Origin And Early History Of The Muslims Of Keralam

 A new history of Muslims of Kerala- ORGANISER/ march 25/ 2012

Origin and Early History of the Muslims of Keralam, 700 AD-1600 AD, JBP More, Other Books, Pp 260, Rs 360.00

In this narrative of Kerala Muslims, the author sheds light on the history preceding as well as the history of more than a century succeeding Vasco da Gama’s arrival on the coast of Malabar.

He says that it was generally the people from West Asia or Middle East, who wrote about India and its people, its history and culture, since the 9th century up to the arrival of the Europeans. Prominent among these West Asians were Saulaiman al-Tajir, Masudi, Al Beruni, Amir Khusrau, Ibn Batuta and Abd-er-Razzak, but with the arrival of the Portuguese in Malabar in 1498, no attempts were made to maintain a systematic record of the history. It was only in the 1580s that Sheikh Zainuddin-al-Mabari produced the Tuhfat al-Mujahideen in Arabic. As nobody is certain of his origins and thus he is considered the first early modern historian of Keralam.

Here the author makes a very interesting observation about what Edward said, current professor at Columbia University said when he reiterated that innumerable Western orientalists during the colonial period were either paternalistic or candidly condescending towards the subject of their study, that is, the Orient and they also carried forward the binary typology of advanced and backward races, cultures and societies. He demonstrates that they presented a biased view of India to give a European form to a formless knowledge, but also to control, supervise and govern the Indians with the help of that knowledge.

The book is divided into two parts, with the first part dealing with the origin and evolution of the Muslims of Keralam until 1600 AD. Containing five chapters, this part is preceded with an introduction and is concluded with the advent of Sheikh Zainduddin. The first chapter traces the historical background of Malabar before the advent of Islam. The second and third chapters deal with the origin and evolution of Islam in Malabar from AD 700-1500. The fourth chapter explores the truth behind the legend of Cheraman Perumal. The fifth chapter is exclusively devoted to a critical study of Vasco da Gama’s arrival on the Malabar coast and its consequences and the reactions of Sheikh Zainuddin to Portuguese penetration into Malabar and the Indian Ocean region.

The second part of the book contains a reproduction of a short account of the Muslims of Keralam by Mahomed Kasim Ferishta of the Bijapur Sultanate in his Gulshan-i-Ibrahimi. Though Ferishta was a Persian, he died in India and that is why, as the author admits, he can be rightly deemed as an Indo-Persian historian and writer of Karnataka where Bijapur is presently located.

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—MG