Dom Manoel (Sultan Hasan IX), Dom Philippe, and the Coir Tribute: Portuguese-Maldivian Relations and the Appeal to the King of Spain
In the early modern Indian Ocean world, the Maldives occupied a strategic niche defined less by territorial conquest than by the production of coir,the fibrous husk of the coconut, spun into rope essential for the rigging and cordage of ships. Portuguese interest in the archipelago, which dated to the opening decades of the sixteenth century, was driven by the need to secure this material for the fleets of the Estado da Índia. Before the Portuguese arrival, Malabar Muslim merchants, most notably Mamalle of Cannanore, had controlled much of the trade, extracting coir, cowries (known locally and in European accounts as boliis or boly), dried fish, and other goods under arrangements with the Maldivian rulers. The subsequent history of Portuguese-Maldivian relations was shaped by a mid-sixteenth-century succession crisis, the conversion and exile of a claimant to the throne, intermittent conflict, and a de facto commercial-tributary settlement that preserved Maldivian internal autonomy and adherence to Islam while guaranteeing Portuguese access to supplies and the system of cartazes (safe-conduct passes).
The crisis that crystallized these relations began around 1551–52, when Sultan Hasan IX (Hassan), facing a rival claimant, sought Portuguese protection. He fled to Cochin, converted to Christianity, and was baptized Dom Manoel,taking the name of the Portuguese king. He later married a Portuguese woman. Portuguese forces, including expeditions associated with figures such as Andreas Andre (known in Maldivian sources as Andiri Andirin), intervened in the late 1550s and established a measure of influence, with Dom Manoel exercising authority by proxy through a converted regent. This phase of Portuguese involvement proved temporary. Around 1573, after prolonged resistance, Maldivian forces under the Takurufaanu brothers,most prominently Muhammad Bodu Takurufaanu,expelled the Portuguese garrison from Malé. Contemporary accounts, including those later recorded by François Pyrard de Laval, note that the brothers at times made temporary alliances with Malabar corsairs, though these partnerships were marked by subsequent conflict.
A settlement followed around 1576. Contemporary and later sources indicate that the Maldivians acknowledged the Christian ex-king’s right to collect specified revenues through a factor resident in the islands, agreed not to employ the full title of sultan or king (adopting lesser designations such as prince or duke), secured Portuguese cartazes for their trading vessels, and retained freedom in internal affairs and religion. Portuguese commercial ascendancy was thereby accepted, yet the islands preserved political autonomy. The full formal terms of any treaty between the Portuguese authorities and the Maldivian princes de facto do not survive in the principal official collections, such as the Arquivo Português Oriental. Tribute obligations, however, are repeatedly referenced. Thereafter, the Portuguese treated the exiled legitimist line primarily as leverage for securing coir rather than as the basis for the permanent imposition of a Christian ruler,an objective they had come to regard as impractical.
The practical operation of the tribute system is documented in both Portuguese administrative records and European eyewitness accounts. A dispatch from the King of Spain (Philip II, who ruled Portugal during the Iberian Union) dated 10 January 1587 records that Dom Manoel engaged to pay, and did pay, 500 bahars of coir to the Portuguese treasury (Arch. Port. Or., Fasc. 3, No. 23). The bahar was a widely used Indian Ocean unit of weight of Arabic and Indian origin (ultimately from Sanskrit bhāra, meaning “load”). Its precise value varied by locality and commodity, but it was commonly reckoned in the range of several hundred pounds avoirdupois; in certain coir agreements it was specified at approximately 4½ quintals. François Pyrard de Laval, shipwrecked on the Maldives in 1602 and resident there until 1607, supplies a crucial comparative observation. He states that the Christian king delivered one-third of his revenue,composed of cowries and coir,to the King of Portugal. Editors of the Hakluyt Society edition of Pyrard’s Voyage, Albert Gray and H.C.P. Bell, therefore inferred that if the 500 bahars represented one-third, the overall scale of the arrangement could reach approximately 1,500 bahars. In logistical terms, Pyrard describes the annual dispatch of four ships of roughly 150 tons, laden with coir; the Maldivians bore the risk until the vessels cleared the northern banks of the archipelago, after which responsibility passed to the Christian king. Coir remained indispensable for the rigging of Portuguese and other Indian Ocean fleets, while cowries continued to circulate as a form of small-change currency, especially valued in Bengal.
Pyrard’s multi-year residence, during which he learned the local language, offers a detailed picture of Maldivian economic life that complements the fiscal tallies of Portuguese officials. Royal revenues derived from domains held in seignory, a fifth part of grain, shares of coconuts and other produce, and ordinary taxes levied in coir, cowries, and dried fish. Cash payments were exceptional, typically limited to purchases of rank or privilege. Subjects were also required to process raw cotton into cloth for the use of soldiers. Trade was extensive and international: merchants from Malabar ports, Gujarat, Cambay, Surat, Bengal, Arabia, Persia, Ceylon, and Sumatra brought rice, cloth, and other goods in exchange for coir, cowries, dried fish, ambergris, and coconut products. Pyrard emphasizes both the primacy of coir and the scale of related exports.
By the early seventeenth century, the position of the exiled royal line had weakened. In 1606 Dom Philippe,grandson of Dom Manoel and a youth of about fifteen when Pyrard later encountered him at Goa,complained to the King of Spain that revenues which had formerly reached 18,000 xerafins in the time of his grandfather and his father, Dom João, had fallen to 5,000 xerafins, which he attributed to the negligence of the viceroys (Liv. das Monç., i, 147). The xerafin was the principal silver coin and accounting unit of Portuguese India, valued at roughly 300 réis in the seventeenth century. While 18,000 xerafins represented a substantial noble-scale income, the reduction to 5,000 marked a clear contraction. Later travelers, including Pietro della Valle, who met Dom Philippe in Goa in the 1620s, observed that the titular kings continued to receive modest tribute extracted from Maldivian merchant ships calling at Portuguese ports. Although local officials were said to embezzle a substantial portion, the residual income was still sufficient to support a comfortable life, even as real political power remained absent.
These relations exemplify a broader pattern in the Portuguese Estado da Índia: influence was frequently exercised through cartazes, tribute arrangements, and client elites rather than continuous garrisons. Official collections such as the Arquivo Português Oriental and the Livros das Monções record revenue obligations, political complaints, and administrative friction involving the displaced Maldivian royals. Pyrard’s narrative, by contrast, supplies the social, logistical, and commercial texture of how coir levies and cowrie trade operated under these pressures. The arrangement secured Portuguese access to a critical naval material while the Maldives retained core political and religious independence-an equilibrium that later Portuguese expeditions, including those of 1631 and 1649, failed to overturn. The intersection of bureaucratic dispatches and the observations of a stranded chronicler remains a valuable window onto early modern Indian Ocean geopolitics and the material foundations of maritime empire.
References
Chandra R. de Silva, ed. and trans. Portuguese Encounters with Sri Lanka and the Maldives: Translated Texts from the Age of the Discoveries. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.
François Pyrard de Laval. The Voyage of François Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas and Brazil. Translated and edited by Albert Gray, assisted by H.C.P. Bell. 2 vols. in 3 parts. London: Hakluyt Society, 1887–1890.
Archivo Português Oriental (Goa collection), Fasc. 3, No. 23 (dispatch of 10 January 1587).
Livros das Monções, vol. i, p. 147 (references to Dom Philippe’s 1606 complaint and the 1607 reply).
Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell. Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases. London: John Murray, 1903 (entry on “Bahar”).
Pietro della Valle. The Travels of Pietro della Valle in India. Translated by G. Havers. 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1892.
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