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COLOMBO: When Ibn Battuta arrived in northern Sri Lanka, the ruler of the Jaffna Kingdom greeted him with pearls extra lovely than any he had ever seen in his life.
The famed Moroccan explorer’s ship arrived in Puttalam in September 1344, and he spent a number of days on the island, entertaining the king who was all in favour of his voyages, and visiting Adam’s Peak, a mountain honored by Muslim pilgrims as the positioning of the footprint of the primary man and prophet.
Ibn Battuta recorded the journey in his “Travels,” and gave an in depth description of it, focusing a lot of his consideration on pearl reefs and pearl searching — one of many essential income earners for the Jaffna king’s coffers.
He wrote in his memoir that the gems he was gifted have been “great pearls, the largest and most lovely pearls on the planet!”
However he was not the island’s first Arab customer.
Those that arrived in Sri Lanka centuries earlier than Ibn Battuta have been those that developed pearl fishing, and who lifted the gemstone, fashioned by mollusks, into changing into the island’s most dear aquatic useful resource.
Abdul Raheem Jesmil, growth officer at Sri Lanka’s Division of Archeology, whose analysis focuses on the historical past of Sri Lankan Muslims, estimates that the primary Arab guests to the island arrived in pre-Islamic instances, across the third century B.C.
At the moment, the commerce with the island was completely within the fingers of Arabs who got here primarily from the Arabian Peninsula and components of Mesopotamia.
“They got here in the hunt for spices akin to cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and white pepper,” Jesmil mentioned.
“After they stayed right here, they discovered that some components of the island’s ocean have been filled with pearls … They diverted their companies to pearl diving.”
Pearl diving has been practiced for 1000’s of years and in lots of communities of the Arabian Gulf was the principle supply of wealth in historic instances. Males from these areas would spend months on expeditions at sea through the pearling season, whereas households awaited them on the shore and carried out rituals for his or her security.
When Arab merchants reached Sri Lanka, they instantly understood the wealth of its pearl beds and explored the island’s northwestern coast.
Pearls have been initially discovered principally in oysters within the Gulf of Mannar, off the cities of Mannar, Chilaw and Kalpitiya.
They have been extremely valued among the many aristocracy of historic Rome, the place chroniclers within the 2nd century A.D. recorded how they have been introduced by ships that chartered the Indian Ocean or by caravans.
Because the trade grew in significance and expanded over centuries, divers additionally started to discover the areas south of the pearl-rich gulf.
“They discovered new locations from Beruwala to Hambantota, which run from the western coast to the southern,” Jesmil advised Arab Information, including that the trade was so profitable that most of the Arab pearl merchants settled down in Sri Lanka and married native ladies, principally from the Tamil communities that have been concerned of their enterprise.
Whereas little is understood about any remaining artifacts documenting the presence of pre-Islamic retailers from the Center East, after the arrival of Islam such proof is plentiful, particularly because the Arab affect additionally entered the sphere of tradition and faith.
“The primary mosque in Sri Lanka was constructed by these Arabs … Al-Abrar Mosque stands a monument of Arabian tradition,” Jesmil mentioned, referring to a mosque in Beruwala that was inbuilt 920 A.D. It’s the oldest remaining —and broadly thought of to be the primary —mosque in Sri Lanka.
Later manuscripts by Europeans point out that till the nineteenth century the gathering of pearl shells from the ocean, processing of them, and buying and selling have been dominated by Arabs and Tamils, who have been thought of one of the best divers.
For one century, pearl fisheries have been beneath the management of the Portuguese who entered a pact with coastal communities in Mannar. Throughout that point, the trade reportedly employed some 50,000 individuals. When the Dutch expelled the Portuguese within the mid-Seventeenth century, they expanded it to 200,000 staff.
It was beneath one other colonial energy, Britain, which took over a century later, that pearl fishing started to wrestle. The waters which was one of the vital plentiful sources of pure pearls on the planet for greater than two millennia, began to lose their oyster colonies.
After the British made a collection of unsuccessful experiments in reviving the trade, within the Twenties it obtained a ultimate blow with the introduction of the aesthetic pearl by the Japanese.
Some pearl searching continued after Sri Lanka gained independence, however at the moment it’s practically extinct.
Whereas Sri Lanka remains to be a widely known jewellery producer, the gems that when gained its fame are now not within the highlight.
Rizan Nazeer, chief government of the annual FACETS Sri Lanka Worldwide Gem and Jewellery Commerce Present in Colombo, mentioned that the pearls utilized by native artisans are infrequently native ones.
“Pearl fishing is a dying trade in Sri Lanka, the gems have been outdated,” he mentioned.
“We get pearls from Japan and Australia.”
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