Arabic-Malayalam books attracts researchers

MALAPPURAM: Edathola Bhavanam, an ancient Muslim house near Kondotty, is a repository of rare Arabic-Malayalam and Arabic-Tamil books dating from 1700 to 1900. The house, built by Koolippilakkal Kunhimoidu — the ‘adhikari’ of the place during the period— in 1869, is attracting researchers of literature of the now non-existent Arabic-Malayalam.The 400 Arabic-Malayalam texts recovered from here by the researchers of the Moyinkutty Vaidyar Memorial Research Centre include the rarest like the first translation of Quran in Kerala.“The translation was done by Moyinkutty Elaya in 1871, but the first imprint was destroyed since the clergy strongly opposed the translation. Undaunted, the author distributed a second imprint to all major Muslim houses in Malabar. This is the only one we have been able to recover so far,” says Dr K K Mohammed Abdul Sathar, head of the History Department, Tirurangadi PSMO College, who has made extensive studies on lesser-known Arabic-Malayalam texts. A manuscript of Quran written in 1844 and an Arabic-Malayalam panchangam, which shows the cultural connection that existed between the communities during the time, are some other texts found from Edathola Bhavanam.