Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c11.18

c11.18

In the extreme south, the Cape area was sparsely populated and infested with wild beasts. On the west coast, the Kerala region was full of people. It had the great ports of Quilon, Cochin, Cranganore, Calicut and Mahe. About Quilon a Jesuit visitor of 1569 says that in its environs are twenty-three villages and these are "heavily populated places"⁹ Near the city of Cochin there were a number of suburban villages.¹⁰ In the city itself in the two Jesuit elementary schools there were 270 students in 1570.¹¹ Besides Cochin is said to have had "houses like those of Rome".¹² Cranganore, as described by a priest of the name of Joseph, consisted of gentiles divided into three classes : gentlemen Nayars, farmers and fishermen.¹³ Pires affirms that there were 150,000 Nayars in Malabar.¹⁴ They had no other duty than to serve in war. Calicut, an important town from antiquity, was reported by Josafat Barbaro to be "of verie great fame, being as it were, a staple of merchants of various places.¹⁵ According to a letter of Girolamo Sernigi, sent to a colleague in Florence in July, 1499, Calicut was reported to be "bigger than Lisbon." and Calicut's population in 1500 may have been about 100,000 and in 1600, 150,000.¹⁶ The territory between Calicut and Cannanore is described as being cluttered with Moorish towns, one of which was Mahe. Barbosa gives the names of a large number of such towns well-populated with Nayars.¹⁷ The narratives of Barbosa and other Portuguese writers in the sixteenth century corroborate the impression of Ibn Battuta in the fourteenth that the Malabar coastal strip was very thickly populated. About Cannanore, “an international trading centre,” Castanheda says that “this is a large city with a fine bay.”¹⁸