In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast we’ll be talking about Socotra, an island in the Indian Ocean, lying between the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. It lies 380 kilometres (205 nautical miles) south of the Arabian Peninsula and 240 kilometres (130 nautical miles) east of Somalia. Geographically part of Africa, it has historically been an extremely isolated island due to the monsoon winds that make it difficult to reach for large parts of the year. This isolation has resulted in unique plant and animal life, with the island harbouring many species which went extinct elsewhere tens of thousands of years ago, and It has been described as “the most alien-looking place on Earth”
Over its history, the island has seen influence from Ethiopian Christians, Greeks, Arabs, Portuguese Explorers and the British East India Company, among others, and as a result has a unique blend of cultures and languages. The island is 3,796 km2 (1,466 sq mi) in size, making it similar in land area to the US state of Rhode Island, or slightly larger than Luxembourg. Around 50,000 people today call Socotra home, with the principal city, Hadibu, boasting around a fifth of the total population. The island became a part of Yemen in 1967, and has recently been impacted by ongoing conflict caused by the Yemeni Civil War, which began in 2014 and is ongoing as we record this. In 2008, Socotra was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its unique flora and fauna. The islanders rub noses when they are introduced, and primarily speak Soqotri, an ancient Semitic language, which has up to a hundred words to describe a goat.
Your hosts, as always, are Luke Kelly @thelukejkelly in Dublin, Ireland, Mark Boyle @markboyle86 in Toronto, Canada, and Joe Byrne @anbeirneach in Dublin, Ireland. Our theme music and other stings come from Thomas O’Boyle @thatthomasfella.
Some further reading material is provided below:
- A chronology of Socotra from Socotra.info
- British Empire Maproom‘s early history of the island
- Discover Socotra’s history page
- Socotra: The Mysterious Island of the Assyrian Church of the East at assyrianchurch.org
- Socotra’s misty future from The New Scientist (July 1995)
- Socotra: rediscovering the ‘island abode of bliss’, from the Financial Times (June 2023)
- Can Socotra, Yemen’s ‘Dragon’s Blood Island,’ be saved? by National Geographic (November 2018)
- Island Africa : the evolution of Africa’s rare animals and plants – Jonathan Kingdon on archive.org
- The Soqotra island:Where phoenix is revived from The Yemen Times (May 2003)
- A Successful Adaptation to Failure: the Portuguese on the island of Socotra during the sixteenth century by Renata Cabral Bernabé
- Socotra: A mysterious Arabian island gives up one of its secrets by The National News
- The Third Voyage of the English East India Company (1607-1610) at Qatar National Library
- Botany of Socotra by Balfour, Isaac Bayley, 1853-1922 at archive.org
- Yemen. The Socotra Archipelago Threatened by the Civil War at orientxxi.info
- Socotra — 1943 by jimmiej at BBC WWII Archives
Music relevant to Socotra includes:
- Khatr Ghusn Al Qana from YouTube
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