Introduction: Back to the North

Linguistic and literary evidence in Jewish Malayalam and Old Malayalam points to north-ern Malabar as another prominent region where Jewish history continued between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. More specifically, the area where a Jewish trading community must have existed is Madayi (māṭāyi), the former capital of Kōlattunāṭu ruled by the Mūṣika dynasty since at least the tenth century. While somewhat specula-tive, the circumstantial evidence of the continuity of Jewish mercantile activities in and around Madayi is compelling, considering the centuries of intense Indo-Arab trade con-nections with the region, including Jews. It is the rulers of this kingdom, known as the Mūvar, who established the port towns of Payyṉṉūr, PantalāyaniKollam (Koyilandy), Vaḷarpaṭṭaṇam (Valapattanam), and Dharmapaṭṭaṇam (Dharmadom), which are men-tioned in the Genizah India trade documents as Jurbattan, Fandaraynā, Barībatan, and Dahbattan respectively. Despite the silence in documentary sources about Jewish con-nections in the region after the Genizah period between the eleventh to thirteenth centu-ries, evidential sources of the early sixteenth century indicate Jewish presence in Madayi.

In the early 1500s, Duarte Barbosa mentions that Madayi (Maravel) is populated by Muslims, Hindus, and Jews, “who speak the country language and have long dwelt there.” In 1686, Mosseh Pereyra De Paiva heard from his interlocutors in Kochi that Madayi was among the first Jewish settlements in Malabar, next to “peryapatnam” and “Cherigandaram.” They also tell him that the tombstone of one Rabbi Samuel Halevi can still be seen in “Cherigandaram.” However, as relying on later sources written by foreign travellers is highly problematic, these references to a historical Jewish community in Madayi need to be corroborated by internal sources.

A Jewish community in and around Madayi must have begun to strike roots as early as the twelfth century. Abraham Ben Yijū’s wife, Aśu, was most probably from a house-hold settled in Jurbattan, the location of which is uncertain. Some scholars identify it with Kannur (kaṇṇaṉūr), but the basis for this identification is quite shaky once one turns to Arabic sources mentioning Jurfattan, the Arabic cognate of the Judeo-Arabic Jurbattan. The late-sixteenth century Tuḥfāt al-mujāhidīn, lists Jurfattan among the ports of Kōlattunāṭu alongside Kannur: “The Kōlattiri ruler of HīlīMārāwī (Madayi), Jurfattan, Kannannūr, Edakkār (Edakkad), and Darmafatan.” Therefore, Jurfattan/Jurbattan cannot be equated with Kannur, as Hussain Nainar rightly argues.