Maldives
The Maldives, or Maldive Islands,
officially the Republic of Maldives,
is an island nation consisting of a group of atolls and about seven hundred
kilometers south-west of Sri
Lanka in the Laccadive Sea of Indian Ocean.
The twenty-six atolls of Maldives
encompass a territory featuring 1,192 islets, of which two hundred and fifty
islands are inhabited.
The inhabitants were Buddhist, probably
since Ashoka's period,
in the 3rd century BC and possibly Hindu before that. Islam was introduced in
1153. The Maldives
then came under the influence of the Portuguese (1558) and the Dutch (1654)
seaborne empires. In 1887 it became a British protectorate. In 1965, the Maldives obtained independence from Britain (originally under the name "Maldive Islands"), and in 1968 the Sultanate
was replaced by a Republic.
The Maldives is the smallest Asian
country in terms of both population and area; it is the smallest predominantly Muslim
nation in the world. It is also the country with the lowest highest point in
the world.