The largest of the islands and the only one with a real population — a few hundred people in scattered fishing villages, herding goats among the coral rubble and salt flats. There is no electricity grid, no piped water, and almost no shade. Most visitors stop here to see the cisterns and the medieval cemetery, and to walk through one of the villages where life has changed remarkably little in a thousand years.
The cisterns, hand-cut into the coral rock, are pre-Islamic and may go back as far as the second century. They still collect the meagre rainfall that keeps the islanders and their livestock alive. A short walk away is the cemetery, with hundreds of weathered grave markers carved in flowing Kufic Arabic — among the oldest Islamic inscriptions in Africa. Bring water, a hat, and respect: this is a working community, not an open-air museum.