Stories and legends of Mount Karthala

Oral tradition

King Solomon’s ring

The most widespread legend links Karthala to King Solomon (Suleiman) and the Queen of Sheba (Balqis), figures found in both the Bible and the Quran. It is told in several versions, depending on the village and the storyteller:

• Solomon is said to have imprisoned malicious djinns on Grande Comore. In revenge, they stole the wedding ring he had given the Queen of Sheba, engraved with the hundredth name of God and giving power over the djinns, and threw it onto the top of the mountain: its fall opened the huge crater;
• in another version, Solomon and Balqis spent their honeymoon at the top of Karthala, where the queen dropped her ring into the crater, promising to come back;
• other tales say the crater was born from the queen’s throne, lost in the archipelago.

Comorian writers often return to these wonders, placing the kingdom of the djinns between Karthala and the mountains of Hadramaut, in Yemen, where some of the ancestors of the Comorians came from.

The invisible world

In Comorian culture, which is Muslim, the mountain, the forest and certain isolated places are traditionally associated with djinns, the spirits of the invisible world. According to some tales, the djinns driven out by Solomon were the first inhabitants of the volcanic islands, before people arrived. These beliefs partly explain the respect, and sometimes the fear, that the summit still inspires.

Memory of the eruptions

Singani, 1977

In April 1977, a fissure opened on the south-western flank of the volcano. The lava flowed down to the coastal village of Singani and destroyed about 300 houses. According to later accounts, the mosque, built of stone, remained standing in the middle of the flow. The black, cooled lava still marks the village landscape.

The ash of 2005

In November 2005, Moroni woke up under a layer of grey ash. Water in the tanks that collect rain from the roofs became undrinkable. Many people on Grande Comore remember those weeks.

All the major eruptions

The names of the volcano

Karthala, Kartala, Al Qirtālah

The volcano is written Karthala, Kartala or Kartola; in Arabic, القرطالة (Al Qirtālah). Grande Comore is called Ngazidja in Shikomori. The two large summit craters have Comorian names: Choungou Chahalé in the centre, Choungou Changomeni to the north.

The massif is reached from several regions of the island: Bambao, Dimani, Hambou and Badjini. Some place names on the massif date from colonial times, such as la Convalescence.

Explorers and naturalists

Karthala and travellers

The first ascent documented by a European dates from 1863. At the end of the 19th century, the French naturalist Léon Humblot, who had been granted a large part of the land of Grande Comore, sent specimens of the island’s wildlife to European museums. Two endemic birds still bear his name: Humblot’s flycatcher and Humblot’s sunbird. According to local historians, the first roads to the massif were opened at that time, partly with forced labour.