Asia’s tiniest country scatters across ninety thousand sea kilometres
The Maldives—Republic of Maldives, once the Maldive Islands—is a South Asian archipelago in the Indian Ocean near the Arabian Sea’s southeastern edge, southwest of India and Sri Lanka. Only 298 square kilometres of land sprawl across roughly 90,000 square kilometres of ocean, strung through 26 atolls that straddle the equator.
Twenty-six atolls run across the equator from Ihavandhippolhu in the north to Addu in the south, some 750 kilometres off the Asian mainland. Ground level averages about 1.5 metres and the highest natural spot reaches only 2.4, so no nation sits lower. The 2022 census counted 515,132 people, second fewest in Asia, yet crowded enough to rank among the densest states. Malé, the capital, was long called the King’s Island because royal dynasties ruled from it.
The name may come from Sanskrit words for garland and island, while Maldivians call themselves Dhivehin and their country Dhivehi Raajje. In 1563 Garcia de Orta reported that locals said Nalediva, which he glossed as four islands in the Malabar tongue. Ibn Battuta used Mahal Dibiyat, a form still written on the state emblem’s scroll, and Ammianus Marcellinus recorded envoys from a people called Divi bringing gifts to the emperor Julian in 362.
Buddhism probably arrived in the third century BCE under Ashoka and held sway until the 12th century; a monastery at Kaashidhoo has been dated to between 205 and 560 CE. Nearly all surviving ruins are stupas and monasteries, since earlier homes of wood and palm fronds rotted away. King Dhovemi, the last Buddhist ruler, converted in 1153 or 1193 and took the name Sultan Muhammad al-Adil, founding six Islamic dynasties that lasted until 1932. Legend credits a Moroccan, Abu al-Barakat Yusuf al-Barbari, with ending sacrifices to a sea demon called Rannamaari.
Britain made the islands a protectorate in 1887; independence came in 1965 and a presidential republic in 1968. The country left the Commonwealth in October 2016 under threat of expulsion and rejoined on 1 February 2020. Tourism now outranks fishing, and incomes exceed those of other SAARC members.
Source: Maldives
