The history of Muslims in Monaragala district (Wellassa), Sri Lanka: an archaeological view

Abstract

Monaragala-also named Wellassa by its ancient residents- is one of the 25 administrative districts, located in South Eastern part of Sri Lanka. There are three major ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, among them the Buddhists are the predominant, constituting 94.5% of the district and the first minority is Tamils. Also the Muslims are the second lager minority in this district. There are discourses that the Muslims of Monaragala have got a longer history and their settlement in Wellassa held 500 years ago, but it is not brought proper evidences to prove their longer existence in this region. Therefore, the main objective of this paper as per the fulfilment of the abovementioned gap, is to explore the proper evidences existed in the same region-Monaragala with doing an analysis of archaeological antiquities such as older mosques, Shrines of holy saints, land deeds written by the Muslims in early times and daily home porcelains which preserved in mosque and some residences. Also it has been analysed in this paper some folktales and utterances which prevailed among the native residents to give in-depth explanations the archaeological antiquities. As a result, these are rightful evidences to prove the longer existence of the Muslims in Monaragala region when it investigated the antiquities seen in this region with the folktales and utterances prevailed among the residents. Thus, it is proved that the Muslims have been living since Portuguese time to date in the region of Wellassa.