Religion and History in the Maldives

The Maldives' religious history divides sharply at a single date. Ruins of stupas and monasteries on several atolls attest to a Buddhist past that once defined the archipelago's religious life, a period that ended with the conversion of the ruling court to Islam in 1153, traditionally credited to a visiting North African scholar. From that conversion onward, the more than one thousand islands of the Maldives became one of the most religiously homogeneous societies in the world, a homogeneity that has persisted for nearly nine centuries with no comparable religious transformation since.

Little of the pre-Islamic Buddhist period survives beyond archaeological remains, since the conversion was thorough enough to leave few living traces of the earlier tradition in later Maldivian religious or cultural life. The 1153 conversion is remembered today chiefly through court chronicle and popular tradition rather than contemporary documentary record, but its consequence is not in doubt: it set the Maldives on a trajectory toward the near-total religious uniformity that distinguishes it from every other country in South Asia today.