South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.s2.16

Language: English

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Muhammadans in the Pāṇḍya country.—It was not the Muhammadan invasions from the north that brought the Muhammadans into this country for the first time. Muhammadan intercourse with the west coast of India seems to have begun much earlier; and we have considerable evidence of pre-Mussalman trade of the Arabs and other people with it. Arab settlements, after the introduction of Muhammadanism, were made in several places on the coast whose principal object was merely trade, for which the Hindu states of the interior apparently gave all facilities. The piratical character of the West Coast appears to have made the coast of the Konkan except for the northern ports of Kambay and Broach, as far down as Bombay undesirable for these foreign traders, possibly along with the dangers of getting close to the shore in the monsoon weather. There was besides the peculiar custom of the land that vessels driven ashore by stress of weather became the property of the authorities of the port into which it happened to be driven.¹ The governments of the east coast on the contrary seem to have pursued a more enlightened policy as the charters to the oversea traders of the Kākatiya Gaṇapati and the Reḍḍi Chief Vēma indicate.

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Under these charters traders were not only relieved from this disability, but were also offered special advantages by way of excuse from all port dues excepting the customs duties (Kūpaśulka).² It is this that made the eastern ports such welcome places to foreign merchants from China and the east on the one side, and the western traders on the other. Hence the name Ma'bar (Arabic for passage) for the Coromandal coast. The same policy seems to have been adopted by the rulers of the Malabar coast also as far north as Canara. Hence at the time that we have come to, that is about A.D. 1290, there were a number of flourishing ports on the east coast, of which the principal ones were Moṭupalli in the Kākatiya dominions in the north near the mouth of the Krishna, and the well-sheltered port at the mouth of the Tamaraparani in the Gulf of Mannar in the south, called Kāyal, not far from the far famed Korkai (Kolkhoi of the classical geographers). Of a number of trade settlements, enjoying the special protection of the rulers, that probably were in existence in all these ports there was one in Kāyal which has come in for prominent mention. This was the agency established at Kāyal by an Arab chieftain who is described by the Muhammadan historians as Maliku-l-Islam Jamalu-d-din ruler of Kis, and later the farmer-general of Fars. Such an agency was required because of the vast trade in horses.

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According to Wassaff, about this time as many as 10,000 horses were imported into Kāyal and other ports of India of which 1,400 were to be of Jamalu-d-din's own breed. The average cost of each horse was 220 dinars of 'red gold'. The cost even of those that died on the way was paid by the Pāṇḍya king for whom they were imported. Jamalu-d-din's agent was a brother as it seems, Takiu-d-din Abdur-Rahman, son of Muhammadu-t-Thaibi described as Marzaban (Margrave). This agent had his head-quarters at Kāyal, and had the other ports of Fitan and Mali Fitan also under his control. This description means that he was the agent general for the import trade of the Arabs in this part of the country, as according to the same authority the trade of this region in those days was very great, both in volume and value. In the words of Wassaf, 'Ma'bar extends in length from Kulam to Nilawar (Nellore) nearly three hundred parasangs along the sea-coast, and in the language of that country the king is called Dewar, which signifies the lord of empire. The curiosities of Chin and Machin, and the products of Hind and Sind, laden on large ships (which they call junks)¹ sailing like mountains with the wings of winds on the surface of the water, always arrived there.

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The wealth of the islands of the Persian Gulf in particular and in part the beauty and adornments of other countries, from 'Irak and Khurasan as far as Rum and Europe, are derived from Ma'bar, which is so situated as to be the key of Hind.'² This description is supported in full by what Marco Polo has to say of the eastern ports both of Kāyal and of Moṭupalli. It was from one of these ports that an embassy went to China sometime about A.D. 1297 under Fakhru-d-din Ahamad bin-Ibrahim-ut-Thaibi. This ambassador was the son of Jamalu-d-din. He returned after a stay of four years in China and died on board when two days distant from Ma'bar about the end of A.H. 704 (A.D. 1305). ‘His tomb is in Ma'bar, near that of his uncle,’ the Marzaban, who died two years before. It seems likely there were other settlements of these Muhammadans even in the interior of the country. In the course of his description of the campaign of Malik Kafur in the Tamil country, Amir Khusru says ‘Thither (to Kandur) the Malik pursued the ‘yellow-faced Bir’, and at Kandur was joined by some Mussalmans who had been subjects of the Hindus, now no longer able to offer them protection. They were half Hindus, and were not strict in their religious observance, but, ‘as they could repeat the Kalima (the Confession of Faith of the Muhammadans), the Malik of Islam spared their lives.

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Though they were worthy of death, yet as they were Mussalmans, they were pardoned.’¹ This shows that at Kandur, which I have identified with Kaṇṇanūr, near Śrīrangam, there was a settlement of Muhammadans quite different from the northern Mussalmans, who came along with the invaders. Ibn Batuta’s statement that Vīra Baḷḷāḷa had a contingent of 20,000 Muhammadans in his army, though made up of slaves and prisoners of war, would seem quite probable as he had a number of Muhammadan settlements on the west coast under his government, among whom the leading one at Honawar owed allegiance to his Viceroy Hariyappa Oḍayar (Horaib), the Harihara I of Vijianagar history. It seems thus clear that the Muhammadans of South India have a history anterior to the invasions from the north.