The whole archipelago
The time of the djinns
Long before humans, the elders say, the islands belonged to the djinns. How King Souleymane is said to have exiled them there, and what happened when humans arrived.
Tales and stories of the Comoros
Hale halele
“Hale!” calls the storyteller. “Halele!” answers the audience. Origin myths, place legends, evening tales and stories of today: step into the spoken word of the Islands of the Moon.
“Hale!” “Halele!”
In the Comoros, stories are shared in the evening, when the work is done. In Mayotte, every tale begins with the same exchange: the storyteller calls out “Hale!”, the audience answers “Halele!”, and the story can begin. On Grande Comore, some storytellers, like the late Salim Hatubou, open the evening with “Allahalele!” and invite the audience to answer “Gombe!” throughout the tale.
This dialogue is not a mere ritual: it makes the audience part of the tale. People encourage the storyteller, laugh, protest and join in the songs. Here we have gathered the great stories of the archipelago, retold in our own words and accompanied by what is known of their origins.
Origin myths
Place legends
Stories old and new
Evening tales
No stories for this island yet.
The words of storytelling
Comorian oral literature is immense: lullabies, epic songs, poems, songs of resistance, proverbs, riddles, myths, legends and tales. In Shingazidja, the word hale refers to the tale itself, a story known to be invented, while hadithi (or hadisi) refers rather to an account held to be true, telling the past of a family, a village or a place.
Proverbs punctuate the speeches of the notables, and riddles, swapped like a game, sharpen children's wits before the evening's stories.
When and how are tales told?
Tales are traditionally told in the evening, among family or neighbours, often by a grandmother or a renowned storyteller. In many homes people say that tales must not be told in broad daylight. The storyteller plays all the characters, sings the refrains and lets the audience guess what comes next.
The same tale is never told twice in the same way: each storyteller adapts it to the audience, the village and the mood of the moment. That is why most stories exist in several versions, which we point out when we know them.
Djinns and sacred places
Djinns, invisible beings mentioned in the Qur'an, are everywhere in these stories. They live in craters, lakes, caves, trees or village squares. These places, called ziara, are still visited and given offerings, in the company of a fundi who knows how to speak to the spirits, even though official Islam often disapproves of these practices.
Many legends explain a landscape in this way: the colour of a lake, the shape of a crater, a sandbank in the middle of the lagoon.
The keepers of tales
Researchers, writers and institutions have collected, transcribed and translated hundreds of stories: Marie-Françoise Rombi and Mohamed Ahmed-Chamanga (Contes comoriens, 1980), Mohamed Ahmed-Chamanga for Anjouan (Rois, femmes et djinns, 1988), Ahmed Ali Mroimana and Mohamed Ahmed-Chamanga for Grande Comore (1999), Noël J. Gueunier and the storyteller Madjidhoubi Saïd for Mayotte (136 tales collected between 1975 and 1983), Salim Hatubou, Saïd Abdallah, Moussa Saïd Ahmed, Nassur Attoumani…
In Mayotte, the Departmental Archives record village storytellers and publish the Contes inédits de Mayotte; pupils from a secondary school in Dzoumogné did the same (Rissitoa hale, 1999). Recordings from 1978 can be consulted online in the CNRS Pangloss collection, and the podcast Halé Halélé, launched in 2022, brings the history and legends of the island back to life every month. Find all the references in the bibliography.
Our approach
The stories in this section are not translations of a single text: they are retellings, written in French from published and oral versions, and translated here into English. Each one is followed by a “What we know about it” box that separates legend from history, and by references for further reading.
Do you know another version, or another tale from your village? Write to us: the spoken word of the islands is meant to travel.