The Story of Sultan Muhammad bin Abdullah: The first Muslim King

Today, 2 Rabīʿ al-Thānī 1448 AH, marks 900 years since the conversion of the Maldives to Islam on 548 AH.

Nine centuries ago, the Maldives stood at one of the most important turning points in its history. The ruler then known as King Dhovemi, who was the last Buddhist king of the Maldives. During his reign, he accepted Islam and became Sultan Muhammad bin Abdullah, beginning the country’s long history as an Islamic sultanate.

His reign therefore occupies a unique place in Maldivian history: he was both the final Buddhist sovereign and the first Muslim ruler of the Maldives.

King Dhovemi before Islam

Dhovemi belonged to the royal family that ruled the Maldives before the establishment of the sultanate. Traditional genealogies identify his mother as Henevi Maavaa Kilege, a sister of King Koimala, who ruled right before him.

Dhovemi succeeded Koimala in the 12th century and is generally placed on the throne around 1141. He ruled during a period when Buddhism remained the dominant religion of the islands, although the Maldives had already been connected for centuries to the wider Indian Ocean trading world.

Archaeological discoveries have established that Buddhism had a substantial institutional presence in the Maldives. Buddhist monasteries, stupas and religious sculptures have been discovered across the archipelago, including important sites in Kaashidhoo, Laamu and other islands. Evidence from the early medieval period shows that Buddhism was not merely a royal belief but had developed religious institutions throughout the country.

At the same time, the Maldives was not isolated from the Muslim world.

Arab and Persian merchants had been sailing through the Indian Ocean for centuries, and Muslim merchants and sailors were already familiar with the islands before the royal conversion. Arabic geographical and commercial references to the Maldives appear centuries before 1153.

Thus, the conversion of the king did not represent the first contact between the Maldives and Islam. Rather, it marked the point at which Islam became established at the level of the Maldivian monarchy and state.

The conversion of the king

The traditional date of the conversion is 2 Rabīʿ al-Thānī 548 AH, in 1153.

There are, however, different historical traditions concerning both the exact day and the person who brought Islam to the king.

The Tārīkh Islām Dībā Mahal, attributed to Qadi Hasan Taj al-Din, identifies Shaykh Yusuf Shams al-Din al-Tabrizi, from Tabriz in Persia, as the man through whom the king accepted Islam.

The tradition preserved by the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited the Maldives nearly two centuries later, gives a different account. Ibn Battuta attributes the conversion to Abu al-Barakat Yusuf al-Barbari, a Mālikī scholar from the western Islamic world.

These traditions have continued alongside one another in Maldivian history. Modern historical research has also noted the strength of the Tabrizi tradition in earlier Maldivian sources and inscriptions, while Ibn Battuta’s account provides the famous Barbari tradition.

The popular story associated with Ibn Battuta tells of Rannamaari, a supernatural being whom the people were believed to appease through the sacrifice of a virgin each month. According to the story, Abu al-Barakat volunteered to take the place of the girl and spent the night reciting the Qur’an. When the expected spirit did not appear, the king was convinced of the truth of Islam and accepted the religion.

This account is one of the most famous traditional narratives of the conversion. It should, however, be understood alongside the earlier written tradition identifying Yusuf Shams al-Din al-Tabrizi.

From King Dhovemi Kalaminja to Sultan Muhammad

Upon accepting Islam, the king took the Muslim name Muhammad bin Abdullah. Historical sources also associate him with the title Muhammad al-ʿAdil.

His conversion transformed the religious character of the Maldivian monarchy. The Buddhist king had become a Muslim sultan, and the country entered what would become its centuries-long period of Islamic rule.

The change was not simply a change of the ruler’s personal faith.

The new Muslim monarchy began establishing Islamic institutions, mosques and religious practices throughout the islands. Islamic law and religious officials became increasingly important to the administration of the kingdom.

The transition, however, was not completed everywhere at the same moment.

The surviving Loamaafaanu copper-plate grants from the late 12th century provide some of the clearest evidence of this process. The Isdhoo and Dhanbidhoo records show that islands in the southern Maldives were still undergoing conversion decades after the king’s own acceptance of Islam.

The Dhanbidhoo Loamaafaanu, dating to the 1190s, records the destruction of a Buddhist monastery and the construction of a mosque on the site. The Isdhoo record likewise describes the removal of Buddhist religious institutions and the establishment of a mosque.

This demonstrates that the royal conversion in 1153 was the beginning of the country’s conversion to Islam, not an event in which every island immediately became Muslim on the same day.

The first mosques of the Maldives

The conversion also led to the establishment of some of the earliest mosques in the country.

Tradition associates the first Friday mosque of Malé with the reign of Sultan Muhammad. His brother Siri Kalo and the official al-Wazir Shanivirazaa are also connected with the early mosque tradition.

The present Hukuru Miskiy, however, should not be confused with the original mosque of 1153. The current structure has undergone numerous reconstructions and additions over the centuries.

Across the country, mosques were also established as individual islands accepted Islam. In several cases, the early mosques were constructed on or near the sites of former Buddhist religious institutions.

The Loamaafaanu records are particularly important because they preserve official evidence of this transformation rather than relying solely on later oral traditions.

Dheeva Mahal and Dhibat al-Mahal

The political transformation also belongs to a much older history of names for the Maldives.

Pre-Islamic Maldivian traditions refer to the kingdom as Dheeva Mahal and related forms.

After the country entered the Islamic period, Arabic sources used forms including Dībā Mahal and Dhibat al-Mahal.

The most famous foreign description comes from Ibn Battuta, who visited the Maldives in the 14th century.

He calls the islands Dhibat al-Mahal and explains that the district of Mahal gave its name to the entire archipelago. He further records that Mahal was the residence of the sultans.

His account is significant because it confirms that Dhibat al-Mahal was not merely a modern reconstruction of the country’s name. It was an Arabic name actually used for the Maldives in the medieval Islamic world.

Ibn Battuta also found a completely Muslim society when he arrived. He described the inhabitants as Muslims and noted the presence of numerous mosques throughout the islands.

By the time of his visit, therefore, the transformation begun under Sultan Muhammad had produced a firmly established Muslim society.

The spread of Islam across the islands

Sultan Muhammad’s reign is traditionally associated with the sending of emissaries to the different atolls to spread Islam.

The king himself is also associated with travelling to islands and encouraging their inhabitants to accept the new religion.

The process was necessarily gradual. The geography of the Maldives, hundreds of inhabited and uninhabited islands spread across a long chain of atolls made communication and administration difficult.

The surviving records from the southern atolls demonstrate this clearly.

The Dhanbidhoo Loamaafaanu describes the establishment of Islam on the island, the building of its Friday mosque and the reorganisation of land and community responsibilities. Buddhist religious institutions were dismantled and their former properties were reassigned to support the mosque.

The records therefore provide an important glimpse into how the religious transformation actually took place at island level.

They also show that the Maldives’ conversion to Islam was a historical process extending beyond the personal conversion of the king.

The king’s final journey

The final years of Sultan Muhammad are surrounded by another tradition that has remained part of Maldivian history.

According to later accounts, the sultan eventually decided to travel to Makkah to perform Hajj.

One tradition connected with the Loamaafaanu records says that a ship was expected to leave for Makkah and that the sultan boarded after Friday prayer without a large royal entourage. He subsequently disappeared from the Maldives.

Later traditions place his final resting place at Salalah in Oman, saying that he became ill while returning from the pilgrimage and died there.

The precise circumstances and date of his death are uncertain. Some chronological traditions place his disappearance in the 1160s, while other interpretations of the Loamaafaanu material place it later.

What is certain is that his reign marked the beginning of the Islamic sultanate and that his name remained closely associated with the country’s conversion for centuries afterward.

The legacy of Sultan Muhammad bin Abdullah

Sultan Muhammad bin Abdullah occupies an unparalleled position in Maldivian history.

He inherited a Buddhist kingdom and became the ruler under whom the Maldives entered its Islamic age.

The change did not erase the country’s earlier history. The archaeological remains of Buddhist monasteries, stupas and sculptures continue to provide evidence of the civilisation that existed before Islam. At the same time, the Loamaafaanu copperplates, early mosques and later Islamic chronicles preserve evidence of the transformation that followed.

His reign therefore stands at the boundary between two major eras of Maldivian history.

Before him was the Buddhist kingdom of Dheeva Mahal.

After him came the Islamic sultanate whose Arabic name was recorded centuries later by Ibn Battuta as Dhibat al-Mahal, with Mahal serving as the seat of the sultans and giving its name to the archipelago.

Nine centuries later, the Maldives remains a Muslim nation.

The traditional date of Sultan Muhammad’s conversion, 2 Rabīʿ al-Thānī 548 AH, has therefore become one of the most significant dates in the country’s history. On the 900th anniversary, his legacy remains inseparable from the story of how the Maldives became an Islamic sultanate.

Kingdom of Dheeva Mahal

King: King Dhovemi Kalaminja Svasti Sri Sandanayaka Thiribuvana Aditya Mahaaradun
Dynasty: Soma Vansa or Homa Vanha (Lunar Dynasty)
Duration: 1141–1153

Predecessor:
King Koimala Siri Mahaabarana Mahaaradhun
Lunar Dynasty

Successor:
Himself as Sultan

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(Maldives converts to Islam in 1153)
Sultanate of Dībat al-Mahal (later Mahaldibiyyah)

Sultan: Sultan Muhammad Bin Abdullah Siri Bavanaditta Mahaaradun (Dharumavantha Rasgefaanu)
Dynasty: Lunar Dynasty (Theemuge Dynasty)
Duration: 1153–1166

Successor:
Sultan Muthey
Theemuge Dynasty (Lunar Dynasty)

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Vocabulary

Loamaafaanu: A thin, long metal plates made from copper or other metals, used to write the king’s decrees and historical accounts

Dheeva: Islands

Kalaminja: A title used by the kings from Theemuge Dynasty

Siri: Glorious

Mahaaradhun: Great King

Bavana: World

Abaarana: A type of a Jewellery

Soma Vansa or Homa Vanha: Lunar Dynasty

Aditya: Solar

Swasti: Happiness

Dharumavantha: Benevolent

Rasgefaanu: King