The Maldives
The nation of twelve hundred coral islands scattered across the Indian Ocean, the lowest country on earth, an all-Muslim people of the Dhivehi tongue, of tuna and coconut, of the big drum and the dhoni. The complete guide.
The Maldives is a nation of coral islands in the Indian Ocean, southwest of India and Sri Lanka, made up of around twelve hundred tiny low-lying islands grouped into a chain of atolls strung across the sea, home to about half a million people, the smallest nation in Asia. To understand it, begin with the extraordinary geography, a scatter of flat coral islands barely above the waves, the lowest-lying country in the world, which has shaped a seafaring people and now places the nation on the front line of the rising sea; with the deep and complete Islamic faith of a people who are all, by law, Sunni Muslims; with the Dhivehi language and its own script, found nowhere else on earth; with the tuna and the coconut that have fed the islands for centuries; and with the two worlds of the modern Maldives, the devout local island and the luxury tourist resort. From these flow the food, the music, and the customs. This guide walks through each in turn.
Overview
The Maldives is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, lying southwest of the southern tip of India and Sri Lanka, made up of around twelve hundred small coral islands gathered into a double chain of natural atolls that stretches for hundreds of miles across the sea, though only about two hundred of the islands are inhabited and another hundred or so given over to tourist resorts. About half a million people live there, making it the smallest country in Asia by both land and population, and the most scattered of nations, with the capital and only real city at Male, a tiny, crowded island packed with people, where a large part of the nation lives.
The Maldives is a presidential republic, in which the president is both head of state and head of government, currently Mohamed Muizzu, who took office in 2023. The nation, once a sultanate and later a British protectorate, won full independence in 1965 and became a republic. Islam is the state religion, and the Maldives is one of the few nations on earth where every citizen is, by law, a Muslim, all of the Sunni faith. The language is Dhivehi, spoken nowhere else and written in its own unique script. The economy rests on two great pillars: the luxury tourism that draws visitors from across the world to the resorts, and the tuna fishing that has fed and sustained the islands for centuries.
A few deep forces shape life in the Maldives. There is the scattered geography of low coral islands and the surrounding sea. There is the deep and complete Islamic faith. There is the Dhivehi language and its script. There is the meeting of the devout local island and the tourist resort. And there is the close, seafaring island community. The sections that follow trace these and walk through the food, the music, and the customs.
A nation of coral atolls
The first and most extraordinary fact about the Maldives is its geography, for the nation is not made of ordinary land at all but of around twelve hundred tiny coral islands, the tops of a great undersea ridge, grouped into ring-shaped atolls and scattered across a vast stretch of the Indian Ocean, so that the country is almost all sea with a sprinkling of land. The very word atoll comes from the Dhivehi language of the Maldives. The islands are small, often tiny, ringed with white coral sand and turquoise lagoons and sheltered by coral reefs teeming with life, among the most beautiful islands in the world.
The Maldives is also, famously, the lowest and flattest country on earth, for the coral islands rise on average only a metre or so above the sea, and no point in the whole nation stands more than a few metres high. This gives the Maldives its haunting beauty and its way of life close to the water, but it also places the nation in grave danger, for as the seas of the world rise with the warming climate, the low islands of the Maldives are among the most threatened on earth, and the nation has become a leading and urgent voice calling the world to act, even raising the question of where its people might one day go.
The scattered sea geography has shaped everything in Maldivian life. It bred a people of seafarers, fishermen, and boat-builders, masters of the ocean, whose traditional sailing and motor boat, the dhoni, is the very symbol of the nation and still carries its people and its catch across the water. It made the sea, not the land, the highway and the larder of the islands. It scattered the people into small island communities across the atolls, far from one another and from the world, which allowed their distinctive culture and language to grow. And it placed the sea, the reef, and the fish at the very heart of Maldivian life.
An all-Muslim nation
Islam is the heart and the law of the Maldives, and the nation is one of the most completely Muslim on earth, for Islam is the state religion and, by the constitution, every citizen of the Maldives must be a Sunni Muslim, so that the faith is not merely the religion of the people but a part of citizenship and national identity itself. The Maldives came to Islam in the twelfth century, when, by tradition, a visiting Muslim scholar converted the Buddhist king and the islands embraced the faith, and the more than eight centuries since have made Islam the foundation of Maldivian life, law, and identity.
The faith orders daily life on the inhabited islands. The call to prayer sounds five times a day from the mosques that stand on every island; Friday is the holy day of congregational prayer, when business pauses; the law of the land is built upon Islamic law; the food is halal and pork is absent; and, on the local islands, alcohol is forbidden. The values of the faith, prayer, modesty, charity, fasting, and submission to God, run through everyday life, and the holy month of Ramadan, when the islands fast from dawn to dusk, is the great season of the year. The fine old mosques, some built of carved coral stone, are treasures of the nation.
Maldivian Islam, shaped by the long isolation of the scattered islands, has its own character, generally moderate in its older form, though more conservative currents have grown in recent times, and alongside the orthodox faith there has long lingered a world of older island belief, the fear of spirits and the folk practices and charms known as fandita, which the islanders blend with their Islam. For the visitor, the rules are clear: respect for Islam is essential, modest dress and behaviour are expected on the inhabited islands, and the practice of other religions in public by Maldivians is not permitted, though visitors keep their own faith privately.
Dhivehi and the Thaana script
One of the most distinctive treasures of the Maldives is its language, Dhivehi, the tongue of the Maldivian people, which is spoken nowhere else in the world and is a deep mark of the nation's identity. Dhivehi belongs to the Indo-Aryan family of languages and is most closely related to Sinhala, the language of nearby Sri Lanka, from which the early settlers came, but over many centuries of island isolation it grew into its own distinct tongue, gathering words from Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Tamil, Portuguese, English, and the other languages of the Indian Ocean traders who passed through the islands.
Dhivehi is written in its own remarkable script, called Thaana, which is unique to the Maldives and unlike any other writing in the world. Thaana is written from right to left, in the manner of Arabic, and its letters were cleverly built partly from Arabic numerals and partly from older local signs, a script developed several centuries ago, in part so that the sacred words and charms of the faith could be written with care. The flowing Thaana script is seen across the islands, on signs, in books, and in the beautiful calligraphy that adorns mosques and buildings, a proud and distinctive emblem of the nation.
The Maldivian people are themselves a blend, the descendants of settlers and traders from southern India and Sri Lanka, from Arabia, from East Africa, and from Southeast Asia, who met and mingled across the centuries on these ocean crossroads to make a distinctive island people, and their language, like their faces and their culture, carries the marks of all these meetings. English is now widely spoken, especially in the capital and the tourist trade, but Dhivehi remains the everyday language and the soul of the nation.
The resort and the local island
The modern Maldives lives in two worlds that sit side by side yet apart, and to understand the nation one must understand both. The first is the world of the local island, the inhabited islands where Maldivians live their ordinary lives, devout and traditional, where the call to prayer sounds, modest dress is the rule, alcohol is absent, and the close island community goes about its fishing, its faith, and its family life much as it has for generations. The second is the world of the resort, for the Maldives is one of the most famous luxury holiday destinations on earth, and scores of its islands have been given over entirely to resorts.
The resorts follow a way found in few other places: each is built on its own private island, one island, one resort, a self-contained paradise of overwater villas, white beaches, and turquoise lagoons, set apart from the inhabited islands, where the visitors from across the world enjoy the luxury, the diving, and the beauty of the reefs. On these resort islands the strict rules of the local islands are relaxed, so that alcohol is served and the dress is that of any beach resort, in a bubble kept apart from the daily life and faith of the Maldivian people. For many years most visitors saw only this resort world and never the real islands at all.
In more recent times a third way has grown, the guesthouse tourism of the local islands, which lets visitors stay among Maldivians and see their true life, within the bounds of local custom and modesty. The tourism, in all its forms, has transformed the Maldives, bringing great wealth and lifting the nation, while raising the delicate task of keeping the devout local culture and the tourist world in balance. For the visitor, the key is to know which world one is in, and to honour the customs of the local islands, modest dress and respect for the faith, when stepping beyond the resort.
Tuna, coconut, and the island plate
Maldivian food is the cooking of the ocean and the island, built for centuries on the three great gifts of the Maldivian world: fish, above all tuna, drawn in abundance from the surrounding sea; the coconut, which grows on every island and flavours much of the cooking; and rice, the staple grain, brought in by trade. From these, with chilli, lime, onion, and the spices of the Indian Ocean, the islanders make a cuisine that is simple, fresh, and full of flavour, close in spirit to the cooking of Sri Lanka and South India yet very much its own.
Tuna is the heart of the Maldivian table, eaten fresh, dried, and smoked, and the famous dried and smoked tuna, the Maldive fish, has been a treasure and an export of the islands for centuries. The classic Maldivian breakfast is mas huni, a delicious mix of shredded smoked tuna, grated coconut, onion, and chilli, eaten with the flat bread called roshi; the everyday fish soup is garudhiya, a clear, fragrant tuna broth served with rice, lime, and chilli; and grilled fish, fish curries, and the rich coconut cooking of the islands fill the table. Beloved of all are the hedhikaa, the array of savoury little short eats and snacks, among them the spicy fish cakes and fried morsels eaten with sweet tea.
The taking of tea with these short eats, in the island tea shops, is a cherished social custom of Maldivian life, a daily ritual of conversation and community. As a Muslim nation, the Maldives observes the rules of halal food and, on the inhabited islands, takes no alcohol, though a traditional palm toddy is known. The food is central to family life and to the warm hospitality of the islands. For a visitor, to taste the tuna and coconut of the Maldivian plate, the mas huni, the garudhiya, and the short eats with sweet tea, is to taste the true flavour of the islands beyond the resort.
The boom of the big drum
The most famous and beloved music of the Maldives is bodu beru, which means simply the big drum, the powerful, hypnotic drumming and dance that is the great traditional art of the islands and the very sound of Maldivian celebration. A bodu beru performance gathers a group of players, often a dozen or more, around the large drums made of coconut wood and skin, who begin with a slow beat and a chant and build, faster and faster, to a thundering, ecstatic climax, while dancers move to the rhythm, their movements echoing the work of the sea, and the whole gathering is swept up in the beat. The drumming carries the deep rhythms of East Africa, brought to the islands long ago, woven into the island culture.
Bodu beru is the heart of Maldivian festivity, played at weddings, celebrations, and gatherings across the islands, and now performed too for visitors as a window into the island spirit. Alongside it the Maldives keeps other traditional music and dance, among them a lively stick dance and a seated dance with clapping and song, and the islands have absorbed the music and films of the wider region, with the songs and movies of Bollywood much loved across the nation.
The Maldives is rich, too, in traditional crafts, the work of island artisans handed down through generations. Most famous is the fine lacquer work, in which wooden boxes, vases, and ornaments are turned and coated in bright lacquer in elegant patterns, an art especially associated with certain islands; alongside it stand the intricate carved coral stone and woodwork of the old mosques, the beautiful woven reed mats, the jewellery, and the building of the dhoni, the traditional boat that is the pride of Maldivian craft. Through the drumming, the dance, and the crafts runs the distinctive island culture of the Maldives.
The close world of the island
Maldivian society is built on the family and the close island community, the deepest of bonds in a nation of small, scattered, and often isolated islands where everyone knows everyone and life is shared. The family is the centre of Maldivian life, the extended family wide and strong, providing the support, the care, and the belonging that hold the islanders together, and unmarried adults, of either sex, commonly live in the family home until they marry. Respect for elders and for those of learning runs deep, taught from childhood, and the wishes of the old and the bonds of kin carry great weight.
The faith and the family together gather the islands at the great festivals, which in the Maldives are above all the festivals of Islam. The two Eids, the Eid that ends the fasting month of Ramadan and the Eid of the sacrifice, are the high points of the year, celebrated with prayer, feasting, new clothes, family visits, and, on the islands, with bodu beru drumming, games, and joyful gathering. The Prophet's birthday is marked, and alongside the religious festivals stand the national days, among them the National Day recalling a hero who freed the islands from foreign rule, Independence Day, and Republic Day, observed with parades and pride.
Maldivians are known as warm, friendly, and hospitable people, with a gentle, easy-going island manner and a cherished sense of calm and contentment. Greetings are warm, often the Islamic greeting of peace, and courtesy, modesty, and respect, especially toward elders, are valued. Dress is modest on the inhabited islands, in keeping with the faith, with women often covering the hair, though the resorts keep their own relaxed ways. For a visitor, the keys are to respect the faith and the modest customs of the local islands, to greet people warmly, to show respect to elders, and to receive the gentle island hospitality with grace.
The nation today
The Maldives today is a small island republic of about half a million people, scattered across twelve hundred coral islands in the Indian Ocean, governed from the crowded capital, Male, by a president, Mohamed Muizzu, who is both head of state and head of government, under a constitution that makes Islam the religion of the nation and every citizen a Muslim. The economy is one of the more prosperous in the region, lifted above all by the luxury tourism that draws visitors from across the world to the resort islands, and supported by the tuna fishing that has always fed the nation, though the wealth is unevenly shared, and the tiny, crowded capital strains under its numbers.
The nation faces challenges as deep as any on earth. Above all, as the lowest-lying country in the world, the Maldives stands on the front line of the rising seas, its very existence threatened by the warming climate, so that it has become a passionate global voice for action, even as it builds defences and raised islands and weighs its future. It works to balance its devout Islamic identity with the tourist world on which it depends; it has passed through years of political turbulence on its road to a young democracy; it manages its place between larger powers in the Indian Ocean; and it guards its fragile reefs and seas. These are the concerns of a small, beautiful, and vulnerable nation.
Through it all, the Maldives holds firmly to the identity that defines it. The scattered coral atolls and the surrounding sea still shape the life of a seafaring people; the deep and complete Islamic faith still anchors the nation; the Dhivehi tongue and the Thaana script still set the Maldives apart from all the world; the tuna and the coconut still grace the island plate; and the big drum still sounds the joy of the islands.