Maldives

• 1. Introduction

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  The Maldives sits an average of just 1.5 metres above the sea that surrounds it. Its highest natural point reaches only 2.4 metres, which makes it the lowest-lying country on Earth. Spread across roughly 90,000 square kilometres of the Indian Ocean, this archipelagic nation in South Asia holds only 298 square kilometres of dry land. That makes it the smallest country in Asia and one of the most spatially dispersed sovereign states in the world. Yet within that thin ribbon of coral live more than half a million people, packed into one of the most densely populated countries anywhere. How did a chain of low coral islands, inhabited for over 2,500 years, come to be ruled by sultans, courted by colonial powers, and warned that it could be uninhabitable by 2100? What does a nation do when scientists say the ocean itself may erase it? And why did one of its presidents hold a cabinet meeting underwater?

• 2. Garland Of Islands

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  According to legend, the first settlers of the Maldives were a people known as the Dheyvis, and the first kingdom was called the Kingdom of Dheeva Maari. The name Maldives may come from the Sanskrit mala, meaning garland, and dvipa, meaning island. Jan Hogendorn, a professor of economics at Colby College, theorised that the name derives from the Sanskrit maladvipa, meaning garland of islands. In Sinhala the islands were called Maala Divaina, the Necklace Islands.

  Medieval Muslim travellers such as Ibn Battuta called the islands Mahal Dibiyat, drawn from the Arabic word mahal, meaning palace. That is the name now inscribed on the scroll in the Maldives state emblem. The classical Persian and Arabic name for the country is Dibajat. The Dutch knew the islands as the Maldivische Eilanden, and the British anglicised the local name first to the Maldive Islands and later to Maldives.

  In a conversational book published in 1563, Garcia de Orta recorded a different theory. He wrote that the natives called the place not Maldiva but Nalediva, explaining that in the Malabar language nale means four and diva means island, so the word would signify four islands. The Maldivian people call their own country Dhivehi Raajje, and they call themselves Dhivehin, a word built from an archaic term for islander.

• 3. Before The Crescent

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  In the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, kingdoms already existed in what is now the Maldives. The Mahavamsa, the venerable Sri Lankan chronicle, records people from Sri Lanka emigrating to the islands. A 4th-century notice written by Ammianus Marcellinus in 362 CE describes gifts sent to the Roman emperor Julian by a deputation from a nation called the Divi, a name strikingly close to the Dheyvis remembered as the first settlers.

  The earliest Maldivians left behind almost nothing for archaeologists. Their buildings were likely made of wood, palm fronds, and other perishable materials that decayed quickly in the salt and wind of the tropics. Their chiefs did not live in stone palaces, and their religion did not call for great temples. Comparative study of Maldivian language, custom, and folklore points to first settlers from the southern shores of the Indian subcontinent, among them the Giraavaru people remembered in legends about the founding of Male.

  The 1,400-year Buddhist period gave the Maldives much of what survives today. Buddhism probably spread to the islands in the 3rd century BCE, during Emperor Ashoka's expansion, and remained the dominant religion until the 12th century. Archaeological evidence from an ancient Buddhist monastery at Kaashidhoo has been dated between 205 and 560 AD using radiocarbon dating of shell deposits beneath its stupas. Nearly all the archaeological remains in the Maldives are Buddhist stupas and monasteries, and the first Maldivian writings and sculpture date from this age.

• 4. The Conversion

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  In 1153, by tradition, the last Buddhist king of the Maldives, Dhovemi, converted to Islam and took the title Sultan Muhammad al-Adil. His conversion began a line of six Islamic dynasties that lasted until 1932, when the sultanate became elective. A folk tale ties the conversion to a sea deity named Rannamaari, said to demand the monthly sacrifice of a young woman, until a visitor convinced the ruler and his subjects to abandon the worship.

  The identity of that visitor is contested. Ibn Battuta names a Moroccan traveller, Abu al-Barakat Yusuf al-Barbari, and quotes a mosque inscription crediting him with the conversion of the sultan. Local chronicles called the Raadavalhi and the Taarikh hold instead that the man was from the Persian town of Tabriz, known locally as Tabrizugefaanu. In Arabic script the words al-Barbari and al-Tabrizi look almost identical, since at the time several consonants could be told apart only by context. His venerated tomb stands at Medhu Ziyaaraiy, across the street from the Friday Mosque, the Hukuru Miskiy, in Male. That mosque was originally built in 1153 and rebuilt in 1658, making it one of the oldest surviving in the country.

  Ibn Battuta himself spent nine months in the Maldives sometime between 1341 and 1345, serving as a chief judge and marrying into the royal family of Omar I. He grew angry that local women went about with no clothing above the waist and that the islanders took no notice when he objected. His strict judgements began to chafe against the easygoing island kingdom, and he eventually left. Arabic became the prime language of administration, and the Maliki school of jurisprudence was introduced, both pointing to direct contact with the core of the Arab world.

• 5. Shells And Coir

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  From the 2nd century CE, Arabs knew the islands as the Money Isles. The reason was the cowry shell, harvested in the Maldives and used as currency across Asia and parts of the East African coast. The Bengal Sultanate, where cowries were legal tender, was a principal trading partner, and the Bengal-Maldives cowry shell trade was the largest shell currency network in history. The cowry is now the symbol of the Maldives Monetary Authority.

  The other essential export was coir, the fibre of the dried coconut husk, prized because it resisted saltwater. Coir stitched together and rigged the dhows that crossed the Indian Ocean, and Maldivian coir was shipped to Sindh, China, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf. Middle Eastern seafarers who took over Indian Ocean trade routes in the 10th century found the Maldives an important first landfall for traders sailing from Basra toward Southeast Asia.

  For many centuries the Maldivian economy depended entirely on fishing and marine products. A milestone came in 1974 with the mechanisation of the traditional fishing boat, the dhoni. A fish canning plant was installed on Felivaru in 1977 as a joint venture with a Japanese firm, and a Fisheries Advisory Board was set up in 1979. Fisheries have contributed over 15% of the country's GDP and engaged about 30% of its workforce, standing as the second-largest foreign exchange earner behind tourism.

• 6. Protectorate And Republic

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  In 1558, the Portuguese set up a small garrison in the Maldives, administered from their colony in Goa, and tried to impose Christianity under threat of death. A local revolt led by Muhammad Thakurufaanu al-A'uzam, his two brothers, and Dhuvaafaru Dhandahele drove the Portuguese out fifteen years later. That event is commemorated as Qaumee Dhuvas, celebrated on the 1st of Rabi al-Awwal.

  The Dutch later replaced the Portuguese as the dominant power in Ceylon and held sway over Maldivian affairs without intervening directly. The British expelled the Dutch from Ceylon in 1796 and folded the Maldives into their orbit. An 1887 agreement formally made the Maldives a British protectorate, with sultan Muhammad Mueenuddeen II accepting British control over external relations and defence while keeping home rule in exchange for an annual tribute. The first Constitution was proclaimed in 1932, but angry mobs were instigated against it and it was publicly torn up.

  The sultanate was suspended in 1953 and the First Republic declared under Mohamed Amin Didi, who had nationalised the fish export industry and championed education and women's rights. Conservatives in Male ousted him, and during a riot over food shortages he was beaten by a mob and died on a nearby island. In 1956 the United Kingdom won permission to reestablish its RAF Gan airfield in Addu Atoll, employing hundreds of locals. When prime minister Ibrahim Nasir called for a review of that arrangement, a secessionist movement in the three southernmost atolls broke away in 1959 as the United Suvadive Republic, with Abdullah Afeef as president and Hithadhoo as its capital. Nasir sent gunboats from Male, and a year later the Suvadive Republic was scrapped and Afeef went into exile.

  Independence from the United Kingdom came on the 26th of July 1965, with an agreement signed by Ibrahim Nasir and by Sir Michael Walker for the British, in a ceremony at the British High Commissioner's Residence in Colombo. On the 15th of March 1968 a national referendum saw 93.34% vote for a republic, and the republic was declared on the 11th of November 1968, ending an 853-year-old monarchy.

• 7. Coups, Crises, And Power

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  Maumoon Abdul Gayoom began a 30-year presidency in 1978, winning six consecutive elections without opposition, after Nasir fled to Singapore with millions of dollars from the treasury. Critics called Maumoon an autocrat who limited freedoms, and his rule faced coup attempts in 1980, 1983, and 1988. The 1988 attempt brought a roughly 80-strong mercenary force of the PLOTE who seized the airport. India responded with Operation Cactus, airlifting a parachute battalion from Agra over 2,000 kilometres; the paratroopers landed at Hulhule and restored the government within hours, while the Indian Navy captured the hijacked freighter MV Progress Light and rescued the hostages.

  The dissident journalist Mohamed Nasheed founded the Maldivian Democratic Party in 2003 and pressed Maumoon toward reform. A new constitution was approved in 2008, the first direct presidential elections were held, and Nasheed won in the second round. His government imposed taxation on goods for the first time and introduced universal health insurance, called Aasandha, along with welfare for those aged 65 and older, single parents, and people with special needs. After a police and army mutiny in February 2012, Nasheed resigned, was later convicted of terrorism, and sentenced to 13 years in a trial widely seen as flawed; the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called for his release.

  Abdulla Yameen, the half-brother of Maumoon, took the presidency after a contested 2013 election. He survived an assassination attempt in late 2015, and his vice-president Ahmed Adeeb was later arrested. Ibrahim Mohamed Solih won the 2018 election and was sworn in that November, and his Maldivian Democratic Party took 65 of 87 parliamentary seats in April 2019. In the 2023 election, Mohamed Muizzu of the People's National Congress won the runoff with 54% of the vote and was sworn in on the 17th of October 2023 as the eighth president, widely seen as pro-China and souring relations with India.

• 8. The Vanishing Country

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  On the 26th of December 2004, a tsunami following the Indian Ocean earthquake struck the Maldives. Only nine islands escaped any flooding, fifty-seven faced serious damage, fourteen had to be totally evacuated, and six were destroyed. The total damage was estimated at more than 400 million US dollars, around 62% of GDP, and 102 Maldivians and 6 foreigners died. The low islands were spared worse because there was no continental shelf on which the waves could gain height; the tallest were reported at 14 feet.

  More than 80% of the country's land rises less than one metre above the sea, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that sea-level rise could make the Maldives uninhabitable by 2100. In 2008, Nasheed announced plans to look into buying land in India, Sri Lanka, and Australia, funded by tourism, telling reporters that his people did not want to become climate refugees living in tents for decades. In 2009 he hosted what was billed as the world's first underwater cabinet meeting to raise awareness, and in 2012 he warned that his country could be underwater in seven years if carbon emissions kept climbing.

  The ocean has also struck at the coral itself. In 1998 a single El Nino event warmed sea temperatures by as much as 5 degrees Celsius and killed two-thirds of the nation's coral reefs. Scientists placed electrified cones 20 to 60 feet below the surface to give larval coral a place to attach, and by 2004 they watched corals regenerate, growing five times faster than untreated coral. The scientist Azeez Hakim said that before 1998 they had taken for granted the reef would be there forever, and that El Nino was a wake-up call. A severe bleaching returned in 2016, when surface water temperatures hit an all-time high of 31 degrees Celsius in May and up to 95% of coral around some islands died. A 2020 study at the University of Plymouth offered a counterweight, finding that tides move sediment to raise island elevation, a natural response that could help low-lying islands adjust, though sea walls were found to compromise that ability and make drowning more likely for islands with such structures.