News Desk
In a historic nod to a towering figure of Maldivian history, a new Dhivehi font inspired by the handwriting of former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was unveiled last night, marking a cultural milestone as the first typeface ever crafted from a president’s script.
Announced by The Maumoon Foundation and designed by Dhivehi Type, the font—making its debut at a special exhibition—captures the elegant strokes of Gayoom’s pen, a calligrapher’s touch honed during his formative years in Cairo.
At 87, the longest-serving leader in Asia’s past continues to leave an imprint, this time on the very letters of his nation’s language, stirring a blend of nostalgia and pride among Maldivians. The story of the man behind it, unfolds below.
History has its riders and its makers—those who drift with the tide and those who steer it. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the soft-spoken titan who ruled the Maldives for three decades, belongs unmistakably to the latter camp. From 1978 to 2008, his 30-year tenure—one of Asia’s longest—transformed a scattering of coral islands into a global name, a paradise of turquoise lagoons and a case study in quiet ambition. Yet today, at 87, his legacy lingers in a strange limbo: celebrated by some, neglected by many, and largely unwritten, as if the nation he built has turned the page without fully reading it—and deliberately ignored by whoever sits in the presidency.
Gayoom’s half-finished biography, A Man for All Islands, sits like a single volume in a series that may never be completed—a tantalizing fragment of a life that filled box files with achievements now gathering dust in forgotten corners of government ministries.
To disagree with him, to label him autocrat or relic, is perhaps forgivable; people are conditioned to forget and overlook his achievements in a nation with a short span of memory. But to forget him entirely? That is a loss the Maldives can ill afford.
A Scholar’s Roots
Long before he shaped a nation, Gayoom was shaping himself. Born in 1937 in Male’, he grew up in a Maldives that was more whisper than nation—a British protectorate with a faltering economy and a literacy rate hugging the floor.
His intellect, however, was restless. In the 1950s, he arrived at Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar University, where he quickly stood out as a student fluent in both Arabic and English, devouring books in each with a voracious appetite. Egypt, then a kingdom, was the intellectual capital of the East and later became a cauldron of ideas under Gamal Abdel Nasser. Gayoom, ever the inquisitive mind, immersed himself in this intellectual ferment—debating, organizing, and absorbing the fervor that would later shape his own quiet mindset.
As a student, he lived in Al-Darb Al-Ahmar, an elite enclave in royal Egypt, a labyrinth of history and culture immortalized in the novels of Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt’s Nobel laureate. There, amid the bustle of ancient streets, his social etiquette took shape, molding a personality both refined and resolute. Nearby, the Azbakeya Garden—a booklover’s paradise in royal Egypt—beckoned with its stalls of books, deepening his already fierce love of literature in Arabic and English.
At Al-Azhar, he sat in the front row of Dr. Muhammad Abu Zahra’s packed lecture hall, absorbing the scholar’s piercing insights into Islamic jurisprudence—lessons that would shape his deep understanding of the field, quietly steering his future scholarship.
He wasn’t alone in this crucible. Al-Azhar has long been a forge for leaders, and Gayoom joined a lineage of alumni who would rise to helm nations: Houari Boumédiène, Algeria’s second president, who led a post-colonial rebirth; Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia’s fourth president, a reformer draped in pluralism; Burhanuddin Rabbani, who navigated Afghanistan’s turbulent post-civil war years. And then Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the third president of the Maldives, carrying the same scholarly fire back to his homeland.
A Builder’s Beginnings
When he returned, an Islamic jurisprudence degree in in hand, Gayoom didn’t arrive as a firebrand but as a planner—a man who saw potential where others saw limits. In his last years in Cairo, when Dr. Hussein Mounis—the distinguished Egyptian historian, author, intellectual, and editor of Al Hilal magazine—asked what he intended to do in the Maldives upon his return, Gayoom’s response was revealing: teaching and nation-building, twin pillars of a vision already taking root.
True to his word, he first stepped into the classroom as a teacher—an intellectual philosopher type, igniting curiosity in his students with the same fervor he’d once absorbed in Cairo. From there, he climbed into bureaucracy, then foreign service, honing diplomacy and running a ministry with the steady hand of a craftsman.
By 1978, at 41, he assumed the presidency of a country of fishermen and a GDP that barely registered. Over the next 30 years, he would stitch it into something durable, something modern.
His achievements read like a checklist for nation-building. There was the typewriter initiative, a modest but revolutionary push to streamline communication and to revive a language that was on its deathbed. Literacy programs followed, built schools, sweeping the islands to educate a generation that had never known classrooms.
He balanced the economy—tourism became the golden goose, turning the Maldives into a byword for luxury—while investing in infrastructure that tied the archipelago together.
Social housing projects, based on sociological theories reminiscent of Averroes, brought dignity to the overlooked. And in primary schools, he introduced environmental studies when the world still treated climate as an afterthought—a prescient move for a nation perilously close to the rising sea.
Gayoom didn’t just build systems; he harmonized them. He restructured administration, creating a governance framework that synced a fragmented geography. He poured energy into the Dhivehi language, nurturing its development and preserving Maldivian history through a fledgling translation movement—limited, yes, but a lifeline for a culture at risk of being washed away. These were not flashy reforms but foundational ones, the kind that endure beneath the surface.
The Democracy Pivot
If Gayoom’s early decades were about construction, his final chapter was about transition—one that remains his most undercelebrated feat. By 2008, the Maldives stood at a crossroads: a growing clamor for multiparty democracy tested his grip on power.
He could have clung tighter, as others in his position had. Instead, he steered the nation toward it, overseeing a constitutional overhaul that ended his presidency but birthed a new political era. It was not messy, but imperfect, and—for Gayoom, personally costly; he lost the subsequent election to a former political prisoner, a demagogue. Yet that shift, scholars say, is a blueprint for transformation, a model of how autocracy can yield to pluralism without bloodshed. It’s a chapter that deserves seminars, not silence.
A Legacy Erased
So why does Gayoom’s name echo so faintly now? In the Maldives, history is a fragile thing, easily swept off by the tides of apathy or intent. Much of the literature chronicling his initiatives—reams of paper once stuffed into government archives—has vanished, deliberately erased, by successors eager to rewrite the narrative.
His literacy drives, his environmental foresight, his cultural stewardship—all are footnotes where they should be headlines. He spoke about ozone depletion and raised global awareness of the environmental dangers posed by rising sea levels. Yet, despite being a champion for the fragile environment of island nations, he remains largely uncelebrated in the West.
“A nation with little appetite for documentation is like that,” one former aide remarked, shrugging as if resignation were the only response.
For Maldivians who still hold on to the ideals of patriotism, Gayoom’s efforts serve as a reminder. President Muizzu, with his heavy focus on patriotic nationalism but little substance, should look back to those past years if he truly intends to nurture a genuine love for the nation. Gayoom was not just a leader who ruled, but one who shaped the nation—a man who transformed a speck into a symbol.
Critics, of course, have their say: his long reign bred accusations of authoritarianism, of stifling dissent to maintain control. Yet, unlike many leaders of developing nations, he handed over the presidency—and the nation itself—without the taint of major governance scandals or the violent coups that plagued other third-world states.
He kept foreign hands from meddling in domestic affairs, holding the line against external influence, while also staving off the shadows of terrorism and extremism that loomed over the region.
Fair enough—history rarely hands out spotless records. But to judge him fully, one must first unearth him, sift through the pages that time and neglect have buried.
The Unfinished Story
A Man for All Islands, published in 1998, stops short of the full arc. It captures the builder but not the relinquisher, the visionary but not the elder statesman who watched his creation evolve without him. There could be more volumes—should be, his admirers insist—chronicling the work that spanned decades, from the Cairo classrooms where he honed his mind to the atolls he lifted from obscurity, and the quiet resilience that followed.
Until then, Gayoom remains a half-told tale, a man whose legacy waits for a nation to reclaim it. In a world of fleeting attention, his story whispers a challenge: to remember, to document, to understand what was—and what might still be learned.
At 87, Gayoom’s journey is far from over. His life—a blend of scholar, teacher, calligrapher, diplomat, and leader—holds lessons yet to be shared. Here’s to wishing him many more years of health and service, that he may continue to inspire a Maldives still finding its way, a nation that might one day write him back into its heart with the pride he deserves.
Note: This article was originally in development for several months, beginning with a focus on Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and his social housing initiatives, viewed through the lens of Averroes (Ibn Rushd)’s sociological theories.
