Nobody knows for certain who the first inhabitants of the Maldives were, but archaeological and linguistic evidence points to waves of settlers arriving from southern India and from Ceylon (today's Sri Lanka) more than two thousand years ago. An early population of Dravidian roots, related to the Tamils, is thought to have settled the atolls, followed by Indo-Aryan migrations from the subcontinent and Ceylon that eventually shaped the national language, Dhivehi: the southernmost Indo-Aryan language in the world, a sister of Sinhala, written today in the Thaana script.
For many centuries, roughly from the 3rd century BC until 1153 AD, the Maldives was a Buddhist land. From that period, mounds known as hawitta or ustubu survive on many atolls: the ruined remains of Buddhist stupas and monasteries, along with coral sculptures depicting the Buddha and various bodhisattvas. In the 1980s the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl popularised the idea of an earlier people, mysterious sun worshippers he called the "Redin", but Maldivian historians pointed out that "redin" was simply the name Muslims used to remember the old "infidel" Buddhists, and his theory of contact with the Indus Valley civilisation was not accepted.
Controversies aside, those Buddhist islands were no forgotten corner: their position in the middle of the Indian Ocean very soon made them an essential stopover for sailors linking Arabia, Persia, India and Southeast Asia. Their waters were also the source of the cowrie, the small shell that for centuries served as currency from Africa to Bengal, and the kings of the atolls lived off that trade long before Islam arrived.
The year 1153 marks the great turning point in Maldivian history. According to tradition, the last Buddhist king, Dhovemi, converted to Islam and took the title and Muslim name of Sultan Muhammad al-Adil, founding a line of six dynasties that, over the centuries, brought together dozens of sultans and a few sultanas. With him, the whole archipelago embraced the new faith, which from then on would be the very heart of national identity: even today the Constitution requires all citizens to be Muslim.
Legend credits the conversion to a traveller who came from the sea, Abu al-Barakat Yusuf al-Barbari, remembered as a saint whose origins historians place either in the Maghreb (Morocco) or in East Africa. The popular tale weaves him into the myth of Rannamaari, a sea demon to whom the islanders had to hand over a young virgin every month. On the night of the sacrifice, Abu al-Barakat is said to have taken the girl's place and spent the hours reciting the Quran; the demon, unable to approach the holy word, never returned, and the king, convinced, converted to Islam.
Behind the lovely legend, Islamisation was also an uneven and sometimes violent process. A document on copper plates, the Dhanbidhoo Loamaafaanu, preserves the memory of the harsh suppression of Buddhism in the southern atoll of Haddhunmathi, which had been a major monastic centre: it describes monks taken to Malé and beheaded, and stupas and statues destroyed or mutilated. In 1343 and 1344 the famous Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta passed through the islands and even served as qadi (Islamic judge); his chronicles are one of the most vivid sources on the life, the cowrie economy and the customs of that early sultanate.
For centuries, the Sultanate of the Maldive Islands held its own as an independent trading state, ruled from Malé and organised into atolls that paid tribute in cowries, coconuts, dried fish and coir rope. That balance broke when Europeans reached the Indian Ocean. After settling in Goa and Ceylon, the Portuguese set their sights on the islands, and in 1558, following the killing of Sultan Ali VI, remembered as a martyr, they occupied Malé and imposed on the archipelago fifteen years of rule marked by plunder, the persecution of Muslims and attempts to impose Christianity.
Resistance to that occupation produced the greatest national hero of the Maldives: Muhammad Thakurufaanu, the son of a leading family from the island of Utheemu, in the northern atoll of Thiladhunmathi. Together with his brothers Ali and Hassan, and aboard a vessel called Kalhuoffummi, Thakurufaanu waged a night-time guerrilla war: he would land on occupied islands under cover of darkness, attack the Portuguese and put back out to sea before dawn. He also had the support of Malabar boats from the Indian coast.
Victory came on 1 July 1573, when his forces took Malé after killing the Portuguese governor, known in Maldivian chronicles as Andiri Andirin. Thakurufaanu ruled as sultan from 1573 to 1585, reorganised the army and laid the foundations of the regained independence. His feat is commemorated every year as Qaumee Dhuvas, the National Day of the Maldives, and his wooden palace in Utheemu is today one of the most revered places in the country.
After driving out the Portuguese, the sultanate kept its independence for almost three more centuries, though always in the shadow of the great Indian Ocean powers. The Dutch, masters of Ceylon, held some commercial influence, and when the British took the island from them in 1796, the Maldives fell into Britain's orbit. The relationship was formalised on 16 December 1887, when the sultan signed an agreement with the British governor of Ceylon that made the archipelago a protected state: the United Kingdom took charge of defence and foreign policy in exchange for an annual tribute, while the islands kept their internal government and Islamic institutions.
The 20th century brought deep changes. The first written Constitution was adopted in 1932, and in 1953 a short-lived first republic was proclaimed under Mohamed Amin Didi; it fell a few months later and gave way to the restoration of the sultanate. The British military presence was concentrated in the far south: during the Second World War the RAF air base was set up on the island of Gan, in Addu Atoll, and it remained in operation through the Cold War. That base also triggered an internal crisis: between 1959 and 1963 the southern atolls, which prospered on the jobs and trade generated by Gan, broke away and formed the short-lived United Suvadive Republic, led by Abdullah Afeef, until they were brought back under Malé's rule.
As part of British decolonisation, full independence came on 26 July 1965: the agreement was signed in Ceylon between Maldivian prime minister Ibrahim Nasir and the British Crown's representative, Sir Michael Walker. The United Kingdom, however, kept its lease on the Gan base until 1976. Every 26 July since then, the Maldives has celebrated its Independence Day.
Shortly after independence, a referendum abolished the sultanate for good, and on 11 November 1968 the second Republic of Maldives was proclaimed, with Ibrahim Nasir as its first president. Nasir modernised the state, moved the administration into the national language and promoted the budding tourism industry, but his government, increasingly authoritarian and contested, ended in 1978 with his retirement and exile to Singapore.
He was succeeded by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who would rule for thirty years, from 1978 to 2008, re-elected in six single-candidate referendums: the longest term in the country's history and one of the longest in Asia. Under Gayoom, the Maldives opened up to the world as a luxury tourist destination and raised its standard of living considerably, but it also consolidated a personalist regime, with the opposition suppressed and freedoms restricted. His government survived several coup attempts. The most serious came in November 1988, when a group of Tamil mercenaries from PLOTE, hired by Maldivian businessmen, came close to seizing Malé. The president asked India for help, and Rajiv Gandhi's government launched Operation Cactus, which put down the uprising within hours and sealed the close alliance between New Delhi and Malé for decades.
The end of the Gayoom era was preceded by two shocks. On 26 December 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami swept over the low-lying atolls, leaving dozens dead, flattening entire islands and displacing thousands of people, a reminder to the world of the country's extreme fragility in the face of the sea. At the same time a democratic movement was growing, led by activist Mohamed Nasheed and his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), which pushed for free elections from exile and from prison. Cornered, Gayoom agreed to reform the Constitution in 2008 and to call the first multi-party elections in Maldivian history.
In October and November 2008, the Maldives held its first multi-party presidential election. In the run-off, opposition candidate Mohamed Nasheed, a former political prisoner, defeated Gayoom with around 54 per cent of the vote and became the country's first democratically elected president. His rise to power after three decades of one-man rule raised huge expectations both inside and outside the islands, and Nasheed quickly became a global figure thanks to his campaign against climate change.
Maldivian democracy, however, proved as bright as it was unstable. On 7 February 2012, Nasheed resigned the presidency in murky circumstances, amid protests and a police mutiny; he and his party claimed he had been toppled in a disguised coup. In 2013 Abdulla Yameen, half-brother of the veteran Gayoom, came to power. His government drew closer to China under the Belt and Road Initiative and was accused of jailing political rivals, among them Nasheed himself, who was convicted on terrorism charges in 2015 before going into exile.
The pendulum kept swinging. In 2018 an opposition coalition led by Ibrahim Mohamed Solih defeated Yameen at the polls and pursued a policy of rapprochement with India. In 2023 the cycle turned again with the victory of Mohamed Muizzu, who leans closer to Beijing and championed the "India Out" slogan, reviving the geopolitical tension in which the Maldives is caught, contested between the two Asian giants. Behind these swings, the young Maldivian democracy is still looking for its balance.
On 3 October 1972 the Kurumba resort opened its doors, the first in the Maldives, built with coral stone walls, coconut wood and palm-thatched roofs by a group of young local entrepreneurs. That modest experiment launched the industry that would transform the country. It also gave birth to the formula that made the islands famous: "one island, one resort", which reserves each islet for a single luxury hotel, guaranteeing privacy and dreamy postcard views, and keeps visitors apart from the islands where Maldivians live. For decades, that exclusive model made the Maldives a byword for expensive honeymoons and turquoise water.
A legal change in 2009, which lifted the old ban on housing tourists on local islands, opened the destination up: hundreds of guesthouses sprang up on islands such as Maafushi, and for the first time backpackers, families and travellers on a tight budget could see the Maldives for a fraction of the price of a resort. Tourism became the absolute engine of the economy, alongside fishing, and today it supports the country's just over 380,000 citizens (more than half a million residents counting foreign workers).
That prosperity, however, rests on threatened ground. With an average elevation of barely 1.5 metres above sea level and a highest natural point of only 2.4 metres, the Maldives is the flattest and lowest-lying country in the world, and therefore the most exposed to the rising ocean: the IPCC has warned that, at the current rate, much of the archipelago could become uninhabitable by 2100. Aware of that fate, President Nasheed made his country the voice of island nations: on 17 October 2009, weeks before the Copenhagen climate summit, he led an underwater cabinet meeting (the ministers, in scuba gear, signed a call on the seabed to cut emissions), an image that went around the world. That diplomacy is backed by engineering responses such as the artificial, raised island of Hulhumalé, designed as a refuge from a sea that keeps on rising.
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Ari Atoll, one of the largest in the Maldives, stretches west of Malé and is split administratively in two: Alifu Alifu (North Ari) and Alifu Dhaalu (South Ari). Its outer reefs, thilas (underwater seamounts) and channels have made it one of the country's most sought-after diving destinations since the early days of tourism, and the classic base for safaris aboard liveaboard boats.
Private-island resorts sit alongside local islands that opened up to budget tourism after 2009, offering a more affordable gateway to some of the best waters in the Indian Ocean.
The south of the atoll is home to a natural rarity found nowhere else on the planet: the South Ari Marine Protected Area (SAMPA), designated in 2009 along some fourteen kilometres of reef between Maamigili and Dhigurah. It's home to the only known population of whale sharks that stay all year round. Unlike elsewhere in the world, these harmless giants (the largest fish in the ocean) don't migrate with the seasons here, so you can see them in any month of the year.
Dhigurah, "the long island", with almost three kilometres of sandbank and palm trees, is the hub for swimming with them, alongside the NGOs that study and protect them. It's one of the most sought-after experiences in the country and has turned this local island into a must-visit nature destination.
At the far north of the atoll, Thoddoo is a one-of-a-kind island. Besides having one of the best bikini beaches in the country (green, wide and quiet), it's famous for its farms. Its fertile soil made it one of the main growers of watermelons and papayas in the Maldives, supplying Malé and the resorts, which is an unusual bit of farming in a country of coral and sand.
Thoddoo is also a good base for snorkelling and diving with the manta rays that visit its reefs, and it gives travellers an unusual mix of countryside, beach and local life in the middle of the ocean.
Above all, Ari Atoll is a temple of diving. Legendary spots such as Maaya Thila, a seamount where reef sharks hunt at night, and Fish Head (Mushimasmingili), famous for its grey sharks and schools of fish, are among the best-known dives in the Indian Ocean. Add to these Moofushi and other reefs where manta rays and sharks gather.
All that marine life made the atoll the historic base for liveaboards, the dive boats that cover several sites in a single trip. Ari sums up the double appeal of the underwater Maldives: big pelagics you can count on and untouched coral reefs.
In 2011, UNESCO declared the whole of Baa Atoll, some 75 islands in the north-west of the country, a World Biosphere Reserve. The listing recognises the exceptional richness of its coral ecosystems and a model that tries to balance conservation with the lives of local people and tourism. Together with the southern atolls, it is the only reserve of its kind in the Maldives.
The international recognition put Baa at the centre of the country's marine conservation efforts, with strictly protected core zones and a management plan that involves the Ministry of Environment and scientific organisations such as the Manta Trust.
The heart of the reserve is Hanifaru Bay, a small bay on the eastern edge of the atoll that has become famous worldwide. Between May and November, when monsoon currents push huge masses of plankton into the bay, hundreds of manta rays come to feed in an underwater ballet that can bring together up to 250 at once, sometimes joined by whale sharks. It's the largest known manta gathering on the planet.
Hanifaru was declared a Marine Protected Area on 8 June 2009, and since then you can only go in with a snorkel and a guide. Scuba diving and fishing are banned, and the number of boats and visitors at any one time is limited so the animals aren't disturbed. In peak season, the scene is one of the great natural spectacles of the Indian Ocean.
Baa's success lies in the tricky balance between protecting and showing. Hanifaru's strict rules (caps on people and boats, limited hours, no touching the animals) aim to make sure wildlife-watching tourism doesn't destroy the very thing that draws visitors. Organisations such as the Manta Trust study and catalogue individual manta rays by their spots, providing valuable scientific data.
The atoll mixes luxury resorts with local islands, and it has become a reference case for how a country that depends on the sea can try to preserve it while living off it.
Beyond its marine fame, Baa is also an atoll with a long craft tradition. The island of Thulhaadhoo is known across the country for its liye laa jehun, the fine lacquer work on turned wood used to make bowls, boxes and ornaments, one of the most iconic crafts of the Maldives.
Other islands in the atoll keep alive the art of weaving feyli, the traditional Maldivian cloth. That cultural heritage, together with its natural heritage, makes Baa an atoll whose riches aren't only underwater.
At the country's northern tip, the historic Thiladhunmathi group is now split into the administrative atolls of Haa Alifu and Haa Dhaalu. Away from the busiest tourist circuits, it's a region of fishing and farming islands, with a strong identity and enormous weight in the nation's history.
It was from these northern waters, in the 16th century, that the men who would change the fate of the Maldives set out: this is where the resistance against the Portuguese occupation took shape.
The island of Utheemu, in Haa Alifu, is famous as the birthplace of Muhammad Thakurufaanu al-Auzam, the greatest hero in Maldivian history. From here, together with his brothers, he organised the night-time guerrilla war that ended on 1 July 1573 with the capture of Malé and the expulsion of the Portuguese, after fifteen years of occupation. Thakurufaanu then ruled as sultan from 1573 to 1585.
The heart of the island is the Utheemu Ganduvaru, the wooden house-palace where the hero lived: a traditional building with carved columns, period beds and courtyards, preserved as a museum and national monument. Every 1 July, the country celebrates Qaumee Dhuvas, National Day, in his memory, and Utheemu becomes a place of patriotic pilgrimage.
Beyond their symbolic value, the northern atolls keep the rhythm of the less touristy Maldives: tuna fishing, the historic backbone of the national economy, and island life rooted in its customs. New regional airports and a handful of guesthouses have started to bring travellers to this remote region.
Those who make it this far find a different side of the country: working islands rather than postcard ones, where Maldivian history and identity feel especially strong.
Laamu Atoll, historically known as Haddhunmathi, was one of the great centres of Maldivian Buddhism before 1153. Its islands are dotted with hawittas, the mounds that hide the remains of stupas and monasteries, and coral sculptures of the Buddha and various bodhisattvas have been found there, evidence of the rich religious life of the pre-Christian and pre-Islamic era.
Islands such as Isdhoo and Gan hold some of the most important archaeological remains in the country, which tell of a refined island civilisation connected to the great Buddhist centres of Sri Lanka and India.
Haddhunmathi is the source of one of the most precious written records in the Maldives: the Isdhoo Loamaafaanu, a set of engraved copper plates that ranks among the oldest surviving documents in the country. Alongside it is the Dhanbidhoo Loamaafaanu, which describes the harsh suppression of Buddhism in this same atoll after the conversion to Islam: monks taken to Malé and beheaded, stupas and statues destroyed.
These documents make Laamu a key place for understanding the great shift from Buddhism to Islam that shaped Maldivian identity, a chapter that was felt especially strongly here.
These days, Laamu is known for something unusual in a country of scattered islands: several of its islands, including Gan, Fonadhoo and Maandhoo, are linked by causeways and roads that form one of the longest continuous stretches of road in the Maldives, a small luxury on land in a nation made of sea.
With a few resorts, guesthouses and a regional airport, the atoll now combines this unique archaeological heritage with little-explored reefs and waves loved by surfers, in a region still off the main tourist routes.
Malé has been the heartbeat of the Maldives for centuries. Already a seat of power in the Buddhist era, it became the capital of the Islamic sultanate after the conversion of 1153, and from then on it was home to the sultans, the mosques and the trade of the archipelago. Its historic jewel is the Hukuru Miskiy, or Friday Mosque, built in 1658 from carved, interlocking blocks of coral stone, with coral columns and lacquered wooden panels. Today it is on UNESCO's tentative list for World Heritage status thanks to its unique coral-stone building technique.
Packed into barely six square kilometres, Malé is also one of the most densely populated cities in the world: a vertical maze of buildings, motorbikes and narrow streets where a huge share of the national population lives. The old fish market, the historic neighbourhoods and the bustle of the port sit alongside a modern skyline, and the city works as the gateway and logistics hub for the whole country.
Faced with an overcrowded Malé and the threat of the ocean, the Maldives took on one of the most ambitious engineering projects in the Indian Ocean: Hulhumalé, an entirely artificial island built up with sand fill since 1997 next to the international airport. Deliberately raised about two metres above sea level, higher than almost any natural island in the country, it was conceived as a "City of Hope", a planned urban refuge from the rising waters.
Today Hulhumalé has residential neighbourhoods, public beaches, cafés and budget hotels, and it is linked to Malé and the airport by the Sinamalé Bridge (the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge), opened in 2018. For travellers it is the natural stop for the first or last night of the trip; for the country, a large-scale trial of what life in the Maldives of the future could look like.
For decades, visiting the Maldives was a privilege reserved for those who could pay for a private-island resort. Everything changed in 2009, when the government repealed an old 1984 law that banned housing tourists on inhabited islands. The first to take advantage was Maafushi, a local island in South Malé Atoll (Kaafu): the first guesthouses designed for travellers popped up there, and with them the budget Maldives was born.
Today Maafushi is the most popular local island in the country, with dozens of places to stay, its "bikini beach" set aside for tourists (in a Muslim society where the rest of the beaches call for modest dress), and trips to sandbanks, snorkelling with turtles and outings to swim with sharks. Its success paved the way for more affordable tourism that now also thrives on nearby islands such as Gulhi, a quiet fishing village between Malé and Maafushi for those who want a budget option without the crowds.
In North Malé Atoll, the local island of Thulusdhoo has earned its place on the world surf map. Off its shore breaks Cokes, a powerful right-hander named after the old Coca-Cola factory on the island, and very close by is Chickens, another left famous among surfers. Between May and October, during the southwest monsoon, the waves of the central atolls draw surfers from all over the world.
Beyond the surf, Thulusdhoo keeps the rhythm of a lively local island, with guesthouses, nearby reefs for snorkelling and a laid-back atmosphere. Together with Maafushi, it embodies the new face of Maldivian tourism: affordable, in touch with people's everyday life and not shut away in the luxury of a resort.
South of Malé lies Vaavu Atoll (Felidhu), the least populated in the country, a handful of tiny islands in the middle of the ocean. Its gem for travellers is Fulidhoo, a minuscule local island with sandy streets and very few visitors, where life moves at the unhurried pace of a fishing village.
Its waters are famous for their wildlife: in the lagoon you can snorkel with rays, and at nightfall nurse sharks come up to the jetty in a show that has become a small ritual for the few tourists who make it this far. Vaavu offers, in miniature, the essence of the most authentic and least crowded Maldives.
Addu, also called Seenu, is the southernmost atoll in the Maldives, lying south of the Equatorial Channel, a domestic flight from Malé. Its horseshoe shape and its islands linked by causeways, which you can ride around by bike, set it apart from the rest of the country, and its main town, Hithadhoo, is the second-largest urban centre in the nation. Its distance from the capital gave the south a strong identity, with its own dialect and a firm sense of being different.
Its reefs, among the most pristine in the country, and its natural setting earned it a place, along with other islands, in the country's network of biosphere reserves. Today Addu is a destination that combines history, cycling between islands and top-class diving.
During the Second World War, the United Kingdom set up a Royal Air Force base on the island of Gan, in Addu, using the atoll's huge, sheltered lagoon as a strategic anchorage in the Indian Ocean. The base kept operating through the Cold War, and the UK held its lease until 1976, leaving a distinctive mark on the south: infrastructure, jobs and a special relationship with the British.
From those years, one of the country's most famous wrecks lies underwater: the British Loyalty, a British oil tanker torpedoed during the war that now rests in the lagoon, covered in coral and turned into a spectacular dive site. The relics of the old base and this wreck make Addu a rare historical tourism destination in the Maldives.
The prosperity brought by the Gan base fed a sense of grievance in the south towards the government in Malé. Between 1959 and 1963, the southern atolls (Addu, Huvadhoo and Fuvahmulah) broke away and proclaimed the United Suvadive Republic, led by Abdullah Afeef, in one of the most unusual episodes in modern Maldivian history.
The short-lived state, which even had its own flag and administration, was finally dissolved in 1963 and its islands brought back under the central government. The episode left a lasting mark on the south's memory and is still a matter of identity and debate in those atolls today.
Isolated in open ocean between the channels that separate Huvadhoo from Addu, Fuvahmulah is the country's only island-atoll: a single landmass, the third largest in the Maldives, just south of the equator. Its geography is unique. Instead of the usual lagoon, it has freshwater lakes such as Bandaara Kilhi and Dhadimagi Kilhi, pebble beaches and lush vegetation that earned it the nickname "the Galápagos of the Maldives".
In the Buddhist era, the island was an important religious centre, as shown by its Havitta, the remains of an ancient stupa in the Dhadimagu district. Today, though, it's famous for something else: the wildest diving in the country. Off its harbour gathers the largest known group of tiger sharks in the world, the result of an old local habit of dumping fish scraps there. They're spotted on the vast majority of dives all year round, along with thresher sharks and hammerheads.
Hardly anything that happened to Maldives happened on its own: these are the histories next door.
