Legend has it, that around 686 CE, an embassy from Mecca disembarked on the busy shores of Kerala. Arab merchants had, of course, been sailing here for centuries, but this particular mission had a unique purpose—it was charged with the conversion to Islam of an Indian prince. A few years previously, the Malayali king, Cheraman Perumal, had crossed the Arabian Sea, to become a Muslim. Now, it was for his nephew that this embassy came, so that he too could follow in the footsteps of his illustrious uncle. The name of the nephew, born from a royal sister, Sridevi, was Mahabali. And promptly after embracing the Prophet’s faith, he was reincarnated, styled hereafter (somewhat conveniently) as Mohammed Ali.

This is merely one of many legends that constructs for the Arakkal family of Kannur a place in Kerala’s antiquity. The region’s only Muslim royal house, and once rulers of the Lakshadweep Islands, Arakkal is distinguished also in following the matrilineal system of succession. It did not matter what the Shariat prescribed in such matters—matriliny, it is said, was another link the family retained to its Hindu origins. Cheraman Perumal, according to dynastic chronicles, instructed his sister to uphold tradition. Both her children, he commanded, “should be made to reign according to their seniority”. And so it was done—if the eldest child in any generation was male, he was the Adi Raja (or Ali Raja) of Arakkal; if it was a girl, she held the same title, with the extra style of “Beevi”.