Rediscover Socotra: the island on the edge of the ecumene

For many centuries the island of Socotra represented for Europeans the southern limit of the ecumene, a land at the edge of a mystical space, where reality and fantasy had long co-existed. The fascination for mysterious places at the threshold of the unknown, woven into the imagination of classical antiquity, exerted a strong appeal in successive eras. When the widening of western geographical horizons began to extend to the East, Socotra became a sought-after and legendary destination on which to project hopes and desires, then to return to the realm of myth in the phases of contraction and crisis. Information emerges from the geographical Latin and Greek sources, from the odeporic mediaeval and early modern accounts, and from historical cartography, above all from the late mediaeval and fifteenth- and sixteenth-century nautical maps. From these sources we draw important themes over a long period which can give us valid points of departure for further courses of study and research and indeed for fresh exploration and evaluation of the island within the fields of historical geography from which we start. Research that can suggest interdisciplinary reflections in the field of social sciences, starting from the real and symbolic values investigated by the geographical-historical disciplines, of the many meanings that Socotra has assumed over time.