The Christians of the Malabar coast (the St Thomas Christians) look to the Church of the East in Persia for their bishop and keep their own archdeacon.
They trade as the Manigramam guild with the Tharisapalli plates of Kollam (849), have churches at Kodungallur and Kollam, and serve Nair kings as soldiers and merchants. They hold no land as a body.
Who holds it
- Title
- The archdeacon of the Christians of the coast, under a bishop from the Church of the East in Persia
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not known
- Confidence
- low
No head is named in any source we read.
Overlord
the Venad king and the Perumpadappu chief
How things stand that morning
A chartered merchant and soldiering community; a church with a distant bishop.
Places of note
- Tharisapalli at Kollam: the church of the Tharisapalli plates; position approximate
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Plates and church line are known from general knowledge; not re-read.
Primary sources for Kerala chiefdoms
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- South Indian Inscriptions (Archaeological Survey of India), Various (Chola, Pandya and other chanceries and temple scribes), edited by E. Hultzsch, V. Venkayya, H. Krishna Sastri and successors (inscriptions of the 7th to 17th centuries; the series ran from 1890). The temple inscriptions printed here are the primary record of the Tamil country in 1200. Read online
- Travancore Archaeological Series, Various (Kerala chiefs, temples and merchant guilds), edited by T. A. Gopinatha Rao, K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyer and A. S. Ramanatha Ayyar (inscriptions of the 9th to 18th centuries; the series ran from 1910 to 1938). The main corpus for the Kerala coast. Read online
- The Book of Roger (the Pleasure of Him who Longs to Cross the Horizons), Muhammad al-Idrisi (completed 1154 at Palermo). The nearest Arabic geography in time to 1200 for the Indian Ocean. Read online
- A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
- Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online
Sources and studies
- Kollam, Wikipedia (read for this sheet)
- Kodungallur, Wikipedia (read for this sheet)
- OMNIA board notes for the place (a lead, checked against the other sources)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.