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Malabar is a crucial place in the Indian Ocean world, but its historical diversity is largely unexplored. Seafarers and writers have described it in terms of its own cultural and social life; however, a complete historical description of the engagement of the Arabs, Persians, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British has still not been attempted.

Unlike the existing studies that rely heavily on European sources, Malabar in the Indian Ocean calls the attention of researchers to the rich trove of unknown or underutilized indigenous and foreign source materials in different languages, such as Malayalam, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, and Latin. In addition, it highlights certain materials that bear archaeological, epigraphical and architectural significance.

Looking beyond the economics of the region and using translations of unpublished and rare sources, this volume highlights how the ocean has left a deep impact on the region’s society, culture, religion and politics, making it an exemplary cosmopolitan place.

Contents: Introduction: Situating Malabar in the Indian Ocean/Mahmood Kooria. 1. Sources for Malabar Muslim Inscriptions/Mehrdad Shokoohy. 2. Khutbat al-Jihadiyya : A Sixteenth-Century Anti-Portuguese Sermon/Mahmood Kooria. 3. Some Early Documents about the Interactions of the Saint Thomas Christians and the European Missionaries/Istvan Perczel. 4. Cross-Cultural Interactions and Missionary Writings in the Context of the Dutch East India Company, c. 1600-72/Meera G. Muralidharan. 5. Patappattu , a Malayalam War-Song on the Portuguese–Dutch Battle in Cochin/Mahmood Kooria. 6. Charles Dellon’s Journey through Malabar/Michael Naylor Pearson. 7. Through a Persian Looking Glass: Malabar’s World in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century/Gagan D.S. Sood. 8. Mother Goddess and the Wooden Ship: Tale and Trade in the Tottam of Marakkalattamma/Abhilash Malayil. 9. Religious Rivalries in Eighteenth-Century Malabar: The Diasporic Writings of a Hadrami Scholar/Abdul Jaleel P.K.M. 10. Jews and Other Peoples of Southern India: Excerpts from the Travelogue Even Sapir, by Rabbi Jacob Sapir, Based on His Journey along the Malabar Coast and Beyond, 1860/Richard G. Marks. 11. The Malabar Mosque: A Visual Manifestation of an Egalitarian Faith/Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H. Shokoohy. 12. The Mosque in a Land of Temples: Reading Malabar’s Muslim Monuments/Sebastian R. Prange. Glossary. Bibliography. Index.