Comoros

The Comoros are three volcanic islands at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel. Grande Comore is built around Mount Karthala, an active volcano, and its lava is so porous that the island has almost no rivers. Anjouan is steep and cut by waterfalls, while Mohéli has a marine park where green turtles nest at Itsamia and humpbacks gather to breed. Coelacanths, fish once thought to have died out with the dinosaurs, live in caves deep offshore.

Austronesian voyagers and Bantu-speaking farmers settled the islands in the first millennium AD, and Swahili merchants drew them into Indian Ocean trade. Arab sailors called them Juzur al-Qamar, the islands of the moon, the source of the country’s name. Islam came early, and rival sultans, many tracing their descent to Shirazi settlers, fought over small kingdoms. France made protectorates of the three islands in 1886 and later ruled them from Madagascar. The Comoros declared independence in July 1975.

Nearly everyone is Sunni Muslim, and Friday prayers fill the mosques of Mutsamudu and Domoni. On Grande Comore the grand mariage, or anda, is a wedding of many days whose feasts take years of saving, and a man who has held one joins the elders of his village. Women shade their faces with msindzano, a paste of sandalwood ground on coral. The islands are a leading source of ylang-ylang, distilled into oil for French perfumers, alongside vanilla, cloves and money sent from Marseille.