Socotran

Socotrans are the native people of the Socotra archipelago in the Arabian Sea, 350 km off the Yemeni coast. They speak Soqotri, a Modern South Arabian language related to Mehri, Shehri, Harsusi, Bathari and Hobyot, with Northern, Central (highland), Southern, Western and Abd al-Kuri dialects; it has no standard script, the state treats it as a dialect, and UNESCO rates it severely endangered. Medieval genomes from the island are closest to those of Hadramawt and stayed stable for a thousand years, and most men carry a paternal lineage found almost nowhere else; coastal towns also hold families of mainland and African origin, many descended from slaves. The island was Christian, in the Church of the East, from late antiquity until the Mahra sultans of Qishn took it in 1480; it slowly became Muslim and stayed under the Mahra sultanate until 1967. Socotrans often describe themselves as affiliated with the Mahra. Most of the c. 70,000 islanders live on the main island, in Hadibu, Qalansiyah and Qadub on the north coast and in the highlands. Since the 1950s close ties of trade and marriage have bound Socotra to the Emirates, above all Ajman and Ras al-Khaimah, where a large share of Socotrans now live.

Island life rests on fishing (shark, kingfish, tuna, salted and dried for the mainland), semi-nomadic herding of goats, sheep, cattle and camels, and date palms harvested in the summer monsoon. Hospitality is an obligation, elders are honoured, and men greet by touching noses, as in the Emirates. Women's dresses carry the Emirati tali braid. Soqotri oral poetry and tales, recorded in the Corpus of Soqotri Oral Literature, are the core of the culture. Families keep links across the sea, with sons working and daughters marrying in the UAE. Herders move between stone-hut hamlets and caves on the plateaus, tap dragon's blood resin and keep rainwater cisterns. Poetry and song were once a normal way to address people, animals, spirits and God, often in 'veiled language', and an annual competition for new Soqotri poems is held; the first known Socotri poet, Fatima al-Suqutriyya, lived in the ninth century. Young islanders founded a Socotri Language Center in 2023, and UNESCO held a first workshop on a unified Soqotri alphabet in Hadibu in 2024.

Socotrans are Shafi'i Sunni Muslims. The island was Christian for about a thousand years, and Christianity faded only after the Mahra conquest of 1480; church ruins, tombs and carved crosses remain. Older beliefs survive in song and custom: spirits of the dead, jinn and sorcerers were addressed in poetry, and accusations of witchcraft once led to witch trials. Elders and villagers hold to old customs more than the young and townspeople. In the UAE, Socotrans worship in state mosques, and naturalised families follow Emirati religious life.

Only Bible portions from 1902-1905 exist in Soqotri: there is no New Testament, no Global Recordings Network recording and no JESUS film. Socotrans understand Arabic, so Arabic Scripture and media can reach them, but no outreach to them is known.