Comoros

The Comoros lie between Mozambique and Madagascar, on the sea route that carried goods and people between East Africa, Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Settlement drew on Bantu, Austronesian, Arab, Persian and Malagasy origins, and all of them remain visible in the language and the architecture.

From the tenth century the islands were governed by a shifting set of sultanates whose stone palaces, mosques and city walls still stand. Shirazi and Omani links tied them closely to Zanzibar and the wider Swahili coast.

The Comoros joined the Arab League in 1993 and remain its only member entirely composed of islands in the Indian Ocean.

Comorian culture centres on the grand marriage, or anda, a long sequence of ceremonies that confers social standing and can occupy years of preparation. Music, dance and communal feasting run through all of it.

Arabic script has been used to write Comorian for centuries, and Quranic schools, mosques and manuscript traditions remain a central part of village life.

The medina of Moroni is a compact quarter of narrow lanes, carved doors and coral-stone houses gathered around the Old Friday Mosque, which has stood at the harbour since the fifteenth century.

Older sultanate capitals such as Iconi and Domoni preserve palaces, tombs and defensive walls from the era when each island held several competing courts.

Mount Karthala on Grande Comore is one of the largest and most active volcanoes in the world, with a caldera several kilometres across and rainforest on its flanks.

The surrounding waters hold coral reefs, nesting turtles and migrating humpback whales, and the deep channels here are where the coelacanth — a fish believed extinct for millions of years — was rediscovered.