Moroni

Moroni was one of a string of Swahili trading settlements on the west coast of Grande Comore. The islands were part of the Swahili world by the seventh to tenth centuries, although when Moroni itself was first settled is not known; by the fifteenth century it was a well-established town in the Indian Ocean network that linked the East African coast with Arabia, Persia and the Gulf. Coral stone and lime were quarried for houses and mosques, and the town grew around a small harbour. The old Friday mosque on the waterfront, built in 1427, marks the wealth of that Islamic town.

The island was divided among rival sultanates. Moroni, with Iconi a few kilometres south as its royal capital, was one of the two centres of the sultanate of Bambao, whose great rival was Itsandra just up the coast. In 1886 the sultan of Bambao signed a protectorate treaty with France, and the territory was later administered from Madagascar for decades; the colonial capital was at Dzaoudzi on Mayotte until the decision of 1958 to move it, and Moroni became the capital of the territory in 1962.

When three of the four islands declared independence in 1975, Moroni became the capital of the new state, and it was the stage for much of the instability that followed — more than twenty coups and attempted coups, the secession crises on Anjouan and Mohéli in the 1990s, and the rotating union presidency created by the constitution of 2001. Politics remains contested: the January 2024 presidential election, won by Azali Assoumani, was disputed and followed by opposition protests. The city has meanwhile grown well beyond its old core, over the lava fields to the north and east.

Moroni is a Muslim town, and Islam organises its week: the Friday gathering at the mosques, Quranic schooling for children, Ramadan evenings that turn the medina into a food market, and the two Eids as the high points of the year. Women wear the leso, a colourful shawl, and the carved doors and plasterwork of the old houses show the Swahili and Arab lineage of the town's culture.

The institution that dominates social life is the grand mariage, the ada — a lavish wedding, usually undertaken only once, that confers elder standing in the community and the right to speak in its affairs. Families save for years and the diaspora in France sends money home for it; the celebrations run for days with processions, drumming, gift-giving and public feasting, and they shape reputation and hierarchy far beyond the couple involved.

Music at these events is twarab, a sung style brought from Zanzibar in the early twentieth century and still the islands' most influential genre, alongside older drumming and dance traditions that vary from village to village. The islands' perfume and spice crops — ylang-ylang, cloves and vanilla — are part of local identity as well as the economy. Manners are formal and unhurried: greetings first, modest dress, and respect for elders and for religious space.

Around 110,000 people live in Moroni and its immediate suburbs, which makes it small as capitals go but by far the largest town in the country. Its population has grown quickly with movement from the villages and the other islands, and new neighbourhoods spread over old lava flows inland from the historic core.

The city is the country's administrative and commercial centre: ministries, the university, the main hospital, banks, the port and the airport road. Beyond government employment, most people work in trade, fishing, transport and small services, much of it informal. The wider economy depends on subsistence farming, on exports of ylang-ylang, cloves and vanilla, and above all on remittances from the Comorian diaspora in France, which sustain households and pay for building.

Daily rhythms follow the heat and the prayer calendar: early markets, quiet afternoons, busy evenings along the corniche. Housing costs, the price of imported rice and fuel, and the difficulty and expense of travelling between the three islands are the concerns residents raise most often.

Moroni eats Swahili and Indian Ocean food: rice as the staple, coconut milk, fresh fish and the islands' own spices. M'tsolola, fish cooked with plantain and greens in coconut milk, is a classic dish, and pilaou, a fragrant rice pilaf from nearby Zanzibar, is a favourite accompaniment. Tuna and reef fish landed at the old port are grilled, fried or simmered with onion and tomato.

Cassava and green banana fill out many plates, with greens such as matava — cassava leaves — cooked in coconut milk, and tangy achard pickles of lemon or green mango alongside. Langouste à la vanille, small lobster in a vanilla sauce, is the dish that shows the French influence and the islands' vanilla crop. Spices flavour both savoury food and sweets such as mkatra siniya, a spiced cake.

Street food is the everyday pleasure of the medina and the Volo Volo market: mshakiki, marinated beef skewers, fried cassava and banana and bread, sold from small stands. Alcohol is sold in only a few places and public drinking is frowned upon; herbal infusions of cinnamon leaves or lemongrass, known simply as thé, and juices of jackfruit, papaya and mango are what people drink.