A History of the Mahrattas v1.c24.62

v1.c24.62

³ The Newayeteh Nabobs is the appellation by which Sadut Oollah Khan, Dost Ally, and Sufdur Ali are known in the Deccan. The Newayetehs are a distinct race of Mahomedans, and said to have been driven from Arabia to seek refuge on the western shores of India in the eighth century. See Wilks, vol. i, p. 242. [The name by which this mixed race is known on the Bombay coast is Navāit, Nāiata, or Nāitia, and they correspond closely in origin to the Māplas of Malabar and the Labbais of the Coromandel coast. According to a tradition current among the Konkani Muhammadans, who are the modern representatives of the Navāits in Bombay, they are descended from Arabs who fled to India in A.D. 699 to escape the persecution of Hajjāj-ibn-Yūsuf, Governor of Irāk, and settling on the western coast from Cambay to Goa, inter-married with Hindu women, whom they converted to Islam. Those who went further south to the Malabar Coast claim to have proselytised one of the Zamorins of Calicut. Between the ninth and sixteenth centuries they intermingled with other Persian and Arab immigrants and absorbed fresh bands of Arab refugees who escaped from the fury of the Karmatians (A.D. 923-6) and from the tyranny of Halaku the Tartar (A.D. 1258). Garcia da Orta (A.D. 1530) speaks of them as trading at Bassein, and describes them as foreign Moors who had married Hindu women of the coast. The name is variously derived from Sanskrit Nava, ‘new,’ meaning ‘new convert,’ and from Nāit, the name of an Arab clan. The Bombay Gazetteer, however, gives the meaning of the name as ‘shipmen’ or ‘sailors.’ (B.G., ‘Gujarat Musalmans,’ 14, 15.)]