60 Fun Facts About Comoros

What is the capital and largest city of the Comoros?

Moroni. The French long governed the islands from Dzaoudzi, a rocky islet off another island, and Moroni grew into the country's largest town only after the capital moved.

France's 1975 law said the Comorian constitution must pass how?

Island by island. Comorian leaders saw the rule as a way to split the archipelago, and within days their deputies declared the whole of it independent, on 6 July 1975.

A 2013 Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of experts in 22 countries ranked the Comoros best for what?

Women's rights. Experts pointed to island custom, under which the family home usually belongs to the wife and stays hers if the marriage ends.

The Comoros is the only member of which organisation to lie entirely in the Southern Hemisphere?

Arab League. It was admitted only in 1993, after years of lobbying, though Comorians speak Comorian at home and learn Arabic mainly in Quran school.

By the area it governs, the Comoros is Africa's third-smallest country, behind São Tomé and Príncipe and which other?

Seychelles, Africa's smallest country, was once French too, but France lost it in 1814 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, decades before it took its first Comorian island.

Juzur al-Qamar, a local name for the Comoros, is usually translated as what?

Islands of the Moon is the usual reading, though the old seafarers' name Qumr is said to have first meant the islands' giant neighbour and only later the smaller group.

The Comoros sits at the northern end of which body of water?

Mozambique Channel. Ships rounding Africa for India once called at the islands for supplies, but the Suez Canal, opened in 1869, left them far from the main trade routes.

Which island of the Comoro archipelago voted against independence and is still administered by France?

Mayotte. A full French department since 2011, it is France's poorest yet far richer than its neighbours, so thousands of Comorians risk the sea crossing to it in small boats.

Which active shield volcano is the highest point of the Comoros?

Mount Karthala. Thousands of villagers fled when it erupted in 2005, and the eruption replaced the water lake on its crater floor with a lake of lava.

The Comoros' largest island has porous lava and no rivers, so where have its villagers mostly got their drinking water?

Rain-filled cisterns. Rain sinks straight through the young lava, so households store it in tanks, and ash from a 2005 eruption fouled the supply of more than 100,000 people.

Since independence in 1975, roughly how many coups or attempted coups has the Comoros been through?

About 20: the usual tally runs to some 20 coups and attempts since 1975, and the first of them toppled the founding president just 28 days after independence.

The Comoros has long been the world's leading producer of which perfume-industry plant?

Ylang-ylang. French planters brought the tree to the islands, and distilling its flowers over wood fires has since helped strip the Comoros of its forest.

Which currency does the Comoros use?

Comorian franc. It is not the CFA franc that many other former French colonies share, but it works the same way: France's treasury guarantees its fixed exchange rate.

Which 'living fossil' fish was caught off the Comoros in December 1952?

Coelacanth. Scientists had searched for a second specimen for over a decade, offering rewards, only to learn that Comorian fishermen had long known the fish.

The Comoros grows bananas and coconuts in plenty but relies heavily on imports of which staple food?

Rice. Export crops planted in colonial times took over much of the islands, so too little food is grown at home and much of the staple grain arrives by ship.

At the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, the Comoros pulled off a shock 3-2 group win over which nation?

Ghana, one of Africa's most successful football nations, lost 3-2 to the Comoros in January 2022 after Ahmed Mogni scored twice, and went out in the group stage.

Ahmed Abdallah, the Comoros' first president, met what fate in office in 1989?

Assassination. Abdallah was shot in murky circumstances in November 1989, and days later the mercenary-led guard that was meant to protect him seized power.

Which French mercenary joined four coup attempts in the Comoros between 1975 and 1995?

Bob Denard stayed on through the 1980s to run the presidential guard, converting to Islam and taking a Muslim name, and surrendered to French troops after a last coup in 1995.

Comorian president Ali Soilih, in power from 1976 to 1978, modelled his youth militia, the Moissy, on which movement?

China's Red Guards. The Moissy set out to sweep away old customs but turned on anyone who crossed them, and their excesses had cost Soilih his support by the time mercenaries overthrew him in 1978.

The constitution Comorians approved by referendum in December 2001 gave their country which new name?

Union of the Comoros. The name sealed a deal to end two islands' breakaway: each island won a large measure of self-rule and a turn at supplying the national president.

What colour is the triangle on the Comorian flag?

Green, a traditional colour of Islam. The triangle holds four stars, one for each main island, including the one that France governs.

With all three goalkeepers ruled out of a 2021 Africa Cup of Nations knockout tie, whom did the Comoros put in goal?

A left-back: Chaker Alhadhur pulled on the gloves after injury and Covid rules sidelined every keeper, and the tournament debutants lost only 2-1 to hosts Cameroon.

Grande Comore, the largest of the Comoro Islands, is known to Comorians themselves by which name?

Ngazidja. It is the youngest island, built by a volcano that has erupted more than a dozen times in two centuries, which is why its soil is thin and its coast has few harbours.

By what name was the island of Anjouan known to English speakers until the early twentieth century?

Johanna. Under that name the island was shelled in 1851 by the American warship USS Dale, sent after its ruler seized an American captain and his ship.

On the Comoros' largest island, a man traditionally wins a voice in village affairs only after hosting what?

A lavish wedding. The grand mariage can swallow a lifetime's savings, and when a revolutionary president tried to ban it in the 1970s the custom outlasted him.

Comorian, the islands' main language, is most closely related to which language?

Swahili. Comorian was long written off as a mere dialect of it, but the two are separate Bantu languages, and a Swahili speaker from the mainland cannot easily follow Comorian.

Twarab, long a leading style of Comorian music, was brought to the islands in the early 1900s from where?

Zanzibar. The style had itself grown up there on the model of Egyptian orchestras, and Comorian bands took up its violin and oud as their own.

Livingstone's flying fox, found only on two of the Comoro Islands, is what kind of animal?

A fruit bat. With a wingspan well over a metre it is often abroad by day and, unlike most bats, can soar on rising air.

Who was the sole survivor of the 2009 Yemenia Flight 626 crash off the Comoros?

A twelve-year-old girl. Bahia Bakari clung to floating debris for hours in heavy seas, and when she could not catch a thrown life jacket a sailor jumped in to pull her out.

Yemenia Flight 626, which crashed on approach to the Comoros in 2009, had departed from which city?

Sanaa. Most passengers had flown there from France on another aircraft and changed planes for the last leg, which ended in the sea after an aborted night landing in strong winds.

President Sambi, elected in 2006, earned the nickname 'Ayatollah' for studying Islam in which country?

Iran. The nickname was a curious fit, since ayatollah is a rank of clergy in a different branch of Islam from the one Sambi preaches, but his years there and his turbans made it stick.

When the island of Anjouan broke away from the Comoros in 1997, what did its separatists hope to achieve?

A return to French rule. Twenty-two years after independence, the island's separatists asked to rejoin France, and it was France that turned them down.

From 2008 the Comoros raised millions through deals with Gulf states to sell what in bulk?

Comorian citizenship. Kuwait and the Emirates wanted papers for stateless residents they would not naturalise, so thousands became Comorians on paper while going on living in the Gulf.

In 2023, which source of income was worth about a fifth of the Comoros' entire economy?

Emigrants' remittances. A large diaspora, much of it in France, sends home roughly twice what the islands earn from everything they export.

Sailors from which country were the first Europeans known to reach the Comoros, in the sixteenth century?

Portugal. Its ships on the new sea route round Africa used the islands as a supply stop, and a Portuguese mapmaker first put the Comoros on a European map, in 1527.

In the 1980s, which country paid for the Comoros' mercenary-led presidential guard?

South Africa. In return the apartheid state got a listening post on the islands and a quiet way round the sanctions imposed on it.

Which single crop was the Comoros' largest export by value in the early 2020s?

Cloves. With one spice leading everything the islands sell abroad, a poor harvest or a slump in world prices can upend the whole country's finances.

What caused Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 to ditch off the Comoros in 1996?

A hijacking by three men demanding to be flown to Australia ended when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 ran out of fuel and ditched off the Comoros in November 1996, killing 125.

Nearly all Comorians follow which branch of Islam?

Sunni Islam. Nearly every Comorian child spends a few years at a Quran school, and it is there that most learn the script long used to write their own language.

Al-Watwan, a national newspaper of the Comoros, is owned by whom?

The government owns Al-Watwan, and it runs national radio and television too; reporters who offend the authorities risk arrest and have seen their papers suspended.

Mshakiki, the Comorian cousin of East Africa's mishkaki, is which barbecued dish?

Marinated skewered beef. Much of the islands' meat has to be shipped in, and it ranks among the country's main imports.

What is the main ingredient of mataba, a Comorian staple dish?

Cassava leaves. Raw, they are poisonous, so cooks pound them in a wooden mortar and simmer them in coconut milk before anyone eats them.

Msindzano, the paste many Comorian women wear on their faces, is made by grinding which wood on coral?

Sandalwood. Rubbed on a block of coral, it yields a paste that women wear both to protect the skin and, on festive days, to look their best.

Which fifteenth-century landmark stands in the Comorian capital?

The old Friday mosque. It was founded around 1427, in the centuries when trade across the Indian Ocean was making the islands' port towns rich.

In 1942, which country's forces seized the Comoros from the islands' Vichy French administration?

Britain. Its forces toppled the pro-Vichy administration and handed the islands to Charles de Gaulle's Free French.

Which French city has long been home to the largest Comorian community outside the islands?

Marseille. When a Yemenia jet bound for the Comoros crashed in 2009, relatives of the many passengers who had set out from the city gathered at its airport for news.

Ikililou Dhoinine, inaugurated in 2011, was the first Comorian president from which island?

Mohéli. The smallest island's turn at the rotating presidency came last, and came a year late: the sitting president's term was extended after a 2009 referendum, until a court struck the extension down.

In 2024 the Comoros became which body's 165th member?

World Trade Organization. The Comoros applied in 2007 and had to wait until 2024, when ministers meeting in Abu Dhabi finally approved its entry.

The kashkazi, which runs from November to April, is which part of the Comorian year?

The rainy period. The kashkazi, a monsoon blowing from the north, brings the year's heaviest downpours and its cyclone risk, before the cooler, drier kusi takes over in May.

Which animal, introduced by people from a neighbouring island, now lives wild in the Comoros?

Mongoose lemur. It changes shift with the seasons: more active by day in the wet season, it turns to the night in the hot, dry months.

The first attested inhabitants of the Comoros are thought to have arrived by boat from where?

Southeast Asia is thought to be where the Austronesian settlers sailed from, arriving no later than the eighth century; Bantu speakers from East Africa were present from the very start of settlement.

Legend says an emissary sent from the Comoros reached which city in 632, just after Muhammad's death?

Mecca. He is said to have arrived too late to meet the Prophet, stayed a while, and then gone home to lead the islanders' gradual conversion.

After the 1995 mercenary coup, France flew Comorian president Djohar to which island for 'medical treatment'?

Réunion. French troops had freed Djohar from the mercenaries, but Paris then kept the elected president away from his own country for months.

On the Comoros' largest island, where does the biggest surviving stretch of rainforest grow?

On the slopes of its volcano. Elsewhere the islands' forests have largely been cut for firewood and farmland, and less than a fifth of the country is still wooded.

Which army colonel seized power in the Comoros in 1999 and was president again 25 years later?

Azali Assoumani. He handed over power in 2006, won it back at the ballot box in 2016, then pushed through a referendum that ended the islands' rotation and let him stay on.

In 2023 the Comorian president took the rotating chair of which organisation?

African Union. As its chair for the year he was invited to the G7 summit in Hiroshima, a rare seat at the top table for a country of under a million people.

The Comoros long sold European fleets the right to catch mainly which fish in its waters?

Tuna. Local fishing has stayed small in scale, so the abundant tuna of Comorian waters have mostly been caught by French and Spanish vessels under licence.

Before France took over, Grande Comore was split among about a dozen rival rulers who each held which title?

Sultan. Their constant wars opened the door to France: in 1886 one of them accepted a French protectorate in return for backing against his rivals.

Why could the Comoros refer Israel's 2010 raid on a Gaza flotilla to the International Criminal Court?

The lead ship flew its flag. The Mavi Marmara was registered in the Comoros, which gave the court jurisdiction, though prosecutors in the end declined to open a full investigation.

Until just after the Second World War, France governed the Comoros as a province of which larger colony?

Madagascar. Schools and public services were concentrated on the big island, so many Comorians moved there, a migration that soured relations once both were independent.