Others In terms of Ihsan: Islam arrived in Kerala, the Malayalam-speaking region in the south-western tip of India, through Middle Eastern merchants.

[16][17]: 79  Kerala's spices attracted ancient Arabs, Babylonians, Assyrians and Egyptians to the Malabar Coast in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE.

[18] The Arabs on the coasts of Yemen, Oman, and the Persian Gulf, must have made the first long voyage to Kerala and other eastern countries.

[18] The Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BCE) records that in his time the cinnamon spice industry was monopolized by the Egyptians and the Phoenicians.

[9] Islam arrived in Kerala, a part of the larger Indian Ocean rim, via spice and silk traders from the Middle East.

[33] According to popular tradition, Islam was brought to Lakshadweep islands, situated just to the west of Malabar Coast, by Ubaidullah in 661 CE.

[35] The known earliest mention about Muslims of Kerala is in the Quilon Syrian copper plates of 9th century CE, granted by the ruler of Kollam.

[41][35][40] The monopoly of overseas spice trade from Malabar Coast was safe with the West Asian shipping magnates of Kerala ports.

[42] The Muslims were a major financial power to be reckoned with in the kingdoms of Kerala and had great political influence in the Hindu royal courts.

[43][42] Travellers have recorded the considerably huge presence of Muslim merchants and settlements of sojourning traders in most of the ports of Kerala.

[9][44] The Koyilandy Jumu'ah Mosque contains an Old Malayalam inscription written in a mixture of Vatteluttu and Grantha scripts which dates back to 10th century CE.

[46] The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battutah (14th century) has recorded the considerably huge presence of Muslim merchants and settlements of sojourning traders in most of the ports of Kerala.

It is written in Arabic and contains pieces of information about the resistance put up by the navy of Kunjali Marakkar alongside the Zamorin of Calicut from 1498 to 1583 against Portuguese attempts to colonize Malabar coast.

[52][53][54] Tuhfatul Mujahideen also describes the history of Mappila Muslim community of Kerala as well as the general condition of Malabar Coast in the 16th century CE.

[39] As the Portuguese tried to establish monopoly in spice trade, bitter naval battles with the zamorin ruler of Calicut became a common sight.

This activities, in the long run, resulted in the Muslims losing control of the spice trade they had dominated for more than five hundred years.

Historians note that in the post-Portuguese period, once-rich Muslim traders turned inland (southern interior Malabar) in search of alternative occupations to commerce.

[48] By the mid-18th century the majority of the Muslims of Kerala were landless labourers, poor fishermen and petty traders, and the community was in "a psychological retreat".

[59] The victory of the English East India Company and princely Hindu confederacy in 1792 over the Kingdom of Mysore placed the Muslims once again in economical and cultural subjection.

[48][61][13][62] The Muslim material strength - along with modern education, theological reform, and active participation in democratic process - recovered slowly after the 1921-22 Uprising.

[9] A large number of Muslims of Kerala found extensive employment in the Persian Gulf countries in the following years (c. 1970s).

[83] The snacks include unnakkaya (deep-fried, boiled ripe banana paste covering a mixture of cashew, raisins and sugar),[87] pazham nirachathu (ripe banana filled with coconut grating, molasses or sugar),[87] muttamala made of eggs,[83] chatti pathiri, a dessert made of flour, like a baked, layered chapati with rich filling, arikkadukka,[88] and more.

[83] According to K. Mohammed Basheer, Kerala has one of the oldest madrasa (Malayalam: othupalli / Palli Dar) education systems in India which has been reformed in modern times to include non-religious and religious subjects.

Madrasas were non-residential, whilst residential facilities supported by mosques and the Muslim village community were called Palli Dar.

They are all grounded in Ahl as-Sunnah, whereas the Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen Vidyabhyasa Board (KNM) and The Council for Islamic Education and Research (CIER) are rooted in Ahl-i Hadith.