Bakeer Markar ancestry and Beruwala

Berberyn in honour of the North African

History has it that the Southern coastal town of Beruwala derives its name from Be- Ruwala which denotes that it was a port where Arab merchant vessels lowered (Be) their sails (Ruwala). Arabs called the place Berberyn in honour of the North African (Berber) traveller Abu Yusuf al-Barbari, who is believed to have introduced Islam to the Maldivians. The legendary Muslim traveller, Ibn Batuta credited for his extensive documentation of Sri Lanka in his travelling episodes, was also a Berber. 

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History has it that the Southern coastal town of Beruwala derives its name from Be- Ruwala which denotes that it was a port where Arab merchant vessels lowered (Be) their sails (Ruwala). Arabs called the place Berberyn in honour of the North African (Berber) traveller Abu Yusuf al-Barbari, who is believed to have introduced Islam to the Maldivians. The legendary Muslim traveller, Ibn Batuta credited for his extensive documentation of Sri Lanka in his travelling episodes, was also a Berber. 

Another pioneer Arab settler Sheikh Jamaludeen-al-Maghdoomi established his foothold in Beruwala- the first Muslim settlement of Sri Lanka. The ancestry of Bakeer Markars’ is traced to this Arab settler.

The family couldn’t have originated from a better place than the seaboard town of Beruwala, lying 56 km South of the capital Colombo; a settlement which speaks for a collective and a colourful Sri Lanka.

Masjidul Abrar Jumma Mosque

It is in Beruwala that the island’s oldest mosque- Masjidul Abrar Jumma Mosque, stands. The holy grounds are traced back to 920 AD, built by Arab merchants who first arrived in the island. It is through Beruwala once again that the Unani tradition of medicine found its way to Sri Lanka going back to the 10th century. The Bakeer Markar family descends from an illustrious line of these Unani physicians. Their ancestral home in Beruwala, revered by the community as ‘Hakeem Villa’ or the home of the physicians or abode of a sage in Arabic, is an enduring monument to the family’s healing touch.

The Islamic teachings of fairness

Men and women from far and across the seas would arrive on the shores of Beruwala in bagalas with boxes of diyahakuru and bondialuva in search of the famed physicians of Hakeem Villa. The home-made oils and concoctions would permeate a permanent therapeutic whiff.

The Holy Quran commands the faithful to "give full measure when you measure, and weight with a balance that is straight: That is better and fairer in the final determination." The Islamic teachings of fairness which the early Arab settlers of Beruwala were guided by, paired with homespun values of ethnic and cultural harmony have nurtured generations of Bakeer Markars’.