Destroying the rock – Evarist Bartolo

There are between 6,000 and 10,000 islands and islets in the Mediterranean Sea, most of which are uninhabited. One of them has two inhabitants. Throughout the last 23 centuries, pirates, hermits, prisoners of war, exiled knights, farmers and tourists have settled on this island.

Some 80 years ago, one of the German prisoners of World War I held there, built a water mill driven by a rat. Apart from rats, bats and wild rabbits, most of the inhabitants there have been pigs.

Over 2,500 years ago, the navigator Scillace called it ‘Lampas’. Cluverius called it ‘Hephaestia’. And 1,800 years ago, Ptolemy referred to it as ‘Chemmona’. ‘Kineni’ in Greek means nearest to and Comino lies nearest to Malta. The Arabs called it ‘Kemmuna’, perhaps a corruption of the Greek word or a reference to the plant of ‘kemmun’ (cumin), which covered large areas of the island at the time.

In 1285, Abulafia, one of the earliest Cabalists and born in Saragossa in 1240, arrived on Comino to live there for three years during which he compiled his “Sefer ha-Ot” (The Book of the Sign).

Five years before he found refuge in Comino, Abulafia went to Rome to convert Pope Nicholas III to the ideal that Moslems, Jews...