Islamization in Malabar

Historians have always been intrigued by the processes of Islamization in various parts of the world. Nehemia Levtzion, in a study which has influenced subsequent scholarship, perceived of Islamization as a movement of individuals and groups, departing from some form of traditional religion and following a process which ends with normative Islam. Writing about Islam in West Africa, he argued that as long as Islam was confined to the trading communities, it operated on the fringes of West African societies where there was actually a dispersion of Muslims rather than a spread of Islam. He identifies social interaction, intermarriage and the role of traders as the important factors of Islamization. Similarly, Trimingham explained the spread of Islam on the East African coast as the result of trans-oceanic contacts, the role of traders and the intermarriage of Arab and Persian settlers with the local Bantu women. He also observes that sections of the people of Hadramaut in Yemen, cut off by the desert from the interior of Arabia, had long ago turned to the sea for a livelihood. The role of intermarriage as a major factor of social integration in the Islamization of East Africa has also been emphasized by Guennec-Coppens in her recent study of the Swahili-speaking groups of the Comoros Islands.

In port enclaves, the primary concern of the foreign merchants was commerce. During their short stays in the different ports, many of the Arab merchants entered into temporary marriages with the local women and in certain regions, multiple marriages were contracted to create a network of lineages in the host societies.