In the list of the metropolitan Sees of the Nestorian Church we find one called Kotrobah, which is supposed to stand for Socotra.  According to Edrisi, Kotrobah was an island inhabited by Christians; he speaks of Socotra separately, but no island suits his description of Kotrobah but Socotra itself; and I suspect that we have here geography in duplicate, no uncommon circumstance.  There is an epistle extant from the Nestorian Patriarch Jesujabus (A.D. 650-660), ad Episcopos Catarensium, which Assemani interprets of the Christians in Socotra and the adjacent coasts of Arabia (III. 133).[1] Abulfeda says the people of Socotra were Nestorian Christians and pirates.  Nicolo Conti, in the first half of the 15th century, spent two months on the island (Sechutera).  He says it was for the most part inhabited by Nestorian Christians.

[Professor W.R.  Smith, in a letter to Sir H. Yule, dated Cambridge, 15th June, 1886, writes:  “The authorities for Kotrobah seem to be (1) Edrisi, (2) the list of Nestorian Bishops in Assemani.  There is no trace of such a name anywhere else that I can find.  But there is a place called Katar about which most of the Arab Geographers know very little, but which is mentioned in poetry.  Bekri, who seems best informed, says that it lay between Bahrain and Oman....  Istakhri and Ibn Haukal speak of the Katar pirates.  Their collective name is the Katariya.”]

Some indications point rather to a connection of the island’s Christianity with the Jacobite or Abyssinian Church.  Thus they practised circumcision, as mentioned by Maffei in noticing the proceedings of Alboquerque at Socotra.  De Barros calls them Jacobite Christians of the Abyssinian stock.  Barbosa speaks of them as an olive-coloured people, Christian only in name, having neither baptism nor Christian knowledge, and having for many years lost all acquaintance with the Gospel.  Andrea Corsali calls them Christian shepherds of Ethiopian race, like Abyssinians.  They lived on dates, milk, and butter; some rice was imported.  They had churches like mosques, but with altars in Christian fashion.

When Francis Xavier visited the island there were still distinct traces of the Church.  The people reverenced the cross, placing it on their altars, and hanging it round their necks.  Every village had its minister, whom they called Kashis (Ar. for a Christian Presbyter), to whom they paid tithe.  No man could read.  The Kashis repeated prayers antiphonetically in a forgotten tongue, which De Barros calls Chaldee, frequently scattering incense; a word like Alleluia often recurred.  For bells they used wooden rattles.  They assembled in their churches four times a day, and held St. Thomas in great veneration.  The Kashises married, but were very abstemious.  They had two Lents, and then fasted strictly from meat, milk, and fish.