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The rise of jihādic sentiments and the writing of history in sixteenth-century Kerala

This article discusses the variation in response to the advent of the Portuguese on the Malabar Coast by different Muslim literary and intellectual figures. It is argued that certain Arabic sources dealing with the history of Islam in Malabar and with jihād against the encroaching Portuguese in fact reveal cleavages and antagonisms within learned Muslim opinion. Both the content of these Arabic texts and the choice of genre by their authors are indicative of this internal conflict within the Malabar Muslim community. Thus, any view positing a monolithic or essentialist view of Malabar Muslims as such becomes untenable. One well-known and previously translated work, Tuḥfat al-Mujāhidīn, by the well-known Malabari scholar Zain al-Din al-Ma‘bari has been misunderstood as entirely representative of the totality of opinion within the Malabari Muslim community. However, it will be argued that a second and hitherto understudied set of texts reveal another, and, startlingly different viewpoint. All these works are clearly products of the conceptual world of jihādi discourse but present sharply opposed prescriptions for collective Muslim actions within Kerala. These divergent prescriptions are rooted in differing historical narratives and imaginaries capable of addressing a perceived profound crisis confronting Malabar Muslims.