[Footnote 1:  The practice originated with the Portuguese, who applied to any unconverted native of India the term gentio, “idolator” or “barbarian.”]

[Footnote 2:  The Spanish word “Moro” and the Portuguese, “Mouro” may be traced either to the “Mauri,” the ancient people of Mauritania, now Morocco, or to the modern name of “Moghrib,” by which the inhabitants, the Moghribins, designate their country.]

Particular events have been assumed as marking the probable date of their first appearance in Ceylon.  Sir Alexander Johnston, on the authority of a tradition current amongst their descendants, says, that “the first Mahometans who settled there were driven from Arabia in the early part of the eighth century, and established themselves at Jaffna, Manaar, Koodramali, Putlam, Colombo, Barberyn, Point de Galle, and Trincomalie."[1] The Dutch authorities, on the other hand, hold that the Moors were Moslemin only by profession, that by birth they were descendants of a mean and detestable Malabar caste, who in remote times had been converted to Islam through intercourse with the Arabs of Bassora and the Red Sea; that they had frequented the coasts of India as seamen, and then infested them as pirates; and that their first appearance in Ceylon was not earlier than the century preceding the landing of the Portuguese.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Trans.  Roy.  Asiat.  Society, 1827, A.D. vol. i. 538.  The Moors, who were the informants of Sir Alexander Johnston, probably spoke on the equivocal authority of the Tohfut-ul-mujahideen, which is generally, but erroneously, described as a narrative of the settlement of the Mahometans in Malabar.  Its second chapter gives an account of “the manner in which the Mahometan religion was first propagated” there; and states that its earliest apostles were a Sheikh and his companions, who touched at Cranganore about 822 A.D., when on their journey as pilgrims to the sacred foot-print on Adam’s Peak. (ROWLANDSON, Orient.  Transl.  Fund, pp. 47. 55.) But the introduction of the new faith into this part of India was subsequent to the arrival of the Arabs themselves, who had long before formed establishments at numerous places on the coast.]

[Footnote 2:  VALENTYN, ch. xv. p. 214.]

The truth, however, is, that there were Arabs in Ceylon ages before the earliest date named in these conjectures[1]; they were known there as traders centuries before Mahomet was born, and such was their passion for enterprise, that at one and the same moment they were pursuing commerce in the Indian Ocean[2], and manning the galleys of Marc Antony in the fatal sea-fight at Actium.[3] The author of the Periplus found them in Ceylon about the first Christian century, Cosmas Indico-pleustes in the sixth; and they had become so numerous in China in the eighth, as to cause a tumult at Canton.[4] From the tenth till the fifteenth century, the Arabs, as merchants, were the undisputed masters of the East;