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Updated: June 5, 2025
They had heard how a Sokotran man had turned a woman of Maskat into a seal and forced her to swim over to Sokotra in that shape. We were told that this story is perfectly true! This evil reputation of the islanders is very persistent.
Scattered all over the island are deserted ruined villages, differing but little from those of to-day, except that the inhabitants call them all Frankish work, and admit that once Franks dwelt in them of the cursed sect of the Nazarenes. We felt little hesitation in saying that a branch of the Abyssinian Church once existed in Sokotra, and that its destruction is of comparatively recent date.
Butter is now the chief product and almost the sole export of the island, and Sokotra butter has quite a reputation in the markets along the shores of Arabia and Africa. The sultan keeps a special dhow for the trade, and the Bedouin's life is given up to the production of butter. Nowhere, I think, have I seen so many flocks and herds in so limited a space as here.
In the inscription of the Nakhtshe Rustam, near Persepolis, which we saw when in Persia in 1889, thirty countries are named which were conquered by Darius, the Akhemenid, amongst them Iskuduru, i.e. Sokotra. Though it is Arabian politically, Sokotra geographically is African.
We often had to resort to them, for, surrounded though we were by herds of cattle, the supply of fresh milk was very irregular: sometimes we could have more than we wanted and at others none at all. It is pretty dear, too, in Sokotra, as so much is used up for the ghi.
Finally, in 1876, to prevent the island being acquired by any other nation, the British Government entered into a treaty with the sultan, by which the latter gets 360 dollars a year, and binds himself and his heirs and successors, 'amongst other things, to protect any vessel, foreign or British, with the crew, passengers, and cargo, that may be wrecked on the island of Sokotra and its dependencies, and it is understood that the island is never to be ceded to a foreign power without British consent.
If we consider that the ordinary village churches in Abyssinia are of the flimsiest character a thatched roof resting on a low round wall we can easily understand how the churches of Sokotra have disappeared. In most of these ruined villages round enclosures are to be found, some with apsidal constructions, which are very probably all that is left of the churches.
About a quarter of a mile inland there is a deep pot of salt water, evidently left behind by the ocean when it receded from the shores of Sokotra; it is about 200 feet across, and has its little beach and seaweeds all complete, with its trees and bushes in its cliffs.
Other ruins of a ruder and more irregular character lay scattered in the vicinity, and at some remote period, when Sokotra was in its brighter days, this must have been an important centre of civilisation. None of the natives would help us to dig in this place. They are very much afraid of the Devil, and think the ground under the ruins is hollow and that there is a house in it.
The sultan lived in a fine brown building with a stunted tower, a glorified Arab house, but nothing like those in the Hadhramout. They send sharks' fins to China from here, as well as from Sokotra and the Somali coast. This is probably Ptolemy's Agmanisphe Kome. It is just the right distance from Arabia-Emporium, i.e. one day; so we found it.
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