Muslims of the Konkan and Malabar coasts represent the oldest Islamic settlements in India. In addition to their status as the vanguards of Islam in India, they are especially interesting to students of Islam in South Asia, because they evolved in areas of continuing upper caste Hindu political and social dominance.

Muslims first arrived in the Konkan in 699, according to Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, less than 70 years after the death of Prophet Muhammad in circa 632. In other words some Muslims were already present in India a decade before the invasion of Sindh by Muhammad ibn Qasim in 711. Thus Konkani Muslims, along with the Moplahs are the oldest Muslim communities in India.

Throughout their long history, the Konkani Muslims have overcome the triple challenges of surviving the assimilative power of syncretistic Hinduism, the crusading zeal of the Portuguese Backed by their armed invasions in the sixteenth century, and the subsequent challenge posed by westernization as represented by the British colonial power.

Among the Konkani Muslims, the community`s history is not known in a clear, systematic manner either. d`Souza, author of The Navayats of Kanara informs us that he had “made a detailed field study of the cultural traits of the Navayats of the Deccan and the Konkani Muslims too,” though it appears to have remained unpublished. R. Saiyed (1931-89) conducted research entitled “Muslims of Konkan: An Explorative [sic] Study,” but it never materialized beyond an investigation of purdah among the Konkani women.

Some years (1989-94) later Muhi al-Din Mumin received a grant from the Indian Council of Historical Research to study the Konkani Muslim communities in the medieval period. Momin did a comparative study of the social mobility among Muslims in Bhiwandi comparing the Konkanis and the weavers called Momins. So far as I have been able to locate, no other studies of the Konkani Muslims are available.

What follows then is my own research based on published materials dispersed in various writings and also on personal interviews conducted with community activists, field observations in Mumbai, and informed journalists in the Konkan. KONKAN: A GEOGRAPHICAL OVERVIEW The Konkan is the coastal plain of Maharashtra state, in western India, lying between the Arabian Sea on the west and the Western Ghats on the east.

The topography of the Konkan coast is congenial to settlement. In this area, bays, peninsula, estuaries and capes coexist, and the combination of the influences of the land and the sea is seen. The settlement pattern in this region is intimately connected with both littoral and estuary ports.

Moreover, some of the rivers issuing out of the Sahyadri range carry some amount of regional trade towards the Arabian Sea. EARLY MUSLIM SETTLEMENTS From time immemorial there had been traffic between the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and India. India`s west coasts of Gujarat, Konkan, and Malabar traded with countries of the western Indian Ocean.

The Arabs had shown themselves to be brave and skillful seamen; the term `Arabian Sea` was no misnomer for the western part of the Indian Ocean. Long before the Greeks first entered the Asian world, the Arabs had crossed the ocean to India and had penetrated the countries of south-east Asia.

The region from Khambayat in Gujarat to Chawl in Konkan came under the control of the Rashtrakutas who ruled for some two centuries between 733-975 from Malkhed.