Kottappuram Fort, or Kodungallur Fort?!

The Kodungallur Fort — now standing mostly in ruins on the northern bank of the backwater where the Chalakudy river and the Periyar meet, adjoining Kottappuram on the southern side of Kodungallur town — was a military installation built by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, at a location of considerable strategic importance.

This renowned fort, referred to in foreign records as "Cranganore Fort," has for some time now come to be called "Kottappuram Fort" instead! In government records and even as part of the Muziris Heritage Project, it is now known as Kottappuram Fort rather than Kodungallur Fort!

The name "Kottappuram" — literally "outside the fort" — originally referred to the area lying beyond the Vijayanthodu canal, which flows along the western edge of Kodungallur Fort. Once Sakthan Thampuran established a market at Kottappuram, the area's diminished significance began to grow once more, centered around this new marketplace. At the time, the partially destroyed fort itself served merely as a Dutch watch-post. Today, the name "Kottappuram" is used to refer to the entire stretch from Thiruvanchikulam — the ancient capital of the Perumals, adjoining Kodungallur town — southward to the edge of the backwater. As the local place-name became "Kottappuram," the very fort that had given rise to that name came, ironically, to be renamed "Kottappuram Fort" in turn! What began as the name for the land outside Kodungallur Fort ended up lending its own name back to the fort itself — an irony indeed!

The site where Kodungallur Fort stands, along with the surrounding area, is said to have been granted by the Kocheril Kon (the Kulasekhara temple authorities acting for the Perumal) to Knai Thomman, a prominent merchant. From that time onward, the area served as both settlement and marketplace for the Knanaya Christian community. It would not be wrong to assume that, even three centuries before Sakthan Thampuran established the Kottappuram market, an ancient marketplace controlled by the Knanaya community already existed at that very site. Because they lived in the southern part of Kodungallur, this community also came to be known by the epithet "Thekkumbhagar" (people of the southern side).

Our historical accounts and various websites commonly state that Kodungallur Fort was built by the Portuguese in AD 1523. However, in AD 1524, as part of the war between the Zamorin and Kochi, the Yemeni Moors allied with the Zamorin attacked Kodungallur town, looting and burning the trading centers and residences of the Jewish and Knanaya Christian communities there. The Jews fled for their lives to Mala, Chendamangalam, and Paravur, while the Knanaya community fled to Udayamperoor and Kaduthuruthy. It is clear, then, that they had to flee from the very location where the fort was later built — which proves that no fort existed at Kodungallur as late as AD 1524.

Mar Jacob was one of four bishops sent to Kerala in 1503 by Mar Elia, the Patriarch of Babylon, to lead the Syrian Christians of Kerala. Lamenting the losses suffered by Christians in the Moorish attack on Kodungallur, he wrote a letter to the King of Portugal in AD 1525 noting that, following the attack, local chieftains had seized the Christians' settlement, and suggesting that it would be well to build a fort there — both to ensure the pepper trade could proceed unhindered and to provide protection for the Christian community. If so, Kodungallur Fort was likely established some years after 1525.

While Mar Jacob, who sought Portuguese support for the protection of Kerala's Syrian Christians, passed away in 1552, it fell to Mar Abraham — a bishop who arrived afterward from eastern Syria — to take up the mission of freeing the Syrian Christians from Portuguese religious dominance. Another turn of historical fate!