Over the years, many seafarers have visited the Maldives, some cast ashore by shipwreck. As a result, Maldives is referred by Indian, Arab, Chinese, and even Roman sources. Yet, few well-known foreign scholars have systematically studied the Maldives.Foreign scholars who did study Maldives include Ibn Battuta (1343), Francois Pyrard de (1602-1607), H.C. P. Bell (1879, 1920 and 1922) and Clarence Maloney, (1970s). Hogendorn and Johnson (1986) provided most details accounts of the role and relevance of the Maldives in cowrie trade.Local researchers include Naseema Mohamed (2002, 2005) and Mohamed Maniku (1986, 1998). It is difficult to identify during which period, the Maldives was inhabitedthe earliest mention of the Maldives is in ancient Buddhist writings in Sri Lankan texts. These texts refer to a group of exiles sent to the Maldives around the period 300 B.C. (Maloney, 2013).Maldivians were included in the group of envoys from South Asia visiting Roman Emperor. This suggests that Maldives may have been within the trade network of Roman expansion of monsoon trade in Indian Ocean in the first century (Pyrard and Bell as cited in Maloney, 2013).There is ample evidence from ‘Dhivehi’ words related to trade and maritime, suggesting that Maldives was well within the South Indian trade networks controlled by Tamils before the sixth century.Studies indicates at least one of the famous Chinese Ming naval expeditions reached the capital city Male’ during the fifteenth century (Ptak, 1987).