When the Abyssinian Christian monarchs conquered Arabia in the early centuries of our era, and Christianised a large portion of that country, they probably did the same by Sokotra, and, inasmuch as this island was far removed from any political centre, Christianity probably existed here to a much later period than it did in Arabia. Marco Polo touched here, and alludes to the Christians of the island.
In speaking of two isles near Greater India, inhabited respectively by men and women, he adds: 'They are Christians, and have their bishop, subject to the Bishop of Socotora. Socotora hath an archbishop not subject to the Pope, but to one Zatuli, who resides at Baldach, who chooseth him.'
F. Xavier said among other things 'that each village had a priest called kashi. No man could read. The kashis repeated prayers in a forgotten tongue, frequently scattering incense. A word like Alleluia often occurred. For bells they used wooden rattles. They assembled in their churches four times a day, and held St. Thomas in great veneration. The kashis married, but were very abstemious. They had two Lents, and fasted from meat, milk, and fish.'
When Padre Vincenzo the Carmelite visited the island in the seventeenth century he found the last traces of Christianity. 'The people still retained a perfect jumble of rites and ceremonies, sacrificing to the moon, circumcising, and abominating wine and pork. They had churches called moquame, dark and dirty, and they daily anointed with butter an altar. They had a cross, which they carried in procession, and a candle. They assembled three times a day and three times a night; the priests were called odambo. Each family had a cave where they deposited their dead. If rain failed they selected a victim by lot and prayed round him to the moon, and if this failed they cut off his hands. All the women were called Maria.' Of this there is now no trace. Both Sacraments had died out.
This debased form of Christianity existed as late as the seventeenth century. The island was one of the places visited by Sir Thomas Roe in 1615.
It is needless to say that all ostensible traces of our cult have long ago been obliterated, and the only Sokoteri religious term which differs in any way from the usual Mohammedan nomenclature is the name for the Devil; but we found, as I have already said, the carved crosses on the flat surface at Eriosh, and we found a rock at the top of a hill to the east of the island which had been covered with rude representations of the Ethiopic cross. Scattered all over the island are deserted ruined villages, differing but little from those of to-day, except that the inhabitants call them all Frankish work, and admit that once Franks dwelt in them of the cursed sect of the Nazarenes. We felt little hesitation in saying that a branch of the Abyssinian Church once existed in Sokotra, and that its destruction is of comparatively recent date.
If we consider that the ordinary village churches in Abyssinia are of the flimsiest character—a thatched roof resting on a low round wall—we can easily understand how the churches of Sokotra have disappeared. In most of these ruined villages round enclosures are to be found, some with apsidal constructions, which are very probably all that is left of the churches.
Near Ras Momi, to the east of the island, we discovered a curious form of ancient sepulture. Caves in the limestone rocks have been filled with human bones from which the flesh had previously decayed. These caves were then walled up and left as charnel-houses, after the fashion still observed in the Eastern Christian Church. Amongst the bones we found carved wooden objects which looked as if they had originally served as crosses to mark the tombs, in which the corpses had been permitted to decay prior to their removal to the charnel-house, or κοιμητἡρια, as the modern Greeks call them.
We stayed two days at Eriosh to study the graffiti and tombs.
Water had to be fetched from Diahàmm, which we afterwards passed. It was brackish. I have heard riho said for water, but diho was mostly used, and certainly the names of many water-places began with Di. I remember my husband answering the question where we should camp by calling out in Arabic 'Near the water.' This was echoed in Sokoteri, 'Lal diho.'