Abstract
Its strategic location on the ancient trade map of the Indian Ocean World, its extensive open west coast, and the availability of pepper1 and other valuable products in it attracted many foreign merchants to the Kerala coast from very early times. The history of trade between West Asia and Malabar2 begins as early as the Phoenician period.3 King Solomon is thought to have built a fleet of merchant ships in the tenth century BC in order to trade with Ophir, which may be today’s port of Beypore near Calicut, Malabar.4 Malabar is the place from which Moses is supposed to have obtained cinnamon and cassia (Exodus 30:23–24) and Solomon to have received ivory, apes, and peacocks.5
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Black pepper (piper nigrum), popularly known as black gold, was grown only in Kerala until the Dutch spread its cultivation in Java. Until well after the Middle Ages, virtually all of the black pepper found in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa traveled there from Kerala. K. M. Mohamed, “Arab Relation with Malabar Coast from 9th to 16th Centuries,” The Malabar 1, no.1 (2001): 8.
Sebastian R. Prange, “‘Measuring by the Bushel’: Reweighing the Indian Ocean Pepper Trade,” Historical Research, 84, no. 224 (2011): 214.
The term Malabar is probably a combination of two words: a Malayalam word mala, which means hill or mountain, and an Arabic word barr, which means land or a Persian word bar, which means country. As Malabar is a hilly region, according to Muhammad Ali, “country or land of hill” is “a name well suited to its physical configuration.” K. T. Mohammed Ali, The Development of Education among the Mappilas of Malabar, 1800 to 1965 (New Delhi: Nunes Publishers, 1990), 1. Malabar was a term coined and bestowed by outsiders. Based on Nainar’s work, Miller argues that the Arab geographer, Yaqut (1179–1229) is the first one who gave the name “Malabar.” Earlier Idrisi (ca. 1154) had used “Manibar” and “Malibar”.
Roland E. Miller, Mappila Muslims of Kerala: A Study in Islamic Trends, rev. ed. (Madras: Orient Longman, 1992). However, Innes notes that Al-Biruni (970–1039) is the first one to call the country Malabar. Before that, the Egyptian merchant Cosmas Indicopleustes used the term Male to refer the west coast of India.
C. A. Innes, Malabar (Gazetter) (Thiruvananthapuram: The State Editor, Kerala Gazetteers, 1997), 2.
Sunil Gupta, “A Historiographical Survey of Studies on Indo-Roman Sea Trade and Indian Ocean Trade,” Indian Historical Review, 32, no. 1 (January, 2005): 141. Also Innes, Malabar, 27.
Muziris is usually identified with the present-day Cranganore or Kodungallur, which is north of Cochin, Kerala. However, in 1341 ce it was silted up and lost its importance. Later, it was replaced by Cochin and Calicut ports. Quilon was another important port of Kerala during the Middle Ages. Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India, 5th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 70.
S. M. Muhamed Koya, Mappilas of Malabar: Studies in Social and Cultural History (Calicut: Sandhya Publications, 1993), 15.
Shalva Weil, “Indian Judaic Tradition,” in Religions in South Asia, ed. Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby (London: Palgrave Publishers, 2006), 169–183.
Shalva Weil, “Cochin Jews,” in Cambridge Dictionary of Judaism and Jewish Culture, ed. Judith Baskin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 107.
Miller, Mappila Muslims of Kerala, 41–42. Many Mappila Muslims trace their origin to the Hadramaut town of Tarim. See also Engseng Ho, The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
A. P. Ibrahim Kunju, “Origin and Spread of Islam in Kerala,” in Kerala Muslims: A Historical Perspective, ed. Asghar Ali Engineer (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1995), 22–23.
Many Tamil Muslims also understand that they are descendants of people who converted to Islam during the lifetime of the Prophet. Vasudha Narayanan, “Religious Vocabulary and Regional Identity: A Study of Tamil Cirappuranam,” in Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia, ed. David Gilmartin and Bruce B Lawrence (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 74.
Vijayalekshmy M., “Towards Understanding the Islamic Diaspora in Pre-Colonial Kerala,” in Kerala Society Historical Perceptions: Essays in Honour of Dr. S. M. Muhammed Koya, ed. Dr. V. Kunhali (Calicut: University of Calicut, 2002), 30.
W. Logan, Malabar Manual Vol. 1 (Madras: Superintendent, Government Press, 1887), 191 and C. A. Innes, Malabar, 185.
Lewish Moore, Malabar Law and Custom, 3rd edition (Madras: Higginbotham & Co., 1905), 418;
E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of India Vol. 4 (Madras: Government Press, 1909), 458;
and H. Gundert, A Malayalam and English Dictionary (Mangalore: Basel Mission Press, 1872).
Muhammad Ali, The Development of Education, 5; Stephen Frederic Dale, Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier: The Mappilas of Malabar, 1498–1922 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 236.
Kunhali, V., Sufism in Kerala (Calicut: Publication Division, University of Calicut, 2004), 44–45.
Aravana, kolkkali, oppana, vattakkali, kolattam, kalari payat, parica kali, onakali, teyyam, etc. are the most common art forms of the Mappilas. A. P. Ibrahim Kunju, Mappila Muslims of Kerala: Their History and Culture (Trivandrum: Sandya Publications, 1989), 185–189.
Prema Kurian, “Colonialism and Ethnogenesis: A Study of Kerala, India,” Theory and Society 23 (1994): 393.
Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, “Islamism and Social Reform in Kerala, South India,” Modern Asian Studies 42, no. 2/3 (2008): 321.
Engseng Ho, “Empire through Diasporic Eyes: A View from the Other Boat,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, no. 2 (2004): 210–246.
Bindu Malieckal, “Muslims, Matriliny, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream: European Encounters with the Mappilas of Malabar, India,” The Muslim World 95, no. 2 (2005): 298 and 305.
K. K. N. Kurup, Aspects of Kerala History and Culture (Trivandrum: College Book House, 1977), 50.
A. Sreedhara Menon, A Survey of Kerala History, rev. ed. (Chennai: S. Viswanathan [Printers & Publishers], Pvt., Ltd, 2003), 318. The Zamorins were rulers of Calicut, Malabar.
P. J. Cherian, ed., William Logan’s Malabar Manual in Two Volumes (New Edition with Commentaries) (Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Gazetters, 2000), vol. 1, 335; Dale, Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier, 94.
K. N. Panikkar, “Peasant Exploitation in Malabar in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Kerala Studies 11 (1984): 156.
K. M. Panikkar, A History of Kerala: 1498–1801 (Annamalainagar: The Annamalai University, 1960), 229.
Michael Mann, “Torchbearers upon the Path of Progress: Britain’s Ideology of a ‘Moral and Material Progress’ in India,” in Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India, ed. Harld Fischer-Tine and Michael Mann (London: Anthem Press, 2004), 4.
Gyan Prakash, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no.2 (1990): 386.
Don Habibi, “The Moral Dimensions of J. S. Mill’s Colonialism,” Journal of Social Philosophy, 30, no.1 (1999): 125.
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 6.
Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 81.
Don Habibi, “The Moral Dimensions of J.S. Mill’s Colonialism,” Ibid. Journal of Social Philosophy, 30, no.1 (1999): 125.
Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), xi.
K. N. Ganesh “Cultural Encounters under Colonialism: The Case of Education in Keralam.” In Culture and Modernity: Historical Explorations, ed. K. N. Ganesh (Calicut: University of Calicut Publication Division, 2004), 152.
Gyan Prakash, “Postcolonial Criticism and Indian Historiography,” Social Text 31/32 (1992): 17.
Jacques Pouchepadass, Review of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, by Dipesh Chakrabarty, in History and Theory 41 (October 2002): 381–382.
Manali Desai, “Indirect British Rule, State Formation and Welfare in Kerala, India, 1860–1960,” Social Science History 29, no. 3 (2005): 463.
Koji Kawashima, Missionaries and a Hindu State: Travancore 1858–1936 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 26.
Prerna Singh. “We-ness and Welfare: A Longitudinal Analysis of Social Development in Kerala, India,” World Development 39, no. 2 (2010): 283–284. Desai, “Indirect British Rule,” 463.
V. K. Ramachandran, “On Kerala’s Development Achievement,” in Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives, ed. Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 268.
George Mathew, Communal Road to a Secular Kerala (New Delhi: Concept Publishing House, 1989), 36.
Tharakan, P. K. Michael. Socio-Economic Factors in Educational Development: The Case of Nineteenth Century Travancore. Working Paper no. 190. Trivandrum: Centre for Development Studies, 1984.
Robin Jeffrey, The Decline of Nair Dominance: Society and Politics in Travancore, 1847–1908 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1976), 147.
P. Rajagopala Chari, Dewan’s Note Dated 15th August 1912, on the Suppression of the Swadeshabhimani Newspaper (Trivandrum, 1912), 2.
The Regional Records Survey Committee, Kerala State, The History of Freedom Movement in Kerala (1885–1938), vol. 2 (Trivandrum: Department of Cultural Publications, Government of Kerala, 2001), 2–3.
D. C. Kizhakkemuri, Swadeshabhimani Ramakrishnapillai (Trivandrum: Department of Publication for the University of Kerala, 2000), 11.
C. N. Ahammed Moulavi and K. K. Muhammed Abdulkareem, Mahathaya Mappila Sahithya Parampariam [Great Mappila Literary Tradition] (Calicut: By the authors, 1978), 496.
Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 64–66.
Muhammadali, T. “Colonial Education, Public Sphere and Marginality in Kerala: The Case of the Mappilas.” In Kerala Society Historical Perceptions: Essays in Honour of Dr. S. M. Muhammed Koya, ed. V. Kunhali, (Calicut: University of Calicut, 2002), 94.
Fazlur Rahman, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 50.
Stephane A. Dudoignon, Komatsu Hisao, and Kosugi Yasushi, eds., Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World: Transmission, Transformation, Communication (London: Routledge, 2006), viii.
Albert Habib Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 235–236.
K. N. Ganesh, “Introduction,” in Culture and Modernity: Historical Explorations, ed. K. N. Ganesh (Calicut: University of Calicut Publication Division, 2004), 13–18.
Inderpal Grewal, Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 13.
Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 6.
Mahmoud Haddad, “The Manarists and Modernism: An Attempt to Fuse Society and Religion,” in Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World: Transmission, Transformation, Communication, ed. Stephane A. Dudoignon, Komatsu Hisao, and Kosugi Yasushi (London: Routledge, 2006), 60.
Copyright information
© 2014 Jose Abraham
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Abraham, J. (2014). Introduction. In: Islamic Reform and Colonial Discourse on Modernity in India. Postcolonialism and Religions. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378842_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378842_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48040-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-37884-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)