Kozhikode

• 1. Introduction

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  Kozhikode sits on the Malabar Coast of Kerala, and for centuries it was the place where the world came to trade. On the 20th of May 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama stepped ashore here, opening the first sea route between Europe and India. Before that day, Arab merchants had been coming since the 7th century. Chinese treasure fleets called in during the 15th century. Ibn Battuta visited six times between 1342 and 1347 and wrote that merchants from all parts of the world were found here. The city went by many names: Koyil Kotta, Qaliqut, Kūlifo, and eventually Calicut. That last name gave the English language a word still in use today. And in 2023, UNESCO recognised Kozhikode as India's first City of Literature. How did a port on the southwestern tip of the subcontinent become one of the medieval world's great crossroads, and what traces of that past survive in the city today? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. The Name and the Fabric

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  Calico, the fine hand-woven cotton cloth that spread across the world, takes its name from this city. The word is believed to derive from Calicut, which was itself an anglicised version of Kozhikode. The journey from one name to the other is a small history of global contact. The name Kozhikode most likely derives from Koyil-kota, meaning "fortified palace." Koyil or Kovil is the Malayalam and Tamil word for a Hindu temple, and in Kozhikode's case the reference may be to the Tali Shiva Temple. Chinese merchants simplified the whole thing to Kūlifo. Arab traders rendered it as Qāliqūṭ. The Tamil name is Kaḷḷikkōṭṭai. Each version reflects a different trading community leaving its imprint on a place that belonged, in different measures, to all of them. The city's identity was woven into that cloth, traded out from the port and renamed in every language it reached.

• 3. Ancient Roots

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  Pliny the Elder, writing in the 1st century CE, placed a port called Tyndis at the northwestern border of the Chera dynasty's territory, describing a region he called Limyrike that was, in his words, prone to piracy. Tyndis was a major centre of trade, second only to Muziris, between the Cheras and the Roman Empire. The value of Rome's annual trade with the region was estimated at around 50,000,000 sesterces. Scholars believe the ancient port of Tyndis was somewhere near present-day Kozhikode, though its exact location remains disputed, with proposed sites including Ponnani, Tanur, and Koyilandy. Cosmas Indicopleustes, another ancient source, noted that the region was a source of pepper, establishing a commodity that would define this coastline for the next two millennia. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek maritime handbook, described the district of Limyrike as beginning at Naura and Tyndis, a region that roughly corresponded to the present-day Malabar Coast. Long before the Zamorins ruled, long before the Portuguese arrived, this stretch of coast was already a node in a trade network that reached as far as Rome.

• 4. The Zamorins

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  The city of Kozhikode came into existence sometime in the 13th century, born out of a prolonged conflict that lasted 48 years. The Eradis of Nediyiruppu, based in Kondotty in what is now Malappuram district, needed an outlet to the sea. After that decades-long struggle with the Polathiri, they won the area around Panniankara, then founded the town of Kozhikode near the palace at Tali and shifted their headquarters there. The Governor of Ernad built a fort at Velapuram to protect the new territory, and that fort most likely gave the city the precursor name Koyil Kotta. As the ruler's status grew, his title evolved until he was called Samoothiri, which European traders corrupted into Zamorin. Historian K. V. Krishna Iyer argued that Kozhikode's rise was both a cause and a consequence of the Zamorin's ascendancy in Kerala. By the late 15th century, all princes and chieftains of Kerala north of Kochi acknowledged the Zamorin's authority. The Sweetmeat Street, known as Mittayi Theruvu, was a commercial artery under his rule. The Zamorin kept a ten-thousand-strong Nair bodyguard called the Kozhikkottu pathinaayiram, and commanded a larger force of 30,000 Nairs in his capacity as Prince of Eranadu. Among those forces, the Nairs also supplied members of a suicide squad called the chaver.

• 5. Travelers Who Stayed to Write

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  Ibn Battuta described Kozhikode as one of the great ports of Malabar where the king "shaves his chin just as the Haidari Fakeers of Room do." He marvelled that a single Muslim merchant there was wealthy enough to purchase the entire cargo of the visiting ships. That was in the years 1342-1347. By 1403, Ma Huan, a Chinese sailor sailing with the imperial fleet under Zheng He, found 20 or 30 mosques serving the city's Muslim population and noted a unique merchant calculation system using fingers and toes, a practice he said continued in his day. Abdur Razzak, ambassador of Persian Emperor Shah Rukh, arrived in 1442-1443 and found the harbour perfectly secured, with precious goods arriving from Abyssinia, Zirbad, and Zanzibar. The Italian Niccolò de' Conti passed through in 1445 and recorded a city with a circumference of 13 km, abounding in pepper, lac, ginger, cinnamon, myrobalans, and zedoary, calling it a noble emporium for all India. The Russian Afanasy Nikitin, writing in the years 1468-1474, called the port a gateway for the whole Indian sea and noted a big bazaar. Each of these accounts lands on the same central fact: this city was a meeting point where goods, religions, and writing systems converged in a way that struck every visitor as extraordinary.

• 6. The Portuguese Rupture

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  Vasco da Gama's arrival in 1498 began a slow erosion of the very commercial order that had made the city famous. A Portuguese factory and fort existed in Kozhikode from 1511 to 1525, until what sources call the Fall of Calicut. The First Battle of Cannanore in January 1502, fought between the Third Portuguese Armada allied with Cochin and the Zamorin's navy, opened a prolonged conflict. The decisive moment came in February 1509 at the Battle of Diu, when a combined fleet drawn from the Sultan of Gujarat, the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, the Zamorin, Venice, and the Ottoman Empire was defeated, beginning Portuguese dominance over the spice trade and the Indian Ocean. Throughout the 16th century, the Zamorin's fleet admiral, Kunjali Marakkar, led naval resistance that is credited as the first organised naval defence of the Indian coast. The fighting significantly reduced Kozhikode's importance as a trading centre. By 1602, the Zamorin was seeking Dutch help, sending envoys to Aceh and promising the Dutch a fort in exchange for trading support. Two Dutch factors dispatched from Aceh were captured by the chief of Tanur and handed to the Portuguese. Then, in November 1604, Admiral Steven van der Hagen arrived with a Dutch fleet, and on the 11th of November 1604 the Dutch East India Company signed its first-ever treaty with an Indian ruler, forming an alliance against Portugal. The Dutch received trading rights in Kozhikode and Ponnani, but by then the port had already lost much of its former standing.

• 7. City of Spices, City of Letters

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  Newspaper publishing in Kozhikode began in 1879 with the English weekly West Coast Spectator, edited by Dr. Keys and printed by Vakil Poovadan Raman. The first Malayalam newspaper there, Kerala Pathrika, was established by Chengalathu Kunhirama Menon in 1884. Mathrubhumi, one of the papers that contributed to the Indian independence movement, was based in Kozhikode. The city's literacy rate today stands at 96.8%, against a national average of 74.85%. In 2012, Kozhikode was recognised as the City of Sculptures, or Shilpa Nagaram, for its architectural landmarks. The Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode and the National Institute of Technology Calicut are both based here. The University of Calicut, established in 1968 as the second university in Kerala, is the largest university in the state, located about 24 km south of the city. Calicut Medical College, founded in 1957, grew into the largest medical institute in the state, with a yearly intake of 250 undergraduate candidates. According to data compiled by Indicus Analytics in 2009, Kozhikode ranked as the second-best city in India to live in. And in 2023, UNESCO's recognition as India's first City of Literature placed the city in a tradition that stretches back to Ibn Battuta's chronicles and Niccolò de' Conti's careful measurements of its circumference.