Cowrie shells and the Maldives: a currency’s history

The money cowrie is a small sea snail, known to scientists as *Monetaria moneta* (older books call it *Cypraea moneta*). Its shell is smooth, pale yellow to white, and usually about the size of a fingernail. It lives in shallow, warm water on reef flats and in lagoons across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and the Maldives has plenty of exactly that habitat.

Why would a shell work as money? Historians point to a few simple qualities:

• Hard to fake. You cannot easily counterfeit a natural shell.
• Tough. Cowries survive years of handling without breaking or rotting.
• Uniform. They are all roughly the same size, so they could be counted, weighed or measured by the basket.
• Small and light. Good for everyday purchases, the “small change” of many economies.

In Dhivehi, a cowrie is called *boli*. If you hear children on a local island talk about collecting *boli* at the water’s edge, that is the same shell that once crossed oceans.

Cowries were used as money in many places, from ancient China to the Indian subcontinent and Africa. What made the Maldives special was supply. The islands’ shallow reefs produced huge numbers of money cowries of good, even quality, and for hundreds of years the archipelago was the main known source for the long-distance trade.

Early accounts

Arab geographers already wrote about Maldivian cowries more than a thousand years ago. The tenth-century writer al-Mas’udi is often cited as an early witness to the harvest and export of shells from the islands. Archaeologists have since found Maldivian-type money cowries at sites in West Africa that date to the end of the first millennium CE, carried there by sea and then overland across the Sahara.

Ibn Battuta’s view

The most famous description comes from the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who lived in the Maldives in the 1340s and served as a judge (qadi) in Malé. In his travel account, the *Rihla*, he describes the shells as the islanders’ money. He reports that they were sold to Bengal in exchange for rice, and that Yemeni traders took them as ballast in their ships. He also gives exchange rates of hundreds of thousands of cowries to one gold dinar, a reminder of how small each shell’s value was. You can read more about his stay in our guide to Ibn Battuta in the Maldives.

Bengal: the great market

For much of history, Bengal (in today’s Bangladesh and eastern India) was the main destination. Maldivian sailors carried shells there, and Bengal in turn traded them onward. Cowries were used in everyday markets in Bengal and Orissa until British colonial currency reforms pushed them out.

Royal control

Cowries were not simply picked up and sold by anyone. Historical sources describe the sultan holding a royal monopoly over the export trade, with shells also accepted as tax. This made the cowrie one of the foundations of the Maldivian state’s wealth before modern times. For the wider story of the sultanate, see our history of the Maldives.

Accounts differ in detail, and practices probably changed over the centuries, but the broad method is well recorded:

1. Gathering. Shells were collected in the shallows, or attracted using bundles or mats of coconut palm leaves laid in the water. Small molluscs crawled onto the leaves, which were later pulled ashore. Some sources say this work was done mainly by women. The coconut palm, as ever, played its part: read more in the coconut palm in Maldivian life.

2. Cleaning. The living animals were left to die and decay, either by drying the shells in the sun or burying them in sand.

3. Washing and sorting. The empty shells were washed until they were clean and white, ready to be counted and packed.

One later account suggests a single worker could collect thousands of shells in a day. Some writers also link harvesting to the tides around the full moon, but this detail rests on secondary summaries rather than a firm primary source.

From the 16th century, European traders (first the Portuguese, then the Dutch, English and French) bought Maldivian cowries, often through Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Bengal, and shipped them to Europe. From there, the shells went as cargo to the West African coast, where they had become an accepted currency in several kingdoms. In the 17th and 18th centuries, cowries were a standard currency on what Europeans called the Slave Coast, in places such as Ouidah in today’s Benin. Many of the people forced across the Atlantic were bought, in part, with shells that had been gathered on Maldivian reefs.

The historians Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson told this story in detail in their book *The Shell Money of the Slave Trade* (Cambridge University Press, 1986), which remains the standard work. Their research, and later studies, estimate that billions of shells reached West Africa by the late 18th century.

The Maldivians who gathered shells had no part in, and probably no knowledge of, what happened to them on the other side of the world. But it is an important link between these small islands and one of history’s greatest crimes.

Several changes brought the cowrie era to a close:

• Abolition. Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807, and demand for shells in the Atlantic trade fell sharply.
• A brief revival. In the 1820s and 1830s, West African palm oil exports kept some demand going.
• Cheaper rivals. From the 1840s, European merchants imported huge quantities of a different species, the ring cowrie (*Monetaria annulus*), from East Africa, especially around Zanzibar. The flood of cheaper shells caused severe inflation and destroyed the cowrie’s value.
• Colonial currencies. Coins and notes issued by colonial governments in Africa and South Asia replaced shells for everyday use.

By around the 1860s, the Maldivian cowrie export trade had all but disappeared, according to historians. Shells were still used as small money in parts of Africa into the 20th century.

You will still find money cowries on Maldivian beaches and reef flats, though not in the quantities of the past. Today, the Maldives uses the rufiyaa, issued by the Maldives Monetary Authority; see our guide to the Maldivian rufiyaa for notes, coins and paying.

Archaeologists continue to study the trade, including excavations in the Maldives in 2016 led by researchers from the University of East Anglia.

On a local island such as Dhiffushi, the shells are simply part of the shoreline; our guide to Dhiffushi history and island life has more on island life past and present.

It is tempting to pocket a pretty shell. Please don’t:

• Shells are part of the reef. Empty shells become homes for hermit crabs, and broken shells slowly turn into the sand of the beach.
• Permits apply. Many marine products, including shells, coral and turtle products, need a permit to leave the country, according to the Maldives Customs passenger guide (December 2024). Without one, they can be confiscated at the airport.
• Living shells are animals. Collecting live cowries kills them.
• Turtle products are illegal. Tortoiseshell items cannot be bought or exported legally.

If you want a keepsake, choose locally made crafts instead, such as lacquerwork, woven mats or coconut-based items. Our souvenirs and shopping guide and traditional crafts guide explain what to look for. Take photos of shells, not the shells themselves. For more on travelling lightly, read our responsible travel guide.