MUSLIMS OF THE MALABAR COAST AS DESCENDANTS OF THE ARABS

Author(s): S.M. Mohamad Koya

Source: Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 37 (1976), pp. 195-200
Published by: Indian History Congress
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44138933
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 195

22. Dhuan Bahi V.S. 1746/1689 A.D. No. 45 ; Bahi Dhuan Rokaà V.S. 1750/
1693 A.D. No. 88 ; G.S.L. Devra, op . c/í., pp. 189-90.
23. Pargana Re Jama god ri Bahi , V.S. 1750 No. 99.
24. Dhuan ri ginati ri Jama, V.S. 1748/1671 A.D. No. 87; Bahi Hasil ri V.S.
1757/1700 A.D. No. 101 Bikaner Bahiyat R.S A.B.
25. Gaon re Halgat ri Bahi V.S. 1739 No. 133 ; Gaon re Hasil Bhachh ri Bahi V.S.
1740, No. 1; Hujdara re Lekhe ri Bahi W. S. 1757. No. Si -Bikaner Bahiyat
R.S.A.B. Daftar Hawaldar was a chief accounts officer of the Dewan's office.
Hawaldar was a revenue collector.
26. Ibid.
27. Dhuan Rokad Bahi V.S. 1 750, No. 88.
28. See the Register of Rampuria Records , Bikaner, R.S.AģB.
29. Bahi Hasil ri V.S. 1810/1753 A.D Bahi Khalisa re gaon ri V.S. 1830/1773
-Basta No. 1 Bikaner Records R.S.A.B.
30. See the list and total amount of the Bigj.
31. Col. J Tod. Annals and Antiquities Vol. II p. 1157; G.S L. Devra, op. cit,,
pp. 188-90.
32. Ibid.

MUSLIMS OF THE MALABAR COAST AS DESCENDANTS

OF THE ARABS

S.M. Mohamad Koya

The direct relation of the Muslims of the Malabar Coast with

Arabian Islam is a unique phenomenon. It is related with the spread
Islam in the South-West Coast of India. Islam in India is supposed
have begun in Kerala and the Mappillas are the descendants of the firs
Indian Muslims.1
Long before the Muslims settled in northern India, there were
colonies in Southern India.2 It is well known that even before the advent
of Islam the Arabs had trade relations with the Malabar Coast. Muziris,
the modern Kodungalloor was a meeting place of the east and the west.
From the west came the Arabs alongwith Phoenicians, Romans, Persians
and East Africans. Arabs made this coast their first and chief port of
call. Not only was it the nearest halting place; it was also the source of
pepper, the black gold, as well as of other valuable products. Thus there
were Arabs sailing back and forth between Arabia and Kerala at the time

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 196

of the Prophet.3 They had even begun to make use of the moonsoon
winds to cut across the Arabian Sea from Aden to Cranganore. The very
word moonsoon is a corruption of the Arabic word mausim , meaning
season. Some of these Arabs may have come from Hijaz, Uman and
Bahrain. However, they were chiefly businessmen from Yemen and
Hadramaut and many Mappilla families particularly those known as
"tangai" families trace their origin to this area. A large number of
Mappilla families find their origin in the interior Hadramaut town of Tarim
a wealthy town dominated by Sayyids which was once the intellectual and
religious centre of Hadramaut.4
The influence of the Arabs continued to assert till the rise and pro-
gress of Islam gave them a predominance by which they were able to hold
the sea and monopolise all intercourse with India. As pre-Islsmic traders
the Arabs provided a friendly situation that facilitated the introduction of
Islam and as Muslims they introduced the faith.5 It is to these Arabs who
came from different Arab lands that the descent of the Mappillas has to be
traced.6
Mappillas have been given many definitions and in all these there is
one thing common, that is, the Arabs contracted marriage alliances with
the women of the country and the Mappillas are the offsprings of such a
union. According to Lewis Moore, they are "originally the descendants
of Arab traders by the women of the country .... ".7 The Census Report
of 1871 has defined them as the hybrid Mahomedan race of the Western
Coast whose members are constantly being added to by conversion of the
slave castes of Malabar.8 In the words of B. Govinda Nambiar, " . . . .
at a very early period, the Arabs had settled for commercial purposes on
the Malabar Coast, had contracted alliances with the women of the country
and ... the mixed race thus formed had begun to be known as the
Mappillas .... ".9 Logan opines that the fact that Arabs had settled for
trading purposes carries with it the further probable assumption that some
of them at least had contracted alliances with women of the country and
the beginnings of a mixed race, the Mappillas, had been laid.10 And there
is no denying the fact that the foundation of the Moplah Section was laid
by the early Arab settlements resulting mainly from the unions of Arab
sailors and traders with the Hindu women of the coast of Kerala. But the
large increase in the population of the community was due mainly to
conversions.11 That brought about two categories of people among the
Moplahs namely the descendants of Arabs through local women whom
Logan calls Malayali Arabs and the converts from among the local people.
Again, the women the Arabs associated with and the people they converted
belonged to different Hindu castes, a condition which left behind the old
differences between those castes.

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 197

The descendants of the Arab traders and in some cases refugees who
settled in the country and married native women are not Mappillas alone
but under this category come the Markkayars of Tinnevelly and the
Jonagans of Tanjore. In the categorisation made by Qadir Husain Khan
the Mappillas along with Marakkayars have been brought under the head
of offsprings of imigrant Musalmans and native women.12 The physical
type in all these cases no doubt reverted to that of the most numerous
class, the natives of the country. Dr. Thurston points out that the cephalic
index of the Mappillas is lower than the other Musalman classes of
Southern India, being only 72.8. This is evidently due to the admixture
with dolichocephalic Dravidians. Mr. Jay arrived at the conclusion that
"the people on the west coast and in the centre of the Deccan namely the
Moplas Mahrattas, and Hyderabad contingent differ considerably from the
Tamils of the east coast. Their heads are considerably shorter. Thisi
points to the admixture of the Dravidians with some Mongolian element.
The tradition that the Moplas are descendants of Arab immigrants seems
to be rejected when the measurements indicate that the immigrants were
Turkish, or of some other Mongolian element, probably from Persia or
Baluchistan".13
On the other hand in many of their manners the Mappillas closely
resemble the Arabs and like them, they are active and enterprising, much
disposed to traffic and averse to agriculture. They belong to the Shafe
sect of the Sunni School- a fact which also points to their descent from
Arabs who as a rule are Shafeis. In India only the Muslims with Arab
influence are of this persuasion. Mappillas of the Malabar coast are one of
the main distinguishable sections of Shafei Muslims. The other two
sections are the Konkani Muslims of the coast of Konkan and the
Navayats of Kanara. Among the Mappillas in common with some other
Shafei Muslim communities on the west coast of India, the amount of mahr
is determined and fixed by custom.14 The popularity of the Shafei law
along the coastal regions of South India (Konkan, Malabar etc. ) was not
probably so much due to political reasons as to the stay of many Arab
Shafei ulema in these regions. The large Arab merchant communities
hailing from Basra, Baghdad, Siraf and Oman and different regions of
South Arabia like the Yemen or Hadramaut or from Egypt who settled
down along the eastern and western coasts of peninsular India seemed to
have followed the Shafei sect from very early days.15
The Mappillas are spread on the west coast of India on the conti-
nuous tract from Cape Comorin in the South to about Mangalore in the
north. Mappillas are also found in the Laccadives Islands off the coast of
Malabar where the entire population consists of Mappillas alone. In the
interior of South India they are also spread in some parts of the present

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 198

Karnataka, particularly Coorg, but their number is not so appreciable

compared with the non-Mappilla population. The Muslims of this region
are descendants of the Arabs resulting from the union of Arab sailors and
traders with native women. They were removed from Indo-Persian Islam
and came to acquire regional characteristics and cultural pattern reflecting
the same in food habits, dress, language etc. The Arab customs and habits
in food and dress and their religious and social conditions have found
their way into the life of these Muslims, giving them a distinction from
their counterparts of the north in their social and cultural behaviour and
psychology16. The direct cultural influence of Central Asia, Iran (Persia)
and Afghanistan to which northern and Central India was subjected had
no impact on the southern and western parts of Incļia. The identity the
Muslims of this region accomplished with Arabs has made it possible to
have the Muslim culture language and religion of this region profoundly
influenced by the Arab affinity more than those of any other region in
India17.
It is a debatable question whether the Arab element in the parentage
of the vast majority of the Mappillas is very small, as Logan puts it18.
Sociologists have tried to explain the Mappilla community by drawing the
lines of division as Tangais, Arabis and Mappillas. The Tangais claim to
be Sayyids and trace their descent from the Prophet, through his daughter
Fatima. The Arabis concentrated mainly in Quilandy are the offspring
of Arab men and native women, but they have retained their Arab
lineage19.
The social and cultural features of the coastal Muslims, and Mappillas
of Malabar in particular, can be traced to the influence of the Arabs on the
Muslim Society of the coast. The matrilineal system of inheritance and
matrilocal residence obtaining among the Mappillas of Malabar are
explained by their Arab background. The matrilineal system (marumak-
katayam) is usually explained as a corollary of the custom observed by the
Nayar and Tiyar converts to Islam, the traditional followers of the custom.
However, it is probable that the custom originated in the early Arab
marriages - even previous to the rise of Islam - with local women. As
the Arabs lived on the Malabar Coast, in pursuit of their trading activities,
only for a definite period of the year, the management of the property of
these came to be vested in them, and inheritance was naturally traced
through them. The matrilocal residence, a peculiar development of the
Marumakkatayam system among the Mappillas, in which the husband
customarily moves to his wife's natal house on marriage can also be
explained by the Mappilla experience. To quote Kathleen Gough
"Mappilla men's work has always tended to take them away from home.
Traditionally, merchants of the ports sailed up and down the coast and

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 199

sometimes to the Middle East.... Inland traders and carriers also travelled,
perhaps thirty or forty miles from home, sleeping in rest houses and
warehouses. Given matriliny and with the men often away it was natural
that women as among Central Kerala Nayars, should remain in their natal
homes protected by the head of their own matrilineal group.20 This type
of visiting marriage is found in almost all Muslim communities generated
by the Arab sailors. It was prevalent in the past on the coast of South
Arabia especially Yaman, which was the region of Arab sailors and is
found in varying degrees in the Muslim communities of Arab descent on
the west and east coasts of India in Ceylon and Sumatra21.
The impact of Arabic on India did not leave the Malabar coast
untouched. The Arab-Malayalam in which many Mappilla songs have
been written is the Mappilla contribution to literature. Malayalam in
Arabic script is a literary development similar to the language forms
originated in other parts of the country such as Arab-Tamil, Arab-Gujarati
and Arab-Punjabi.
Such is the impact of Arab culture on the Muslims of the coast.
Culturally the Malayalis were as far removed from the Arabs as the high
topical soenery of Kerala is removed from the austere landscape of Arabia.
But once wedded, the offspring of that union, the Mappillas have remained
loyal to both parents42.
Against this background the Persian influence on the Mappillas is
negligible. While the large majority of the Muslims of the region are of
Sunni persuasion, there is a small section who have some leanings towards
Persian Shiaism. This sect following the Kondotti tengal remains a distinct
groups not as Shias, for they object to the use of the name, Shia, and assert
that they are as much Sunnis as the Sunni party following the Makdum
tangai of Ponnani23 but as a group who hold their tangai of Persian in
great so reverence24. This is the solitary trace of Persian influence on the
Muslims of the Malabar coast. However, many Persian words and those
of Persian origin have come into the daily use of the Muslims here. Words
like 'bank' (call for prayer), cherrin (sweets) are a few examples.

REFERENCES

1. Roland E. Miller, Mappila Muslims of Kerala. A Study in Islamic Trends

Madras 1976; p. 39.
2. S.S. Nadvi, Islamic Culture, VIII (1934), p. 478.
3. Miller, Op. cit, p. 41.
4. See for example, the case of Syed Shaikh Jifri whose birth-place was Tarim
K.K. Mohammed Abdul Karim, Hazrat Mampuram Syed Alavi Tangai
Tirurangadi, 1975, p. 13.
5. Miller, Op. cit., p "42.

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 200

6. These Arabs were "the progenitors of the Moplahs". Hamid Ali 'The
Moplahs" in T.K Gopal Panikkar, Malabar and its Folk , 3rd edition, Madras
1929
7. Lewis Moore, Malabar Law and Custom , 3rd ed. 1905.
8. E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India , (1909), p. 456. See also
L.K. Anantha Krishna Iyer, The Cochin Tribes and Castes Vol. II., p. 462.
9. Madras Review , 1896. Quoted in E. Thurston, Op. cit., p. 457.
10. W. Logan, Malabar Vol . /, Madras 1951, p. 196.
11. Victor S.D'Souza, "Status Groups among the Moplahs on the South-West
coast of India" in Imtiaz Ahamad, Caste and Social Stratification among the
Muslims , Delhi, 1973, p. 46. The spread of Islam in the South was due more
to its missionary efforts than its political influence. See Qadir Husain Khan,
South Indian , Mussai mans Madras 1910. p. 33.
12. Qadir Hussain Khan, Op. cit. p. 7.
13. Man , 1903, Quoted in E. Thurston Op. cit , p. 458.
14. See Victor S.D' Souza, 'A Unique Custom Regarding Mahr (Dowry) observed
by certain Indian Muslims of South-India', Islamic Culture , 29(4) pp. 267-274.
15. Maqbool Ahmad, Indo- Arab Relations , (1969), p. 50.
16. Ibid., pā 51.
17. E. Miller, Op. Cit., p. 51.
18. W. Logan, Op. Cit., p. 196.
19. For detail see Victor S.D'Souza, 'Status groups among the Moplahs on the
South-west Coast of India' Op. Cit.
20. Schneider and Gough, Matrilineal Kinship, p. 426 (Indian Reprint), Allahabad,
1971.
21. For details óf visiting marriage among Navayats of Kanara and the Konkani
Muslims of the Coast of Konkan, see Victor S.D'Souza, The Navayats of
Kanara : A Study in Culture Contact , Dharwar, 1953.
22. Miller, Op. Cit., p. 51.
23. W. Logan, Op. Cit., p. 199.
24. Muhammad Shah Tangai of Kondotti, an 18th Century Sufi of Sayyid
ancestory was born in Kardan (former Bombay State) and his mother-tongue
was Persian. See Miller, Op. Cit., p. 257.

DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE HAL-E-HASIL OF THE JAGIRS

OF SOME MUGHAL MANSABDARS (1068-78H/1 657-68 A.D.)

M.AŠ Nayeem

An attempt is made to bring to light, for the first time, certain Persian
documents of Aurangzeb's reign relating to the Mughal Jagirdari system,
preserved in the State Archives, Hyderabad.
The documents furnish valuable statistical data regarding the assign-
ments of Jagirs, rank and pay of the mansabdars and their troops, the

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