New coffee-table book unveils rich, little-known heritage of Sri Lanka’s Moor Community

Author Asiff Hussein , known for his extensive research on the culture and traditions of Sri Lanka’s Muslim communities, discusses his latest work.

The author of ‘A Ceylon Moor Pictorial with a Glimpse into the Moorish Life of Old,’ has set out to showcase the often-overlooked culture of Sri Lanka’s largest Muslim community, the Moors.

Speaking to The Island, Hussein explained the inspiration and scope behind his coffee table book, which offers a visual journey into the unique customs, attire, and culinary heritage of this long-established community.

By Ifham Nizam

“Moors have a very rich culture, but it remains largely unknown outside the community,” Hussein said. “Beyond the familiar dishes like biriyani, wattalappam, and falooda, the Moorish culinary heritage includes diverse foods from India, Persia, and the Arab world. These foods reflect the centuries of cultural exchange that have shaped our community.” His new book aims to broaden public awareness, capturing the community’s traditions and customs in 360 images that span family portraits, wedding ceremonies, traditional dress, and heirloom artifacts.

Excerpts of the interview:

Q: What inspired you to create a pictorial book about the Moor community of Sri Lanka?

A: That’s a good question. Little is it known that the Moors, who are the largest Muslim community of our island, have a very rich culture. However, it is not much known outside of the community, that is except in respect of food, which is shared with others, but even here only part of it is known, like biriyani, wattalappam and falooda, which need no introduction. There are, actually, many more rich rice dishes, desserts and beverages the Moors are heir to, and have originated from lands as far as India, Persia and the Arab World, showing the diverse cultural influences the community has been subject to over the course of a thousand years or so.

When I published my book Sarandib, an Ethnological study of the Muslims of Sri Lanka, now in its third edition, I included some photographs, but these were not many. Over time, during my excursions and sojourns in various parts of the island, where the Moors had established settlements long ago, I would at every given opportunity take photographs of various items, artefacts, dishes of various kinds of food and even old houses and flora and fauna believed to have been introduced here by the Arabian ancestors of the Moors long ago. Old Moor families shared their albums and heirlooms to take pictures of, and museum collections such as those housed in the Southeastern University were another important repository of our traditional culture which I took photographs of during my visits to the provinces. By the middle part of this year I had gathered a considerable collection.

Although I had initially planned to publish some of these in subsequent editions of my book Sarandib, over time, I conceived the idea of producing a coffee table book with a lot of visual content including old and rare monochrome photographs, colour photographs of more recent times, vintage maps, paintings and sketches that captured the life and culture of those times, supplemented by extracts from journals and travelogues, and my own field work and research findings that went into both the main text and captions.

Q: Can you elaborate on the significance of the 360 images included in the book?

A: Well, I must say it’s quite a collection and includes old photographs that capture the traditional life of the community such as weddings and circumcision ceremonies and individual and group photos from family albums that clearly depict how the Moor gentlemen and ladies of old were attired, more recent colour photographs of various cultural items, including food items prepared by the traditional families, articles of dress and jewellery from museum and heirloom collections, some interesting artefacts from heritage mosques, including an old hatchet buried under the old mihrab of the Maradana Mosque which must have had some ritual significance, and a very old tile, that goes back to Kandyan times, I discovered at the Bakinigahawela Mosque in Uva Province, not to mention extracts of Old Dutch registers, known as Tombos, which show what Moor names were like more than three hundred years ago and vintage maps showing old Moor settlements, such as a very old Dutch map I came across in the Old Town Hall of Colombo.

Besides these, the book contains old sketches including Moormen in Surattu Toppi which was the traditional headgear of the Moor gentleman before the Fez cap took its place, and old paintings such as of the Maradana Mosque which is shown standing besides a graveyard with the gravestones clearly seen, proving that it served as a burial ground for the faithful of old.

Q: What cultural traditions and unique practices of the Moor community do you hope readers will appreciate the most?

A: There are many such traditions and practices covered, including some which have gone out of usage and others which are little understood outside of the community. An interesting item I came across in the Maradana Grand Mosque was an iron hatchet that had been under the older Mosque and which I feel had some ritual significance, such as to ward off the Jinn who Islamic lore holds are beings created out of smokeless fire. Even Satan, known in Arabic as Shaitan, is one such being. Such jinns are said to be afraid of iron and one finds a similar belief in Sinhala culture where the Yakku or demons are likewise supposed to be scared of iron. Such practices are, however, no longer followed when erecting mosques.

Others are little understood, but need to be told so that we have greater understanding between our communities. One such is female circumcision, which has been falsely compared to the African practice of FGM by interested NGOS whereas what we practice here is a harmless procedure which may actually be beneficial if performed in the religiously prescribed manner of removing the redundant skin surrounding the clitoris, both for hygiene’s sake and a better sex life later in life. We never had any problem with it in the past and there’s no reason why it should be an issue now. So there’s a lot others need to understand about us and this book brings that out vividly.

Q: Why do you believe this book is important for Moor households and the wider public in Sri Lanka?

A: The Moors, as I said earlier, have a very rich culture. Sadly it is not much known outside the community. Unlike in other communities, there have been very few writers who have written about it in languages other than in Tamil. This is despite the fact that a good number of Muslims, in the Sinhala-majority areas, are literate and conversant in both Sinhala and English. In fact many Moors today speak these languages as their ‘home language’ like my family, but sadly these have not as yet been fully established as full-fledged literary languages of the community.

Another reason is, of course, the fact that many Moors have been traditionally business people and since their interaction with others was limited, they may have not thought it necessary to share those features of their culture other than food, which was, of course, much appreciated by others. That said, the situation has changed somewhat over the years and even prominent business families now feel a need to share and showcase their culture. In fact the sponsors of this book are one such family, the Hashim family of Malship fame.

So I think it’s quite important that Moorish culture be publicised in its full scope and range from the seemingly trivial to the more salient aspects so that others know, understand and appreciate us better as a cultured community. Here’s what one Tour Guide said after seeing a post about the book “I was immediately captivated by the intriguing history and culture of the Ceylon Moors. After receiving my own copy, my admiration for the community deepened, sparking an even greater sense of pride in the country I call home. As a tour guide constantly learning and discovering new facets of Sri Lanka’s diverse heritage, this book is a valuable addition to my collection. I believe this work belongs in every Moorish household and in the homes of anyone who appreciates the rich cultural tapestry that defines Sri Lanka”.

The members of the community also look upon it as a valuable contribution to preserving our traditional way of life and have told me so. In fact at a MyBiz event after I had made a presentation about the book, there was this lady who had been gifted a copy by a friend and had gone through it cover to cover and got up to tell the audience how important it was to have the book in their households, not the least because their children would come to know what their culture was really like in the good old days.

So yes, we have come a long way, and ours is a story worth telling in pictures that speak a thousand words.