Beary

The Beary, also called Byari, are a Muslim trading community of the Tulu Nadu coast, centred on Mangalore and the ports of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi, and count among the oldest Muslim settlements in India, with a documented history of more than 950 years. Their name is said to come from the Tulu word byara, meaning trade.

Community tradition traces its faith to the Arab missionary Malik bin Deenar, who reached Malabar in the seventh century; his companion Habeeb bin Malik is credited with preaching in Tulu Nadu and building mosques at Kasaragod, Mangalore and Barkur.

Their speech, Beary, is an outlying dialect of Malayalam shaped by Tulu phonology and enriched with Persian and Arabic merchant loanwords, and it is written in both the Malayalam and Kannada scripts.