The Zafiraminia (meaning "descendants of Ramini") were a group of Muslim settlers on the island of
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
. They appeared in Madagascar at least a century before the more well-known
Antemoro
The Antemoro (or Antaimoro) are an ethnic group of Madagascar living on the southeastern coast, mostly between Manakara and Farafangana. Numbering around 500,000, this ethnic group mostly traces its origins back to East African Bantu and Indon ...
; the two peoples' traditions are often not distinguished.
The leaders of the Zafiraminia claimed to descent from family lines that moved from
Mecca
Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow val ...
to
Mangalore
Mangalore (), officially known as Mangaluru, is a major port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats about west of Bangalore, the state capital, 20 km north of Karnataka– ...
and then to Madagascar. However some scholars believe their origin is more likely to have been in either
Sumatra or among the
Bugis
The Bugis people (pronounced ), also known as Buginese, are an ethnicity—the most numerous of the three major linguistic and ethnic groups of South Sulawesi (the others being Makassar and Toraja), in the south-western province of Sulawesi ...
of
Borneo
Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java Isl ...
. Other traditional accounts also support a Sumatran origin, as Ramini is apparently a medieval name for Sumatra. They are thought to have first come to Madagascar about the 13th century.
References
Islam in Madagascar
Ethnic groups in Madagascar
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