 43, 44, 47, 62, 67, 124, 172, 220, 222, 248n families, 47, 121, 220, 242n see also sharifu Hahaya, Ngazidja, 186, 209 Hajj, 34, 45, 46, 47, 50, 57, 71, 73, 97, 154 Halidi, Ahmed, 170 Halima I, Sultana of Ndzuani, 45

Halima II, Sultana of Ndzuani, 60, 67, 75, 250n Hamadi, Hassane, 265n Hamahame, Ngazidja, 15, 47, 71, 72, 104, 175–6 Hambuu, Ngazidja, 104, 150 Hashim, Sultan of Mbadjini, 106 Hassan ibn Muhammad, 43 Hassanaly, Hadji, 163 Hassanaly, Mohamed, 155 head tax, 7, 107–8, 130 healthcare, 128, 138, 146, 172, 193 Henry, Marcel, 141, 146, 168, 201 Himidi, Salim, 144, 155, 181 hinya, 4, 5, 33–4, 211, 214 see also clan, lineage Hinya Fwambaya, 44, 71–3, 105 Hinya Matswa Pirusa, 44, 72, 103 hirimu, 35, 212 Holmwood, Frederick, 101 Hory, Jean-François, 168 Humblot, Léon, 104–9, 111, 114, 122, 125, 200, 222, 223, 257n Ibadhi school, 102 Ibn Battuta, 6, 242n, 249n Ibn Majid, 47, 52, 242n Ibn al-Mujawir, 42, 241n Ibrahim, Abdallah, 179–82 Ibrahim, Mahamoud Abdallah, 190–91 al-Idrisi, Muhammad, 6, 40 Ikililou Dhoinine, 187, 190–93, 200 Ikoni, Ngazidja, 19, 53, 54, 72, 73, 160 Île de France, 71, 76, 81, 82, 95, 248n see also Mauritius Îles Glorieuses, 8 immigration, 222 India British in, 2, 54, 57, 58, 70, 77, 99, 124

281

INDEX famine (1631), 58 Portuguese in, 50, 51, 252n trade routes, 2, 23, 24, 25, 29, 30, 42, 55, 61 Indian Ocean monsoon system, 11, 24, 41, 42, 49 trade winds, 11–12, 24 trading systems, 6–7, 23–5, 30, 41–2, 50–51, 55, 61 Indian Ocean Commission, 174, 198 Indonesia, 6, 14, 17, 24, 27, 42, 43, 46, 123, 265n inheritance, 33, 68, 105, 117, 204 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 178, 189, 193 Internet, 20, 190, 193, 205, 231 Inyehele, 47–8 Iran, 1, 10, 38, 39, 176, 186, 189–90, 191 iron, 24, 28, 30, 41, 55, 56 Islam, 4, 5, 30, 31, 36–41, 45–7, 62, 83, 102, 115–18, 120–21, 163 ãda na mila and, 120, 191, 215, 262n Ibadhi school, 102 Ismaʿlism, 222 Koran schools, 125, 130, 132, 134, 161, 224 Ramadan, 45, 47, 49, 50, 62 sharia, 21, 89, 90, 116–17, 203–4 Shiʿism, 38, 186, 190–91, 193–4 slavery and, 37, 38, 49, 62–3 Sunnism, 45, 102, 190, 194, 222 Sufism, 120–21, 122, 135, 146, 156 Zaydism, 38, 240n Ismaʿlism, 222 Issa bin Muhammad, Sultan of Mayotte, 44 itreya, 66 Itsandra, Sultanate, Ngazidja, 15, 44, 71–3, 91, 92, 101–4, 106,

282

Itsandramdjini, Ngazidja, 19, 71–3, 104, 160, 215, 259n ivory, 24, 25, 51, 55 Jacobins, 78, 96, 253n Jaffar, Said Mohamed, 144, 145, 152 Jamal al-Layl, 102 Jean-Baptiste, Henry, 168, 201 Jeune Comorien movement, 128 Johanna, 2, 57–61, 95–6, 254n see also Ndzuani Jones, William, 59, 61, 68, 74, 250n, 251n juge d’instance, 116, 117 Jumbe Addia, 43 Jumbe Fatima, Sultana of Mwali, 91–4, 95, 106 Juwa party, 188, 194–5, 196, 265n Kalfane family, 163–4, 222 Kamardine, Mansour, 222 Karoni, Mayotte, 53 Karthala, Ngazidja, 9–13, 18, 19, 105, 106, 122, 158, 161, 200, 209 Kenya, 29, 30, 38 exports to Comoros, 154 migration to, 223 Kersten, Otto, 118 Kibushi, 36, 221 Kidd, William, 75 Kilwa Chronicle, 38, 39, 43 Kilwa, 38, 42, 43, 49, 50, 52, 67, 102, 242n, 249n, 250n Kirk, John, 101 Kiwan, Bashar, 199–200 Koran schools, 125, 130, 132, 134, 161, 224 Kumr, 52 Kuwait, 154, 198, 199–200 Kwale ware, 28 Kwambani, Ngazidja, 66, 72, 106

INDEX kwasa kwasas, 179, 203, 204 La Grille, Ngazidja, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 166 Lac Salé, Ngazidja, 32 Lambert, Joseph, 93–4, 123 Lamu, 41, 55, 73, 97, 102, 191 Lancaster, James, 54 language, 26–8, 35–6 Le Myre de Vilers school, Antananarivo, 132, 169, 226 Lebret, Yves, 151, 155, 261n Lelieur, William, 102 lemurs, 17, 26, 27, 30 Libya, 172, 176, 189, 190 lineage, 5, 33–4, 43, 57, 67–8, 84, 90, 95, 102, 103, 117, 118, 125, 213, 235n, 242n see also clan Livingstone, David, 99 Livingstone’s flying fox, 17 Lobo de Sousa, Balthazar, 53, 54, 249n Loi Defferre (1956), 135, 136 Loi Fondamentale, see constitution (1977) London Missionary Society, 96 Longoni, Mayotte, 205 Longquan celadon, 42 Lycée Gallieni, Antananarivo, 150, 226 el-Maarouf, 121 Macron, Emmanuel, 204 Madagascar, 2, 7, 23, 30, 110, 114–16, 121, 122, 125, 126, 142, 145 Arab traders in, 52 British in, 55, 59, 130, 259n Comoros, relations with, 7, 110, 115, 122, 158, 163 diaspora in, 226–8 education in, 128, 132, 150, 169, 226

settlement of, 26–7 Mayotte, trade with, 73 migration to, 108, 129, 146, 223, 226–8 Portuguese in, 52, 53, 56 Madi, Mohamed Abdou, 180, 181 Madi, Zakia, 142 madjeliss, 213, 229 al-Madoua clan, 43 Maecha, Mtara, 170, 171 mafe, 34 maferembwe, 34 Mahajanga, Madagascar, 26, 96, 104, 129, 132, 168, 223, 226–8 massacre (1976), 157, 161, 173, 228 Mahame Said, Sultan of Itsandra, 71 Mahmoud, Regent of Mwali, 106 Majid ibn Said, Sultan of Zanzibar, 93, 94, 103 makabaila, 63, 68–9, 90, 98, 100, 101, 121, 131, 146, 163, 212, 220 Makua, 63, 220, 222 Malabar coast, 42 Malagasy, 6, 7, 126 Indonesia, voyages to, 42 in Mayotte, 82–5, 89, 203, 221, 238n in Mwali, 62, 83–5, 91–2, 95 in Ndzuani, 63, 97, 125 in Ngazidja, 122 slave raiders, 7, 55, 56, 73, 76–8, 79, 82, 86, 96, 102, 110, 139, 254n trade networks, 55, 59 Malagasy language, 26, 27, 28, 30, 36, 84, 126, 127, 221 malaria, 230 Malay archipelago, 20, 24, 27, 238n Malay language, 27, 30 Malindi, Kenya, 47, 49, 53 Mamadaly family, 222 Mamluk Empire, 41, 50

283

INDEX Mamoudzou, Mayotte, 86, 137, 141, 142, 204, 217, 221 MaMwe, 190, 201 Manau Idarus, 250n Manda, Kenya, 29 manyahuli, 34, 211 manzaraka, 119, 216 Maore, see Mayotte Mapharitis, 25, 234n Maputo, Mozambique, 223 Marche Rose (1975), 151 Mardjani bin Abudu, Sultan of Mwali, 95 marriage, 5, 21, 118–19, 156, 163, 177–8, 204, 210–15, 218–19 brideprice, 67, 213, 215 diaspora and, 224, 225, 227, 228 divorce, 211 Islamic, 21, 204, 213 polygamy, 4, 5, 21, 204, 210 Ali Soilihi ’s laws on, 156, 163 see also ãda na mila Marseilles, 144, 216, 228, 229 al-Masela clan, 45, 57, 90, 93, 100, 102, 107 Alawi, 250n Massounde, Tadjidine ben Said, 155, 176, 182 al-Masudi, 6, 38, 240n matrilineal society, 3–4, 32–4, 39, 63, 64, 65, 67, 84, 118, 210–11 maulida ya shenge, 141, 229 Mauritius, 71, 76, 78, 80, 81, 82, 90, 91, 95, 98, 99, 108, 173, 174, 181, 198, 248n mawana flag, 179, 180 Mawana Mmadi, Sultan of Mayotte, 83, 84, 90 Mayotte, 2–3, 7, 8, 21–2, 70–71, 83–91, 139–42, 145–6, 159, 167–8, 183, 201–5, 206–7, 232

284

archaeological sites, 28, 29, 30, 42, 43 creoles, 86, 89, 140, 146, 168, 222 crime, 21–2, 204 population, 79–80, 89, 139, 255n French annexation, 85, 98, 139, 254n Islam in, 203–4 labourers in, 7, 87–8, 98, 99, 100, 108 lagoon, 3, 8, 15, 12, 29, 70, 85 legal systems, 21, 119 Malagasy in, 82–5, 89, 203, 221, 238n migration to, 7, 21, 86, 89, 90, 103, 108, 140, 160, 179, 198–9, 202–3, 204–5, 221–2 Ndzuani, relations with, 70–71, 84, 85, 90, 97 plantations, 86–8, 90, 98, 99, 100, 108, 123 separatism, 5, 140–42, 151, 168, 210 slavery in, 81, 86, 87, 90, 221 social unrest, 204, 205 sultanate, 43–4, 53, 61, 70–71, 75, 83–5 United Nations and, 167, 189, 202 Mazrui dynasty, 75 Mbadjini, Ngazidja, 9, 11, 12, 104, 106 Mbaraka Combo, 78–9, 95–6 Mbashile, Ngazidja, 28 Mbeki, Thabo, 185 Mbeni, Ngazidja, 48, 66, 72, 150, 175 Mbude, Ngazidja, 36, 73, 104 Mbwankuu, Ngazidja, 104, 177 Mchangama, Mohamed Said Abdallah, 171 Mde, Ngazidja, 104 Mdere, Zaina, 142 mdji, 45, 65 Mdjongwe, 34

INDEX Mecca, 34, 37, 45, 46, 50, 55, 57, 71, 73, 97, 154 Membeni, Ngazidja, 28, 30, 40 Menouthias, 25, 234n mercenaries, 1, 76, 84, 104, 106, 107, 151, 160, 162, 164, 165–6, 167, 172–3, 174 Merina Kingdom, 76, 78, 82, 83, 93 Messageries Maritimes, 129 Messmer, Pierre, 145 Mijikenda, 239n mila na ntsi, 34, 117–20, 177–8 millet, 14, 29, 52, 55, 102 Ming Fleets, 47–8 Minhaj al-Talibin, 117 Miraj, 46 Miringoni, Mwali, 55, 56 Mitsamihuli, Ngazidja, 18, 44, 54, 66, 72, 104, 132 Mitsoudje, Ngazidja, 185 Mitterrand, François, 166, 168, 207 Mlanau, Sultan of Bambao, 72–3 Mmadjamu, 71, 72 Mocquet, Jules, 109, 111 Mogadishu, Somalia, 42, 43, 47, 102 Mollana Alachorra, 250n Mombasa, 38, 41, 49, 52, 67, 75, 242n Monomotapa, 51 monsoon system, 11, 24, 41, 42, 49, 51, 55, 57, 61, 233n Moroni, Ngazidja, 12, 19, 66, 72, 132 airstrip, 138 Badjanani Mosque, 65 capital moved to, 137, 138, 141 Darweshi in, 215 education in, 132, 134, 144 Friday mosque, 172 el-Maarouf, tomb of, 121 student strike (1968), 144 waterfront development, 199 Moshi, Tanzania, 143

mosques, 45–6, 65, 119 classical period, 42–3, 44, 239n Dembeni period, 30, 37–8, 39, 41 Friday mosques, 45, 65, 71, 172, 221 Shanga, 30 Moukdar bin Abubacar, 83, 95 Mouvement de Libération Nationale des Comores (MOLINACO), 143, 144, 145, 150 Mouvement Départementaliste Mahorais (MDM), 202 Mouvement du Peuple d’Anjouan (MPA), 179 Mouvement Populaire Mahorais (MPM), 141, 142, 145–6, 150, 151, 201, 210, 261n Mouvement pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (MDP), 168 Mozambique, 10, 25, 36, 39, 42, 49, 51, 52, 55–56, 63, 67, 97, 161, 165, 184, 200, 223 Hadramis in, 43 Malagasy slave raiders and, 78 Mayotte, migration to, 89 Mwali, trade with, 55 Ngazidja, trade with, 73 Mozambique Channel, 19, 55, 82, 165 Mradabi, Mahamoud, 185 Mranda party, 144 Mro Dewa, Mwali, 28 Mroudjae, Ali, 144, 160, 170 Msafumu Fefumu, Sultan of Itsandra, 101, 103–4 Mshangama, Maulid, 225 Mtsamboro, Mayotte, 43, 242n Mtswa Mwindza, 36–7, 39 mudiriyas, 155, 159, 162 Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, 32, 36–7, 46–7, 176, 220, 242 Muhammad, Sultan of Bambao, 103–4 Muhammad, Sultan of Ndzuani, 45

285

INDEX Muhammad ibn Ahmed, 60 Muhammad ibn Hassan, 43 Muhammad ibn Issa, 43 Muhammad ibn Said, Sultan of Mwali, 93, 94 Muhammad ibn Said, Sultan of Ndzuani, 107, 110 Muhammad ibn Sheikh, Sultan of Mwali, 95 Muhammad ibn Uthman, 37 Mundy, Peter, 58 Mury, Francis, 126 Muscat, 75, 84–5, 97 music, 218–19 Mutsamudu, Ndzuani, 16, 19, 43, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 76, 77, 78, 96, 100, 101, 116, 129, 181, 190–91, 217 American whalers in, 80, 98, 99–100 British in, 16, 57–8, 74, 98 capital moved to, 58 governors, 68, 76, 97 schools, 125, 132 uprising (2018), 195, 232 viziers, 97 Mwali, 2–3, 9, 55–7, 61, 83–5, 87, 91–5, 101, 106, 110, 119, 211, 215, 216, 220, 254n British in, 55, 56, 57, 62 fani, 56–7 Madagascar, trade with, 55, 73 Malagasy in, 62, 83–5, 91–2, 95 Mozambique, trade with, 55 Ndzuani, relationship with, 56–7, 69–70, 83, 97 population, 11, 79–80, 93, 254n Portuguese in, 55 protests (2010), 189 secession (1997–8), 180, 181 uprising (1902), 106 Zanzibar, relations with, 84–5, 91–4, 98

286

Mwali Mjini, Mwali, 28 Mwinyi Baraka, Said Omar Abdallah, 225 Mwinyi Mkuu, Sultan of Bambao, 91, 102, 103–4, 132 Mynea Shaw, King of Ndzuani, 69, 74 Nadhoim, Idi, 187 Nahouda, Georges, 130, 141 Nairuz calendar, 39–40 Napier, Joseph, 98 national archives, burning of (1977), 158 National Assembly, 132–3, 134, 136, 166, 168, 210 National pour la Justice (FNJ), 186–7 Ndzuani, 2–3, 8–9, 44, 45, 56–61, 67–71, 83, 95–102, 107, 11057–61, 69–70, 73–5, 95–101 119, 211, 215 archaeological sites, 28–9 Bacar crisis (2007–8), 187–8 British, relations with, 57–61, 69–70, 73–5, 95–101 land, pressures on, 11, 68, 122, 128, 133 Malagasy, relations with, 63, 97, 125 Mayotte, relations with, 70–71, 84, 85, 90, 97 Mayotte, migration to, 7, 21, 160, 179, 198–9, 203, 205, 221–2 mosques, 37, 39, 42, 43, 65, 67 Mutsamudu uprising (2018), 195, 232 Mwali, relations with, 56–7, 69–70, 83, 97 plantations, 98, 99, 100, 108–9 population, 11, 68, 96, 100 Portuguese in, 63 secession period (1997–2002), 5, 179–84, 196 slavery, 63, 76–8, 83, 96, 97, 98, 100, 107, 221, 255n

INDEX taxation, 69, 87, 97, 98 trimba ritual, 32 Tumpa’s rebellion (c. 1783–4), 68–9, 251n United States, relations with, 100–101 Zanzibar, relations with, 100, 101 Nema Feda, Sultana of Hamahame, 71, 72 Netherlands, 6 Mayotte, contact with, 70 Ndzuani, contact with, 57, 68, 96 New Caledonia, 107, 257n New Zealand, 200, 201 Ngazidja, 2–3, 9–11, 13, 54–5, 71–3, 101–7, 108 archaeological sites, 28, 29, 30 British, relations with, 54–5, 103 cadis, 107 cash crops, 104–5, 106–7, 108, 123, 124, 128 elders, assembly of, 176–7 France, migration to, 7, 198, 228–230 great war, see nkodo nkuu Islam, arrival of, 36–7 labourers, 124–5 Madagascar, migration to, 108 Malagasy, relations with, 122 Mayotte, migration to, 103, 108 mosques, 37, 65, 71 Mozambique, trade with, 124 nkodo nkuu (1848–52), 103, 223 plantations, 104–5, 106–7, 108, 123, 124, 128, 209 population, 102, 116 Portuguese, relations with, 53–4 rebellion (1915), 122 slavery in, 63, 101, 107, 220, 221 Tanzania, migration to, 226 uprising (1891), 107, 257n

water, lack of, 11, 12, 123 Zanzibar, relations with, 7, 102–4, 106, 108, 124, 129, 223, 224 Nilotic languages, 34 North, Nathaniel, 75 Nosy Be, Madagascar, 70, 77, 82, 85, 88, 98, 223, 226 Novou, Christian, 150 Ntringui, Ndzuani, 8 ntsambu, 14–15 Ntsaweni, Ngazidja, 36, 37, 65, 239n Ntsudjini, Ngazidja, 66, 71, 73, 102, 150, 160, 164 nutmeg, 14 Nyamawi, Ngazidja, 28, 32 Nyerere, Julius, 143 Nyumakele, Ndzuani, 9, 11, 32, 108–9, 132 Nyumamilima, Ngazidja, 106 Nyumashuwa, Mwali, 9, 55, 57, 64, 69, 83 Nyumbadju, Ngazidja, 107 oil, 10, 200–201, 207 Oman, 61, 102, 137, 217 opium, 55 oral tradition, 6, 15, 30–31, 32, 34, 36, 44, 45, 53, 71 orange flower, 123 Orange party, 265n Organisation of African Unity (OAU), 143, 149, 158, 163, 175, 179, 180, 182, 183 see also African Union Organisation pour l’Indépendence d’Anjouan (OPIA), 179 Othman bin Muhammad, 83 Othman, Fani, 43, 242n Ottoman Empire, 45, 50, 61, 66, 121, 241n, 242n, 261–2n Ouatou Akouba, 120, 126–7, 176

287

INDEX outrigger canoes, 13, 14, 15, 27, 77, 129, 209, 241n Ovington, John, 69 Owen, William, 83 Palmerston, Lord, 91 Parti Blanc, 134, 144, 260n Parti pour l’Évolution des Comores (PEC), 144, 145 Parti Socialiste des Comores (PASOCO), 144, 145, 155, 181 Parti Vert, 134, 135, 144, 260n Passot, Pierre, 85, 86, 87, 92, 103 Pate, Kenya, 45, 97 Patsy, Ndzuani, 11, 100 peas, 14, 29, 96, 216 Pelly, Lewis, 99, 265n Pemba, Tanzania, 25, 40, 234n Penang, Malaya, 20, 97 pepper, 14, 51, 123, 152 perfume, 1, 14, 19, 105, 123, 128, 146, 152, 201 Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, The, 24–5, 26, 28, 234n Persia, see Iran Pétain, Philippe, 130 pigs, 18, 30 Pike, John, 60, 75 piracy, 75–6, 209, 252n Piri Re’is, 52–3, 56, 62, 242n Pobéguin, Henri, 109 Poirier, Charles, 122, 126 Pokomo, 239n polygamy, 4, 5, 21, 204, 210 Pomoni, Ndzuani, 83, 98–9, 100, 109, 123 Pompidou, Georges, 166 Port Louis, Mauritius, 91, 99 Portugal, 6, 20, 31, 47, 49–54, 55, 56, 66, 67, 243–5n in East Africa, 51, 52, 55, 56, 67, 97, 223

288

in India, 50, 51, 252n Malagasy slave raiders and, 77, 78 mestizos, 53, 61, 63 Ngazidja, relations with, 103 slave trade, 56, 59 Portuguese, as term for foreigners, 31, 47 pottery, 28–30, 41, 55 Prason, 25, 234n Presidential Guard, 164, 165, 167 Pro, John, 75 prostitution, 226 protectorates, 105–111 Ptolemy, 25, 234n Pujo, Pierre, 146, 168 punishment of villages, 117, 177–8, 215 see also ulapva Purser Jack, 59–60, 78 Pyrard, François, 62 Qadiriyya, 121 Qamar al-Din, 127 al-Qasimi family, 172 Qatar, 189, 190, 193, 194, 198 Qishn, Yemen, 248n Querimba Islands, 53, 102 Radama I, King of Madagascar, 78, 82, 83 Radama II, King of Madagascar, 93 Radhi party, 265n Radio Comores, 156 Radio Dar es Salaam, 143 Ramadan, 45, 46, 49, 50, 62 Ramadani, Soibahadine Ibrahim, 168 Ramanetaka, 83–5, 98 Ranavalona I, Queen of Madagascar, 82, 83 Ras Hafun, Somalia, 97

INDEX Rassemblement Démocratique des Comores (RDC), 265n Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Comorien (RDPC), 144, 145, 260n Rassemblement National pour le Développement (RND), 176 Rassemblement pour la Démocratie et le Renouveau (RDR), 169–70 Ratolojanahary, 122 Red Sea, 24, 25, 41–2 referendums constitutional (France 1958), 136, 141, 260n constitutional (Ndzuani), 181, 183 constitutional, 162, 167, 169, 184, 188, 194–5 independence (1974), 145, 146, 260n independence (Ndzuani), 180, 181, 183, 264n on status of Mayotte (1976), 151, 159, 183, 201–202 presidential (1977), 159 Regoin, Alfred, 109, 123 remittances, 3, 7, 20, 198–9, 201, 206, 210, 215, 225, 229–31 Repiquet, Jules, 238n Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (RENAMO), 165 Réunion, 10, 76, 78, 82, 88, 91, 92, 94, 136, 173, 174, 175, 168, 188 labourers, 85, 99, 100, 108 Mayotte, migration to, 86, 89, 90, 140 migration to, 198, 228 Rhapta, 25 rice, 14, 41, 52, 45, 102, 117, 242n Rifa’iyya, 121 roads, 20, 117, 129, 138, 159, 190, 193, 205, 206

rock crystal, 29 Rodney, Admiral Lord, 60 Roe, Thomas, 54, 55, 62, 245n Roger II, King of Sicily, 40 Romana, Serge, 221 Sabaki languages, 36 Sabena, 157, 219, 262n Sabili, Madi, 141 Sabili, Souffou, 138, 141 Saghir, Ali Mohamed, 143 Said Ahmed, Sultan of Ndzuani, 67, 68, 75, 76, 95 Said Ali Kemal, 164, 168, 170, 173, 185 Said Ali bin Said Omar, Sultan of Bambao, 91, 101, 102, 104–7, 109, 110, 114, 121, 125, 131, 257n Said Hamza, 96–7 Said Hassan Said Hachim, 163 Said Hussein bin Said Ali, 131, 132, 135 Said ibn Sultan Bu Saidi, Sultan of Zanzibar, 84–5, 91–3, 98, 223 Said Ibrahim bin Said Ali, 127, 132–6, 139, 141, 144, 145, 150, 154, 262n Said Kafe, 163 Said Mohamed Cheikh, see under Cheikh, Said Mohamed Said Mohammed Cheikh Ahmed, see under el-Maarouf Said Muhammad ibn Nasser Mkadara, 84, 92–3 Said Muhammad, Sultan of Ndzuani, 107, 110 Said Omar bin Said Hussein, Sultan of Ndzuani, 90–91, 93, 100, 102, 107 Sainte-Marie, 75, 82, 86, 89, 141 Sakalava, 76, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 221 Salafism, 191 Saleh, Ibuni, 225

289

INDEX Salim I, Sultan of Ndzuani, 67 Salim II, Sultan of Ndzuani, 87, 91, 98, 99 Salim III, Sultan of Ndzuani, 101, 107 Salim, Daniel, 135 Salima Machamba, Sultana of Mwali, 94, 106, 110 Sambi, Ahmed Abdallah, 186–92, 194–6, 199–200, 202–3, 206, 231 sandalwood, 55, 56 Sangani, Ngazidja, 165–6 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 202 Sassanian-Islamic ware, 29 Saudi Arabia, 154, 163, 186, 189, 191, 193, 194, 198, 242n Sayyid Said Bu Saidi, see under Said ibn Sultan Bu Saidi Schmidt, Karl, 106 Second World War (1939–45), 35, 113, 130, 225, 226, 259n Seif bin Said Muhammad ibn Nasser, 93, 94 Senegal, 46, 154, 187 separatism Mayotte, 5, 140–42, 151, 168, 210 Ndzuani, 5, 179–84, 196 Seychelles, 173, 253n Shadhuliyya, 120–21, 135 Shafi’i school, 45, 102, 117, 242n Shambara, 34 Shami, Ali Mohammed, 143 Shanga, Kenya, 30, 38 sharifu, 45, 47, 57, 67, 78, 102, 121, 156, 168, 215, 220, 242n Sharjah, 172 sharks, 15, 124 Shaw, Abdallah, 231, 247n embassy to London (1676), 74 sheep, 18, 29 sheikhs, 56–7 Shezani, Ngazidja, 177, 215

290

Shiʿism, 38, 186, 190–91, 193 ban on, 193–4 in Kenya, 191 see also Zaydism Shibam, Hadramawt, 220 Shihr, Hadramawt, 42, 67, 242n, 248n Shimalis, 224–5 Shirazi Mosque, Domoni, 37, 39, 42 al-Shirazi, Omar Abubakar, 90 Shirazis, 37, 38–40, 42–3, 67, 222, 239n, 246n Short Empire flying boats, 259n shungu, 212, 215 Shwani, Ngazidja, 150, 158 Siberia, 20 Sima, Ndzuani, 28, 37, 40, 42, 43, 236n Singani palace, Ntsudjini, 71 Singani, Ngazidja, 10, 158 sisal, 14, 123, 153 slave trade, 6, 7, 30, 31, 41, 55–6, 59, 73, 74, 75, 76–8, 79, 80, 82, 83, 86, 67, 87, 90, 96, 99, 101, 102, 107, 110, 139, 254n slavery, 6, 20, 23, 30, 31, 37, 49, 55–6, 62–3, 64, 67, 70, 71, 87, 100, 101, 110, 220–21, 222 abolition of, 80, 81, 83, 87, 90, 97, 98, 99, 101, 107 Arabs and, 6, 30, 31, 41, 55–6, 67, 87 Britain and, 74, 75, 78, 80, 83, 87, 90, 97, 98, 99, 101, 107 Dembeni period, 31, 34, 37, 38, 41 France and, 71, 76, 80, 81, 87, 90, 110 Islam and, 37, 38, 49, 62–3 Madagascar and, 7, 31, 55, 56, 73, 76–8, 79, 96, 102, 110 spaces and, 64, 66, 220–21 UNESCO Slave Route Project, 221 Smart, John, 70, 252n

INDEX Soalala, Madagascar, 226 soapstone, 29, 42, 241n socialism, 137, 143, 144, 150, 155, 158, 161, 162, 173, 174 Société Anonyme de la Grande Comore (SAGC), 106, 122, 123, 124, 125, 130, 133, 258n Société Coloniale de Bambao (SCB), 123, 130, 133 Société Comorienne des Hydrocarbures (SCH), 190 Société de Developpement des Comores (SODEC), 153 Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures, 264n Socotra, 56 Sofala, Mozambique, 42, 49, 51, 83, 243n Soilihi, Ali, 144, 149–61, 162, 173 aristocracy, relations with, 155–6, 163, 215 atheism, alleged, 156, 163 execution, 160 foreign aid, appeal for, 154, 158 France, relations with, 151–2, 154, 160, 161, 162, 173 marriage laws (1976), 156, 163 Soilihi, Mohamed Ali, 193 Somalia, 36, 39, 42, 43, 47, 56, 102, 143 sorghum, 14 sorodas, 145–6, 151 Souef, Said Mohamed, 180 Soulé, Ibrahim Mohamed, 196 South Africa, 165–6, 167, 174, 223 migration to, 223 tourism in Comoros, 197 Southern African Development Community (SADC), 194 Soviet Union, 137, 143, 158 spaces, 64–6, 220–21

Spain, 46, 51, 56, 58, 59 Spanish reals, 56, 58–9, 246n Special Arab Aid Fund for Africa, 154 spices, 24, 51, 115, 152, 201 Spilberg, George, 57 spirit possession, 31–2 Sri Lanka, 47 Srivijaya, 27 St Augustine’s Bay, Madagascar, 55 St Helena, 248n steamships, 80, 81 Stirn, Olivier, 151 Sudan, 172, 186, 187 Suez Canal, 20, 80, 81, 110 Sufism, 120–21, 122, 135, 146 sugar beet, 108 sugar, 14, 52, 86, 87, 90, 98, 100, 108, 115, 123, 153 Sulawesi, Indonesia, 17 Sultan bin Muhammad, Emir of Sharjah, 172 sultan ntibe, 44, 73, 103, 104, 106 sultanates, 4, 43–5, 47, 49–80, 83–5, 91–105 Sumatra, 27 Sunley, Robert, 109 Sunley, William, 87, 98–101, 109, 255n Sunni Islam, 45, 102, 190, 194, 222 see also Shafi’i school Supreme Court, 168, 169, 170, 182 Surat, India, 55, 70 Swahili language, 27, 30, 36, 127, 226, 239n Swahili world, 23, 38, 45, 73, 83, 114 Syria, 191, 199, 259n Tabula Rogeriana, 40 Taki Abdoulkarim, Mohamed, 150– 51, 160, 164, 168, 172, 175–82, 192 Tanzaco, 158

291

INDEX Tanzania 10, 25, 26, 34, 38, 42, 104, 143, 157, 184, 187, 200 aid to Comoros, 154 Comoros, relations with, 157, 158, 163, 174 migration to, 226 MOLINACO in, 143, 145 socialism, 161, 174, 228 taxation ãda and, 130, 205, 215 French colony, 116, 122, 123, 124–5, 130, 131 French protectorates, 7, 107–8, 109, 122 Itsandra sultanate, 72 Mayotte department, 21, 204 Ndzuani sultanate, 69, 87, 97, 98 taxis, 170, 177 telecommuncations, 186, 190, 193, 199, 205 tenrecs, 18, 27–8, 29, 30, 237 territoire d’outre mer, 113, 131, 145, 159 Thailand, 154, 266n timber, 13, 24 Toliara, Madagascar, 55 tortoiseshell, 25, 102, 124 tourism, 2, 19, 20, 166, 197, 199, 230 Tourqui, Said Bacar, 160 Toybou, Moussa, 188 Trambavu, Sultan of Mitsamihuli, 72 Trambwe, Sultan of Washili, 73 transport aviation, 129, 138, 165, 171, 186, 197–8, 199, 209, 210, 259n, 261n ferries, 129 roads, 20, 117, 129, 138, 159, 190, 193, 205, 206 taxis, 170, 177 trimba ritual, 32 Tsidje, Ngazidja, 73

292

Tsimkura, Mayotte, 53 Tsingoni, Mayotte, 44, 53, 65, 75, 242n Tsivandini, 91, 92, 93 Tsoundzou, Mayotte, 141 Tsy Levalo, 82 Tumpa, 68–9, 251n turbans, 61–2, 163, 217 Turkey, 182 turtles, 17, 18, 19, 29 Twama, 199 twarab, 213, 214, 218, 219 Udzima, 145, 150, 164, 168, 169 Ujumbe palace, Mutsamudu, 64 ulapva, 177–8, 215 Umma party, 144, 150 Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar, 29 unilateral declaration of independence (1975), 114, 146, 149, 207 Union Démocratique Comorienne (UDC), 144, 145, 260n Union Française, 131, 135, 136 Union Nationale pour la Démocratie aux Comoros (UNDC), 168 Union pour la Défense des Intérêts de Mayotte (UDIM), 141 Union pour le Développement des Comores (UPDC), 265n United Arab Emirates, 1, 172, 200, 266n United Kingdom, see under Britain United Nations Comoros independence (1975), 151 Development Programme (UNDP), 18, 19, 200 Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 19, 221 Mayotte and, 167, 189, 202 Ali Soilihi, relations with, 158 United States, 173–4 Azali, relations with, 186

INDEX Ndzuani, relations with, 100–101 slavery and, 100, 101 War of Independence, 20, 74 whalers, 20, 80, 98, 99–100 University of the Comoros, 186 Uthman ibn Affan, Rashidun Caliph, 37 uxorilocality, 4, 5, 33–4, 210–11

al-Yachroutu, Caabi, 173, 175, 186, 264n Yaminis, 224–5 Yemen, 30, 37, 38, 41–2, 45, 61, 62, 67, 68, 162, 178, 197, 240n, 242n Yemenia, 178, 197 ylang ylang, 11, 14, 21, 123, 128, 152, 154, 196, 261n

vala, 65 Vallée, Jean-Claude, 168 vanilla, 14, 108–9, 123, 130, 152, 154, 164, 178, 196, 209, 230, 261n, 263n, 265n Vérand, André César, 88 Vérin, Pierre, 28 VeriSign, 199 Vichy France (1940–44), 130, 225 Vienne, Émile, 116 Voeltzkow, Alfred, 118, 257n Vohémar, Madagascar, 241n volcanoes, 7–10, 40, 123, 158 see also Karthala Vwadju, Ngazidja, 160

Zaki, Said Ahmed, 69, 133, 238n, 242n, 250n, 251n Zambezi River, 67 zanatany, 227 Zanzibar, 2, 20, 29 40, 84–5, 87, 91–4, 98, 100–101, 102, 129, 138, 143, 155, 161, 173, 174, 213, 214, 218, 219, 223, 225, 239n British Protectorate (1890–1963), 7, 105, 108, 110, 124, 129, 130, 137, 224 diaspora in, 7, 103, 106, 108, 110, 124, 129, 130, 137, 143, 146, 223–6 education in, 126, 129, 224, 226 France, relations with, 91–4, 98 Mwali, relations with, 84–5, 91–4, 98 Ngazidja, relations with, 7, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 124, 129 slave trade and, 87 United States, relations with, 100–101 Zaydi Islam, 38, 240n Zheng He, 47 zifafa, 213, 218 Zimba, 67 Zimbabwe, 51 ziyara, 32 Zoroastrianism, 40 Zubeir bin Abdallah, 97

Wabedja, Sultana of Itsandra, 71–2, 73 Wadaane family, 220 Wahhabism, 191 Wala, Mwali, 9, 83 wamatsaha, 41, 63, 68–9, 220, 249n wanamdji, 212, 213, 214, 217 Wani, Ndzuani, 69 washendzi, 31 Washili, Ngazidja, 15, 72–3, 104 Wassion, Abdoul, 150 al-Watwany, 167, 195, 265n whales, 18, 19, 20, 80, 98, 99–100 wilayas, 155, 162, 261–2n Wilson, Benjamin Franklin, 100–101, 114, 123 World Bank, 178, 193, 198

293

1: The earliest known sketch of Ngazidja, from João de Castro’s Roteiro de Lisboa a Goa, an account of his voyage to India in 1538.

2: An engraving of the island of Mayotte, portraying the visit of the Dutch admiral Jacob Van Heemskerk in 1601.

3: A 1705 map of the Comoros and the nearby mainland coast, by Pieter Mortier. Ngazidja is disproportionately large, its exaggerated size reflecting navigators’ wariness of the island.

4: Moussamoudo (Rough sketch of Johanna, half the town—H.B.M. Consulate & Anchorage) May 1875, J.E. The captions read, from left to right: Town walls; Old ruined Arab fort; Anchorage; H.B.M.’s Consulate with yard & landing place; Town walls with ruined fort; Mssrs Dunlop Mees & Co of Rotterdam (Agency); River ‘Ziancunde’; Saddle Island; Sultan’s House; Mosque.

5: The first issue of the government-owned national newspaper, then called Al-Watwany, with the portrait of President Ahmed Abdallah on the front page.

6: A silver 5000-franc coin, part of a prestige collector’s set of three coins bearing the portrait of Said Mohamed Cheikh, issued as a revenue-raising exercise in 1976 by Ali Soilihi.

7: Sultan Said Ali ben Said Omar of Bambao, Ngazidja, surrounded by the notabilities of the island.

8: Sultan Said Omar el Masela of Ndzuani with, to his right, Pierre Papinaud, governor of Mayotte from 1888 to 1890.

9: A contemporary pro-Comorian roadside sign in Moroni.

10: The former governor’s residence, Dzaoudzi, Mayotte.

11: A wooden-framed mud-plaster house, Mwali.

12: Aerial view of the town and port of Itsandramdjini.

13: Bull-baiting during an ãda wedding at Fumbuni, Ngazidja.

14: The zifafa, a procession in the ãda wedding on Ngazidja, during which the groom is escorted to his future residence.