Al-Maldīv

The Indian Ocean archipelago where Ibn Battuta was stranded after his shipwreck and where he served as chief qadi for approximately eighteen months. His account of the Maldives is one of the earliest and most detailed descriptions of the islands: their economy of dried fish and coconut products, their matrilineal social customs (unusual for a Muslim society), their recent conversion to Islam, and the legal disputes that kept him busy as their judge. He was both attracted by the beauty of the islands and frustrated by what he saw as inadequate Islamic observance — eventually leaving after his attempts to enforce stricter Islamic standards of dress and practice created friction with the local population, an unusually candid admission of the limits of his authority.

As understood in the classical tradition of Ibn Battuta and the scholars of his school.