Precolonial inhabitation
The first human inhabitants of the Comoros Islands are thought to have been African and Austronesian settlers who traveled to the islands by boat. These people arrived no later than the sixth century AD, the date of the earliest known archaeological site, found on Nzwani, although settlement beginning as early as the first century has been postulated. The islands of Comoros became populated by a succession of diverse groups from the coast of Africa, the Persian Gulf, the Malay Archipelago, and Madagascar. Swahili settlers first reached the islands as a part of the greater Bantu expansion that took place in Africa throughout the first millennium.
According to a famous pre-Islamic mythology: A jinni (possibly Spirit) dropped a jewel, which formed a great circular inferno. This became the Kartala volcano which, created the island of Comoros. The early inhabitants of the islands worshiped nature and most probably the moon which they believed controlled the tides, these beliefs unified the islands.
Development of the Comoros is divided into phases, beginning with Swahili influence and settlement in the Dembeni phase (ninth to tenth centuries), during which each island maintained a single, central village. From the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, trade with the island of Madagascar and merchants from the Middle East flourished, smaller villages emerged, and existing towns expanded. The citizens ‹The template Reference necessary is being considered for merging.› and historians of the Comoros state that early Arab settlements date to even before their known arrival to the archipelago, and Swahili historians frequently trace genealogies back to Arab ancestors who had traveled from Yemen mainly Hadhramawt and Oman.
In the year 933 Al-Masudi mentions Omani sailors, who call the Comoros islands "The Perfume Islands" and sing of waves that break rhythmically along broad, pearl-sand beaches,
