According to legend, in 632, upon hearing of Islam, islanders are said to have dispatched an emissary, the navigator Qumralu, to Mecca—but by the time he arrived there, the Prophet Muhammad had died. Nonetheless, after a stay in Mecca, he returned to Qanbalu and led the gradual conversion of his islanders to Islam.
Even though it was Arab merchants who first brought Arab and Islamic influence to the islands. One possibility is that Arabs traded for slaves in Africa, increasing the spread and dominance of Arab culture. As their religion gained hold, small mosques and large mosques were constructed. The Comoro Islands, like other coastal areas in the region, were important stops in early Islamic trade routes frequented by Persians and Arabs. Despite its distance from the coast, Comoros is situated along the Swahili Coast in East Africa. It was a major hub of trade and an important location in the sea route between Kilwa (an outlet for Zimbabwean gold) in Mozambique and Mombasa in Kenya.
Arab colonization in the region increased when nearby Zanzibar came under Omani rule, and Comorian culture, especially architecture and religion, also increasingly came under Arab imperial sway. Many rival sultanates colonized the area in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
By the time Europeans showed interest in the Comoros, the dominant Arab cultural veneer of the islands led many to remind of the society's Arab colonial history at the expense of its native Swahili and African heritage. More recent western scholarship by Thomas Spear and Randall Pouwells emphasizes black African historical predominance over the diffusionist perspective.
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