Muziris

Muziris

Muziris is an ancient sea port on the banks of the river Periyar on the Malabar Coast. The ancient name of this port was MuciriPattanam.

Muciri means, Cleft Palate and Pattanam means, city. In a flood of the river Periyar in 1341 CE, Muziris was destroyed and centre of commerce was shifted to other areas like Cochinand Calicut For long it was considered to be Kodungaloor

However, in 1983, a large hoard of Roman coins was found at a site around six miles from a place called Pattanam, North Paravur some distance away from Kodungaloor. Excavations carried out from 2004 to 2009 at Pattanam has revealed evidence that may point out the exact position of Muziris.

Pattanam is a small village, two km north of North Paravur and twenty-five km north of Kochi in Ernakulam District in the Chittattukara Panchayat the northern shore of Paravur thodu, a branch of Periyar River.

The archaeological excavations indicate that this village site could have been part of the ancient port city of Muziris, which is referred to by Greek-Latin and Indian classical sources as far back as 2000 years ago. It is now believed that the name Pattanam is the abbreviation of what was originally Musiripattanam, the local name of Muziris.Its mentioned as Murachipattanam in Valmiki's Ramayana.

The flood of the river Periyar in 1341 AD resulted in the splitting of the left branch of the river into two just before Aluva. The flood silted the right branch (known as River Changala) and the natural harbour at the mouth of the river, and resulted in the creation of a new harbour at Kochi. An island was formed with the name Vypinkara between Vypin to Munambam during the flood.

During this time there was the rise of theSamoothiri Rajas of Kozhikode. The town was nearly completely destroyed by the Portuguese (Suarez de Menezes) on September 1, 1504 in retaliation for the Samoothiri Raja's actions against them.

The trade relationship with foreign countries through Muziris paved way for the incoming of religions likeIslam , Judaism , and Christianity and hence the COSMOPOLITAN culture of Kerala.