A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c20.s2.1

c20.s2.1

The contact of South India with Islam is much older than that of the North. A Muslim fleet first sailed in Indian waters in 636, when a governor serving under Caliph Umar sent an army to Thāna; but Umar disapproved of this. Very soon afterwards, Muslim traders continuing the contacts of pre-Muslim days settled in numerous parts of the Malabar coast, married the women of the country, and the issue of such unions became the Māppiḷas (Moplahs). Such Muslim traders were encouraged by Hindu Rājas who used them to procure horses for their cavalry and for manning their fleets. Al-Ishtakhri, an Arab writer of the tenth century who knew India at first hand, says that there were Musalmans and Jumma Masjids in the cities of the Rāshtrakūta empire. A doubtful legend relates the conversion to Islam of the last of the Perumāl rulers of Kerala, Cheramān Perumāl. He is said to have made the pilgrimage to Mecca and to have sent directions from there to the rulers of his homeland to receive Muslims hospitably and to build mosques for them. Travellers like Masūdi (916) and Ibn Batūtā (fourteenth century) testify to the presence of Muslims and mosques all along the west coast. There were Muslim settlements on the east coast also, of which Kāyal-pattanam and Nagore were the most important. Islam, it is said, was preached actively near Trichinopoly early in the eleventh century by a Sayyid prince of Turkey, Nathad Vali, who became a missionary, came to India, and spent his last years converting many Hindus. His tomb is still pointed out in the city. According to Ibn Batūtā, the army of Hoysala Ballāla III included 20,000 Musalmans. The Muslim invasions from the North and their consequences, the rise of the Bāhmani kingdom and its relations with Vijayanagar, have been dealt with elsewhere. By the beginning of the sixteenth century the Māppillas were estimated by Duarte Barbosa to have formed one-fifth of the population of Malabar, but the arrival of the Portuguese checked the growth of Muslim power and ruined the Arab trade.