Origin of Name
Jaffna is known in Tamil as Yalpanam and earlier known as Yalpanapattinam. The name also occurs on copper plates issued by Sethupathi kings of the same era. The suffix -pattinam indicates the place to have been a seaport town.
The origin of the name can be traced to a legend about the town’s etymology. A king (supposedly Ukkirasinghan) was visited by the blind Panan musician, who was an expert in vocal music and one skilled in the use of instrument called Yal. The king who was delighted to the music played with the Yal by the Panan, presented him a sandy plain. The Panan returned to India and introduced some members of his tribe as impecunious as himself to accompany to this land of promise, and it is surmised that their place of settlement was that part of the city which is known at present as Passaiyoor and Gurunagar. The Columbuthurai Commercial Harbor situated at Colombuthurai and the harbor known as ‘Aluppanthy’ situated previously at the Gurunagar area seem as its evidences.
Jaffna and surrounding region was part of the chiefdom of Naga Nadu mentioned in the 5th century AD Tamil epic Manimekalai and the Pali chronicle Mahavamsa as inhabited by tribal Naga people, surmised as one of the earliest tribes of Sri Lanka. They had according to scholars fully assimilated to Tamil language and culture by the 9th century AD or earlier.
South indian invasions
During the medieval times, the Kingdom of Aryacakravarti came into existence in the 13th Century as an ally to the Pandyan Empire in South India. When the Pandyan Empire became weak due to Muslim invasions, successive Aryacakravarti rulers made the Jaffna kingdom independent and a regional power to reckon with in Sri Lanka.Nallur a suburb of Jaffna served as the capital of the kingdom.
Politically, it was an expanding power in the 13th and 14th century with all regional kingdoms paying tribute to it. However, it met with simultaneous confrontations with the Vijayanagar empire that ruled from Vijayanagara, southern India, and a rebounding Kotte Kingdom from the southern Sri Lanka. This led to the kingdom becoming a vassal of the Vijyanagar Empire as well as briefly losing its independence under the Kotte kingdom from 1450 to 1467. The kingdom was re-established with the disintegration of Kotte kingdom and the fragmentation of Viyanagara Empire. It maintained very close commercial and political relationships with the Thanjavur Nayakar kingdom in southern India as well as the Kandyan and segments of the Kotte kingdom. This period saw the building of Hindu temples in the peninsula and a flourishing of literature, both in Tamil and Sanskrit.
The Portuguese
The Portuguese established Jaffna city in 1621 as their colonial administrative center. Prior to the military capitulation to the Portuguese Empire in 1619, the capital of the local Jaffna Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of the Aryacakravarti was Nallur, which is close to the city limits of Jaffna. The capital city was known in royal inscriptions and chronicles as Cinkainakar and in other sources as Yalpaanam in Tamil and Yapaapatuna in Sinhalese.
From 1590, Portuguese merchants and Catholic missionaries were active within the Jaffna kingdom. Impetus for a permanent fortified settlement happened only after 1619, when the expeditionary forces of the Portuguese Empire led by Filipe de Oliveira captured Cankili II, the last native king. De Oliveira moved the center of political and military control from Nallur to Jaffnapatao. Jaffnapatao was attacked number of times by A local rebel Migapulle Arachchi and his allied Thanjavur Nayakar expeditionary forces attacked Jaffnapatao a number of times, but the Portuguese defence of the city withstood the attacks. Jaffnapatao was a small town with a fort, a harbour, Catholic chapels, and government buildings. Portuguese merchants took over the lucrative trade of elephants from the interior and monopolised the import of goods from Colombo and India, disfranchising the local merchants. The Portuguese era was a time of population movement to the Vannimais in the south, religious change, and as well as the introduction to the city of European education and health care.
The Dutch
In 1658, Portuguese lost Jaffapatao to the Dutch East India Company (VOC) after a three-month siege. During the Dutch occupation, the city grew in population and size. The Dutch were more tolerant towards native mercantile and religious activities than the Portuguese had been. Most of the Hindu temples that the Portuguese had destroyed were rebuilt. A community of mixed Eurasian Dutch Burghers grew up. The Dutch rebuilt the fort and expanded it considerably. They also built Presbyterian churches and government buildings, most of which survived until the 1980s, but suffered damage or destruction during the subsequent civil war. During the Dutch period, Jaffna also became prominent as a trading town in locally grown agricultural products with the native merchants and farmers profiting as much as the VOC merchants.
The English
Great Britain took over the Dutch possessions in Sri Lanka from 1796.Britain maintained many of the Dutch mercantile, religious, and taxation policies. During the British colonial period, almost all the schools that eventually played role in the high literacy achievement of the Jaffna residents were built by missionaries belonging to American Ceylon Mission, Weslyan Methodist Mission, Saivite reformer Arumuka Navalar and others. Under British rule, Jaffna enjoyed a period of rapid growth and prosperity, as the British built the major roads and railway line connecting the city with Colombo, Kandy and the rest of the country. The prosperity of the city’s citizens enabled them to underwrite the building of temples and schools, and the library and museum.
Post-Independence
After Sri Lanka became independent in 1948 from Britain, the relationship between majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils worsened. Residents of Jaffna city along with the rest of Tamil population of Sri Lanka were in the fore front of the political mobilisation behind Tamil nationalist parties. After the Tamil conference incident in 1974, the then mayor of Jaffna Alfred Duraiappah was assassinated by the leader of rebel LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran in 1975.
the war
Following further deterioration of political discourse, the Jaffna library was burnt down in 1981 by Police and other miscreants. Failure of the political class to find an adequate compromise led to full-scale civil war starting in 1983 soon after the Black July pogrom. Sri Lankan military and police were using the Dutch era fort as their encampment which was surrounded by various Tamil militant groups. Bombardment from air and land of the city led to damage to civic and civilian properties, death and injury to civilians and destruction the economic potential of the city. In 1986, the Sri Lankan military withdrew from the city and it came under the full control of the LTTE.
In 1987, the Indian forces brought to Sri Lanka under the auspices of the Indo- Sri Lankan peace accord led an operation to take the city from the rebels. It led to incidents like the Jaffna University Helidrop and Jaffna hospital massacre in which patients and medical workers were killed by the Indian Army. After the departure of the Indians, the city came under the control of the LTTE once more, but they were ousted in 1995 after a 50-day siege. The economic embargo of the rebel controlled territories in general also had a negative impact in Jaffna including lack of power, critical medicines and food. Since the end of civil war in 2009, refugees have begun to return and visible reconstruction has taken place. The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora and business interests from Colombo have invested in commercial enterprises.
