"The Mappillas and other South-Indian Muslims, whatever their date of first settlement, emerged from obscurity several centuries after the rise of Islam. Probably they originally inserted themselves in local society by a special Islamic institution which was particularly vigorous among certain tribes of South Arabia and is still in vogue to day among the Muslims of the Maldives and Calicut, and which was called m utca, a ‘temporary marriage’.22 By this means they may have ensured themselves of a spouse in the harbours which they frequented, and this was of extra importance in Malabar on account of the strong taboos on commensality which developed here among the Hindus. The women with whom such marriages were contracted were often, if not always, of low fishermen and mariner castes. Their offspring multiplied in the harbour towns and belonged to the mother, in conformity to the matriarchal custom of Malabar, but was raised in Sunni Islam."
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Wink A Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume 1 p 71ff
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mappila_Muslims
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Mappila Muslims
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