Comoros

The islands were settled by Bantu-speaking peoples from the East African coast and by Austronesian voyagers, and from around the tenth century were drawn into the Swahili trading world of the Indian Ocean, with Arab and Persian merchants and, later, Shirazi dynasties founding a patchwork of small sultanates. Islam took root early and has defined the islands ever since.

France established a protectorate in the nineteenth century and made the archipelago a colony administered from Madagascar. In a 1974 referendum, three of the four islands voted for independence, which they declared on 6 July 1975; the fourth, Mayotte, voted against independence and is still administered by France, becoming a French overseas department in 2011 after a further referendum. The Comoros has never ceased to claim the island, and United Nations General Assembly resolutions, which are not legally binding, have declined to recognise French rule there.

Independent Comoros became a byword for instability, with more than twenty coups or attempted coups — several involving the French mercenary Bob Denard — and a period in which the islands of Anjouan and Mohéli declared their own secession. A 2001 constitution created a rotating union presidency. Azali Assoumani, who first took power in a 1999 coup, was elected president in 2002, served until 2006 and has held the office again since 2016, winning a disputed election in January 2024 amid opposition protests.

Comorian society is Sunni Muslim and conservative, and Islam structures the day, the week, and the year; Friday prayers, Ramadan, and the two Eids are the fixed points, and children learn the Qur'an in Quranic schools. Dress is modest, and visitors, especially women, are expected to cover shoulders and knees away from beaches.

The islands keep a distinctive marriage custom, the grand mariage (ada), a lavish, expensive village wedding that a man is expected to hold once in his life to pass from youth to elder and gain full social standing; families save for years, and it drives much of the flow of remittances from abroad.

Culture blends African, Arab, Malagasy, and French elements — in the twarab music played at celebrations, the carved doors and coral-stone houses of the old towns, and the everyday use of French alongside Comorian. The perfume trade is woven into the landscape: Comoros is one of the world's main producers of ylang-ylang essence, and clove and vanilla are also grown.

Most of the roughly 950,000 people live on Grande Comore (Ngazidja), the largest island, and around the capital, Moroni. Anjouan (Ndzuani) is the most crowded and mountainous, and Mohéli (Mwali) the smallest.

Comoros is a low-income country, with few resources, little industry, and farmland under pressure. The economy depends heavily on subsistence agriculture and fishing, on exports of ylang-ylang, cloves, and vanilla, and above all on money sent home by the large Comorian diaspora in France, especially around Marseille — remittances are the country's economic lifeline.

Daily life is rural and slow, organised around the mosque, the family compound, the market, and the farming and fishing calendar. Power and water supply are patchy, and inter-island travel is a real obstacle to ordinary life.

Comorian cooking reflects the islands' Swahili and Indian Ocean setting: rice, coconut, plentiful spices, and fresh fish. Langouste à la vanille, small lobsters in a vanilla sauce, is a French-influenced favourite, while tuna, salt cod simmered in an onion and tomato sauce, and m'tsolola — firm-fleshed fish cooked with plantains and greens in coconut milk — are everyday fare on the coast.

Cassava, green banana, and matava (cassava leaves, cooked in coconut milk) fill out meals, with pilaou, a spiced rice pilaf, and tangy achard pickles alongside; sweets include mkatra siniya, a Comorian spice cake. Cloves, cinnamon, and vanilla — the islands' own crops — flavour both savoury dishes and sweets.

Alcohol is sold in a few places, such as Moroni's Volo-Volo market, but public drinking is frowned upon in a country that is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim; fresh coconut water, fruit juices, and "thé", often an infusion of cinnamon leaves or lemongrass, are the usual drinks.

Comoros is a destination for people who want empty beaches and volcanoes without crowds. On Grande Comore, Mount Karthala is a very active shield volcano and the country's highest point at 2,361 m, with a summit caldera roughly three kilometres by four reached by a long, guided climb; Moroni's old medina, with its coral-stone alleys and the waterfront Badjanani mosque of 1427, is the most atmospheric townscape in the country, and in 2026 it was inscribed, with five other Comorian historic towns, as the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Historic Sultanates of the Comoro Islands.

Mohéli, the smallest island, has the best-protected nature: Mohéli National Park, created as the country's first protected area in 2001 and extended over much of the island's land in 2015, where green and hawksbill turtles, dolphins, dugongs and humpback whales use the waters, and eight small mountainous islets host seabird colonies.

Anjouan is green and steep, with waterfalls, the old town of Mutsamudu — another of the six medinas in that World Heritage listing — beneath a citadel built in 1786, ylang-ylang and clove plantations, and Lake Dzialandzé, a crater lake high on Mount Ntringui. Diving and snorkelling on reefs around all three islands, and the chance of seeing the coelacanth's home waters, round out the appeal.