The Maldives is a chain of 26 natural atolls and roughly 1,190 coral islands strung across the equatorial Indian Ocean. Its position on the old sea lanes linking Arabia, India and South-East Asia has shaped its story for more than two thousand years, bringing traders, new faiths and, at times, foreign powers to its shores.
Early settlement
No one knows exactly when people first reached the islands. Language, folklore and customs point to early settlers from southern India and Sri Lanka, most likely fishing communities who crossed from the nearest coasts.
These first islanders built with timber, thatch and other materials that do not last long in the tropics, so they left little behind for archaeologists. The oldest surviving ruins belong to the Buddhist period that followed.
For centuries the islands were known abroad for cowrie shells, which Maldivians gathered and exported. The shells were used as money across much of Asia and along the East African coast, which made the atolls a valued stop for merchants.
The Buddhist period
Buddhism probably reached the Maldives in the last centuries BC or the first centuries AD, and it remained the main religion for well over a thousand years. Much of what still defines Maldivian life took shape in this era, including the Dhivehi language, its earliest scripts and many customs and institutions of royal rule.
Serious study of the ruins began with H.C.P. Bell, a British official in the Ceylon Civil Service who was shipwrecked in the Maldives in 1879 and later returned to survey ancient sites. Overgrown mounds known locally as havitta, hatteli or ustubu turned out to be the remains of stupas and monasteries.
In 1990 the Maldivian historian Hassan Ahmed Maniku listed 59 islands with known Buddhist sites. Among the best known are the Kuruhinna Tharaagandu complex on Gan in Laamu Atoll and the monastery ruins on Kaashidhoo in Kaafu Atoll. Coral carvings and inscribed relics now held at the National Museum in Malé point to links with Buddhist centres in mainland India as well as Sri Lanka.
In the 1980s the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl excavated several sites and proposed that an earlier seafaring, sun-worshipping people had lived on the islands before the Buddhists. His theory drew wide attention, though most historians and archaeologists regard the ruins he studied as Buddhist.
Conversion to Islam (1153)
By the 12th century, Arab and Persian merchants dominated trade across the Indian Ocean. In 1153 the king embraced Islam and took the name Sultan Muhammad al-Adil. Some copperplate records give a slightly later date.
The conversion is credited to a visiting Muslim scholar known as Abu al-Barakat. The traveller Ibn Battuta described him as a Berber from North Africa, while Maldivian tradition often identifies him as Yusuf Shamsuddin of Tabriz. His tomb stands in Malé near the Hukuru Miskiy, the Old Friday Mosque, which was built of carved coral stone and completed in 1658 under Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar I.
The Isdhoo loamaafaanu, royal grants inscribed on copper plates in the 12th century, are among the oldest surviving documents written in Dhivehi and record the change of faith. Because the plates describe the dismantling of Buddhist monasteries, some historians argue that the transition was not entirely peaceful.
Ibn Battuta himself lived in the Maldives in the 1340s and served as a judge. The sultanate founded in 1153 would last, under six dynasties, for more than 800 years.
The Portuguese and Muhammad Thakurufaanu
In 1558 the Portuguese seized Malé and ruled it from their colony at Goa. Their rule was deeply resented, and islanders came under pressure to give up their faith.
In 1573 Muhammad Thakurufaanu of Utheemu, in Haa Alifu Atoll, and his brothers waged a campaign from the sea and drove the Portuguese out of Malé. He became sultan, and the victory is marked each year as National Day on the first day of the Islamic month of Rabee-ul-Awwal. His family home, Utheemu Ganduvaru, is preserved as a memorial.
Dutch and British protection (1887)
In the 17th century the Dutch, who had replaced the Portuguese in Ceylon, held loose influence over Maldivian affairs but left internal government to the sultans. When the British took Ceylon from the Dutch in 1796, they inherited that relationship.
An agreement signed in 1887 formally made the Maldives a British protectorate. Britain took charge of foreign relations and defence, while the sultan and his ministers continued to run domestic affairs under Islamic law and local custom.
The first written constitution was introduced in 1932, during the reign of Sultan Muhammad Shamsuddeen III, and the sultanate became an elected office.
The first republic (1953) and Amin Didi
On 1 January 1953 the monarchy was set aside and the first republic was proclaimed, with Mohamed Amin Didi as president. As a leading figure in government in the 1940s he had brought the fish export trade under state control, and he is remembered for expanding schooling, championing girls' education and modernising the administration.
His government did not last. Food shortages and opposition in Malé led to his removal in August 1953, and he died in January 1954. The sultanate was restored that year.
The Suvadive episode
In 1956 Britain won permission to reopen its wartime airfield on Gan, in Addu Atoll, along with facilities on neighbouring Hithadhoo. Ibrahim Nasir, who became prime minister in 1957, pushed to renegotiate the terms.
In 1959 the three southern atolls of Huvadhu, Addu and Fuvahmulah broke away and declared the United Suvadive Republic, with Abdullah Afeef as president. The south had prospered from jobs and trade linked to the British base and resented control from Malé.
The government in Malé reasserted its authority, and by 1963 the breakaway state had been dissolved. Afeef went into exile in the Seychelles.
Independence (26 July 1965) and the second republic (1968)
The Maldives became fully independent on 26 July 1965 under an agreement with the United Kingdom, and joined the United Nations later that year. Britain kept the use of its facilities on Gan and Hithadhoo.
In a referendum in March 1968, Maldivians voted to abolish the sultanate. The second republic was proclaimed on 11 November 1968, with Ibrahim Nasir as president.
The Nasir years
Nasir governed for a decade and dominated political life. His government began early modernisation, and the first tourist resorts opened in 1972, launching the industry that would later transform the economy.
The decade also brought hardship. The Sri Lankan market for Maldivian dried fish collapsed, and Britain's closure of the Gan base in 1976 hit the southern economy hard. Power was tightly concentrated: in 1975 Prime Minister Ahmed Zaki was removed and banished to a remote island.
Nasir left office at the end of his second term in 1978 and moved to Singapore. The new government later accused him of misusing public funds. He died in Singapore in 2008.
Gayoom and the 1988 attack
Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, a former university lecturer who had represented the Maldives at the United Nations, was elected president in 1978. He was returned for five further terms in single-candidate referendums and served for 30 years. Tourism and fishing grew quickly.
On 3 November 1988, gunmen from PLOTE, a Sri Lankan Tamil militant group, landed in Malé in an attempt to seize power. The plot was organised by a Maldivian businessman, Abdullah Luthufi, with a small group of associates. The attackers took key points in the capital but failed to capture the president.
At the government's request, India flew in paratroopers within hours in what it called Operation Cactus. The coup collapsed, and the Indian Navy later intercepted the fleeing attackers at sea. Around 19 people were reported killed. Luthufi and others were convicted in Malé, and their death sentences were later commuted.
The 2008 constitution and the first multi-party election
Pressure for change grew in the early 2000s. The death of a young inmate at Maafushi prison in 2003 sparked protests in Malé, and the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 devastated many islands. Political parties were allowed to register in 2005.
A new constitution, ratified on 7 August 2008, separated the powers of the state, created independent institutions and guaranteed a wide range of rights. In October 2008 the country held its first multi-party presidential election.
Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldivian Democratic Party defeated Gayoom in the run-off and was sworn in on 11 November 2008, ending three decades of rule by one president.