سقطرى

سقطرى

A large island with many trees, mostly aloe, which the islanders harvest. Al-Idrisi says its people are Christian, through an old tradition he attributes to Alexander's time, when Greeks were settled there to tend the aloe ¹. Earlier, al-Hamdani counts the island near eighty farsakhs with some ten thousand Mahra fighting men, all Christians — its own tradition saying Romans were cast ashore there in Kisra's time, settled by Mahra who partly converted; rich in palms, cast-up amber, dragon's-blood and aloes. The Aden version denies the Romans ever entered, holding hermits inhabited it then died out ².