49 Fun Facts About Maldives

The Maldives lies in which ocean?

Indian Ocean: the chain sits astride busy east-west shipping lanes, which is why far bigger powers compete for influence over so small a country.

Under Maldivian law, where are tourists allowed to drink alcohol?

On resort islands: in this officially Muslim country visitors cannot bring alcohol in or carry it off a resort, and drinking on an inhabited island can mean arrest and deportation.

Which line crosses the Maldives' island chain?

Equator: it is hot and humid here all year, so the seasons are told apart by the monsoon winds, one dry and one wet, and not by the temperature.

Of the roughly 1,200 islands in the Maldives, most are what?

Uninhabited: only about 200 have permanent residents, and the tourist resorts sit on separate islands of their own, away from local communities.

The Maldives holds which superlative among the world's countries?

Lowest-lying: most of its land lies less than a metre above the waves, so rising seas threaten the country's very existence.

The Maldives' islands sit on the tops of what?

Sunken volcanoes: the islands grew up on the crowns of an ancient volcanic range as it sank beneath the sea, which is why none of them has a hill to speak of.

By the 2010s the Maldives was home to the world's largest fleet of which kind of aircraft?

Seaplanes: most resorts occupy a small island of their own, so guests are flown out from the main airport and set down on the water beside their hotel.

The Maldives is the smallest country on which continent?

Asia: all its dry land adds up to only about 300 square kilometres, yet the islands are strung out along a chain more than 800 kilometres long.

In 2008 the Maldives' incoming leader planned a fund to buy what?

A new homeland: he called the fund an insurance policy, so that Maldivians forced out by rising seas would not end up as climate refugees living in tents.

Which geography word is English said to have borrowed from the language of the Maldives?

Atoll: most dictionaries trace it to the islanders' word for their ring-shaped reefs, and Charles Darwin's writings on how such reefs form made it a standard term.

The name Maldives is thought to derive from Sanskrit words meaning what?

Garland of islands: the likeliest root is the Sanskrit maladvipa, a name that fits because the islands trail across the sea in a long looping chain, like a necklace.

What is the official language of the Maldives?

It is an Indo-Aryan tongue closely related to Sinhala.

The modern Maldivian script, Thaana, is written in which direction?

Right to left: several of its letters were modelled on Arabic numerals and the script runs the same way as Arabic, though numbers within a line still run left to right.

Until its king converted to Islam in the 12th century, which religion did the Maldives follow?

Buddhism: the earliest known settlers were Buddhists, and tradition credits one visiting Muslim scholar with persuading the king, and with him the whole country, to change faith.

In Maldivian legend, a Muslim traveller converted the islands by ridding them of what?

A demon: it was said to demand a young girl each month until a Muslim traveller took her place and recited the Quran all night, after which the king converted.

Which Moroccan traveller served as chief judge in the Maldives and married into its royal family in the 1340s?

Ibn Battuta meant only to pass through but was plied with gifts to take the post, stayed about nine months, and quit amid feuds after failing to make the island women cover up.

For centuries, traders shipped what from the Maldives to be used as money as far away as Africa?

Cowrie shells: the islands supplied most of them, and the glossy little shells passed from hand to hand as small change in markets thousands of miles away.

The medieval Maldives was famous for exporting coir rope, which is made from what?

Dried coconut husk: its coarse fibre resists salt water, so Arab shipwrights used the rope to sew the planks of their vessels together in place of nails.

Which European power garrisoned the Maldives in 1558, only to be expelled about 15 years on?

Portugal: its soldiers had seized the capital by force, and it took a revolt by the islanders themselves, not a rival empire, to throw them out.

From 1887 to 1965 the Maldives had which status under Britain?

Protectorate: Britain took charge of defence and foreign affairs while the islands went on governing themselves at home, so colonial officials never ran daily life there.

In 2009 the Maldives pledged to become what within ten years?

Carbon-neutral: the country planned to switch entirely to renewable power, its president hoping that the nation with most to lose from rising seas could spur others to follow.

Before becoming a republic in 1968, the Maldives had been ruled for centuries by whom?

Sultans: the throne was scrapped for a republic in 1953, brought back within months, then abolished for good after a referendum in 1968.

The Maldives' first bridge between islands, opened in 2018, was paid for largely by which country?

China: a grant and a cheap loan from Beijing covered most of the bill, which is why the crossing from the capital opened as the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge.

How did Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's 30-year presidency end in 2008?

Election defeat: after six terms won in yes-or-no referendums with no rival on the ballot, he allowed a multiparty contest and was beaten in the run-off.

Which country airlifted troops to crush the 1988 coup attempt in the Maldives, in Operation Cactus?

India: paratroopers flew in within hours of the president's appeal and retook the capital that night, and the navy then ran down the ship on which the fleeing gunmen held hostages.

The gunmen who tried to overthrow the Maldives' government in 1988 were hired from which country?

Sri Lanka: a Maldivian businessman hired Tamil militants there, and they stormed the capital before dawn but never caught the president, who hid in a safe house until foreign paratroopers arrived.

Which co-founder of the Maldivian Democratic Party won the country's first multi-party presidential election?

Mohamed Nasheed: an activist jailed many times under the old regime, he beat the man who had once imprisoned him and then urged the country to move on without retribution.

To highlight climate change, where did the Maldives hold a world-first cabinet meeting in 2009?

Underwater: ministers in scuba gear sat at a table on the sea bed and used hand signals to approve a call for every country to cut its emissions.

Who was sworn in as the eighth President of the Maldives in November 2023?

Mohamed Muizzu: the former mayor of the capital had campaigned on sending home foreign troops based in the islands, and he asked for their withdrawal within days of winning.

The Maldives temporarily withdrew from which organisation in 2016, rejoining in 2020?

The Commonwealth: it had warned the islands they risked suspension for backsliding on democracy, so the government walked out, and its successor took the country back in.

In November 2025 the Maldives banned everyone born since 2007 from ever buying what?

Tobacco: the lifelong ban covers holidaymakers as well as locals, so a visitor born in 2007 or later cannot legally buy a cigarette anywhere in the country.

Which body's experts said tourism in the Maldives would never succeed?

The United Nations: its 1960s mission judged the islands unsuitable, yet the first resort opened in 1972 and holidaymakers became the backbone of the economy.

What is the traditional Maldivian boat called?

Dhoni: once driven by sail, many now carry engines, and they work as the islands' water taxis, ferrying visitors between the airport, the capital and nearby hotels.

The main international airport serving Malé sits on which neighbouring island?

Hulhulé: arriving passengers once had to cross to the capital by boat, until a road bridge opened in 2018 joined the two islands.

Which island near the capital was reclaimed from a lagoon in the early 1990s to serve as a rubbish dump?

Thilafushi: waste from the capital and the resorts arrives by boat, and so much has been buried there since 1992 that the rubbish itself has steadily enlarged the island.

What is the name of the Maldivian currency?

Rufiyaa: the name is a cousin of the rupee, both tracing back through Hindi to a Sanskrit word for wrought silver, and each rufiyaa divides into 100 laari.

Guinness World Records has listed the Maldives as the world leader in which social statistic?

Divorce rate: the official figures Guinness cites put it far ahead of any other country, and remarrying several times has long been unremarkable in the islands.

Under the Maldives' 2008 constitution, the president and every judge must follow which branch of Islam?

Sunni Islam: ministers and members of parliament face the same test, and the constitution goes further still by barring non-Muslims from becoming citizens at all.

Hulhumalé, the man-made island beside the capital, is built mostly of what?

Dredged sand: pumped from the seabed, it raised the new island about two metres above the sea, higher than the natural ones, to take the overflow from the crowded capital next door.

Bodu Beru is a Maldivian tradition of what?

Drumming and dance: its pounding rhythms are thought to have crossed the ocean with sailors from East Africa, one of several far-off cultures that left a mark on island life.

What are the colours of the Maldivian flag?

Green with a red border and white crescent: the flag began as a plain red banner, and the green panel and the crescent of Islam were added only in the twentieth century.

Which fish is the staple of Maldivian cooking, eaten fresh or dried?

Skipjack tuna: boiled and sun-dried, it becomes the 'Maldive fish' the country is known for, and in dried, frozen or canned form it makes up the bulk of the nation's exports.

Malé's 17th-century Hukuru Miskiy (Friday Mosque) is built from what material?

Coral stone: builders cut the blocks from the surrounding reefs and carved them with ornament so fine that conservationists call the craftsmanship unique to these islands.

Maldivian fishermen traditionally land their catch using which method?

Pole and line: crews hook the fish one at a time from the deck instead of netting whole shoals, and the old method has carried on even though much of the fleet is now motorised.

In which southernmost island group did Britain operate the RAF Gan airfield until 1976?

Addu: the Royal Navy secretly built a fleet anchorage there in 1941, code-named Port T, and the airfield later became the RAF's refuelling stop on the long route to the Far East.

An island in the Maldives stood in for the tropical planet Scarif in which 2016 film?

Rogue One: the crew filmed on location in the Maldives, while London's Canary Wharf tube station doubled as the inside of an Imperial base.

The 'Sea of Stars' that makes some Maldivian beaches sparkle blue at night is the work of what?

Glowing plankton: the display is usually put down to microscopic algae that flash blue when waves or footsteps jostle them, so the shoreline seems to mirror the night sky.

Why did the Maldives' first democratically elected president resign in February 2012?

A police mutiny: officers sided with crowds protesting at his arrest of a senior judge. He later said he had been forced out in a coup, but an official inquiry ruled he had gone voluntarily.

Roughly how many people live in the Maldives?

About 500,000: that is fewer people than many a single city, yet well over 100,000 of them cram into a capital covering only a couple of square kilometres.