Beypore or Beypur is a ancient port town and part of Calicut municipal corporation in Kozhikode district

Kozhikode district

Kozhikode District , formerly Calicut, is a district of Kerala state, situated on the southwest coast of India. The city of Kozhikode, also known as Calicut, is the district headquarters. The district is 38.25% urbanised...

  in the state of Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. The place was formerly known as Vaypura / Vadaparappanad. Tippu Sultan named the town “Sultan Pattanam”.This place also has a marina and a beautiful beach. Beypore port is one of the oldest ports in Kerala from where trading was done to the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

. Beypore is also famous for building wooden ship, it is called Dhows or Urus in Malayalam language. These ships are usually bought by arab

Arab

Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

 merchants for trading, fishing and now used as tourist ships. According to Captain Iwata, founder member of the Association of Sumerian ships in Japan, Sumerian ships might have been built in Beypore. There are evidences to prove that Beypore had direct trade links with Mesopotamia and was a prominent link on the maritime silk route.

History

Beypore thronged first by Romans and afterwards by Chinese, Syrians, Arabs and in recent centuries by Europeans for trade. Beypore has long history of being a centre for shipbuilding since the first century AD, and it was further expanded under the East India Company during the early nineteenth century. The Indian Ocean trade started from ancient times and strengthened during the medieval times. While in the old days Malabar directly traded with the Greeks and Romans, it concentrated on exchanges with the Middle Eastern ports in the medieval times. This exchange of goods resulted also in transfer of people from their abodes. While it is mentioned that Malabari’s were found along African ports and even Egypt’s, it was mostly Arabs who migrated to the Malabar coasts, mainly to administer, control and conduct the trade with their brethren in Yemen, Basra and Egyptian ports. Beypore was virtually free port with only an export import duty imposed by the ruling Zamorins. The intermediaries between the Arabs and the Nairs were the Moplah’s (themselves a community started by the intermingling Arab men and local women from ancient times). Also the south east Malay ports sent ships to Malabar for the cloth from Kerala, until British cloth took its place later in the 19th century. It was also a stop over for Hajj pilgrims from south east Asia. The Arab settlers in Malabar even had African slaves during that period.

Beypore Port

Beypore port is a Sub-port of Calicut port and is situated approximately 10 Km south of Calicut. It is an estuarine port, where Beypore river discharges into the Arabian Sea. Beypore is 180 km North of Cochin and 391 km away from Trivandrum. Beypore port is the second biggest port in Kerala after Cochin and currently handles about 100,000 tones of cargo per annum. The nearest competing ports are Kochi and Mangalore.. It is currently handling 100,000 tones of cargo traffic and 7500 passengers per annum. Now the port has a depth of about 4 meters alongside wharf and approach channel and it is proposed to be developed in stages and utilities like storage shed, cranes and tugs are already installed. Beypore port is one of the oldest ports in Kerala from where trading was done to the Middle East.

Geography

Beypore is located at . It has an average elevation of 1 metre

Metre

The metre , symbol m, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units . Originally intended to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole , its definition has been periodically refined to reflect growing knowledge of metrology...

s (3 feet

Foot (unit of length)

A foot A foot A foot (plural: feet; abbreviation or symbol: ft or ′ (the prime symbol) is a unit of length in a number of different systems including Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman, English units, Imperial units, United States customary units and the units of many Continental European...

).

Travel Information

By road : Beypore is well connected by road and is just 11 km from Calicut.

By air : Calicut airport, is at Karipur and is 23 km from Calicut city centre

By rail : Kozhikode station 10 Kms apart and Feroke 4 Kms apart

Demographics

As of 2001 India census

Census

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

, Beypore had a population of 66,883. Males constitute 49% of the population and females 51%. Beypore has an average literacy rate of 81%, higher than the national average of 59.5%; with 50% of the males and 50% of females literate. 13% of the population is under 6 years of age.

Places of Attraction

Pulimuttu- Pulimuttu is the local name of the 1 km long bridge made of stone stretching in to sea. It is made by piling stones like a pathway to sea.
Beypore light house is situated at the south bank of chaliyar,