page_title: Perim
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Perim / History
caption_attribution_description: English: 16th century Turkish painting depicting the Ottoman fleet protecting shipping in the Gulf of Aden. The three peaks on the left symbolize Aden.
context_page_description: Perim, also called Mayyun in Arabic, is a volcanic island in the Strait of Mandeb at the south entrance into the Red Sea, off the south-west coast of Yemen and belonging to Yemen. It administratively belongs to Bab al-Mandab District, Taiz Governorate. The island of Perim divides the strait of Mandeb into two channels.
  The island was a part of the British Empire between 1857 and 1967.
context_section_description: The straits of Bab-el-Mandeb were probably witness to the earliest migrations of modern humans out of Africa roughly 60,000 years ago. At this time the oceans were much lower because so much water was frozen in Ice Age glaciers and the straits were much shallower or dry.
  Despite its sheltered natural harbour and strategic location at the entrance of the Red Sea, Perim was largely bypassed by written history until the middle of the 19th century, in good part because the bare, waterless island could not easily sustain life. As a result, only fishermen and pearl divers lived there seasonally, building reed huts with material brought from elsewhere.
  In 1513, Afonso de Albuquerque, as part of the Portuguese bid to seize control of the trade routes to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, attacked Aden near the entrance to the Red Sea but failed to capture the fortified city. Having failed in his main objective, he nonetheless sailed for the Red Sea. The Red Sea pilots of those days lived on an island close to Perim and one was secured by sending forward as a decoy an Indian-built ship. The passage of the first Portuguese ship through the Bab-el-Mandeb was the occasion for much ceremony.  After having spent some time at the island of Kamaran in preparation for an attack on Jeddah that could not be carried out due to contrary winds, the fleet left Kamaran on its return journey. Perim, which Albuquerque named Vera Cruz, was inspected and pronounced unfit for a fortress due to lack of water.
  During the following years, the Portuguese tried several more times to conquer Aden and gain the mastery of the Red Sea, harassing shipping and battling the Egyptian Mamluk, then Ottoman navies, which gradually gained the upper hand. These actions as well as the sending of an annual fleet to blockade the Bab-el-Mandeb and prevent Indian merchant ships from entering the Red Sea most likely involved  frequent use of Perim’s natural harbour. By the time the Ottomans captured Aden from its local ruler in 1538, the Ottoman fleet was taking control of the Red Sea, maintaining firm control of the Red Sea, the Bab-el-Mandeb and Aden until the 1630s when the Turks were expelled from Yemen and the south half of the Red Sea.
  A French naval squadron may have used Perim's natural harbor in the course of a punitive expedition against nearby Mocha in 1737. In 1799, the island was briefly occupied by the British East India Company in preparation for the invasion of Egypt.
caption: The Ottoman fleet protecting shipping in the Gulf of Aden
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