Kavvayi is a small island, near Payyannur in the Kannur district

Kannur district

Kannur District is one of the 14 districts in the state of Kerala, India. The town of Kannur is the district headquarters, and gives the district its name. The old name Cannanore is the anglicised form of the Malayalam name Kannur. Kannur District is bounded by Kasaragod District to the north and...

 of Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

 state in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. The island is connected to Payyannur by a small bridge on the Kavvayi River. This is a very scenic island. The population is mainly Muslim.

History

Kavvayi has been mentioned by name by significant global travelers, including Marco Polo

Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...

 1293AD, Ibn Battuta

Ibn Battuta

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta , or simply Ibn Battuta, also known as Shams ad–Din , was a Muslim Moroccan Berber explorer, known for his extensive travels published in the Rihla...

 1342AD and Abdul Fida 1273AD.

The island of Kavvayi was originally named Kavvil Pattanam, but renamed by Sir William Hogan, the then district collector

District collector

The District Collector is the district head of administration of the bureaucracy in a state of India. Though he/she is appointed and is under general supervision of the state government, he/she has to be a member of the elite IAS recruited by the Central Government...

 of the area. Kavvayi was the headquarters for an area of 125 square miles (323.7 km²) which housed a large port and the magistrate court, including during British East India Company

East India Company

The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

 rule. It declined after the headquarters were moved to other parts of Malabar

Malabar District

Malabar District was an administrative district of Madras Presidency in British India and independent India's Madras State. The British district included the present-day districts of Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram, Palakkad , and Chavakad Taluk of Thrissur District in the northern part of...

.

This island is famous for having a history of zamindars.

The lat Long of Kavvai is 12.0898 N and 75.1803 E

Geography

Kavvayi is surrounded by small islands called Kadappuram, which directly face the Arabian sea

Arabian Sea

The Arabian Sea is a region of the Indian Ocean bounded on the east by India, on the north by Pakistan and Iran, on the west by the Arabian Peninsula, on the south, approximately, by a line between Cape Guardafui in northeastern Somalia and Kanyakumari in India...

. Access to these small islands is only by small boats or traditional thonis. These islands are becoming smaller in size, and inhabitants have been moving to cities.