Being strategically sited near the southern gates of the Red Sea, possessing a safe anchorage and a brackish supply of drinking water, Kamaran has been occupied continuously ever since the Persians placed their garrison on it, and perhaps for long before.

The Portuguese have come and gone, leaving behind a fine, but now crumbling, sixteenth century fort. However, the Turks who followed contributed most to the island’s well-being, not only with the wells cut deep through the coral in an inland depression, but also with the conception which gave Kamaran a heyday of prosperity — its use as a quarantine station for Muslims on the pilgrimage to Mecca.

From late in the nineteenth century, ships jammed tight with Muslims from India, Africa and all the countries of the Far East, crowded into the Kamaran anchorage during the pilgrimage season. Their human cargoes were off-loaded into camps, medically inspected, disinfested and disinfected before being allowed to proceed to the sacred soil which began at Jeddah, a little further up the coast, and ended before the Kaaba of Mecca.

When the Turks were defeated in the First World War, an international control was exercised over the Quarantine Station, but it was placed under British administration. In anticipation of a vast increase in the number of the faithful who would make the pilgrimage the camp was greatly extended. Long lines of barrack-like sleeping quarters were constructed where the Turks had provided only wattle huts. Big disinfecting plants were installed where the pilgrims went through an ordeal of cleansing on a production line basis. A power station was built worthy of a small town. The local water supply was inadequate, so a massive distillation plant was introduced to make sea water fit for drinking. 
There were carpenters’ shops, machine shops, a small railway to transport fuel and stores, a wireless station, a fine landing stage, a cantonment of officials’ bungalows. Lastly, but by no means least in the eyes of all who worked on Kamaran, there was the ice factory, which produced the only means of keeping cool.
The islanders, born to be fishermen and sailors, prospered exceedingly on this trade in potential disease among the devout, and the population grew. In the village of Kamaran, the only settlement apart from a few isolated groups of fishermen’s huts, fine houses and a magnificent mosque went up, and a lively trade in pilgrim requirements was conducted with the mainland. This, on top of the wealth that the more hardy could derive by diving for pearls from the coral reefs, gave the inhabitants a glimpse of previously unimagined wealth.
But their prosperity was short-lived. Anxious to control the pilgrimage in all its aspects (for even in these days of oil royalties it is still a very lucrative traffic), the Saudi Arabian Government decided to construct its own Quarantine Station and to insist that Kamaran be by-passed.

Today, the long lines of buildings in the camps lie empty and deserted and a handful of men maintain a ghost town while arrangements are debated for its breaking up and disposal. Kamaran has become a museum and it was to the exhibits in this museum, illustrating the final chapters of its history.