Malabar · Western Coastal Strip

People

Name	Years	Field	Known for
Zainuddin Makhdum II	c. 1532–1583	Scholarship and history	Taught at Ponnani and wrote Tuhfat al-Mujahidin, an Arabic account of this coast and of the Portuguese on it — one of the earliest histories of a part of India written by someone living in it.
Kunhali Marakkar IV	Died 1600	Naval command	The last of the Marakkar admirals who commanded the Zamorin's fleet against the Portuguese for most of the sixteenth century, using small fast craft against larger ships. Executed in 1600 after the alliance with the Zamorin broke down.
Qazi Muhammad of Kozhikode	c. 1548–1616	Poetry and religious scholarship	Composed the Muhyiddin Mala in 1607 — the earliest surviving work in Arabi-Malayalam, and the beginning of a written literature in a script that gave Malayalam a second readership.
Hermann Gundert	1814–1893	Lexicography and printing	A Basel Mission scholar at Illikkunnu near Thalassery who published the first Malayalam newspaper, Rajyasamacharam, in 1847, wrote an early Malayalam grammar, and compiled the Malayalam–English dictionary published in 1872 that later Malayalam lexicography is built on.
Keeleri Kunhikannan	1858–1939	Circus	A kalari teacher at Thalassery who opened the country's first circus training school in 1901, taking the body conditioning of kalaripayattu and applying it to acrobatics. Most of the Indian circus trade traced its performers back to this coast for the following century.
O. Chandu Menon	1847–1899	Literature	A magistrate in Malabar who wrote Indulekha in 1889 — the first substantial Malayalam novel, set in a matrilineal household and arguing about it from inside.
Moyinkutty Vaidyar	1852–1892	Poetry	The major poet of Mappila pattu, from Kondotty; his Badarul Munir–Husnul Jamal of 1872 is the form's best-known romance, and he is the reason Mappila verse is treated as literature rather than as folklore.
K. Kelappan	1889–1971	Public life	Born near Koyilandy; led the Guruvayur satyagraha for temple entry in 1931–32 and was a central figure in Kerala's temple-entry and social reform campaigns.
A. K. Gopalan	1904–1977	Politics	From Kannur; a teacher who became the first Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and the name attached to the earliest constitutional case on preventive detention in independent India.
S. K. Pottekkatt	1913–1982	Literature	Novelist and travel writer of Kozhikode, awarded the Jnanpith in 1980 for Oru Desathinte Katha, a novel that is essentially a biography of one street in his own city. His statue stands on that street.
Punathil Kunjabdulla	1940–2017	Literature	A doctor from Vadakara whose Smarakasilakal brought the interior life of a Mappila household into mainstream Malayalam fiction.
M. Mukundan	b. 1942	Literature	Born in Mahe; wrote the enclave into Malayalam literature in Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil, a novel of a French town inside Malabar and of what happened to it in 1954.
P. T. Usha	b. 1964	Athletics	From Payyoli in Kozhikode district; ran the 400 m hurdles final at the 1984 Olympics and finished fourth by one-hundredth of a second, and then built a training school on this coast that has produced a line of international athletes.

People from Malabar who shaped its history, arts, science, sport and public life. (13)