How Buddhist Maldives became an Islamic sultanate exactly 900 years ago

The Maldives is celebrating 900 Hijri years since its last Buddhist king embraced Islam and turned the archipelago into an Islamic sultanate. But, ancient ruins and copper plates reveal the story of the destruction of Buddhist monasteries, a mosque being built over one, and monks being beheaded in the capital, Male.

In Short

• President Muizzu launches a year-long commemoration logo and slogan on Sunday
• The Maldives' last Buddhist king embraced Islam in 1153 and founded a sultanate
• Monasteries were destroyed, mosques came up over them, and monks were beheaded

In 1879, the British steamship Sea Gull struck a reef in the Indian Ocean, near the present-day Maldives. Years later, the wreck of the steamer brought colonial official Harry Charles Purvis Bell to the archipelago to investigate the accident. But beyond the broken ship, Bell found several mysterious mounds that would help uncover another wreck buried under centuries of history — the Hindu-Buddhist past of the Maldives.

The Maldives on Sunday (September 12) marked 900 Hijri years since its conversion to Islam with a ceremony led by President Mohamed Muizzu. He launched the logo and slogan for a year-long commemoration and described Islam as the "shield protecting the island nation's sovereignty and independence".

The anniversary commemorates the conversion of the Maldives' last Buddhist king in 548 AH, or 1153 CE, which transformed the kingdom into an Islamic sultanate. Because the Hijri year is about 11 days shorter, the Maldives is marking 900 Islamic years, which are 873 Gregorian calendar years.

Before the advent of Islam, Buddhism had for centuries shaped the Maldivian religion, its kinship, architecture and sculpture. Archaeologists have discovered stupas, monasteries and coral-stone carvings bearing Buddhist as well as broader Hindu-Buddhist, Mahayana and Vajrayana iconography, which have shed light on the archipelago's ancient past and its links with India and Sri Lanka.

"Islam is the essence of the Maldives' cultural sovereignty and independence," Muizzu said on Sunday, adding that the nation's "strongest safeguard is its continued existence as a 100% Islamic state."

But how did the Buddhist kingdom become an Islamic sultanate? Why did the Buddhist king embrace Islam? And, what do the ruins, royal records and legends reveal about the Maldives' pre-Islamic past?

Medieval copper plates reveal that the Maldives' conversion involved the destruction of Buddhist monasteries, the replacement of one with a mosque and the beheading of monks. Nine centuries later, Islam is embedded in Maldivian statehood, even as ruins and coral mounds preserve traces of the islands' Buddhist past. Today, the Maldives is 100% Muslim. Constitutionally, Islam is the state religion. And, non-Muslims can't be citizens there.

HOW A SHIPWRECK REVEALED BUDDHIST PAST OF THE MALDIVES

Harry Charles Purvis Bell, then a British civil servant in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), first travelled to the Maldives in connection with the wreck of the British steamer Sea Gull. For Bell, it was an official assignment which eventually turned him into a pioneering chronicler of Maldivian archaeology and its past.

Bell, after coming across the mounds, which the Maldivians called havitta or ustubu, names linked to the Sanskrit-Pali-Buddhist terms chaitya and stupa, returned to the islands. This time, he was there to examine the ruins and to establish if Buddhism had been the dominant faith before the conversion to Islam.

Later excavations confirmed the existence of Buddhist complexes across several atolls of the Maldives. At Gan, researchers found the ruins of dozens of structures and earthworks, indicating that it had once hosted a substantial Buddhist religious centre.

"A few Hindu artifacts have been found in the islands, which would indicate the presence of Hinduism in the Maldives in pre-Islamic times," noted Maldivian historian Naseema Mohamed, in her paper, Pre-Islamic Maldives.

Researchers believe Buddhism might have reached the Maldives around the third century BCE. Early scholars linked Maldivian Buddhism largely to Sri Lanka's Theravada tradition. Around the same period, according to Sri Lankan chronicles, Mauryan emperor Ashoka's son Mahinda introduced Buddhism to Sri Lanka, while his daughter Sanghamitta later brought a sapling of the Bodhi tree.

However, later archaeological discoveries in the Maldives also revealed the influences of the Mahayana and Vajrayana sects of Buddhism, which they said, could have come from the Indian subcontinent.

Theravada, which stressed monastic discipline and the Buddha's earliest teachings, probably reached the Maldives from Sri Lanka around the third century BCE. Mahayana later arrived from India with the worship of Bodhisattvas such as Tara. From around the sixth century CE, Vajrayana added mantras, tantric rituals and sacred symbols to the Buddhist tradition.

WHEN A SEA DEMON MET THE QURAN: FROM IBN BATTUTA'S CHRONICLES

The most dramatic account of the Maldives' conversion was recorded by Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited the islands during the 14th century. It involves a Muslim preacher, a terrified population and a sea demon called Rannamaari.

According to the story narrated to Ibn Battuta, the demon arrived once every month and demanded that a young woman be left inside a temple. A visiting Muslim scholar, identified as Maghribi (western) Hafiz Abu al-Barakat Yusuf al-Barbari, volunteered to spend the night there in her place, according to American historian, Stephanie Honchell Smith's research paper, Sufis, Sea Monsters, and Miraculous Circumcisions.

Maghribi Hafiz al-Barbari reportedly recited verses from the Quran throughout the night. The demon did not appear, the woman was spared, and the incident was presented to the Buddhist king as a miracle.

The king then embraced Islam and asked his subjects to follow suit, according to their chronicles. Maldivian tradition identifies him as Dhovemi, the last Buddhist ruler, who adopted the Muslim name and title Sultan Muhammad al-Adil and inaugurated the Islamic sultanate in 1153.

For context, when Islam was adopted and enforced in the Maldives, the Delhi Sultanate in north India was 53 years old. This was also about 442 years after the Arab conquest of Sindh.

The origins of Abu al-Barakat, the Islamic cleric, remain disputed. Ibn Battuta described him as a Maghrebi, who is often interpreted as a Moroccan. Another version traces him to Somalia. However, historians, including Honchell Smith, regard the Rannamaari episode as a conversion legend, not an independently verified account.

HOW ISLAM SPREAD IN THE MALDIVES? SHATTERED REMAINS REVEAL VIOLENT PAST

By the 12th century, Muslim merchants from Arabia and adjoining regions, had become influential across the Indian Ocean, and the archipelago sat (and still sits) on trade routes linking Arabia, East Africa, India, Southeast Asia and the far east.

The islands supplied cowrie shells, which were used as currency across parts of Asia and Africa, along with coir, coconuts, spices and dried fish. Regular contact with Muslim traders and scholars probably prepared the ground for the king's conversion and helped draw the Maldives into the Islamic commercial world.

The official Maldivian government's narrative presents the conversion as complete and peaceful. Archaeological and written evidence suggests that the transformation was neither peaceful nor uniform across the scattered islands.

Copper-plate records from 1195 and 1196, around four decades after the "royal conversion", describe action against Buddhist institutions in the southern atolls, according to Maldivian historian Naseema Mohamed's paper, Pre-Islamic Maldives.

Medieval Maldivian copper plates record the destruction of Buddhist monasteries and the construction of a mosque on the former monastery site at Dhanbidhoo.

Celebrated Maldivian satirist, Yameen Rasheed, who was stabbed to death by in 2017 for "mocking Islam", wrote in a piece in 2011, "12th-century copper plate grants found in the Maldives reveal the blood-soaked, painful process of conversion of the Maldives to Islam. The Sultans of the day went through the trouble of bringing in Buddhist monks and beheading them in the capital."

"The modern day Maldives takes a much simpler route. The 2008 Constitution unilaterally declares all Maldivians to be Sunni Muslim without the courtesy of so much as an opinion poll," Rasheed wrote in the piece, published in 2018 by the Maldives Independent.

ISLAMISTS HAVE ASSERTED THEMSELVES IN THE MALDIVES

Today, the Maldives officially describes itself as 100% Muslim, while its Constitution makes Islam the state religion and bars non-Muslims from becoming citizens.

Islam ultimately became inseparable from Maldivian statehood, but the traces of its pre-Islamic past remain under mosques, settlements and coral mounds. Some Buddhist sites were reused, while the difficulty of travelling between distant islands probably allowed old practices to survive longer in some places.

Over the past two decades, the Maldives has faced Islamic extremism and shrinking space for secular voices and other faiths. In 2012, a mob stormed the National Museum in Male and destroyed 99% of its pre-Islamic collection, including irreplaceable Buddhist artefacts.

The killing of Yameen Rasheed in 2017 and laws prohibiting non-Islamic places of worship and the public practice of other religions show the climate of intolerance.

In 2022, protesters, declaring yoga contrary to Islam, attacked participants and vandalised the India-backed International Yoga Day event attended by more than 150 people, including diplomats. Muizzu has also benefited from the radicalisation of a section of the Maldivian population.

As part of the anniversary on Sunday, Muizzu laid the foundation stone for the Sultan Mohamed Bin Abdullah Grand Mosque and Islamic Civilisation Centre in Hulhumale. Funded by Saudi Arabia's Al Rajhi Company, it will include the Maldives' largest mosque, an Islamic library, a cultural centre and a Quran museum.

The Maldives is celebrating 900 Hijri years of Islam, but the ruins exposed after the 1879 shipwreck reveal the story of a Buddhist kingdom and a Hindu-Buddhist past whose traces are still present beneath the island nation's Islamic identity.

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