History

Adhirampattinam is a town along the coast of Thanjavur. It was once a leading port in the maritime trade before the advance of the British and the Portuguese.

Adirampattinam has a strong arab connection which is present in some of the local practices and customes. Even the Tamil spoken in Adhirampattinam has a large number of words belonging to Arabic origin. There are historical evidences that Arab traders from Egypt and Yemen landed at the port of Korkai (the present Kayalpattinam) in the Pandia Kingdom of Tamilnadu way back in the year 1120 A.D.

Some of these traders came with their families while others married the local Tamil ladies. They primarily spoke Arabic. However, over the time the Arabic language of these people faded away giving rise to Arab-Tamil and finally integrated in to Tamil.

This community of Maraikkayars can be clearly distinguished from the rest of the tamil speaking muslim population(who were basically hidus converted to Islam). It has been revealed in the recent studies that the structure of the facial bone of the Maraikkayars closely resembled that of the people of Southern Arabia.

This community migrated to Kilakarai in Ramanathapuram District and Adirampattinam as it is evident from the socio cultural similarities of these three places. The first migrant from Kayalpattinam to Adirampattinam in A.D. 1180 was a wealthy Dhahla Maraikayar, who built the most ancient mosque in Adirampattinam named after him as Marica Pillai mosque which is now called as Al Masjidthul Aqsa.

The town has produced a lot of Islamic scholars eversince its evolution. Great ships and mariners navigated from its coast. Many eminent poets composed poems. Those were the golden era for the Adirites to boast. The glory of the town diminished when the Portuguese came to the Tamil nadu coast.