Maldivian folklore and legends: Rannamaari and spirits

The Maldives has been a Muslim country for close to nine centuries, and Islam shapes daily life on every inhabited island. Folklore is something different. It is the older layer of stories, beliefs and characters that grew up over centuries of island life, some of it with roots before Islam and even before the Buddhist period. Our guide to the Maldives before Islam explains that earlier history.

Keep in mind:

• These are stories. Many Maldivians enjoy them the way people elsewhere enjoy ghost stories.
• Some beliefs are taken seriously. Belief in jinn is part of Islam, so listen with respect.
• Versions differ from island to island and teller to teller, and little was ever written down.

Rannamaari is the most famous figure in Maldivian folklore, and the one you are most likely to hear about. The story is tied to the conversion of the Maldives to Islam, which Maldivian tradition dates to 1153.

The popular version

As it is usually told, a demon rose from the sea at the start of each month. To keep it away from the island, the people left a young girl alone overnight in a temple by the shore. In the morning she was found dead. Then a Muslim traveller from North Africa, remembered as Abu al-Barakat, arrived and stayed with a family whose daughter had been chosen. He offered to go in her place. He sat in the temple through the night reciting the Qur’an, and the demon fled back into the sea. When this happened again, the king accepted Islam, and the people followed.

This is the version taught in Maldivian schools. It is still retold in the national media, and a public holiday, the Day Maldives Embraced Islam, marks the conversion each year. See our guide to festivals and public holidays for when it falls.

What Ibn Battuta wrote

The oldest written account comes from Ibn Battuta, the North African traveller who worked as a judge in Malé in the 1340s, about two centuries after the conversion. Respected local people told him the story, and he wrote it down.

In his telling, a spirit came from the sea each month looking like a ship full of lights. Families drew lots, and the chosen girl was left in an idol temple on the shore. A visitor from the Maghrib who knew the Qur’an by heart took her place and recited through the night, and the spirit plunged into the sea. When it did not return the next month, the king and his court converted, and the temple was pulled down.

He did not use the name Rannamaari, which belongs to the later, popular version. Read more about his time in the islands in our guide to Ibn Battuta in the Maldives.

Legend and history

Historians treat the demon story as legend. The conversion itself is history, and a scholar remembered as Abu al-Barakat is firmly part of that tradition, but the night in the temple belongs to storytelling. For the wider picture of faith in the islands, see our guide to religion in the Maldives.

Beyond Rannamaari, Maldivian folklore is full of spirits. You may hear these Dhivehi words in conversation.

Dhevi

*Dhevi* is a broad word for the mysterious beings of island belief. A book on the dhevi by the Maldivian scholar Hassan Ahmed Maniku, published in Malé in 1988, is listed by the National Centre for Cultural Heritage.

Handi

*Handi* are dangerous female spirits. In many tales they bring illness or death, and stories of women who harm or eat people are, according to scholars, one of the most distinctive features of Maldivian folklore. A well-known example is the Foolhudhigu Handi, a spirit said to haunt a graveyard.

Fureytha

*Fureytha* are monsters, often coming from the sea. Some ideas about them may be older than both Islam and Buddhism in the islands. Younger Maldivians mostly enjoy them as scary entertainment.

Jinn and the trees

Jinn are part of Islamic belief, and island tradition links them with certain large trees. In school folklore, rain trees and banyan trees are often named as their homes. Some people still say that cutting down certain trees can bring trouble.

The hero of many old tales is the *fanditha* man, a learned islander who knew charms, protective verses and remedies, and who could face down the spirit world.

Practitioners are still consulted on some islands, and the word overlaps with traditional healing. Our guide to Dhivehi beys, traditional Maldivian medicine covers the healing side. As a visitor, simply treat it as part of local culture. It is not a tourist activity.

Some of the best Maldivian tales explain how things came to be. One well-known origin story concerns the coconut palm, the national tree.

As it is told, the first settlers had no coconut palms and were dying from hunger. A great fanditha man placed a mixture of herbs and leaves in the mouths of the dead before burial, and coconut palms grew from their skulls. The story links to a Dhivehi word, *naashi*, which is used for both the hard coconut shell and the skull. Read more in our guide to the coconut palm in Maldivian life.

The most complete English collection is *Folk Tales of the Maldives* by the Spanish scholar Xavier Romero-Frías, published by NIAS Press in 2012. It brings together 80 tales from a much larger body of stories he gathered while living in the Maldives between 1979 and 2007. A scholarly review of the book describes six broad kinds of story:

• Spirits and monsters. Ordinary people and fanditha men facing the spirit world.
• Long romances. Fairytale-like stories told in the verse form *raivaru*, often about a loving couple standing up to a powerful king. Some may echo the Ramayana. Our guide to raivaru and Dhivehi literature explains the verse form.
• Comic tales. Funny stories about the king (*radhun*) and his subjects.
• Animal fables. Crabs, grey herons and many reef fish, plus elephants and tigers that hint at old trade links with the mainland.
• Seafaring lore. Old verses (*veshi*) that worked as spoken maps, naming features along sea routes.
• Semi-historical tales. Stories built around real events, such as epidemics or a sea mine washing ashore.

Storytelling has changed a great deal. Reviewers of Romero-Frías’s work note a sharp decline in the oral tradition since the 1980s, as television, smaller households and changing religious attitudes took the place of long evenings of tales.

The stories have not vanished, though. They live on in proverbs, in school ghost stories (many schools have their own, such as a severed hand said to haunt corridors), in new poetry and art, and in family talk with older islanders.

You won’t find folklore performances on a timetable. The stories come out naturally, usually in the evening, over tea, or on a boat. On a local island such as Dhiffushi, quiet evenings on the beach or the jetty are when conversations turn to old times. Our guide to evenings on a local island gives ideas, and the Dhiffushi history and island life guide shows how islanders lived from the reef and the palm.

Ask politely and don’t push, as some people prefer not to talk about spirits. Laugh with a storyteller, not at the story, and treat graveyards, mosques and old trees with care.