Case file · Cryptid
The nasnas of Hadramawt
Al-Mas'udi, in his Meadows of Gold (947), reported the nasnas of Yemen and Hadramawt: a half-being with one eye, one arm and one leg that hops through the hills, and that people there hunted and ate.
947 CE · 15.93, 48.79 · status: legend
The account
Later writers such as al-Qazwini repeated and illustrated it. Some accounts made the nasnas a cursed tribe; in the Thousand and One Nights it lives on islands.
The sceptical view
Modern scholars suggest travellers' tales, possibly about apes (Hamadryas baboons live in south-west Arabia) or about a despised people.