Maldivian Links with Eastern Africa

Situated in the central Indian Ocean some 2,500 miles north-east Mombasa and some 400 miles south-west of Sri Lanka, the Maldive Archipelago is both geographically and culturally closer to South and Southeast Asia than it is to Africa. Nevertheless, despite the vast distances involved, commercial and cultural links between the Maldives and the Swahili Coast have existed for many centuries.

The Maldives were first settled by a Dravidian people from South Asia about half way through the first millenium BC. Little is know of these first inhabitants, who were soon followed by Indo-European people closely related to the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka. For more than a thousand years the Maldives remained under the influence of nearby Buddhist Sri Lanka, but in 1153 the Maldivian king converted to Islam, took the name Muhammad al-Adil and established an Islamic Sultanate which was to endure, almost without interruption, until 1968.

David Henley / CPA

An Indian Ocean dhow.

Throughout their long history the Maldivian people have retained a strong sense of their national and cultural identity. They speak a language called Divehi which is closely related to medieval Sinhalese, but contains a considerable admixture of Arabic, and they write in their own script, Thana, which is based on a mixture of Arabic and south Indian numerals. Although the islanders remain predominantly Indo-European, it is easy to detect in aspects of their physiognomy and culture the influence of many generations of travellers and settlers who have reached the remote archipelago from Southeast Asia, the Arab world, and the coast of eastern Africa.

Links between eastern Africa and the Maldive Islands, though never pronounced, have been surprisingly long-standing. It has been tentatively suggested that the Maldives (as well as the Seychelles) may have played a role as mid-oceanic staging posts in the Indonesian migrations to eastern Africa and Madagascar thought to have occurred during the fourth and fifth centuries AD. However, until concrete evidence of this can be produced, such evidence must remain purely speculative. Similarly, it is possible that the mid-Indian Ocean archipelagoes, including the Maldives, played a part in the westward spread of such staple crops as the banana and the coconut. Of more certain significance to the whole of Africa, however, was the trade in Maldivian cowries.

As early as the mid-ninth century A.D., the Maldive Islands were known to the Arab merchant Sulayman as a producer of cowries (Cypraea moneta), the tiny shells once used as a medium of exchange in Bengal, Tibet, China, Southeast Asia, and throughout large parts of Africa. Although there are no records of a direct trade in cowries between the Maldives and East Africa, it is known that huge quantities of these shells were taken to the ports of Southern Arabia as ballast in Arab dhows crossing the Indian Ocean from Southeast Asia by way of Male. These cowries were then re-exported to Africa via Sinai, the Red Sea, and the ports of the Somalia and the Swahili Coast. It is also likely that dhows sailing directly from South Asia to eastern Africa carried cowries as ballast, no doubt exchanging them for local produce in ports such as Mogadishu, Lamu, Malindi, Mombasa and Kilwa.

The profits attached to the cowrie trade were substantial. Ibn Battuta, who visited the Maldives in 1343-4 and again in 1346 (and who did some trading in cowries himself) records that cowries sold at Male for between 400,000 and 1,200,000 to the gold dinar. Seven years later the "Traveller of Islam" was to see similar cowries, almost certainly of Maldivian origin, selling at 1,150 to the gold dinar in the West African Kingdom of Mali.

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With the arrival of European vessels in eastern waters during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Arab domination of the cowrie trade between the Maldive Islands and eastern Africa was rapidly superceded first by the Portuguese and then by the Dutch. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Maldivian cowries were generally shipped in bulk to Bengal, often aboard Maldivian vessels, and then re-exported in European ships to both the east and west coasts of Africa.

During the latter half of the seventeenth century the Maldivian cowrie trade was largely re-routed via Ceylon, which had fallen under Dutch control between 1640 and 1658. The Dutch did very well out of this trade, and each successive governor of Ceylon was urged by the Dutch authorities at Batavia to supply larger quantities of Maldivian cowries for the rapidly expanding slave trade on the West African coast. By the middle of the eighteenth century, when the West African slave trade was at its peak, Dutch control of the traffic in Maldivian cowries was long-established and their value in West Africa, although still substantial, had started to fall. An anonymous Dutch account published in 1747 draws dispassionate attention to this development in the following matter-of-fact terms:

Formerly twelve thousandweight of these cowries would purchase a cargo of five or six hundred negroes; but those lucrative times are now no more; and the negroes now set such a value on their countrymen that there is no such thing as having a cargo under twelve or fourteen tons of cowries.

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Cypraea moneta - money cowries.

Maldivian cowries made less of an impact on the east coast of Africa, probably because they faced two serious rivals in the local cowries (Cypraea annulus) and in the established cattle standard of the interior, for in cattle areas, especially where iron was fairly abundant, there was less demand for imported currencies such as the money cowrie. When, however, Maldivian cowries first made their appearance in the lake regions of eastern Africa the Arab slave-traders from Zanzibar and Bagamoyo were briefly able to make staggering profits. According to Roscoe, writing in 1911, at the beginning of the nineteenth century it was possible to buy a woman for two cowries in the Buganda region. The high value placed on cowries in this area was short-lived, nevertheless, and by 1860, following several decades of cowrie importation, it required 2,500 cowries to purchase a cow at the capital or on the main trade routes of Buganda whilst a woman was valued at between four and five cows in the same places.

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A dhow off Zanzibar.

Although during the nineteenth century Zanzibar and other places on the East African coast developed a cowrie industry of their own based on the indigenous Cypraea annulus, Maldivian cowries continued to find a good market in eastern Africa. This was probably because the blue Zanzibar cowries are larger than the white Maldivian cowries and the latter were reckoned considerably more valuable, both because of the higher cost of transport to the East African coast and also because once in Africa, they could be transported more easily and cheaply owing to their smaller weight. Maldivian cowries continued to be used as currency in parts of eastern Africa until about 1921 when they were finally displaced by the rupee.

Eastern Africa contacts with the Maldive Islands date back at least 700 years, to the time of the conversion of the Maldive Islanders to Islam, and probably considerably further. During Ibn Battuta's first visit to the remote archipelago in 1343-4 he noted that the inhabitants 'annointed themselves with musk from Mogadishu'. Later during the same visit he was presented with five sheep by the Maldivian vizir, which he noted were: 'rare animals with the islanders, having to be brought from Ma'bar, Malabar and Mogadishu.'

Andrew Forbes / CPA

A Maldivian boat maker.

By Ibn Battuta's time African slaves already formed a part of the Maldivian population, and the learned Moroccan, who was appointed chief judge of the islands during his stay there, was called upon on one occasion to presideover the trial of an African slave accused of conducting an "adulterous intrigue" with a lady of the Maldivian Sultan's harem. Not all the Africans present in the Maldives at this time were slaves, however, for when Ibn Battuta returned to the Maldives in 1346 he landed at Kinalos Island in Malosmadulu Atoll and was 'welcomed with respect' by the island chief whose name, abd al-Aziz al-Makdashawi (that is, of Mogadishu), indicates a clear connection with the Somali coast.

Of more importance, Ibn Battuta records visiting 'a hermitage situated at the extremity of the island (Male) and founded by the virtuous Shaykh Najib'. This is a reference to the Habshigefanu Magan, or "Shrine of the African Worthy", a memorial erected to a certain Shaykh Najib who is believed by the Maldivians to have travelled through the Maldive Archipelago spreading the faith of Islam before dying at Karendu Island in Fadiffolu Atoll. The Habshigefanu Magan survived in the precincts of the Lonu Ziyare at Male until the latter's demolition at the beginning of this century.

African slaves continued to be brought to the Maldives, chiefly aboard Arab dhows, until about the middle of the nineteenth century. The number of Africans brought to Maldives in this way was never great, but the physiognomy of their descendants is still clearly distinguishable amongst some of the inhabitants of Male and the northern atolls. Most such slaves are reported to have come directly from eastern Africa via Zanzibar and the Omani port of Muscat, but others were bought in Jeddah, on one occasion by the Maldivian Sultan Hasan III, who brought 70 slaves from the Hijaz to Male in the mid-fifteenth century.

Andrew Forbes / CPA

Fort at Lamu, Kenya.

According to the Maldivian Ta'rikh, an historical chronicle written in the early nineteenth century, trouble arose following the return of this sultan to Male when a slave killed a Maldivian. If the Ta'rikh is to be believed, the sultan must have thought very highly of this slave, for when the chief judge of the Islands demanded that the murder be punished, Hasan III refused and had the judge burned at the stake instead. Generally speaking, however, African slaves brought to the Maldives settled peacefully in the northern and central atolls, intermarrying with the local people and working chiefly as raveri, or keepers of coconut plantations. The trade in African slaves had largely died out by the beginning of the nineteenth century, and in 1834 two British naval lieutenants who visited Male were able report that:

From the information we were able to collect... it appears that Muscat vessels do not often visit this place: when they do, they generally bring a cargo of slaves. Five years ago one came and sold about twenty-five lads, at an average price of about 80 rupees each.

Amongst the possible cultural contributions of eastern Africa to the Maldives are the babaru lava or "negro songs" which are performed to traditional Maldivian bodu beru ("big drum") dances. Maldivians believe that the bodu beru style of dancing and singing was introduced to their country by African settlers and slaves during the twelfth century. Bodu beru is played with three drums, accompanied by a small bell and an onugadu, or piece of bamboo on which horizontal lines have been cut and which is scraped sound. Including the three drummers and a lead singer, about 15 people usually participate in the choruses and dancing. The songs are preceded by a slow rythmic beating of the drums which is accompanied by dancing. As the songs reach a crescendo, one or two dancers keep the beat with their frantic movements, and sometimes go into a trance. The songs vary in tempo and are variously in Divehi, Arabic and, according to Maldivian sources, in some of the languages of eastern Africa.

Possible Maldivian Influences on Eastern Africa

Possible Maldivian contributions to the history of eastern Africa remains shrouded in obscurity and, with the single exception of the cowrie trade, are considerable less easy to trace than African influences on the Maldive Islands.

Andrew Forbes / CPA

Seafront at Lamu, Kenya.

It has been widely suggested that the Wadiba, a sea-borne people who, according to Swahili oral tradition, conquered parts of the East African coast including Pemba and possible Mombasa, whose name is thought to mean "from the islands" (based on the Sanskrit for Island, dvipa, a term applied by the medieval Arab navigators to the Maldive and Laccadive Islands), are believed to have ruled over Pemba during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

According to some traditions the infamous Mkame Mdume ("Milker or Men"), who is credited with having built and lived at Pujini on Pemba, was a Wadiba. Mkame Mdume, whose real name is sometimes given as Muhammad bin Abd al-Rahman, was clearly a Muslim and is remembered as having been fiercely orthodox in his observance of the faith. The Wadiba in general and Mkame Mdume in particular are remembered for their proselytism of Islam, building of mosques, and proficiency in the construction of mtepe sewn-boats -all possible indication of Maldivian identity.

However, the Wadiba are remembered above all for their terrible cruelty, and this alone is enough to dissociate them from the Maldivians, who are among the most gentle of people. This was so even in Ibn Battuta's time, when half the audience hall fainted away on hearing the Moroccan judge order that a thief's hand should be cut off. The Maldivians have never attacked any neighbouring territories other than, on rare occasions, the Laccadive Islands, and although willing and able to defend themselves against foreign invaders, are otherwise generally loathe to take any higher form of life, whether human or animal.

Another Swahili oral tradition, which comes from the Lamu area and is far more likely to be associated with the inhabitants of the Maldives than it is with the Mkame Mdume legend, records that a number of foreign vessels were wrecked off Kiwayu Island the beginning of the sixteenth century. The survivors of this catastrophe, who are similarly styled Wadiba or "islanders", were treated hospitably by the local Bajun people with whom they subsequently intermarried. The Lamu tradition goes on to relate how the Wadiba taught the Bajun, who until this time had used only dugout canoes, to build vessels after their own fashion. The Bajun were pleased with the new design, and adopted it themselves, substituting local mangrove wood for the coconut planks with which the original Wadiba vessels were reportedly built.

If the Lamu tradition of the Wadiba is based on any element of fact, the possibility that shipwrecked Maldivian sailors introduced some improvements to the sailing vessels of the Bajun cannot be ruled out. Certainly, similarities between smaller Maldivian craft and the East African mtepe exist, particularly in their common use of a square sail rig. The Maldives islanders have long held a well-deserved reputation as intrepid mariners. Their traditional maritime trade routes carried them as far afield as Singapore, Bengal, the Arabian Peninsula and Mauritius. While the coast of eastern Africa lay outside their normal circle of trade, numerous instances of Maldivian vessels reaching East Africa having been driven out of their course by adverse weather and customs have been recorded.

This article was originally published in Kenya Past and Present, The Journal of the Kenya Museum Society, Nairobi.

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