Capital: Mamoudzou
Population: 135 000 (1998)
Official language: French
Majority group: mahorais (61%)
Colonial language: French
Minority groups: Comorian languages, Swahili, Malagasy sakalava, goudjarati, French, Arabic
Political system: statute of French territorial collectivity
Constitutional articles (language): art. 2 of the French Constitution of 1958 (modified in 1992)
Linguistic laws: all linguistic laws of Republic the law no 75-620 of July 111975 relative to the education; the law n° 84-52 of January 26, 1984 on the higher education; the law of orientation n° 89-486 of July 10, 1989 considering the education; the decree n° 93-535 of March 27, 1993 carrying approval of the notebook of the missions and the loads of the national Society of broadcasting and French television overseas for the (RFO).

I GEOGRAPHICAL DATA
The Mayetta Island, nicknamed "the island to Perfumes", is situated in the ocean Indian, to a few 400 km to the northwest of the island of Madagascar and to 300 km of the African coasts, to the entry of the channel of Mozambique (look at the card 1). Mayetta is part of the archipelago of Comoros with the islands of the Big Comoro, Mohéli and Anjouan (look at the detailed card 2 of the islands). However, whereas Mayetta constitutes a French territorial collectivity (no a DOM-TOM), the three other islands belong at the Islamic Republic of Comoros. The island of Mayetta (375 km2) is composed of two main islands, the Grande Terre (360 km2), of about 40-km long and 20-km large, and the Petite Terre (13 km2) as well as of about twenty scattered islets in the lagoon (look at the card 3). Mayetta is distant of The Meeting by a few 1500 km of sea.
The Grande Terre has the shape of a hippocampus (look at the card 3) that became the symbol of the island. The capital, Mamoudzou, is in this island. The Petite Terre consists of the islet of Pamandzi and the rock of Dzaoudzi, bound by a dam nicknamed the "Boulevard des Crabes". The county seat is Dzaoudzi. According to the tradition, the name of MAYOTTE would come from an Arabian word, maouti, designating the death, because many ships would have smashed themselves on the coral gate that protects the island.

II HISTORIC DATA
The history of Mayetta is inseparable of the one of the archipelago of Comoros of which it makes part geographically (but not politically). The first population of the archipelago occurred in the second half of the first millennium from the Africa bantoue (half south). Between the VIIth and the XIIth century, of the Austronesianses, that contributed to the population of the island of Madagascar, passed by Comoros, but are not established themselves of it.

2.1 The islamisation of Comoros
Then, in the XIIth century, the Arabo-Shirazienses - the term Shiraz designates the Persian Gulf -, of the Islamized groups crossed (Arabs and Iranians), accompanied by their slaves, arrived to Comoros and introduced the Moslem religion. The islamisation imposed itself in all Comoros; the first mosque of stone was constructed in Mayetta in 1566 in the city of Chingoni (that is called Tsingoni now). Then, the political and matrimonial alliances of the Arabo-Shirazienses with the Comorian chiefs entailed a change of the political organization and the creation of sultanates.
Toward the XVIIIth century, the Arabs original of Yemen, declaring the Prophet's descendants, also allied to the noble Comorian families and contributed to the establishment of new matrimonial lineages thus, especially in the Big Comore and to the island of Anjouan. It is of this time that dates the written documents and the manuscripts quite in Arabian language, in Swahili or in Comorian, the presented in Arabian alphabet.

2.2 The Madagascans and the slavery
It is also during the XVIth century that a big number of Madagascans sakalava settled in the south of Mayetta. Since this period, coexisted in the island a population arabo-shirazi to the north and a population sakalava in the south, the all on bottom of African origin. It is what explains why the inhabitants many Comorian villages speak again today a Malagasy language, notably in Mayetta with the sakalava and the antalaotsi; these languages belong to the family Austronesian. From the middle of the XVIIIth century, the four islands of Comoros were victims of raids organized by Malagasy pirates. These incursions weakened the islands and pushed the local sultans to search for the protection of the big powers of the time: Britain, France and Germany.
Between the XVIth and the XIXth century, as it was almost everywhere the case in the ocean Indian and to the Antilles, the archipelago of Comoros was the theatre of the trade of the slaves. Already, in the XIIth century, the Arabo-Shirazienses practiced the slavery and it is besides with their slaves that they arrived to Comoros. Later, the Europeans were going to look on the East coast for their manpower of the African continent, notably at the Africans of origin bantoue and the Madagascans.