Malabar region

For other uses, see Malabar (disambiguation).

Bekal Fort Beach, Kerala

Malabar (Malayalam: മലബാര്‍ ) is a region of southern India, lying between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea.The name is thought to be derived from the Malayalam word Mala (Hill) and Persian word Bar(Kingdom). This part of India was originally a part of the British East India company controlled Madras State,when it was designated as Malabar District . It included the northern half of the state of Kerala and some coastal regions of present day Karnataka. And most important, the majority of kerala's muslim population known as Mappila live in this area. The name is sometimes extended to the entire southwestern coast of the peninsula, called the Malabar Coast. Malabar is also used by ecologists to refer to the tropical moist forests of southwestern India (present day Kerala).

Malabar region

The Malabar region lies along the southwest coast of the Indian peninsula and forms the northern part of present-day Kerala state. Malayalam is the chief language of the region, and the ancestors of today's Dravidian population have inhabited the region for centuries. The region formed part of the ancient kingdom of Chera for centuries. It became part of the Hindu Vijayanagara empire in the 15th century. with the breakup of the empire in the mid-16th century, the region came under the rule of a number of local chieftains notably the Kolathiris of Kasargod, Zamorins of Calicut and the Valluvokonathiris of Walluvanad. The region came under British rule in the 18th century, during the Anglo-Mysore Wars.

At the conclusion of the Anglo-Mysore wars, the region was organized into a district of Madras Presidency. The British district included the present-day districts of Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram, much of Palakkad and a small porion of Thrissur. The administrative headquarters were at Calicut (Kozhikode). With India's independence, Madras presidency became Madras State, which was divided along linguistic lines on November 1 1956, when Malabar district was merged with the Kasaragod district immediately to the north and the state of Travancore-Cochin to the south to form the state of Kerala.

Malabar Coast

The Malabar Coast, in historical contexts, refers to India's southwest coast, lying on the narrow coastal plain of Karnataka and Kerala states between the Western Ghats range and the Arabian Sea. The coast runs from south of Goa to Cape Comorin on India's southern tip.

The Malabar Coast is also sometimes used as an all encompassing term for the entire Indian coast from the western coast of Konkan to the tip of the subcontinent at Cape Comorin. It is over 525 miles or 845 km long. It spans from the South - Western coast of Maharashtra and goes along the coastal region of Goa, through the entire western coast of Karnataka and Kerala and reaches till Kanyakumari. It is flanked by the Arabian Sea on the west and the Western Ghats on the east. The Southern part of this narrow coast is the South Western Ghats moist deciduous forests.

The Malabar Coast features a number of historic port cities, notably Kozhikode (Calicut), Cochin, and Quilon, that have served as centers of the Indian Ocean trade for centuries. Because of their orientation to the sea and to maritime commerce, the Malabar coast cities feel very cosmopolitan, and hosted some of the first groups of Christians (now known as Syrian Malabar Nasranis), Jews (today called as Cochin Jews), and Muslims (at present known as Mappilas) in India.

Geographically, the Malabar Coast, especially on its westward-facing mountain slopes, comprises the wettest region of southern India, as the Western Ghats intercept the moisture-laden monsoon rains.

Malabar Tamils of Ceylon

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) transferred many Indian workers from the Malabar region to the sparsely populated Jaffna peninsula (markd Weligammo, i.e, Sinhalese Waeligama in VOC maps) of Ceylon. These workers were virtual slaves who had to work in the tobacco plantations of the island. The very close similarity of the present day Jaffna Tamil language to the Tamil of the Malabar coast testifies to the importance of this immigration. In fact, except perhaps for the "upper caste" group of Jaffna, most of the ""lower-caste" population of today may have been derived from these Malabar immigrant workers.

(Note: Malabar lies in the south-west coast of India where majority of the people speak the Malayalam language. Tamil on the other hand is spoken only on the eastern side of the Western Ghat Range of mountains. So the above description of "Malabar Tamil" does not seem to be logical but it is rather a misnomer. It is more likely that these Tamils were transferred from the Dutch ruled regions of Pulicat and Nagapatnam in what constitutes todays Tamil Nadu state of Modern India)

European settlements in India

Malabar rainforests

The term Malabar rainforests refers to one or more distinct ecoregions recognized by biogeographers:

1. the Malabar Coast moist forests formerly occupied the coastal zone to the 250 meter elevation (but 95% of these forests no longer exist)
2. the South Western Ghats moist deciduous forests grow at intermediate elevations
3. the South Western Ghats montane rain forests cover the areas above 1000 meters elevation

The Monsooned Malabar coffee bean comes from this area.