Malabar Heritage Digital Archives

Malabar Heritage Digital Archives employs state-of-the-art technologies and professional
archival standards to ensure that endangered Arabi-Malayalam manuscripts, oldest collections of
Mappila songs, and recorded performances of Mappila performing arts are kept available for the
long-term to enhance scholarship, creativity, and the safeguarding of Malabar’s intangible cultural
heritage for future generations. A particular focus has been the repatriation of collections held in
archives abroad for access to scholars and institutions especially related to the Dutch
Ethnomusicologist Arnold Adriaan Bake (1926-1939).
The Virtual Archive is dedicated to creating greater awareness about the Mappila history, music,
oral & visual traditions of Malabar and create greater awareness about the oral and visual
traditions of Kerala. The digital archive is a repository of voluntarily deposited collections from
scholars and collectors who have recorded the memories of rich heritage documents personally.
The collections have all been meticulously documented, and are complemented by a superb
a library that includes books, journals, and dissertations relevant to the field of cultural landscapes
of Kerala in general, with a particular focus on Malabar.
We follow an active program of acquisition, cataloguing, preservation, and dissemination. Our
goals are to preserve, restore and promote the heritage of the Malabar region of Kerala, and in
particular its plethora of Arabi-Malayalam manuscripts, through conservation projects, cultural
promotion, and educational programs. A major part of our mission is bringing Malabar’s rich
heritage to a new generation as well as creating a globally accessible digital resource for the
scholars working on the cultural landscapes of Malabar.
Malabar is home to hundreds of monuments of historic, artistic, and architectural significance
dedicated to several faiths, in addition to several other non-religious monuments, such as forts,
palaces, caves, and irrigation systems, etc. Department of history recognizes the importance of
these endangered sources and has established a digital documentation and Archival Centre on
August 20, 2021, to document its severely threatened Mappila manuscripts and to consolidate the
research scholarship of eminent scholars working on the Malabar. Initially, by the digitization of
manuscripts and photographic documentation by scholars such as pictures and photographic
slides. A set of 100 photographic slides, Arabic and Arabi-Malayalam books, Mappila songs, and
Arabi-Malayalam manuscripts related to the Mappila Independence struggle in the 1920s had
been digitized. In addition to that, photographs of the Mamburam mosque, Tirurangadi valiya
Jumuath Palli, Malappuram Masjidh, Pookottur Gate, Hajur Kacheri, Muttichira Mosque, and
Mappila performing arts like kolkkali, Dhuffmuttu and Oppana, etc are also digitalized.