The discovery of the island of Madagascar by Europeans dates back to the year 1500 when Portuguese explorer Diego Diaz first encountered it and named it St. Lawrence. In the 1530s, French navigators Jean and Raoul Parmentier also stumbled upon the island, mistaking it for the one Marco Polo referred to as Madeigascar in his travel writings. However, historical evidence suggests that Polo was actually describing the Comoros archipelago and misinterpreted a label on an Arabic map that was meant for the city of Mogadishu in Somalia. Prior to Diaz and the Parmentiers, Madagascar had no indigenous name, and the name Madeigascar eventually became the accepted moniker, albeit with slight alterations. Interestingly, the origin of the name Mogadishu can be traced back to an Arabic term meaning “holy” or “seat of the Shah”.
