The Maldives An Introduction

The Maldives is a sovereign island nation located in the Indian Ocean. It is made up of 26 atolls, which are chains of islands, and hundreds of individual islands. The Maldives is known for its stunning natural beauty and crystal-clear waters, making it a popular destination for tourists seeking a tropical getaway. The Maldives has a long and interesting history, with evidence of human habitation dating back to 500 BC. It was ruled by various dynasties and empires, including the Portuguese and the British, before gaining independence in 1965. Today, the Maldives is a republic with a president as the head of state and a multi-party system. Its economy is heavily reliant on tourism, with the industry contributing to over a third of the country's GDP. However, the Maldives also faces challenges such as environmental degradation and political instability.

Beyond the tropical paradise and beyond the fear of climate change effects, the Maldives is a fascinating island country that faces social, cultural, economic and environmental transformations. Atolls of the Maldives: Nissology and Geography provides a spatial analysis on some key challenges the Maldivian society has to deal with, and guides the reader in the discovery of the human and environmental geography of this Indian Ocean archipelago. Geographers, political scientists, sociologists, geologists, biologists and experts in environmental policies help the audience to move through the complex systems of interrelations, connections and disconnections that shape the environment and the geography of this extraordinary archipelagic country.

A promising blue-sky holiday drew celebrated detective, Devin Langhar, to the pristine beaches of Maldives. The ultra-luxury Embassy Island resort with its exclusive over-water private villas, Michelin-star restaurant and a cosmopolitan guest list, fulfilled the conditions of excellent wine and fascinating company. But when millionaire, Jeffrey Dale, turns up dead, it becomes clear that all that glitters is not gold. Surrounded by the Indian Ocean on all sides, and a killer in their midst, it is now in the hands of detective Devin Langhar to solve the Murder in Maldives.

A collection of 80 traditional short stories and legends from the local oral tradition. These folk tales offer insights into the history, culture and beliefs of the people of the Maldives and into the world they live in.

This book presents pioneering research on the Indian Ocean archipelago of the Maldives in the medieval period. Primarily archaeological, the book has an interdisciplinary slant, examining the material culture, history, and environment of the islands. Featuring contributions by leading archaeologists and material culture researchers, the book is the first systematic archaeological monograph devoted to the Maldives. Offering an archaeological account of this island-nation from the beginnings of the Islamic period, it complements and nuances the picture presented by external historical data, which identify the Maldives as a key player in global networks. The book describes excavations and surveys at a medieval site on the island of Kinolhas. It offers a comprehensive analysis of finds of pottery, glass, and cowries, relating them to regional assemblages to add valuable new data to an under-researched field. The artefacts suggest links with India, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, Arabia, central Asia, southeast Asia, and China, offering tangible evidence of wider connections. The research also evidences diet, crafts, and funerary practices. The rigorous presentation of the primary material is framed by chapters setting the context, conceptual approaches, and historical interpretation, placing the Maldives within broader dynamics of Islamic and Indian Ocean history and opening the research results to a wide readership. The book is aimed at students and researchers interested in the archaeology and history of the Indian Ocean, Islamic studies, island and coastal communities, maritime networks, and the medieval period, with special relevance for the ‘Global Middle Ages’. It will appeal to art historians, archaeologists, museologists, and heritage and material culture studies researchers with related interests.

This book examines Islam’s relationship to democratization in the Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives. It explores how and why an electoral democracy based in a constitution that has many liberal features but also Islam-based limitations, especially lack of religious freedom, emerged in the country by 2009. In doing so, the book interrogates a major approach to Muslim politics that assumes reformist interpretations of Islam are a positive, and even a necessary, force for liberalization and democratization in Muslim-majority contexts. This book shows reformist Islam did play certain positive roles in democratization in the Maldives. However, the book suggests reformist Islam may not be an invariably uncontroversial force in the space of politics. It argues that modern nation building in the Maldives shaped by political actors with reformist Islamic orientations, since around the 1930s, has also completely transformed Islam as a modern institutional and discursive political religion. These transformations of Islam as a modern political religion have existed as path-dependent constraints on the depth of democratization, ensuring religion-based limitations and intensifying controversy over religion vis-à-vis the state and individual rights. An original empirical contribution towards a better understanding of Islam and politics in the Maldives, this book will be of interest to academics and students working on democracy, and Islam in particular, and in the fields of political science and area studies, especially South Asian politics.