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Malabar region
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Malabar region lies along the southwest coast of India and forms the northern part of the present-day state of Kerala. Malayalam is the chief language of the region.
The Malabar region is in southern India between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, making up the northern half of the state of Kerala. Geographically the name is sometimes extended to the entire southwestern coast of peninsular India to the area called the Malabar Coast or the Malabari Coast . The land is tropical wet forests typical of southwestern India.
The ancestors of today's Dravidian population have inhabited the Malabar region for centuries. The region formed part of the ancient kingdom of Chera. It became part of the Hindu Vijayanagara empire in the 15th century. With the breakup of the empire in the mid-16th century, the Malabur region came under the rule of a number of local chieftains notably the Kolathiris of Kannur, Zamorins of Calicut, and the Valluvokonathiris of Walluvanad. In the 18th century, during the Anglo-Mysore Wars, the Malabar region came under British rule.
When the Anglo-Mysore wars concluded, the Malabar region became part of a province of British India known as the Madras Presidency. This province included the present-day Kannur District, Kozhikode District, Wayanad District, Malappuram District, most of Palakkad District and a small part of Thrissur District. The administrative headquarters was in Calicut, known today as Kozhikode.
With India's independence, Madras Presidency was renamed Madras State. It was subsequently split up along linguistic lines in 1953. Under the States Reorganisation Act of 1956, the states of Kerala and Mysore were carved out of the Madras state and the remaining part was renamed Tamil Nadu.
The Malabar region was included in Kerala state in the reorganisation.
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.