Malabar District

The district Malabar is a former district in India. It existed until 1956 and was located on the Malabar coast in the northern part of present-day state of Kerala. The area of the district of Malabar included the present-day districts of Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram, most of the district of Palakkad, a smaller part of the district of Thrissur and located in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Lakshadweep. Administrative center was the town of Kozhikode ( Calicut ).

The Malabar district was created after Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore, in 1792 at the end of the Third Mysore War, ceded the northern part of the coast of Malabar to the British East India Company. 1799 was followed by the area of Wayanad ( Wynaad ). The British annexed the area as Malabar District in the Madras Presidency. After Indian independence, the borders of the South Indian states were redrawn in 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act in accordance with the language barriers. The district Malabar was doing merged together with the state of Travancore -Cochin to malayalamsprachigen state of Kerala. At the beginning of 1957, the District of Malabar was divided into the three districts of Kozhikode, Palakkad and Kannur. The district was created in 1969 from parts of Malappuram district Kozhikode and Palakkad, the Wayanad District was formed in 1980 from parts of Kozhikode and Kannur districts.

The archipelago of Lakshadweep (including the island of Minicoy ) was merged as part of the States Reorganisation Act, together with the adjacent amine divas to Union Territory Lakshadweep, amine divas and Minicoy, which bears the name of Lakshadweep since 1973.