54<0t Sir A. Jobnston's Letter relating to the preceding Inscription. 



adjoining provinces of Mossele, Mantotte, and Nannetan, which are now al- 

 most a desert, were then extremely populous and most highly cultivated. By 

 meansof their different establishments in the southern peninsula of India, they 

 introduced from thence into Ceylon, between six and seven hundred years 

 ago, the first body of cloth- weavers that ever was settled on that island.* By 

 means of the intercourse which they kept up, through the Persian Gulf and 

 Bussorah, with Bagdad and all the countries under that caliphat, on the one 

 side, and through the Arabian Gulf and Egypt, with all the Mohammedan 

 powers settled along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and of Spain on the 

 other side, they introduced from those countries into Ceylon many original 

 works in Arabic on Mohammedan law,t and many translations into Arabic 

 of the most valuable of the Greek and Roman classics, upon medicine, 

 science, and literature.t By means of the influence which they possessed 

 with the sovereigns of Ceylon, they obtained from them the important 

 privilege, that in the different ports in which they carried on their trade, 

 all commercial and maritime cases in which a Mohammedan merchant, 

 mariner, or vessel was concerned, should be tried at the port itself, without 

 delay or expense, by a tribunal which consisted of a certain number of 

 Mohammedan priests, merchants, and mariners, and which was bound to 

 proceed according to a maritime code of laws which universally prevailed 

 amongst the Asiatic Mohammedans. § 



The Portuguese, on their first arrival on Ceylon at the conclusion of the 

 fifteenth century, found that the Mohammedan traders still monopolized the 

 whole export and import trade of the island, and that they were, from their 

 commercial and political power in the country, the most formidable rivals 

 whom they had to encounter. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, 

 the trade and affluence of the Mohammedans on the island of Ceylon have 

 been gradually, though constantly, on the decHne ; owing, in some degree, 

 to the general decline of the trade and influence of the Mohammedan traders 

 in every part of India, but more particularly to the systems of policy which 

 have been respectively adopted by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the 

 English Governments of Ceylon, and to the great improvement which has 

 been made within the last three centuries in the science of navigation. 



The Mohammedan population on that island now consists of about 

 seventy thousand persons, who are distributed in every part of the country. 



* See Note (R). f See Note (S). See Note (T). § See Note (U). 



