The Maldive kingdom of Male

Who rules

Name

not known (the king reigning on 1 January 1200 is not pinned)

Title

King (Maha Radun, later styled Sultan) of the Maldives, of the Theemuge house

Since

not pinned

Born

not known

Family

Theemuge dynasty, said by the Maldive chronicles to begin with Koimala (Siri Mahabarana) in 1117 or 1118; the next kings in the late royal lists are Dhovemi (Dhovemi Kalaminja Siri Thiribuvana-aadiththa Maha Radun, Muslim name Muhammad al-Adil; 1142 to 1165 in the Raadhavalhi) and his uncle Muthey Kalaminja from 1165 (Raadhavalhi). The chain from 1165 to 1200 is not given in the pages we reached.

Confidence

low

The royal lists are late: the Taarikh of Hasan Taj al-Din and the Raadhavalhi (1757), printed in H. C. P. Bell's work, and we did not have the full tables. The only documents near 1200 are the copper-plate grants (loamaafaanu): Isdhoo (1194), Gamu (1194/1195) and Dhanbidhoo (1196/1197) in the English Wikipedia, which give the years in CE only. The English Wikipedia page on Laamu Atoll says the Isdhoo and Dhanbidhoo plates are dated 1193 and name the king of the time as 'Sri Gadana Aditya Maharadun'; we could not check the name against the plates or match it to any name in the late royal lists, so it is a lead and not a finding.

The conversion to Islam is 1153 in the chronicle tradition and 'possibly 1193' in some readings of the plates.

What the realm holds

• Male, the royal island, with the king's palace and a Friday mosque (tradition ascribes the first to the convert king; the present Hukuru Miskiy is of 1656)
• The atolls in order from north to south, each under a governor the king appoints (the later 'atolu veriyaa'); the plates mention officers by title, none by name that we could read
• The cowrie and coir trade to Bengal, Sindh, China, Yemen and the Gulf, the monopoly of the crown
• Laamu (Haddhunmathi) atoll with the Buddhist monasteries whose destruction the Dhanbidhoo plate is said to record

How it was acquired

The Maldive chronicles make Koimala the first king to rule all the islands (1117 or 1118) and credit him with freeing them from the Chola; the dating is the lists', not independent evidence.

Allies and rivals

No wars are known. Trade ties with Bengal, Ceylon, the Malabar coast and the Arab merchants of Basra and the Gulf. The Chola took the northern atolls in the eleventh century (Rajaraja I); there is no Chola claim now that we could find.

The realm that morning

A Muslim court on the throne of a recently Buddhist country, only a few years (on the 1193 reading) or about half a century (on the 1153 reading) after the conversion. On the English Wikipedia's account of the Dhanbidhoo plate, Buddhist monuments on Laamu have been destroyed, monks beheaded and mosques built in their place by a date it gives as 1193; the plates of Isdhoo, Gamu and Dhanbidhoo are the nearest documents. The king's name, age and heirs for 1 January 1200 are not known.

Wealth

Cowrie shells (the legal tender of Bengal in later centuries), coir, dried fish (the later 'Maldive fish'), coconut, tortoiseshell, ambergris; port dues at Male.

Military

No army is known; the kingdom is defended by distance and by the reef passages. Ships and boats of the atolls. No numbers.

Threats

• A South Indian or Sinhalese seaborne raid (the Chola of the eleventh century is the model)
• Religious faction: the Buddhist families and monks of Laamu and the south
• A succession dispute inside the Theemuge house

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. through 1200No dated event is known for 1200; the plates of 1194 to 1197 are the nearest documents, so the island is in the generation of conversion and suppression.Depends on: The reading of the plates (1153 or about 1193 for the conversion). Stopped by: A different reading of the plates.

Places of note

• Male, the royal island: King's seat.
• Isdhoo and Dhanbidhoo, Laamu (Haddhunmathi) atoll: Find-spots of the Isdhoo and Dhanbidhoo copper plates (dated 1193 on the Laamu Atoll page, 1194 to 1197 on other pages); the Dhanbidhoo plate is said to relate the end of the Buddhist monuments.

Where the sources disagree

• The OMNIA board has no Maldive places for this sheet's area; the assignment asks for the king of 1200 from the royal lists. We give the lists' early kings and say plainly that the 1200 king is not pinned.
• The English Wikipedia gives the conversion as 1153 and 'possibly 1193 according to some copper plate grants'; the list pages for the monarchs carry no table for 1117 to 1250 in the version we could read.
• The plate dates disagree between pages: Laamu Atoll (English Wikipedia) says 1193 for Isdhoo and Dhanbidhoo; the Loamaafaanu pages we read earlier gave 1194, 1194/5 and 1196/7. The plates are the only contemporary documents; the campaign should treat 1193 to 1197 as the window and the king named on them (Sri Gadana Aditya Maharadun, per Wikipedia) as the likely king of 1200, not as proven.

Evidence: Only the Dhivehi chronicles (late) and three copper plates near 1200, none of which we read directly.

On the map: The sheet's land units are atolls; the king is drawn as holding all of them.

Primary sources for this realm

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.

• 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