Maritime Migration and Islamization of the Malay Diaspora to Madagascar

Abstract

This study reconstructs the historical and sociocultural trajectory of the Malay diaspora in Madagascar, examining their significant role in Islamization across the western Indian Ocean. Using a critical, diachronic historical method, comprising heuristics, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography. Findings show that the Malagasy population reflects a distinctive Afro-Asian synthesis, genetically most closely linked to South Kalimantan populations, particularly the Banjar and Ma'anyan peoples. Linguistically, Malagasy belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian family, retaining loanwords from Malay and Sanskrit absorbed through Javanese influence. The Malay diaspora also introduced wet-rice cultivation, rectangular house architecture, and outrigger canoe technology, all essential to the island's material culture and trans-oceanic mobility. In the religious sphere, Islam spread through the active involvement of Southeast Asian Muslim communities via trade, intermarriage, and education, evidenced notably by the Sorabe script, in which Malagasy was written using Arabic letters to preserve religious texts and genealogies