From the 10th century, Arabs have been known to visit the Mascarene Islands. A 12th century map by the Arab geographer Ash-Sharif al-Idrisi supposedly contains them, and the Cantino planisphere of c.1500 and some other contemporary maps clearly show the three islands of the Mascarenes as Dina Arobi (or Harobi), Dina Margabin and Dina Moraze. These are apparently corrupted transliterations or transcriptions of the Arabic Diva Harab ("Desert Island"), Diva Maghrebin ("Western Island") and Diva Mashriq ("Eastern Island"). While the second clearly refers to R�union, sources disagree about which of the other is Mauritius and which one Rodrigues, which are both to the east of R�union and arranged in a somewhat stylized way on these maps. However, even in its original state, Rodrigues had some karst, while Mauritius even after suffering 500 years of deforestation can by no means be called "desert" even in a colloquial sense.
The island was located again in February 1507. Part of the fleet of Afonso de Albuquerque and Trist�o da Cunha, Diogo Fernandes Pereira's Cirne spotted R�union on February 9 after a cyclone diverted their course. The other two islands were subsequently rediscovered. The initial name was Diogo Fernandes; Domingo Froiz was given as a name some years later, and by 1528 it had been again renamed after the Portuguese navigator Dom Diogo Rodrigues and has remained so since. The orthography has been less stable at first, with the name being transcribed Diego Rodriguez,Diego Roiz, Diego Ruys (or even "Diego Ruy's Island"), Dygarroys or Bygarroys. Some early French sources called it �le Marianne.
Due to the island lying far off the beaten track of seafarers at that time, it received few visits. From 1601, the Dutch began visiting the island somewhat more regularly for fresh supplies of food. In 1691 the Huguenot, Fran�ois Leguat and 7 companions landed on the island, intending to set up a farming colony of Protestant refugees. Farming was not
