Between Interconnectedness and Insularity: Soqoṭrā from the Sixth to the Sixteenth Century CE
Between Interconnectedness and Insularity: Soqoṭrā from the Sixth to the Sixteenth Century CE

Summary/Abstract: The history of the Yemeni island of Soqoṭrā from Late Antiquity to the European Age of Exploration is the history of an alternation between interconnectedness and insularity. On the one hand, Soqoṭrā was linked through commerce with other regions in the Indian Ocean, as well as with regions as far afield as the Mediterranean. Additionally, the Church of the East had, by the sixth century, put down roots on Soqoṭrā, a development that afforded the island a connection, however tenuous, to a wider world of eastern Christianity. A further link with the outside world was established in the mid-eighth century, when the Ibāḍī imamate of Oman briefly established rule over Soqoṭrā. On the other hand, Soqoṭrī history is also characterized by the equally strong pull of insularity. As a case in point, the indigenous islanders speak their own, unique Soqoṭrī language, which belongs to the Modern South Arabian branch of Semitic. As for Omani rule, this was ultimately overthrown through a revolt by Christian Soqoṭrīs, and while foreign merchants continued to visit the island, Soqoṭrā gained something of a reputation as a haven for pirates and an abode of magicians. It was also widely known as an outpost of Christianity. Over time, however, Soqoṭrā lost contact with the normative Christianity represented by the Church of the East, such that, by the time that the Portuguese first made contact with the island in the early sixteenth century, they found the indigenous inhabitants practicing a vestigial form of Christianity that centered on a veneration of the cross, but retained little else that could be deemed Christian.

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