The full name of Maldives: The Republic of Maldives (formerly known as the Maldives Islands, changed to its current name in November 1968) is located in South Asia. It is an island country in the Indian Ocean and the largest coral island country in the world. It consists of more than 1,200 small coral islands, 202 of which are inhabited. From an aerial view, it looks like a string of pearls scattered on the Indian Ocean. With an area of ??298 square kilometers (not counting territorial waters), it is the smallest country in Asia. ?

The Maldives is 675 kilometers away from Sri Lanka in the northeast, and about 113 kilometers away from Minicoi Island in India in the north. The equatorial strait and the one-and-a-half-degree strait in the south of the Maldives are important maritime traffic routes.

On December 4, 2014, a fire broke out at the Malé desalination plant, causing some equipment to be damaged and the fresh water supply to the entire island to be interrupted. The Chinese government provided emergency cash assistance and drinking water to the Maldives. ?

On October 13, 2016, the Maldives Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement stating that the Maldives government decided to leave the Commonwealth. ?

On February 5, 2018, President Yameen of the Maldives officially issued an order to implement a 15-day state of emergency across the country starting from that day. ?

Extended information

Historical records indicate that the Maldives originated in the 12th century, but literary works and archeology have found that the history of the Maldives can be traced back to the pre-Islamic era. The Maldives was once a stopover for the great explorers who set out on their long voyages, long before the history of European navigation.

The first mention of the Maldives was in the writings of the second-century Greek astronomer, mathematician and geographer Ptolemy, in which he mentioned 1,378 small islands west of Sri Lanka, referring to It's the Maldives. Since then, many navigators have continued to mention the Maldives: Pappus Alexandria at the end of the 14th century mentioned the island of Taprobane and 1,370 adjacent islands. Scholasticus of Thebes, who sailed to the coast of Malabar in India, spoke of "a thousand islets and their treacherous conditions: for the magnet coast there would have caused the iron ships to run aground and sink."

Persian merchant Suleiman once crossed the Indian Ocean. He wrote: "There are nearly 1,900 islands in this ocean called Herkend. The ruler is a woman with incalculable wealth." He also followed Zheng He's expedition to East Africa in 1433. He confirmed in his coast survey that merchant ships came to the Maldives for trade and purchased ropes here. During the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese were very familiar with these islands and called them "mountains under water" (quicksand), and recorded the climate, geography, customs and customs here. ?

In the mid-14th century, the famous Arab traveler Ibn Battuta arrived in the Maldives and described the local customs and customs in detail. ?

Reference material Maldives (Maldives ***)_Baidu Encyclopedia?