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Polyglossic Malabar: Arabi-Malayalam and the Muhiyuddinmala in the age of transition (1600s–1750s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2020

P. K. YASSER ARAFATH
P. K. YASSER ARAFATH*
Affiliation:
University of Delhiyasserhcu@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article examines the relations between trade, faith, and textual traditions in early modern Indian Ocean region and the birth of Arabi-Malayalam, a new system of writing which has facilitated the growth of a vernacular Islamic textual tradition in Malabar since the seventeenth century. As a transliterated scriptorial-literary tradition, Arabi-Malayalam emerged out of the polyglossic lingual sphere of the Malabar Coast, and remains as one of the important legacies of social and religious interactions in precolonial south Asia. The first part of this article examines the social, epistemic and normative reasons that led to the scriptorial birth of Arabi-Malayalam, moving beyond a handful of Malayalam writings that locate its origin in the social and economic necessities of Arab traders in the early centuries of Islam. The second part looks at the complex relationship between Muslim scribes and their vernacular audience in the aftermath of Portuguese violence and destruction of Calicut—one of the largest Indian Ocean ports before the sixteenth century. This part focuses on Qadi Muhammed bin Abdul Aziz and his Muhiyuddinmala, the first identifiable text in Arabi-Malayalam, examining how the Muhiyuddinmala represents a transition from classical Arabic theological episteme to the vernacular-popular poetic discourse which changed the pietistic behaviour of the Mappila Muslims of Malabar.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 517 - 539
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2020

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References

1 There are a few Malayalam works on Arabi-Malayalam but these mostly focus on its etymological and lexicological aspects, overlooking the complex ideational and historical processes that led to its growth as a lingual-scriptorial variant: see Abu, O., Arabi-Malayala Sahitya Charitram (Kottayam, 1970)Google Scholar; Moulavi, C. N. Ahmad and Kareem, K. K. Mohammad Abdul, Mahattaya Mappila Sahitya Paramparyam (Calicut, 1978)Google Scholar; and Kunhi, P. K. Muhammad, Muslimkalum Kerala Samskaravum (Thrissur, 1982)Google Scholar. In a recent work, M. H. Ilias and Shamsad Hussain have attempted to analyse the morphological and phonological characteristics of Arabi-Malayalam script. However, larger questions about the historical origin of this script and important narrative shifts that happened in the Muhiyuddinmala remained outside the purview of their study, see Arabi-Malayalam: Linguistic and Cultural Traditions of Mappila Muslims of Kerala (New Delhi, 2017)Google Scholar.

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26 Muhiyuddinmala, p. 12; futhiya can be transcribed as puthiya (new), as it has been used today. But I retain many such expressions in the article as they were used in the Muhiyuddinmala so as to indicate how the Malabar ulama used Malayalam words during the period under scrutiny. I have used one of the earliest copies of the Muhiyuddinmala, printed in 1876 by M. Koyali Haji at Telicherry. This copy is preserved in the un-catalogued manuscript section at the Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library. According to Koyali Haji, this lithographed version is a direct copy of the original manuscript which was preserved by the family of Qadi Muhammed. I compared this version with a number of other printed versions that are found at the British Library and were printed in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. They include Muhiyuddinmala (Telicherry, 1874)Google Scholar, Muhiyuddinmala (Telicherry, 1875)Google Scholar, and Muhiyuddinmala (Ponnani, 1909)Google Scholar. All translations from this text are mine, unless otherwise mentioned.

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34 Varthema, Travels, p. 151.

35 Words from other languages such as serambi-rest house (Malay regions) and kanji-porridge (Ming China) show how various lingual components influenced the polyglossic life in Malabar. This region also housed a few polyglossic Muslim navigators who were familiar with European languages in the early-sixteenth century. See Pearson, M. N., The Portuguese in India (Cambridge, 1987), p. 11Google Scholar.

36 Early Malayalam kavya texts also give us the detailed descriptions about the presence of people from different lingual-scriptorial regions, within India and outside. Written between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries, such texts indicate the multi-layered trading networks in medieval Kerala. See Veluthat, Kesavan, “Trade, Markets and Urbanism: Perceptions of Literature from Medieval Kerala”, Studies in People's History 2, 1 (2015), pp. 54–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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41 Ayyar, K.V. Krishna, The Zamorins of Calicut (Calicut, 1938)Google Scholar. Similarly, Afanasy Nikitin, a fifteenth-century Russian trader who travelled in India was well versed in Arabic. He transliterated many polyglossic urban usages that were interspersed among Arabic, Persian and Turkish expressions, see Knezevic, Anto, “The Case of Afanasii Nikitin: Some Remarks about a Political Friendship”, Islamic Studies 33, 4 (1994), pp. 488–490Google Scholar.

42 The Travels of Ibn Batuta, pp. 170–171.

43 Metcalf, Alida C., Go-betweens and the Colonization of Brazil: 1500–1600 (Austin, 2005), p. 32Google Scholar; Kurup, K. K. N., “Arabic Tradition in Kerala”, in Arabic in South India: Papers in Honour of Professor S. E. A. Nadvi, (ed.) Kutty, E. K. Ahmed (Calicut, 2003), p. 41Google Scholar.

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47 This article uses ‘agrarianate city’ and ‘agrarianate society’ to reflect the fact that the nature of economic transactions in pre-colonial Calicut was largely based on agricultural products and services rather than manufactured goods.

48 Unniyachi Charitam, (ed.) Pillai, P. K. Narayana (Trivandrum, 1970), p. 34Google Scholar; Allah'r could be understood as the first specific localised expression with which the local people identified Muslims in the region before they came to be known as Mappilas.

49 Hein, “On the Way to the East”, p. 9.

50 In the fourteenth century, Ibn Battuta reflected on the increasing network of Islamic institutions and Islamic habitus around mosques and shrines across Malabar where native Muslims could not hold religious posts such as qadi and mufti. Most of these designated positions were kept by scholars from Oman, Baghdad and other such centres, see The Travels of Ibn Battuta.

51 Gibb and Beckingham, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, p. 165.

52 Tschacher, Islam in Tamilnadu, p. 3.

53 The Travels of Ibn Battuta; apparently Battuta presumed that native Muslims did not have the required cognitive competence for holding any such theological and legal positions.

54 Neeba, N. V., “Recognition of Malayalam Documents”, in Guide to OCR for Indic Scripts: Documents Recognition and Retrieval, (eds.), Govindaraju, Venu and Setlur, Srirangaraj (London, 2009), p. 128Google Scholar.

55 A large number of such texts are preserved in the British Library and they include Chadaṅgu (sixteenth century), EAP584/1/4 Pt 2; Aśaucadīpīkā (sixteenth century), EAP584/1/5 Pt 2; and Tripura Stotra Vyakarana [sixteenth century AD], EAP208/13/4.

56 Perczel, “Garshuni Malayalam”.

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66 Barbosa, Description, p. 146; According to Varthema, the Mappila population was about 15,000 in the early-sixteenth century, far exceeding the description by Barbosa. Varthema's figure could be taken as exaggeration by a European who saw a considerable number of Muslims in a non-Islamic region, see Varthema, Ludovico di Varthema, p. 151. Similarly, the statement of Chinese traveller Ma Huan in the fifteenth century—“30,000 Muslims and more than twenty mosques”—also strains reality. Muslim traveller Abdu Razaq (fifteenth century), was closer to reality when he stated that there were only two mosques in the city and they were managed by a qadi and imam, and according to him the majority of the city population was non-Muslim.

67 “In the interior of the country they (Mappilas) are very well provided with estates and farms”, see Barbosa, Description, p. 146.

68 These texts included: Qadi Muhammed, Al Qutubat al Jihadiya, reprinted in Aydyuludiya wa Nnidal (Ideology and Struggle) (ed.) Kader, N. A. M. Abdul (Calicut, 2012)Google Scholar; Qaseedat-al-Jihadiya, reprinted in Aydyuludiya wa Nnidal (Ideology and Struggle), (ed.) Kader, N. A. M. Abdul (Calicut, 2012)Google Scholar; Qasidat-al-Fath-al-Mubeen (ed.) Aziz, Mankada Abdul (Calicut, 1996)Google Scholar; Zainuddin Makhdum I, Tahreel Ahl-al Imani ala-Jihadi Abdat-a-Ssulban, reprinted in Nadwi, Faisal Ahmed Bhaktali, Tehreek-e- Azadi me Ulema ka Kirdar: 1857se Pehele (Lucknow, 2003)Google Scholar; Makhdum, Zainuddin II, Tuhfat-al Mujahideen fi ba'd Akhbar al-Burtughaliyan, translated by Hamsa, C. (Calicut, 1999)Google Scholar.

69 Arafath, P. K. Yasser, “Malayalam, Malabari and Arabi-Malayalam”, Madhyamam Weekly 21 (2018), pp. 36–49Google Scholar.

70 VOC/OB 2310, MiD, fol.1218 vo), cited in Barendse, Rene J., Arabian Seas 1700–1763: The Western Indian Ocean in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 1 (Leiden, 2009), p. 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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72 The second quarter of the eighteenth century marked the beginning of the second wave of Arabi-Malayalam literarisation in the region with the writings of Kunjayin Musliayar (1700–86?), whose texts include Nool Madh (1737), Kappappattu (1750s) and Noolmala (1785) as mentioned above. See Moulavi and Kareem, Mahattaya Mappila, pp. 162–168; Hikmathulla, V., “Kunjayin Musliyarude Noolmala, Soofi Bhavanayude Prathalangal”, Thelicham Magazine 18, 5 (2017), pp. 30–33Google Scholar.

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74 “Mutthum Manikyavum Onnayi Kotthapol, Muhiyuddin Malena Kottnan Jnan Lokare”, Muhiyuddinmala, p. 3.

75 The polyglossic language in Malabar was known by different expressions and came to be established as ‘Malayalam’ in the early-eighteenth century. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, terms such as Malayazhma, Malayanma and Malayalma were used to categorise the language of Malabar. Barbosa described it as Maleama, an expression that came to his Lusophone tongue. The Hortus Malabaricus, another seventeenth-century text, indicates that the term ‘Malayalam’ was used interchangeably to denote the region of Kerala and its language, see Van Rhede, Hendrik, Horti Malabarici (Amsterdam, 1678)Google Scholar. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that Qadi Muhammed who lived in Calicut in the same century was unaware of these terms such as ‘Malayalam’ and Malayanma. Similarly, in the early-eighteenth century, Johann Ernst Hanxleden (Arnos Pathiri) used the term ‘Malayalam’ in his Vocabulario Malavarico (1732) a Portuguese-English dictionary, to indicate the region and its people while using ‘Malame’ for the language they spoke. For a detailed discussion about this development, see Arafath, ‘Malayalam, Malabari’, pp. 36–49. Therefore, this article uses ‘Malayalam’ as a colligatory lingual term to indicate the coastal language of the natives who called it by different names in the seventeenth century before it entered into the larger bracket of ‘Malayalam’ in the early-eighteenth century.

76 Freeman, “Rubies and Coral”, p. 58.

77 Miller, Roland, Mappila Muslims of Kerala: A Study in Islamic Trends (Madras, 1992), p. 289Google Scholar.

78 Muhiyuddinmala, p. 14; Qadi's verse involving eshudukil, a polyglossic expression for the act of ‘writing’, clearly shows that he intended to caution the scribal section among Muslims who used Arabic-Malayalam script for non-pietistic engagements According to Qadi Muhammed, scriptorial mistakes would cost them the anger of God and the Saint.

79 Muhiyuddinmala, p. 2

80 Muhiyuddinmala, pp. 2–6.

81 Muhiyuddinmala, p. 3.

82 Muhiyuddinmala, pp. 1–5.

83 For the concepts—‘alchemy’ and ‘sublimation’—I am largely indebted to Rajani Sudan whose recent work uses these terminologies while examining the ways in which British colonialism changed the meanings and characters of geographical territories, commodities and technologies in India over a period of time. Sudan argues that the British introduced a range of new meanings and changes through the acts of adaptation and strategic accommodation to strengthen their political and intellectual agenda in the eighteenth century. See Sudan, Rajani, The Alchemy of Empire: Abject Materials and Technologies of Colonialism (New York, 2016), pp. 10–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 In order to get a brief picture of such acts, see, Gamliel, Ophira, “On the Warp and Woof of Language: Arabic, Malayalam and the Muḥyidin Mala”, Ishal Paithrikam Thrimasika 15 (2017), pp. 24–30Google Scholar.

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87 Tschacher, Islam in Tamilnadu.

88 Gamliel, Ophira, “Jewish Malayalam” and “Fading Memories and Linguistic Fossils in Jewish Malayalam”, in Oral History Meets Linguistics, (eds.) Kasten, Erich, Roller, Katja and Wilburn, Joshua (Havel, 2016), pp. 83–106Google Scholar.

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90 I take my cue from Shahab Ahmed's terminology—“Balkans-to-Bengal”—to identify the geographical, lingual, political and religious connectedness operating between Malabar and Ma'bar from early medieval period, see Ahmed, Shahab, What Is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, 2016), pp. 82–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The multiple connectivity which included theological, scholastic and maritime exchanges in the ‘Ma'bar to Malabar Complex’ became very crucial in the developments of Islamic religious institutions and textual traditions in the Indian Ocean region from the fifteenth century.

91 According to Ronit Ricci, literisation of Arabi-Tamil texts only began around the end of the seventeenth century and the reasons can be found in vernacular scholars’ strong familiarity with Tamil script, unlike Muslim scholars in Malabar, see Ricci, Ronit, Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion, and The Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia (Chicago, 2011), p. 171CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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95 Scholars have paid very little attention to the Portuguese genocidal violence in various Indian Ocean regions. It is only very recently that historians have started engaging with the genocidal aspects of the Portuguese violence in Malabar and connected places such as Mecca, see Arafath, “Malabar Ulema”, pp. 25–68; Kooria, Mahmood, “Killed the Hajj-pilgrims and Persecuted Them: Portuguese Estado da India's Encounters with Hajj Pilgrimage, Sixteenth Century”, in The Hajj and Europe in the Age of Empire, (ed.) Ryad, Umar (Leiden, 2017)Google Scholar.

96 According to Varthema, the city of Calicut “was ruined by the king of Portugal”, see The Travels of Ludovico, p. 178; a decade later Barbosa agreed that “after that the King of Portugal made himself master there, and these Moors [pardesi] saw that they could not defend it, they began to leave the country, and little by little they went away from it, so that very few of them remain”, Descriptions, p. 147.

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100 Muhiyuddinmala, pp. 4–12.

101 For this debate, see Foucault, Michel, “What is An Author”, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, (ed.) F.Bouchard, Donald (Ithaka, 1997), p. 134Google Scholar.

102 Ibid, p. 124.

103 Muhiyuddinmala, pp. 5–6.

104 Qadi informs the readers that the Sufi was qualified to ensure the protection of Muslims and “God addresses the sufi as the supreme succor” (Avannam Allah Fadachavan Thaan Thanne, Ya Gawzul Ennu Allah Vilichovar), Muhiyiddeenmala, p. 3.

105 Muhiyuddinmala, pp. 5–12.

106 Muhiyuddinmala, p. 6.

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108 Muhiyuddinmala, p. 12.

109 Muhiyuddinmala, pp. 8–10.

110 “May Allah bless those who utter it, may Allah bless those who sing and hear this Muhiyuddinmala”, Muhiyuddinmala, p. 14.

111 Muhiyuddinmala, p. 14.

112 Foucault, “What is an Author”, p. 131.

113 Qadi refers to the intuitive teaching methods of Jilani who, according to him, made deep impact on Muslims through his hortatory speaking methods like wa'ad, Muhiyuddinmala, pp. 8–9. It is to be noted that Qadi himself wrote many hortatory texts like Al Qutubat al Jihadiya (Calicut, 2012)Google Scholar.

114 For Islamic religious public sphere, see Eickelman, Dale F., “The Religious Public Sphere in Early Muslim Societies”, in The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies, (eds.) Hoexter, Miriam, Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. and Levtzion, Nahemia (Albany, 2002)Google Scholar.

115 Makhdum, Zainuddin I, Manqus Mawlid, translated by Baqavi, Muhammed (Tirurangadi, 2014)Google Scholar; also see Arafath, Malabar Ulema, pp. 48–49.

116 Mawlawi, Muhammed, Khil'at-ul Jamal fi Tarjamati al-Manqus (Thirurangadi, 1927)Google Scholar; Mawlid Manqus, (ed.) Ahmed, P. Kunji (Telicherry, 1875)Google Scholar; Mawlid Manqus, (ed.), Abu, N. (Telicherry, 1883)Google Scholar; all these versions have been preserved in the Asian and African Reading Room, British Library, and I accessed them in 2017.

117 al-Farabi, Abu Nasr, Mabadi ara ahl al-Madina al-fadila, translated by Walzer, Richard, Al-Farabi on The Perfect State (Oxford, 1985), pp. 201–245Google Scholar.

118 Foucault, “What is An Author”, p. 127.

119 Muhiyuddinmala, p. 3.

120 Foucault, “What is An Author”, pp. 126–127.

121 Muhiyuddinmala, p. 8.

122 Green, Nile, “The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya: Persianate Knowledge Between Person and Paper”, Modern Asian Studies 44, 2 (2010), pp. 241–265CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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124 Koya, Mammad, Kozhikotte Muslimklude (Calicut, 1994), pp. 144–145Google Scholar.

125 Hanaoka, Mimi, Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Peripheries (New York, 2016), p. 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

126 Green, “The Uses of Books”, p. 244.

127 Correspondence on Moplah Outrages in Malabar for the Years 1849–53 (Madras, 1863)Google Scholar, India Office Library, V/3212, p. 251.

128 Moplah Outrages, p. 251.

129 This author has collected the copies published in the years 1874, 1875, and 1876.

130 Foucault, “What is an Author”, p. 132.

131 Emmanuel Kant, one of the foremost German philosophers of the Enlightenment, points out such necessary interpretation of history based on probabilities and human experiences in order to explain certain historical period and incidents. See Kant, Emmanuel, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History and Morals, translated by Humphrey, Ted (Indianapolis, 1983), pp. 49–51Google Scholar.

132 Werner, A., “The Languages of Africa”, Journal of the Royal African Society 12, 46 (1913), p. 121Google Scholar.

133 Concerns about religious and pietistic transgressions were already expressed in the last quarter of the sixteenth century as the ulema were aware of the influences that the local rituals and normative practices had on a huge majority of the Mappilas, see Makhdum, Zainuddin II, Fath-al-Muin, (trans.) Faizi, Abdul Majeed. (Calicut: 1575/2012), p. 429Google Scholar.

134 Dimock, Wai Chee, “Introduction: Genres as Fields of Knowledge”, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 122, 5 (2007), pp. 1377–1388CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

135 Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature (Massachusetts, 1995), p. 35Google Scholar.

136 For such constitutive traits, see Tzvetan Todorov and Richard M Berrong, “The Origin of Genres”, New Literary History 8, 1. Readers and Spectators: Some Views and Reviews (1976), pp. 159–170.

137 To identify how such changes get reflected in literary genre and lyrical texts, see, ibid, pp. 161–163.

138 Arafath, P. K. Yasser, “Malappattukal: Charitram, Rashtreeyam Pradhirotham”, Bodhanam Quarterly Journal 15, 13 (2014), pp. 67–91Google Scholar.

139 For such interconnected acts, see, Ragab, Ahmed, Piety and Patienthood in Medieval Islam (New York, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; a number of mala texts and their performances continue to play important roles in shaping the moral and religious life of the Mappilas in contemporary Malabar, see Muneer, A.K., “Poetics of Piety: Genre, Self-Fashioning and the Mappila Lifescape”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3 (2015), pp. 1–19Google Scholar.