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The Maldive Islands, Dhibat-ul-Mahal part 2
Chapter
16 from the English translation by Dr. Mahdi Husain
The Rehla of Ibn Battuta
- India, Maldive Islands and Ceylon - translation and commentary
Oriental
Institute, Baroda, India 1976
Women of these islands
The
women of these islands do not cover their heads, nor does their queen and they
comb their hair and gather it together in one direction. Most of them wear only
a waist-wrapper, which covers them from their waist to the lowest part, but the
remainder of their body remains uncovered. Thus they walk about in the bazaars
and elsewhere. When I was appointed qazi there, I strove to put an end to this
practice and commanded the women to wear clothes; but could not get it done. I
would not let a woman enter my court to make a plaint unless her body were covered;
beyond this, however I was unable to do anything.
The clothes of some
of them consisted of a shirt (qamis) besides the waist-wrapper and their shirts
had short wide sleeves. I had slave girls whose clothing was like that of the
women of Dehli and who covered their heads. But far from being an ornament, it
looked like a disfigurement since they were not used to putting it on.
The
female ornaments consist of arm-rings; a certain number of which a woman wears
on both forearms in such a manner that the space between the wrist and the elbow
is covered completely. These rings are made of silver, while gold rings are not
used except by the wives of the sultan and his relatives. They wear also ankle-rings
called baail and gold necklaces coming down to their breasts called basdarad.
A
strange thing about them is that they seek employment as servants at a fixed rate
of five dinars or less, getting their keep free from their employers, and they
do not consider it a slight. Most of the girls do so, with the result that you
will find ten to twenty of them in the house of a rich man, and any utensil broken
by a girl is charged up against her. When a girl leaves one house for another,
the new employers give her the sum for which she is indebted. She makes it over
to the owners of the house whence she came; thus to the extent of this amount
she remains indebted to her new employers. The chief occupation of these hired
girls is the spinning of coconut fibre.
It is easy to marry in these
islands because of the smallness of the dowries and the pleasures of society which
the women offer. Most people do not even fix any dowry; only the witnesses are
recorded and a suitable dowry consistent with the status of the woman in question
is given. When the ships put in, the crew marry; when they intend to leave, they
divorce their wives. This is a kind of temporary marriage (muta).
The
women of these islands never leave their country, and I have seen nowhere in the
world women whose society was more pleasant. A woman in these islands would never
entrust to anybody else the serving of her husband; she herself brings him food
and takes away the plates, washes his hands and brings him water for ablution
and massages his feet when he goes to bed.
One of the customs of the
country is for the women not to dine with their husbands and the husband does not
know what his wife eats. In these islands, I married several women; some of them
dined with me after I had tackled them, but others did not. And I was not able
to see them eat and no device on my part was of any avail.
Cause
of the conversion to Islam of the inhabitants of these islands and the demons
from among the genii who molest them every month
Reliable
men among the inhabitants of the islands, like the jurist (faqih) and teacher
(mu'allim) Ali, the judge Abdullah - and others besides them - told me that the
inhabitants of these islands were once infidels, and that every month a demon
of the genii appeared to them: he came out of the sea and had the appearance of
a ship full of lamps. It was customary with the islanders that when they saw him,
they took a virgin maid whom they adorned and brought into a budkhana, that is,
an idol-house which was built on the seashore and had a balcony commanding a view
of the sea. They left the girl there overnight and the people, as they returned
at daybreak, found her ravished and dead. Every month they cast lots and whoever
was chosen gave his daughter.
Subsequently a Moroccan named Abul Barakat
the Berber who knew the great Quran by heart came to them. He put up at the house
of an old woman in the island of Mahal. One day as he saw her, he found that she
had called her family together and the women were weeping as if they were in mourning.
He enquired about their condition but they could not explain it to him. Then there
came an interpreter, who informed him that the lot had fallen on the old woman
who had no child except one daughter whom the demon was to kill.
'This night,'
said Abul Barakat to the woman, 'I shall go in place of your daughter.' And, curiously
enough, he had absolutely no beard.
He was brought at night into the
idol house after he had performed his ablution. He kept reciting the Quran, and
as the demon appeared to him through the balcony he continued his recitation.
As the demon drew close enough to hear the recitation he plunged into the water
and the westerner continued reciting as before until the dawn. Then the old woman,
her family and the islanders came to take away the maiden and burn her as had
been the practice. But they found the westerner reciting the Quran; so they took
him to their king called Shanuraza and told him of the news. The king was astonished.
The westerner then proposed to the king to embrace Islam and persuaded him to
do so.
Shanuraza said to him, 'Stay with us till next month. If you act once
more as you have already acted, and if you escape the demon again, I shall accept
Islam.'
He stayed amongst them and God opened the heart of the king
to Islam and he accepted it before the end of the month; and his wives, children
and courtiers followed it. At the beginning of the next month, the Moroccan was
brought into the idol house but the demon did not appear while he continued reciting
the Quran till morning. Then the king and the people came to him, and they found
him reciting. They broke to pieces the idols and razed the idol house to the ground.
The islanders embraced Islam and sent missionaries to the rest of the
islands, the inhabitants of which also became Muslims.
The Moroccan
stood in high regard with them, and they accepted his cult which was that of Imam
Malik. May God be pleased with him! And on account of him, they honour the Moroccans
up to this time. He built a mosque which is known after his name. On the railed
gallery (maqsura) of the congregational mosque, I read the allowing inscription
carved in wood - Aslama as-sultan Ahmad Shanuraza ala yade Abil Barakat al-maghiribi
(the sultan Ahmad Shanuraza accepted Islam at the hands of Abul Barakat the Moroccan).
And the king assigned one third of the evenues of the islands to charitable purposes
for travellers, since his conversion had taken place through them; and this portion
of the state revenue is still disposed of for the same purpose.
Through
this demon, many of these islands had been depopulated before they were converted
to Islam. I had no knowledge of this at the outset when we visited this country.
But one night as I was busy with my affairs, I suddenly heard the people shouting
in a loud voice - 'There is no God but God, and God is great', and I saw the children
carrying copies of the Quran on their heads and the women beating copper cups
and vessels.
I wondered at their behaviour and asked, 'What are you doing?'
Someone
answered, 'Do you not see the sea?'
I looked and saw what seemed to be a
large ship full of lamps and torches.
'That is the demon,' they said. 'It
is customary with him to appear once a month; but when we act as you see, he goes
away and does not harm us.'
Queen of
these islands
One of the wonders of these islands is that
its ruler (sultana) is a woman named Khadija, the daughter of sultan Jalaluddin
Umar, son of sultan Salahuddin Salih of Bengal. Sovereignty was exercised first
by her grandfather, and then by her father. When the latter died, her brother
Shihabuddin became king. He was still young and the vezir Abdullah son of Muhammad
al-Hazrami married the mother of Shihabuddin and overpowered him. And it was he
who married also this sultana Khadija after the death of her husband, the vezir
Jamaluddin, as we shall relate further.
When Shihabuddin attained his
majority he expelled his step-father - the vezir Abdullah - and exiled him to
the Suwaid islands and established his own rule firmly. He then took one of his
freed men named Ali Kalaki as his minister, whom he dismissed after three years
and banished to Suwaid. It is related about the aforesaid Sultan Shihabuddin that
he often illegally visited at night the harems of his dignitaries and courtiers.
He was therefore deposed and banished to the region of Haladummati and subsequently
a man was sent there who put him to death.
The only survivors from
the ruling house were his three sisters, namely Khadijat-ul-kubra, Mariyam and
Fatima. The inhabitants of the Maldive islands preferred for sovereignty Khadija
and she was the wife of their orator (khatib) Jamaluddin who became vezir. He
took over the reins of government and gave his own position of the orator to his
son Muhammad, but orders were issued in the name of Khadija only. The orders were
written on palm leaves with a bent piece of iron similar to a knife, while paper
was not used except for writing the Quran and books of learning.
The
orator mentions the queen in the Friday prayer and also on
other occasions. 'O my God!' says he, 'help Thy female slave whom Thou in Thy
wisdom hast chosen from all creatures and made an instrument of Thy grace for
all muslims - verily, that is, sultana Khadija, the daughter of sultan Jalaluddin,
bin sultan Salahuddin.'
It is a custom in the islands that a foreigner
coming to the country and going to the council hall called daar must bring two
pieces of cloth. He makes an obeisance in the direction of the sultana and throws
down one of the said pieces; he then bows before her vezir - who is her husband
Jamaluddin - and then throws down, the other piece.
The troops of the
sultana who number about a thousand men consist of foreigners, though there are
some natives also. They come daily into the council hall, make obeisance and then
withdraw. Their pay is given to them in the form of rice every month from the
bandar. When the month comes to a close they go into the council-hall, greet the
sovereign and say to the vezir, 'Pay our respects to the sultana and tell her
that we have come to ask for our pay'; thereupon appropriate orders are given.
The
judge and the officials who are called wuzara also appear daily in the council
hall; they pay their respects to the sultana through the bearers and then retire.
Officials
and their duties
They call the grand vezir, who is also the
deputy of the sultana, by the name of kalaki; and the qazi as fandayarqalu. All
sentences proceed from the qazi, who is the most influential man with them, and
his orders are carried out like those of the sultan or even more punctiliously.
He sits on a carpet in the council hall and has three islands, the income from
which he, appropriates for his personal use according to an old custom introduced
by sultan, Ahmad Shanuraza.
The orator is called handijari;
the chancellor of the exchequer famaldari; the minister of public works mafakalu;
the magistrate (hakim) itnayak; and the admiral manayak - all these officials
are styled 'vezir'.
There are no prisons in these islands and criminals
are looked up in wooden houses which were originally prepared to hold merchandise.
Each of them is secured by means of a piece of wood as is done in Morocco with
European prisoners.
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Pyrard 1602-07 
