Pyrard in Male, Maldives 1602-1607

From cover of Gray's 1887 translation of Pyrard

Francois Pyrard was forced to live in Male for five years after being shipwrecked while passing through the Kashidoo channel in 1602.

Pyrard proved to be a successful trader whose wares appealed to the royal court. His record of Maldivian customs and social life was both sympathetic and acutely observed. It formed a major part of Pyrard's best selling book The Voyage of Francois Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas and Brazil, first published in French in 1611, which for nearly 400 years remained the most complete and incisive foreign description of Maldives and its people.

The life and scandals of the reigning king Kalafan, son of the 16th century Maldivian hero Bodu Mohamed Takurufan, were fully revealed by Pyrard. Ironically, Kalafan was killed by Indian invaders, and later generations of Maldivians enshrined him as a great king brutally martyred and a cornerstone of the Male aristocracy. For generations, Maldivian leaders have made the pilgrimage to his tomb on Hangnameedoo on South Ari atol. Pyrard's revelations have been censored from the Divehi translations of his account.

All 19 chapters relating to Maldives from Pyrard's book are available here from the English translation by Albert Gray published in 1887. There is also a chapter by Pyrard on the coconut palm.

Albert Gray includes an article on the descendents of a young Male king who became a close ally of the Portuguese and converted to Christianity.

Ibn Battuta in Maldives 1343-1345

Coconuts, southern Huvadu atol, Maldives

Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan magistrate and explorer, travelled and lived in Maldives almost 700 years ago, from 1343 to 1345.

Battuta became the chief judge in Male and took part in political intrigues. He married many times and found the Maldivian slave girls particularly charming.

Battuta's detailed account of Maldives and its people remained virtually unknown until the 19th century.

The English translation of The Rehla of Ibn Battuta, available here in four parts, is by Dr. Mahdi Husain and published in 1976 by the Oriental Institute, Baroda, India.

Ibn Battuta (and Ibn Juzay) also wrote one of the earliest surviving accounts of the coconut.

An excerpt from The Rehla:

The revenue of the treasury which is there called bandar, is derived from the purchase of a certain part of every kind of merchandise on board at a price fixed by the officials, whether the goods are worth this price or more. This is called the law of the bandar. And for the bandar there is on each island a wooden house called bajansar in which the governor, who is called karduvari, stores up the goods, sells them and buys them.

The inhabitants of these islands buy crockery, on being imported to them, in exchange for fowls so that a pot sells in their country for five or six fowls. The vessels take from these islands the fish which has been mentioned before, coconuts, waist-wrappers, wilyan and turbans made of cotton. And people take from there copper vessels which are abundant with the Maldivians as well as cowries and qanbar, that is the fibrous covering (coir) of the coconut. This is tanned in pits on the shore, beaten with mallets and then spun by the women.

Ropes are made from it which are used to bind the ships together and are exported to China, India and Yemen; these ropes are better than those made from hemp, and with these ropes the beams of the Indian and Yemenite ships are sewn together for the Indian ocean has many rocks. If a ship nailed together with iron nails collides with rocks, it would surely be wrecked; but a ship whose beams are sewn together with ropes is made wet and is not shattered.

Most popular Maldives Culture article: Rosset in Male, 1885

Young man, Male, Maldives 1885

Carl Wilhelm Rosset, a doctor and explorer born in Freiburg, Wurttemberg, Germany, took photographs and collected artefacts and specimens while staying in Male' from 29 October until 21 December 1885.

Most of Rosset's photos were probably destroyed in Berlin in 1945 at the end of World War II.

The Rosset article is the most viewed page on the Maldives Culture website. Rosset's full English account of his visit published by The Graphic in 1886 (appearing on the Internet with complete text for the first time), plus coloured additions from a shorter but more frank and revealing German language article by Rosset in Illustrierte Zeitung in 1887, translated by the Swedish Maldivian history researcher Lars Vilgon.

Rosset's acquisitions, collected with the help of the leading minister Atireege Ibrahim Didi (Abrahim Deedee in the article), formed the major part of displays of Maldivian products, manufactures and cultural items at exhibitions in London, Berlin and Chicago.

Rosset also published articles about Maldives with the Zoological Society of London and the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

Early morning photographs of Male during Ramadan 2012

Western Male, Maldives, backstreet corner

The back streets of Male the Maldivian capital are rarely visited by tourists or other foreigners apart from the thousands of Bangladeshis and Indians who service the city.

Male has not been planned for human habitation. It is a maze of narrow streets lined with shops, and tenements designed for maximum rental returns.

Walls are often covered in graffiti, and footpaths are an afterthought; motorised traffic has had legal right of way over pedestrians since 1975. Men ride motorbikes while women and children walk. The rich and powerful move through the streets unseen behind darkened glass in expensive cars.

Just after dawn, people have left the streets. Only the mannequins stare.