Indian Muslims: Who Are They c6.s6: The Malabar Coast

c6.s6.1

In Malabar, Muslim population increased considerably during the period of fourteenth-fifteenth-sixteenth centuries. In Quilon, the pearl fishery was monopolized by the Muslims who were there in large numbers. Such was their strength and influence that, although the ruler of Quilon and his armed retainers were always close by the city, the real arbiters of justice in local affairs seemed to be the wealthy Moors who ran the fishery.⁵³ Both Barbosa and Barros talk of the large number of Muhammadans, both foreign and indigenous, in Malabar. The foreigners included Arabs, Persians, Gujaratis, Khurasanis and Deccanis. The local ones were called Moplahs. They were mostly Sunnis, they lived in cities and made their living by trade. They comprised about 20 per cent of the total population.⁵⁴ Barbosa contends that they were so numerous that the advent of the Portuguese alone prevented Malabar from becoming a Moorish state.⁵⁵ A letter from Goa of the Year 1568 asserts that the Malabar nation is Muslim, and they are almost all pirates and hostile to the Christians.⁵⁶ But the arrival of the Portuguese provided a check and a challenge to Muslim proselytizing endeavour. They had captured Goa, Daman and Diu in the early years of the sixteenth century. In their triumphal entry into Goa (C.E. 1510), the clergymen were at the head of the procession. Albuquerque encouraged his soldiers to marry in the families of his Turkish officers. Force was also openly used for obtaining converts. And we shall see later on, the Portuguese tried to check conversion to Islam.