That there ever existed Portuguese sovereignty over any part of the Maldives is a myth fabricated relatively recently. No such record exists in Portuguese archives and there is no reference to Portuguese rule in the Tarikh, the official Maldive chronicle written prior to thr 20th Century.

16th Century Portuguese Caravel

No doubt the Christian King Manoel, formerly Sultan Hassan IX, had the moral and some material support of the Portuguese who evangelised him. The bulk of the evidence supports the view that there were Portuguese volunteers or mercenaries under the command of his captains in the expeditions sent to the Maldives. His regent in Malé was Andiri Andirin, a Maldivian by birth and upbringing, albeit of foreign parentage.

The Tarikh uses the terms Nasorah (Christian), Kaafaru (infidel) and Faranji ("Frank", a term used interchangeably to mean European and Christian) to refer to the Christian rulers of the Maldives and their Christian subjects. The oral tradition as related by Buraara Koi also refers to the Kaafaru to describe the persuasion of the non-Moslems in the Maldives at that time and only occasionally as Faranji.

Buraara is more specific than the Tarikh regarding the allegiance of mercenaries in the employ of Andiri Andirin. When the Thakurufans of Uteem took up arms against the regime in Malé, according to Buraara, Andiri Andirin despatched a fleet of Malabars to quell the rebellion. Malabar was a term used to describe the people of the Western coast of Southern India

Vasco da Gama- First Portuguese mariner in Asia

At the time Malé finally capitulated to Kateeb Mohamed Thakurufan of Uteem, according to Buraara, the expatriates there comprised of Goans (undoubtedly Portuguese subjects), Frenchmen and Malabars and evidently they were all in the employ of Andiri Andirin. It was unlikely that any Portuguese authority would have engaged Frenchmen, subjects of a rival mercantile power.

Up until his assumption of the regency in Malé, Andiri Andirin is referred to by Buraara as Goa Kalu Faranji, which means the "black Frank of Goa" or the "black Christian of Goa". Why was he black? At that time it was highly unlikely that there were any dark-skinned people in Europe. The Kingdom of Grenada, the last Moorish (some of whom were dark-skinned) State in Europe fell more than 50 years before to Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille. Was Andiri Andirin not Portuguese?

The Tarikh and Buraara Koi, however, do refer to the Portuguese quite specifically. For instance there is a reference in the Tarikh to an abortive invasion in 1624 (over fifty years after the so-called Portuguese rule ended), in the reign of Sultan Shuja'i Mohamed Imaduddine I, headed by a captain "Balbagi".

The author of the Tarikh was very careful to describe the invaders specifically as Furhetikeysin (the Maldivian word for Portugal is Furhetikal and the Portuguese is Furhetikeysin) and not merely as infidels, Christians or Franks.

During the regency of Andiri Andirin, undoubtedly there would have been many Portuguese people based in the Maldives, as traders, mercenaries and missionaries. Other European mercantile powers in Asia, the French and the Dutch and later the English would have viewed this arrangement as Portuguese rule.

Where transfer of sovereignty had not taken place, Christian mercantile powers at that time operated by establishing spheres of influence and by mutual understanding kept away from each other's sphere of influence. In common usage, European burghers regarded these spheres of influence as being under the rule of the respective mercantile powers.

This was undoubtedly the reason why Bell and other European writers such as the Frenchman François Pyrard de Laval had referred to the Portuguese presence as Portuguese rule. In spite of references to Portuguese rule, Bell concedes that the "Islands were then governed by a Native Regent, under the control of the Portuguese Commandant, who ruled in the name of the exiled King Don Manoel (Hassan IX)".

Hassan IX and his fellow converts were probably not the first Maldive Christians. Theophilus, sent by Emperor Constantius (about AD 354) on a mission to Arabia Felix and Abyssinia, was one of the earliest, if not the first. He had been sent when very young a hostage a Divoeis, by the inhabitants of the Maldives, to the Romans in the reign of Constantine the Great. His travels are recorded by Philostorgius, an Arian Greek historian, who relates that Theophilus, after fulfilling his mission to the Homerites, sailed to his island home. (see reference). Theophilus was a well-known physician. Could it be that he was the first Maldive doctor who practised in Europe? It is said that Theophilus was from a place called Divus. This is variously understood as the Maldives or Diu on the Western coast of India. As Diu is not an island, it is possible that Divus referred to the Maldives. Another Roman source, Amianus Marcellinus courtier to the Roman emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus wrote in AD 362 about Maldive envoys that came to the emperor's court. He called the Maldives Divi, which could be another Latin form of Divus.

Buraara describes in minute detail the odi (sailing vessel) of the Viyazor, the collector of revenue or Atoluverin of the four atolls to the north of Malé . Although the designation of Viyazor was derived from the Portuguese word vedor, interestingly, his vessel flew a plain red flag, and not the Portuguese ensign. From time immemorial until 1903, the flag of the Maldive sovereigns was the plain red flag shown at the top of this page.

The Viyazor of Baararh himself sounds very much a Maldivian by disposition, even though Andiri Andirin was supposed to have recruited him in Goa to act as a pilot in his expeditions to capture Malé. If the Viyazor was not a Maldivian, he must have been someone who was very familiar with the Maldives and Maldivian customs, before his arrival with Andiri Andirin.

According to Buraara, he had a wife in Goa when he married the widow of the slain Sultan in Malé. No Catholic would have been allowed to divorce his wife, let alone take more than one wife. King Henry VIII had to secede England from the Church of Rome in 1534 because Pope Clement VII would not allow him to divorce Catherine of Aragon. It was highly unlikely that in 1558 Pope Paul IV would have consented the Viyazor of Baararh to take a second wife.

Oral tradition describes the Viyazor as a likeable fellow, who occasionally shared a meal with the Thakurufans of Uteem in a communal plate. Moslems would willingly share a meal with Christians, but it was unlikely that they would eat with a Christian from a communal plate. According to Buraara, the Viyazor was steeped in astrology, numerology and dabbled in necromancy. If he were a Portuguese Christian, the Holy Inquisition would have had him burnt at the stake for such heretical activities.

The terminology used in the Tarikh to describe the end of the rule of the Christian King and the end of Holin rule in 1752 is also significant. While the end of Christian rule is described as a conversion to Islam, the end of Holin rule is described as a "transfer of ownership of the Kingdom to its people". This means that while the end of Holin rule was clearly recognised as liberation from a foreign power, the author of the Tarikh saw the end of Christian rule merely as a coup d'état.

Bell had used translations of the Tarikh in his Monograph. Where the Tarikh clearly uses the terms described above, Bell uses the term "Portuguese", in translation. Whoever was Bell's translator must have been keen to draw a comparison between the colonial history of Ceylon where Bell was born and that of the Maldives.

When British rule ended in the countries of Southern Asia in 1947 and 1948, these countries started celebrating independence days or national days. This and the wave of Nationalism sweeping Asia and much of the world at that time dictated that, like other countries, the Maldives also celebrated a so-called "National Day".

At a loss for a day, Mohamed Amin Dorhimeyna Kilegefan came up with the idea of appointing the first day of the Islamic lunar month of Rabee-al-Awwal as the National Day of the Maldives. Three and three quarter centuries before on this day, according to the Tarikh, Mohamed Thakurufan kateeb of Uteem assassinated Andiri Andirin and seized control of Malé.

The National Day, of course, had to be romanticised with the defeat of a colonial European power. The myth of Portuguese rule over the Maldives was thus fabricated, institutionalised and committed to official history.

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