Revisiting Malabar as a Medieval Cosmopolitan Space
Sebastian Prange’s ‘Monsoon Islam’ brings the least explored medieval Malabar into the limelight
Malabar’s unrivalled presence as a hotspot in the centuries-long maritime trade network and its unique position in the cultural realm of the Indian subcontinent have not been addressed justly for so long in the academic space. When looking for the character of medieval Malabar, we are confronted with a remarkable amalgamation of commerce, climate, geography, language, culture and religion. Similar to other regions of the Indian Ocean littoral, Malabar was characterized by the civilizational traits of Islam, as well as the indigenous maritime culture deeply embedded in it. Rather than a mere spiritual narration of the religious texts, as it has been observed, a multi-faceted translation and representation of faith has greatly aided in the formation of such a local version in the medieval Malabar.
This is evident from the fact that the editions of Islam in Malabar, Indonesia, China and North Africa were culturally distinct from each other, albeit they enjoyed a uniformity in the essence they carried. In Malabar, the harmonious existence of Muslims within non-Muslim societies forged a receptive space for the generations to come. In his book, 'Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast’, Sebastian R. Prange, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia, provides a meticulous study of how Islam in Malabar carved out a space of its own in response to emphatic economic, socio-religious, and political challenges.
The Arab merchants and travelers who headed east, adjusting their sails according to the movement of the monsoon winds, arrived in Kerala, often dubbed as the “Land of Spices”. It is noticeable that, centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, in 1498, the Arabs, Persians, African and Chinese Muslims were in constant contact with the port cities along the Kerala coast. As observed by Prange in his book, “Shafi‘i madhhab formed the primary basis of commercial law in the world of Monsoon Islam”. The fact that Shafi’i school-based thoughts are equally pervasive in the East African countries, the Oman, Yemen and Aden regions of the Arabian Peninsula, the Malay Archipelago and Malabar, undergirds the depth of cross-cultural relations between these coastal areas. And the author in a broader sense regards Islam as “the religion of trade” taking into account the many commercial directives included in the Islamic law.
Persian was the administrative language of Islam, which made its way into northern India via the Khyber Pass along with the freshly arrived Central Asian ruling class, and spread across the Indo-Gangetic Plain and Deccan Plateau with the help of various influential Sufi orders. As a result of the predominantly Persianate demeanour of the Sultanate, Mughal courts, Persian language, within no time, saw a tremendous growth in the subcontinent. Meanwhile, the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean, Prange points out, including the Malabar coast, had adopted Arabic as the lingua franca of the maritime world and intertwined with it their local culture to shape brand new identities.
The book also elaborates on the role of Makhdoom scholars (Zainuddīn I, II) in the spread of the Shafi’i school and the Arabic language on the Malabar coast. However, it is noteworthy that even after being profoundly impacted by the Arab Islam, a regional version of the faith had originated in Malabar which incorporated with it the native cultural fabric of Kerala. That being said, it must be admitted that the socio-political-cultural relevance of the wider Indian Ocean world — Malabar and Coromandel regions in particular, has been often overlooked in the mainstream discourses in Indian academia till recent times in contrast to the well projected Persianate-Sanskrit historical zones.
By the 16th century, with an upsurge of Portuguese hegemony in the Indian Ocean, Arab ties with Kerala coast weakened. Unlike the Arabs, for whom a greater part of their sea voyages operated as a means to explore various societies and transmit ideas, the Portuguese, who sought greener pastures to gain commercial monopolies, often posed a great threat to the atmosphere of cultural inclusion and religious tolerance that largely prevailed along the coast. As the Mappila Muslims of Malabar rose into prominence in the sea trade after the decline of the Arabs, it led to constant and fierce struggles with the Portuguese.
The ‘Tuhfat-al-Mujāhidīn’ of Sheikh Zainuddīn Makhdoom II — an instrumental work in marshalling local people to fight against the colonisers, the naval battles against the Portuguese under the admiralship of the Marakkārs and the political interventions of the Arakkal Beevis, all must be viewed as the expositions of the newly formed Malabar Islam. Besides, Malabar was arguably the first region in the Indian subcontinent to have raised rebel voices against the European colonialism with local religious figures penning down literatures of resistance invigorating the masses to join the movement. Another publication on the theme, ‘Malabar in the Indian Ocean - Cosmopolitanism in a Maritime Historical Region' (2018), jointly edited by Prof. Michael N. Pearson (University of New South Wales) and Dr. Mahmood Kooria (University of Leiden, Asoka University), establishes that a small tract of land in the south-western coast of the mainland Indian subcontinent, Malabar, was exemplarily cosmopolitan in it’s outlook in the Indian Ocean trade arena.
What sets Sebastian Prange’s ‘Monsoon Islam' apart is its departure from being a well-worn, Eurocentric reading of the Indian Ocean World. Along with several European sources, a considerable number of Malayalam, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Latin texts and monographs were extensively used to present a compelling narrative on the topic. As the rich bibliography of the book suggests, Prange has used end number of primary materials to draw his conclusions: ‘Qissat shakarwatī farmād' (the legend of king Cheramān Perumāl), ‘Tuhfat-al-Mujāhidīn’ by Makhdoom II, Imam Al-Shāfi’ī’s ‘Risāla’ (Treatise on the Foundations of Islamic Jurisprudence), Cairo Geniza Documents, Ali al-Hujwīrī’s ‘Kashf al-Mahjúb' (The Oldest Persian Treatise on Súfism), 'The Book of Duarte Barbosa’, 'Kitāb al-Fawā’id' of Ahmad bin Majid al-Najdi, among many others, and vast number of secondary sources by local and foreign authors including Sardar K.M Panicker’s work on the Portuguese presence on the Malabar Coast, Dr. Pius Malekandathil’s writings on commercial networks, Seema Alavi’s book on Muslim cosmopolitanism, Santhosh Abraham’s work on the Keyi Muslim merchants of Tellicherry, M. Shokoohy’s 'Muslim Architecture of South India’, V. Hansen’s 'The Silk Road: A New History’, Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s 'Europe’s India: Words, People, Empires, 1500–1800’ etc. — this implies author’s compendious approach to the writing of the book.
Sebastian Prange divides ‘Monsoon Islam' into four main sections: The Port, The Mosque, The Palace, The Sea. In the first chapter, The Port, Prange deals with the economic foundations of Monsoon Islam from the perspective of a port. The expectation of a traveller at sea for months is to anchor at the intended port and sell or buy his cargo at a profit. However, it could be argued without a shadow of a doubt, ports provided socio-cultural spaces for trading communities along with financial gains. Ports become extremely vital places for they serve as the intersection of urban and marine spaces, engendering socio-cultural exchange that transcends identities and boundaries often dismantling preconceived notions. From Kollam, Kochi and Kozhikode to Hormuz, Malacca and Aden, all were links within a vast and complex maritime trading network, sharing a common interest.
Being a part of the medieval Muslim trading world, which as viewed by Prange “not only circulated goods within the commercial cosmopolis but also individuals, ideas, texts, allegiances, and reputations”, Malabar truly reflected the characteristics of the wider Monsoon Asia. Merchants who knew Arabic, Persian and Chinese alike were a constant sight in the medieval Malabar ports. It’s quite discernible that ports had transformed them into cosmopolitan individuals being able to speak various tongues and sense different cultures. In this chapter, Prange also inquires into the relationship between ports, what he calls as “central nodes”, and the oceanic networks. Secondly, he invites our attention to the role of Muslim merchants within these networks, and their internal organisation. Trust is one crucial thing to be established primarily while dealing with long-distance trades. The legal framework followed by the Malabar merchants, both Muslims and non-Muslims, eventually helped foster a sense of trust among themselves.
Mosques were inextricably associated with the religious, social, commercial and political spheres of Muslims in medieval Malabar. The second chapter of the book, The Mosque, discusses the inevitable role of Monsoon Mosques among the Malabar Muslims. In an article, under the title ‘Monsoon Mosques’, Prange elucidates why he describes the mosques in medieval Malabar as Monsoon Mosques — Profit from trade journeys based on monsoon often served as the major source of funding for the construction of such mosques. He regards monsoon mosques as “both symbol and manifestation of Monsoon Islam in South India”.
The mosques in Kerala, from the early period of Islam onwards, down to the closing decades of the last century, had adopted a local form of architecture entirely different from the Indo-Saracenic style that was widely favoured in northern Indian regions. So the mosques of that time could be found as exact simulacra of the local Hindu temples. In fact, the Monsoon mosques of Kerala — indigenous by construction methods and foreign by concept — visually manifested the very character of Malabar Islam — an egalitarian faith. Many mosques used as hideouts and military offices during the war with the Portuguese show that they had roles more than just places of worship.
The chapter also critically examines the historicity of the Cheramān Perumāl legend in order to investigate the creation of a Muslim religious class within a non-Muslim social order in Malabar (According to oral traditions, king Cheramān Perumāl was the contemporary of Prophet Muhammed and had witnessed the splitting of moon — a miracle performed by the Prophet — and thus travelled to Mecca to meet him and embraced Islam in his presence). In this part, Prange qoutes Yohannan Friedman who based on his study of ‘Qissat shakarwatī farmād' argued that “one of the purposes of the tradition (Cheramān Perumāl) was to establish the ancient rights of the Muslim families who held the judicial positions (qādi) in Malabar”.
In the third chapter, the Palace, the author delineates the relation patterns between the maritime trading groups and the rulers of Calicut. Initially, Prange goes through the history of Calicut as “a principal hub of trade not only on the Malabar coast but across the entire Western Indian Ocean”, and how it gathered pace within a short space of time. He observes a close connection between the city’s Muslim community and the rise of Calicut as a major port in the Indian Ocean World, as Muslims for a long time had been at the forefront of the maritime trade world. It is obvious that the Portuguese presence in the region had redefined their relation with the state.
Calicut, for more than a century, had served as the epicentre of Malabar Muslims' relentless resistance against the atrocities of the Portuguese colonial power. Moreover, the relationship shared by the Muslim trading communities and the rulers like Sāmoothiri (Zamorin) was often cordial thus helping the trade in the Indian Ocean flourish. Prange argues that the initial trade agreement between the Zamorin and Muslims was intended to defenestrate the Portuguese and to enrich trade locally. However, the treaty signed by the Zamorin with the Portuguese in 1513, he observes, prompted Malabar Muslims to mobilize themselves without any outside assistance against the Portuguese brutalities, which eventually augmented their sense of pride.
Final chapter, The Sea, looks into all the three sets of network relationships: commercial, religious and political, in the context of the sea. Marking the Malabar merchants within the framework of the long-distance commercial network, Prange follows the history of the Indian Ocean pepper trade. In his own words, “Black pepper was the single most important ingredient of the Indian Ocean spice trade, it was this trade that instituted and sustained most other connections and exchanges that made up the world of Monsoon Islam”. The constant and universal demand for pepper made the Malabar coast and the Indian Ocean world in general, a bustling zone of foreign traders including the Europeans. Thus, it is conspicuous that spice trade had a pivotal role to play in the making of the Monsoon Islam.
Similarly, Islamic scholars of the Indian Ocean World and their texts too had worked as a binding force in constructing a solid religious network in tandem with other network relationships. Given that, Prangue opines, it was not only religious scholars who could be credited with making the existence of Islam relevant in this region, but Sufi orders too had left an indelible impression in redefining the faith on the coast. The role of Sufi mystics in the propagation of Islam in northern India has been well-documented, similarly, in the Indian Ocean world as well, we could trace their substantial presence. Although, local Sufi hagiographies were hardly compiled on the Malabar coast in comparison to the Persianate world of northern India as the absence of Muslim rulers in the region meant that there was no patronage for such ventures. In the final part of the chapter, Prange demonstrates both religious and commercial connections Islamic states along the Indian Ocean coasts had had with the trading communities of Malabar. Even though these relationships outwardly relied on religious mode of operation, commercial interests and political rivalries must be considered the real motives behind this kinship, the author says.
Concisely, the central idea of the book is to shed light on the religious and political dimensions of the intervention of Malabar Muslims in the Indian Ocean region along with its commercial aspects. According to Prange, the notion of Monsoon Islam largely rests on the fact that “it is the process of embedding global forces in local contexts, and vice versa”. Monsoon Islam was not nurtured by any state or religious class, but it was a trade-oriented faith exhibiting both local and trans-national qualities, and therefore could not be attributed with some specific set of behavioural patterns. Malabar Muslims, as any other trade-based communities, had adopted multiple modi operandi while dealing with societies beyond their confines. To put it simply, what constituted the crux of Monsoon Islam was it’s equally effervescent and diverse entity, thus placing itself in a position far from being a monolithic and bland faith.
