Published on 30th July, 2017, in Mid-Day Many Muslims in Tamil Nadu call themselves Marakkayar, which means seamen, a word that is derived from the Arabic ‘markab’. They believe their ancestors were Arab sea merchants who took Tamil wives, or Tamil men who converted to Islam following contact with Arab merchants. They speak Tamil using loan words not only from Sanskrit but also from Arabic and Persian. Unlike Islam in the North that spread through […]