Malabar rites Malabar rites Malabar rites is a conventional term for certain customs or practices of the natives of South India, which the Jesuit missionaries allowed their Indian neophytes to retain after conversion but which were afterwards prohibited by Rome. They are not to be confused with the liturgical rite of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (a variant of the East Syriac Rite), for which see Syro-Malabar rite. The missions concerned are not those of the coast of southwestern India, to which the name Malabar coast properly belongs, but rather those of nearby "inner" South India, especially those of the former Hindu "kingdoms"
Malabar region moisture-laden Southwest monsoon rains. The Malabar Coast featured (and in some instances still does) a number of historic port cities. Notable among these were/are Naura, Vizhinjam, Muziris, Nelcynda, Beypore and Thundi (near Kadalundi) during ancient times, and Kozhikode (Calicut), Cochin in the medieval period, and have served as centers of the Indian Ocean trade for millennia. Because of their orientation to the sea and to maritime commerce, the coastal cities of Malabar are very cosmopolitan and have hosted some of the first groups of Christians (now known as Saint Thomas Christians), Jews (today called as Cochin Jews), and Muslims (at