Maldives High Sea

The Maldives stretch across the Indian Ocean as a chain of low coral atolls. Cowrie shells and coir fibre were among the goods carried from the islands by sea; Bengal was a major market for the shells, which served as currency there and in other distant lands. In the fourteenth century the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta spent nine months in the archipelago as a judge, marrying into the ruling family before a dispute with its leaders brought his stay to an end.