“It is no accident that all peoples, past and present, have had their mythology of a lost Paradise”.
The Eden Project, in Search of the Magical Other, James Hollis
Illustration; © Soft Atoll, 2024
When reading about Maldives, especially about the country’s early history, it’s very likely you will come across the name of the 14th century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta. According to the editor of Ibn Battuta’s travels, Ibn Juzayy, Ibn Battuta’s own name was Muhammad son of Abdulla, Ibn Batuta being the family name, still to be found in Morocco.[1]”
While Ibn Batuta traveled, and in his own account, visited the Maldives twice and fathered a child with a Maldivian woman, Maldives had been inhabited for several centuries before his visit. He mentions;
“From these islands there are exported the fish we have mentioned, coconuts, cloths, and cotton turbans, as well as brass utensils, of which they have a great many, cowrie shells, and qanbar. This is the hairy integument of the coconut, which they tan in pits on the shore, and afterwards beat out with bars, the women then spin it and it is made into cords for sewing (the planks of ) ships together. These cords are exported to India, China, and Yemen, and are better than hemp. The Indian and Yemenite ships are sewn together with them, for the Indian Ocean is full of reefs, and if a ship is nailed with iron nails it breaks up on striking the rocks, whereas if it sewn together with cords, it is given a certain resilience and does not fall to pieces. The inhabitants of these islands use cowrie shells as money. This is an animal which they gather in the sea and place in pits, where its flesh disappears, leaving its white shell. They are used for buying and selling at the rate of four hundred thousand shells for a dinar. They sell them in exchange for rice to the people of Bengal, who also use them as money, as well as to the Yemenites, who use them instead of sand (as ballad) in their ships. These shells are used also by the negroes in their lands; I saw them being sold at Ma’lli and Gawgaw (see Ch.XIV.) at the rate of 1,150 for a gold dinar.”
[1] Ibn Batuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, An Autobiography, 1929, Palantianos Classics