Having described the Maldive polity, and the more remarkable events that happened before fortune cast us there, I now come to speak of the most singular and memorable occurrences during the space of five years I resided there. But first I must not forget to tell what I learned of the islanders concerning the first peopling of the Maldives, and how the inhabitants changed their religion.

They hold that the Maldives began to be inhabited only four hundred years ago, and that the first who came and peopled them were (as I have already said, in passing) the Cingalles of the island of Ceylan, which is not far distant, and were idolaters, but afterwards changed their religion, it being about one hundred and fifty or two hundred years at most since they received Mahometism, through the Moorish and Arabian navigators, who, while trading over all the continent and islands of the East Indies, brought there also their law, which has since remained in most of those parts. It also appears that it was then that the Tartars, who extended their dominion throughout the East, and even to these islands, became infected with this accursed and false doctrine of Mahomet, which has wasted three-fourths of the world. The Maldive people have ever since retained this law, as I have fully described in my treatment of their religion and ceremonies.