Malabar is the long coastal region of south-western India, facing the Arabian Sea and corresponding roughly to the modern Indian state of Kerala. In The Achehnese Vol. I, Snouck Hurgronje invokes Malabar chiefly in connection with the long commercial and religious intercourse between the Indian subcontinent and the [[Acheh|Achehnese] lands, an intercourse that left deep marks on the population and culture of the Indian Archipelago.
Mohammedan and Hindu Traders
The author notes that “there are numerous indications of contact with the inhabitants of India; it is indeed more than probable that Acheh, like other countries of the Indian Archipelago, was mohammedanized from Hindostan.” Not only Mohammedan Klings and people from Madras and Malabar, but also heathen Klings, Chetties and other Hindus, carried on trade in Acheh down to the present time. From the earliest period of which memory survives, no serious opposition seems to have been raised to the permanent settlement in Acheh of these foreign merchants, of whom the Mohammedans from Malabar and the Coromandel coast formed an important element.
The West-Coast Nickname
The traces of this Indian settlement survive in the very nicknames applied to sections of the Achehnese population. The people of mixed descent on the West Coast of Acheh are contemptuously called aneu’ Rawa (people from the province of Rawa), ancu’ jamee (descendants of strangers or guests), or by Malay and Kling epithets referring to their mixed descent. The Malabar element, though less prominent than that of the Klings or the Coromandel traders, contributed its quota to this complex of mixed populations, and the Mohammedan merchants of Malabar must be reckoned among the agents by which Islam reached the northern tip of Sumatra.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.