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Message: <blockquote data-quote="emes" data-source="post: 7451371" data-attributes="member: 1822">only a small part of the book is put here, and well misinterpreted I guess. I am from Akurana and I know the history of Akurana a bit. Akurana was gifted by a Kandyan king to muslims for their support given to the sinhalese kings during foriegn invasion.And the Kandyan muslims (includes Akurana muslims) have enjoyed an excellent relationship with the Sinhalese and other communities since the Kandyan Kingdom. Till to date we havent had any ethnic problems in akurana or in kandy, even today the sinhalese and muslims live peacefully helping each other.Please refer an extract from an article in Daily News (<a href="http://www.dailynews.lk/2008/12/02/fea03.asp" target="_blank">http://www.dailynews.lk/2008/12/02/fea03.asp</a>)Incidentally, our relations with the Muslim world through those who came here, not as conquerors but as traders, got on excellently for nearly a thousand years until British times. Talking the Kandyan period, Lorna Devaraja in her essay, to which I referred last week, A study in Ethnic Harmony says, “Here we find two communities, aliens in race, religion and culture but considered equals in every respect, harmoniously co-existing in a mutually beneficial relationship.”What brought the two communities together was the persecution of the Muslims, first by the Portuguese and then by the Dutch. The Sinhala kings opened their frontiers to them and settled them in many villagers. Akurana and Gampola are two places where there are large Muslim communities today.It is incredible how they fitted into this caste-ridden, ‘godless’ society and occupied both high and low office in the royal household. They functioned as provincial governors (disavas) and Muhandirams in the administration, as ambassadors in the foreign service and as bodyguards to the king in the king’s palace. Their descendants still carry the name Muhandiramlage. King Senarat is reported to have built a mosque for them in Kandy and Buddhist temples helped and supported Muslim priests who lived in viharagamas.</blockquote>

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