Sir A. Johnston's Letter relating to the preceding Inscription. 541t 



The Mohammedan traders still have estabhshments at Putlam, Colombo, 

 Barbareen, and Point de Galle, from whence they carry on an export and 

 import trade with the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel. A great many 

 of them possess small capitals, with which they also carry on a considerable 

 portion of the retail trade of the country, and rent from Government the 

 several duties which are annually farmed out by the different agents of 

 revenue. They are of the sect of Shafei. Their book of religious in- 

 struction is an abridgment of the Koran, called the Umbda, written in 

 Arabic by a learned man from Arabia who visited Ceylon about the 

 close of the twelfth century. The commentary on the Mohammedan 

 law which is most in use amongst them is called the Amali. The whole 

 of it is written in Arabic ; the text in the old Arabic of the Koran, and 

 the notes in modern Arabic. Their laws of marriage and inheritance are 

 a modification of the laws of marriage and inheritance which prevailed 

 amongst the Arabs, who were subject to the Caliph of Bagdad at the 

 time their ancestors emigrated from Arabia. Their maritime and commer- 

 cial laws bear a strong resemblance both to those maritime and commercial 

 laws which prevail amongst the Hindu maritime traders of India, and to 

 those which prevail amongst the Malay maritime traders of Malacca and 

 the eastern islands 



The conduct which they, as a body, invariably observed with respect to 

 the different measures which I adopted while I was Chief Justice and 

 President of His Majesty's Council on Ceylon, gave me a very favourable 

 opinion of their intellectual and moral character. In 1806, when I called 

 upon their chiefs and their priests to assist me in compiling for their use, as 

 I had done for that of each of the other classes of inhabitants in Ceylon, a 

 separate code of laws, founded upon their respective usages and customs, I 

 derived the most extensive and valuable information from their local expe- 

 rience. In 1807, when I consulted them as to the best mode of improving 

 the education of their countrymen, I found them not only anxious to co- 

 operate with me on the occasion, but willing to make, at their own expense, 

 the most liberal establishments in every part of the island, for instructing all 

 the children of the Mohammedan religion in such branches of science and 

 knowledge as I might think applicable to the peculiar state of society which 

 prevailed amongst tliem. In 1811, when I publicly assembled them to 

 explain the nature of the privilege of sitting upon juries, and of the 

 other privileges which I had obtained and secured for them under the 



