Boli

Cowry shells

Cowry

Cowry, also sometimes spelled cowrie, plural cowries, is the common name for a group of small to large sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the family Cypraeidae, the cowries...

 (Cypraea moneta), or boli, were the first known medium of exchange used in the Maldives

Maldives

The Maldives , , officially Republic of Maldives , also referred to as the Maldive Islands, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean formed by a double chain of twenty-six atolls oriented north-south off India's Lakshadweep islands, between Minicoy Island and...

. Various writers and travellers have in the past recorded the country’s trade in these money shells, which were used as a medium of exchange in parts of Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

. In the past, cowry were actually cultivated in the Maldives. When Moroccan

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

 traveler and historian 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...

 visited there in the 14th century, the Maldives was trading extensively with the money shells. The shells were also used to make ornaments. The country’s trade in cowry shells, which attracted the particular attention of the Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 in Ceylon, continued until the late 19th century, when it was used mostly as ballast

Sailing ballast

Ballast is used in sailboats to provide moment to resist the lateral forces on the sail. Insufficiently ballasted boats will tend to tip, or heel, excessively in high winds. Too much heel may result in the boat capsizing. If a sailing vessel should need to voyage without cargo then ballast of...

 for sailing vessels.

Dhigu laari

According to history, the first dhigu laari was struck in the Maldives, during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim III ibn Ghazi Muhammed (1585-1607), son of the hero Sultan Ghazi Muhammed Thakurufa'anu Akbar al-'Azam. Dhigu laari or larin, which owes its name to Lar, in the Persian Gulf

Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...

, where it was originally struck, was one of the standard currencies of the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

 in the late 16th century. The dhigu laari is actually a long piece of silver, about three inches in length, doubled over and stamped with the name of the sultan, in Arabic.

Loa laari

Loa laari or laari fothi ("circular coin") was first struck by Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar I (1648-1687). The first coins were of silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

 and fairly coarse. Later, coins of copper

Copper

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

 and lead

Lead

Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...

 were put in to circulation. Gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

 coins were also struck by Sultan Hassan Nooraddin (1779-1799). Said to be the finest struck at the Maldive mint, the two denominations of gold coins issued by Sultan Hassan Nooraddin, known as the mohori and bai mohori, were never put into circulation.

Today

The Maldivian unit of currency is the rufiyaa (ISO 4217

ISO 4217

ISO 4217 is a standard published by the International Standards Organization, which delineates currency designators, country codes , and references to minor units in three tables:* Table A.1 – Current currency & funds code list...

 code MVR, symbol Rf.), introduced in 1981. The rufiyaa is divided into 100 laari

Laari

Laari may refer to:* Maldivian laari, a coin denomination issued by the Maldives* Lari people , an ethnic group of the Republic of the Congo...

. On 1 February 2009, the exchange rate with the US dollar was USD1.00 = MVR12.80. On 10 April 2011, the Government announced a limited float of the currency within a band of 20% from the previous exchange rate of 12.80. Due to short supply of US Dollars, the official rate quoted by all banks as on 10 May stands as follows: Buy Rate USD 1.00 = MVR 14.42; Sell Rate USD 1.00 = MVR 15.42.

External links

• Currency in Circulation, Maldives Monetary Authority
• Exchange rate from Yahoo! Finance.