ABSTRACT
Prince, and the Portuguese to hinder i t : till he and eight more being slain, the enemy fled to the castle, which was scaled, and those who entered opening the gate for the rest, a bloody fight began within, the Moors disputing it to the last man...The Portuguese lost six men. The natives [Christians] who had kept off, hearing o f their success, came to thank De Cunna for delivering them from the heavy yoke o f the Muham medans, and were received under the protection o f the king o f Portugal, who having chosen Don Alfonso de Noronna to command the fort, i f taken, De Cunna gave it him, with a hundred men for garrison.” It would appear from De Souza that the island at this period was in habited principally by Christians :— “ They are all Jacobite Christians, like the Abissins. The men use the names o f the Apostles, the women chiefly that o f Mary. They worship the cross, which they wear on their cloathes, and set up in their churches, where they pray thrice a day in the Chaldean language, alternatively, as in a choir. They receive but one wife, use circumcision, fasting, and tithes. The men, comely ; the women, so manly, that they follow the war, and live like Amazons. Some o f them, for propagation, making use o f such men as arrive there, and even bringing some by witchcraft. Their cloathing, some cloth, and some skins ; their habitations, in the caves ; their weapons, stones and slings. They are subject to the Arabian king of Caxem” [Keshin]. {P ort. Asia , vol. i. pp. 116-119.) Dr. Vincent quotes Cosmas Indocopleustes as stating that “ the inhabitants o f Socotra were Greeks from Egypt. He was not at the island, but conversed with some of the natives in Ethiopia : they were Christians, and their priests were from Persia, that is, they were Nestorians.” {Com. and N avig. o f the Ancients, vol. ii. p. 342 n.) El-Edrisi describes the population in his time as being composed chiefly o f Christians, and his account o f their original settle ment there is curious though obviously fabulous :— “ Most o f the inha bitants o f Socotra are Christians, and the cause o f this was that Alex ander [the Great] after he had overcome the king o f Persia, and his fleet had captured the Indian islands, and he had killed MGr, king o f India, his preceptor, Aristotle, having enjoined him to discover the Island o f Aloes, this subject was on his mind, owing to his preceptor’s injunc tion ; so that after he had accomplished the taking o f the Indian islands, and had overcome them and their kings, he turned from the Indian Sea
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land. W e remained in this island about fifteen days, and found it to be small: the inhabitants of it are black and poor, and have very little food here ; but it comes to them from the mainland, which is not far distant. Nevertheless, there is a very good port here. Sometimes we went on the main land to amuse ourselves and to see the country. W e found some races o f people quite black and quite naked, excepting that the men wore their natural parts in a bark of wood, and the women wore a leaf before and one behind. These people have their hair bristling up and short, the lips of the
to the Sea o f Yemen, [which he never did,] and he conquered* those islands as far as Socotra, with which he was much pleased on account o f its fertility and the temperature o f its climate, and wrote to his pre ceptor accordingly. When, this news reached Aristotle, he wrote direct ing him to remove its inhabitants, and to replace them by Greeks who were to be instructed to take care o f the aloes trees, and to cultivate them, on account o f the several benefits to be derived therefrom.’7 (Part vi. o f F irst Clim ate.) Marco Polo, a century later, describes Socotra as the seat o f an archbishop, who was subject to a Zatolia [Catholicos] who resides at Baidak, [Baghdad,] by whom he was elected.
