Southeast Asian Islam and Southern China in the Second Half of the 14thCentury

Geoff Wade

Southeast Asian Islam and Southern China in the Second Half of the 14thCentury

Geoff Wade

Introduction

Islam came to the polities and societies of Southeast Asia by sea, along the girdle of trade which extended from the Arab and Persian worlds through the ports of South Asia, to Southeast Asia and onwards to the southern extensions of the Chinese world in the East China Sea. Islamic in fl uences extended into Southeast Asia from both ends of this trade route in different periods. In examining such in fl uences, the extension of Islam into Southeast Asia prior to 1500 can be divided into three major stages:

1) The period from the emergence of Islam until the Cõla invasions of Southeast Asia in the 11thcentury;

2) The end of the 11thcentury until the 13thcentury;

3) The 14thand 15thcenturies, following the establishment of the first Islamic Southeast Asian polities in the 13thcentury.

The present article will focus attention on the early part of the third period,speci fi cally the second half of the 14thcentury, in order to demonstrate how key were events of this period in the Islamisation of Southeast Asia.［1］

There is little doubt that the earliest introduction of Islam to Southeast Asia was by Muslim merchants who travelled along the maritime routes which, for at least a millennium earlier, had connected the two ends of the Eurasian continent. The foundation of the urban centre of Baghdād in 762C.E. –with Basra as its outlet to the Arabian Sea—was a major impetus in the transformation of trade and the development of commerce between the Persian Gulf and East Asia.［2］The importance of this early maritime vector is still evident today, as it is in maritime Southeast Asia rather than the mainland where reside the major Muslim communities. The speci fi c activities of the early Persian and Arab traders［3］in Southeast Asia are poorly documented, but we can glean some knowledge of them from accounts written in the destination ports in southern China. In the 8thcentury, for example, Ibn Khurdādhbih recorded the trade ports at the furthest distance from the Arab world as L ū q ū n (likely Loukin, situated in what is today Vietnam), Khānfū (Guangzhou/Canton), Khānjū (Quanzhou), with Qānsū (Yangzhou) marking the end of their maritime route. In the middle of the same century (758/59 C.E.), following the An Lu-shan rebellion, the major Chinese port of Guangzhou was sacked by persons from “Da-shi,” the name which Chinese chroniclers assigned to the Arab world.［4］By a century later, there was evidence in the same city of a quite large Islamic community. Suleimān, who visited Guangzhou in 851, noted that the city had a Muslim community governing itself according to the sharía under a kādī, whose appointment had to be con fi rmed by the Chinese authorities. It is likely that this was the port from which the Arab/Indian ship wrecked off Belitung island in about 826 CE and carrying cargo possibly bound for Western Asia had sailed.［5］That the foreign community in Guangzhou was quite large in the 9thcentury is affirmed by Ab ū Zaid, who reported that some 120,000 Muslims, Jews, Christians and Parsees were killed when the city was taken in 878/79 by Huang Chao, a rebel against the ruling Tang dynasty.［6］There is evidence, also from Chinese texts, that Muslim communities had appeared by this period in the ports of Sumatra and of Champa.

Islam between China and Southeast Asia from the 11thto the 13thcenturies

It was in the fi rst half of the 11thcentury that disruptions to the trade route connecting the two ends of Eurasia resulted from the attacks on and possiblycapture of the major peninsular and Sumatran ports in maritime Southeast Asia by C ō la forces. This period also saw a major shift in the region’s maritime trade, with the Fujian port of Quanzhou eclipsing the former trade centre of Guangzhou. Quanzhou quickly became the site of mosques［7］and Tamil temples, as the maritime merchants from lands extending all the way to Asia Minor brought trade products to China and took Chinese products on their return journeys. It is clear that Champa was a major staging post on these voyages, and that Muslim traders led Champa “tribute” missions into China throughout the 10thand 11thcenturies. That the Islamic communities of coastal China and Southeast Asia were still intimately tied during the 12thcentury is apparent from a comment by al-Idrīsī (1100-65) who stated that when China was convulsed by troubles, the (Muslim) merchants would descend to the harbours of a place they called Zābaj.［8］

Half way around the globe, in and around the Red Sea, the 12thand 13thcenturies saw Yemeni ports developing their links with regions to the East under the aegis of the Ayyūbid (1171-1250) in Egypt and subsequently the local Rasulid dynasty (1228-1454). This revitalized the luxury and spice trades with India and with ports further east, providing increased avenues for Muslims to travel to and interact with people from the Southeast Asian realm, as well as further reasons for Southeast Asians and Chinese to travel to the major Islamic centres in the Middle East.

Quanzhou thus became the end port for the long journey from the Arab and Persian lands, as well as a key port for those Muslims trading from Southeast Asia. From the sources we have available, more than half of the foreign trade into Quanzhou appears to have been controlled by Muslims in this period. By the 13thcentury, when the Mongols ruled over China, it seems that Quanzhou was being administered almost as a Muslim polity, funded through its trade with Southeast Asia and beyond. The boom in maritime trade during the 12thand 13thcenturies underwrote Islamic power in Quanzhou, and in this process a fi gure known as Pu Shou-geng and his family members were major players.

Islamic links between Quanzhou and Brunei during this period areevidenced by material remains. A grave of a Song dynasty of fi cial surnamed Pu and likely from Quanzhou has been found in Brunei. Dated to the equivalent of 1264 C.E., it is the earliest Chinese-script gravestone in Southeast Asia as well as one of the earliest Muslim gravestones.［9］The Pu clan was a major element in the story of Islam in the maritime realm which connected Southeast Asia and South China. One account suggests that an unnamed Pu ancestor had originally come to Guangzhou from somewhere in the Arab world and had been appointed as the head-man of the foreign quarter in that city, eventually becoming the richest man in the entire region. Another version suggests that this person was a noble from Champa which, as noted above, does not preclude him from having been an Arab. Could he have been a descendant of the Pu Luo-e who led his family members to Hainan from Champa in 986 following political disturbance in that place? The fact remains that during the 12thcentury a person “surnamed” Pu, a Muslim, was one of the richest men in the city of Guangzhou, and behind whose residence stood a giant “stupa,”unlike Buddhist ones. This was likely the minaret of the Huai-sheng-si, the famous mosque of Guangzhou. The wealth of the family, however, declined,and the son of the Guangzhou foreign head-man, named Pu Kai-zong (蒲開宗),removed the family to Quanzhou［10］as that port rose to dominate the trade with Southeast Asia and beyond. It was his son, Pu Shou-geng (蒲壽庚) who was to become famed in the histories of Quanzhou, Chinese Islam and maritime trade with Southeast Asia.［11］Reputedly for his assistance in suppressing pirates in the region of Quanzhou, Pu Shou-geng was rewarded by the Song court in 1274 with the position of Maritime Trade Supervisor of the port. All maritime trade through Quanzhou was subject to his control, and as this was the major port of the entire polity, the opportunities for gain would have been enormous. He and his brother also operated many ships on their own account. Pu Shou-geng was subsequently appointed to even higher of fi ce with a provincial post, only a few years before the Yuan armies crushed the Southern Song capital at Hangzhou and the Song dynasty came to an end.［12］

Even before they took Hangzhou in 1276, the Yuan generals had recognised the power of Pu Shou-geng and his brother in south-eastern China and hadsent envoys to invite them to side with the Yuan. The Pu brothers knew where their future lay, and they gave their allegiance to the incoming Mongols. The importance of this to the Yuan was enormous, as it provided the Mongols a local regime with access to the sea, something which the Mongols had never commanded. Their new ally subsequently massacred the Song imperial clansmen who resided in Quanzhou, showing his allegiance to the Mongols.The Yuan rulers richly rewarded those who had assisted them and Pu Shougeng was appointed as the Grand Commander of Fu-jian and Guang-dong, and subsequently as a vice minister of the Fu-jian administration. Pu was tasked with assisting the Mongols in both promoting maritime trade and providing ships and personnel for some of the Mongol invasions of overseas polities.It is not surprising that the first countries to respond to Pu Shou-geng’s invitation to resume trade were Champa in Southeast Asia and Ma’abar, on the subcontinent’s Coromandel Coast -- both major trading polities with large Muslim populations. One of the latest reports we have of Pu Shou-geng, dating from 1281, notes that he had been ordered by the Yuan emperor to build 200 ocean-going ships, or which 50 had been fi nished.

The arrival of the Yuan forces in southern China in the 1270s and the violence which accompanied that arrival had apparently spurred some Muslims to leave Chinese ports and, as in the past, fl ee south. Li Tana has examined the Vietnamese annals on this point and found reference to Muslim refugees from China arriving in the Vietnamese polity in 1274.［13］This date fits well with fl ight prior to the last-ditch Song defence of Yangzhou during the Yuan attack on that city in 1275. Yangzhou was a very cosmopolitan city and it would not have been surprising if some of the residents there – Muslim and other-- would have opted for safer climes to the south prior to the attack.［14］

At approximately the same time, in the Southeast Asian archipelago,we begin to see evidence for the emergence of Muslim rulers. An Islamic gravestone is reported for one Sultān Sulaimān bin Abd Allāh bin al-Basīr of Lamreh dated 608 AH (1211 CE).［15］It remains controversial, but if con fi rmed this will be the first evidence of a Muslim ruler in the Nusantaran world.Separately, in the account of his return journey by sea from China, Marco Poloreported in the 1290s that the Sumatran city of Pĕrlak/Ferlec was Muslim,［16］but neighbouring urban centres named Basman and Samara were not. The latter polity was more than likely Samudera, where a gravestone of the reputed fi rst Islamic ruler of that polity --Sultān Malik al-Sālih – dated 696 AH (1297 CE) has been found.［17］In the 1280s, two envoys came to the Yuan court from Samudera (Su-mu-da), and they bore patently Islamic names— Hasan and Sulaimān. These phenomena manifest a new age in the relationship between Islam and Southeast Asia, with rulers of polities taking on the new religion. That the emergence of these Islamic polities was linked with the rise and expansion of the Mam lū ks (1250-1517) in Egypt is suggested by the adoption by Samuderan sultans of the title Al-Malik al-Zahir, an apparent commemoration of the Mam lū k Sultān al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Dīn Baybars al-Bundukdārī (1260–77) of Egypt and Syria, who had defeated the seventh Crusade sent by Louis IX, as well as the Mongol forces at Ayn Ja lū t in Palestine in 1260. The indigenous tradition relating to these earliest Islamic polities in Sumatra was later recorded, somewhat anachronistically, in Hikayat Raja-raja Pasai.［18］

The Quanzhou Violence and Flight to Nusantara

Why Islamic polities should have emerged in northern Sumatra in the 13thcentury remains an enigma. It is obvious that Muslim traders had been passing and stopping at these port-polities for centuries before this. It is likely that the rise of Islamic states in Sumatra was linked with the decline of the Cō la dynasty in southern India, the collapse of that country into war and the end of the integrated regional economy which incorporated the northern Sumatran polities. With the rise of the more domestically-oriented Vijayanagara in southern India, the linkages of the Hindu-Buddhist polities of Sumatra with the subcontinent would have declined, as would have the Tamil guilds,the resultant lacuna likely providing new avenues for religious conversion.Moreover, the ports of the Malabar Coast continued to be meeting places andcommercial marts for traders from Yemen, Southeast Asia and China. The expansion of Islamic trading networks, and some have suggested Su fi guilds,along these maritime trade routes appears to have thus burgeoned.

From the 14thcentury we see growing evidence of the expansion of Islam in Southeast Asia. In Sumatra (or al-Jāwa as he referred to it), Ibn Batt ū ta recorded what he, or his informants, observed when passing through the port-polity of Samudra in 1345 and 1346. He noted that the ruler—one Sultān Al-Malik Al-Zāhir—was “a Shāfiī in madhhab and a lover of jurists”who “often fights against and raids the infidels.” It was further noted that“the people of his country are Shāfī who are eager to fight infidels and readily go on campaign with him. They dominate the neighbouring infidels who pay jizya to have peace.”［19］Through the account provided, we see a polity whose ruler was engaged in frequent jihad, who sent missions to Delhi and to Zaitūn/Quanzhou, and who, at home, was surrounded by wazīrs, secretaries, sharifs, jurists, poets, and army commanders, and who obviously had close links with Islamic societies to the west, and direct sea links with Quilon. The Shāfiī school which the sultan followed has remained important throughout Indonesia and in the coastal areas of India. We should not, however, consider this to have been simply a Middle Eastern society or ruling structure transplanted to Southeast Asia. It has been remarked that Ibn Battūta likely concentrated excessively on the cosmopolitan Arab/Iranian aspects of the court, and ignored the Indic and local elements unfamiliar to him. Certainly, the batu Aceh of the period re fl ect a strong indigenous element to the culture of the polity.［20］

Ibn Batt ū ta then visited Mul Jāwa, the “country of the in fi dels,” which is accepted to mean that Islam had not gained any real foothold in the island of Java by the mid-14thcentury. The only other major stop on the voyage to China,was Tawālisī, which has never been de fi nitively identi fi ed. The long-standing importance of Champa as a stop on the Islamic trade route to China, however,makes it the leading candidate. This supposition is supported by Yamamoto Tatsuro’s equation of Kailū karī, the name of the largest city in Tawālisī according to Ibn Bat tū ta, with the Cham name Klaung Garai.［21］

The West Asian links with Champa are manifested in the princess whom Ibn Battuta met in Tawālisī, who spoke to him in Turkish, who was literate in Arabic, and who wrote out the bismillāh in the presence of the visitor. Ibn Batt ūta, however, considered the polity to be outside Islam. This may well be a manifestation of the diversities of Islam within 14th-century Southeast Asia. He then travelled on to China, where Ibn Bat tū ta noted the option of staying with Muslim merchants resident there, and that in Zaitun/Quanzhou, the “Muslims live in a separate city.” There he met Muslims from Isfahān and Tabrīz. It thus appears that, for Ibn Batt ū ta in the mid-14thcentury, the areas extending between the Islamic polity at Samudera and the Muslim communities on the Fujian coast remained outside Islam.

Events which occurred in Southern China not long after the visit of Ibn Batt ū ta appear, however, to have had major effects on Islamization in Southeast Asia. As noted, the port of Quanzhou was controlled by Muslims during this period, the Mongol Yuan rulers including them within the semu［22］group of Central Asian and Middle Eastern of fi cials who exercised Yuan power over the Chinese inhabitants. The two major groups competing for power over the city and its foreign trade were the locally-born Islamic families, including that of Pu Shou-geng, and the newly-arrived Isfahān group of Persians who had come to the area with the Yuan armies. In the 1350s, a descendant of Pu Shou-geng,named Na-wu-na, controlled the local Maritime Trade Supervisorate for the Yuan court, while the Persians were represented by two persons -- Sai-fu-ding and A-mi-li-ding -- both holding military positions as brigade commanders.At a time when the Yuan was in steep decline, and when rebellions against the Yuan administration were occurring widely throughout China, it is not surprising that the tensions in Quanzhou also spilled over. The standard Yuan History tells us: “In the spring of the 17thyear of the Zhi-zheng reign (1357),the local brigade commanders Sai-fu-ding and A-mi-li-ding rebelled and took control of Quanzhou.” This so-called Isfahān (亦思巴奚 )［23］rebellion was to last for 10 years. It is possible that the prominent merchant Sharaf al-Dīn of Tabrīz, whom Ibn Bat tū ta met in Quanzhou and of whom he noted that he had borrowed money in India, was the same “Sai-fu-ding” who is mentioned in theYuan text.［24］

By 1362, the forces of Sai-fu-ding controlled much of the area around the provincial capital Fuzhou, but were then defeated by Yuan forces and fl ed back to Quanzhou, where it is reported that both Sai-fu-ding and A-mi-li-ding were killed by the Maritime Trade Supervisor Na-wu-na, a descendant of Pu Shou-geng. It has been suggested that the members of the Pu Shougeng clan were Sunni, while the Işfahān forces were Shi’ite. This intra-Islamic struggle in Quanzhou also quickly involved Mongol forces of the Yuan and the Chinese themselves who felt that they had been maltreated under Yuan rule. The breakdown of dynastic order gave an opportunity to a more powerful contender for regional power -- Chen You-ding, a former Yuan general. With the assistance of Jin Ji, a general of Persian origin,Chen eliminated Na-wu-na and then began methodically murdering Sunni followers, as well as destroying Sunni graves, mosques and residences. It appears that initially the purge was directed at Sunni followers, but that it later expanded into a broader anti-Islamic campaign, with the depredations lasting for almost a decade after Chen You-ding captured Quanzhou. Those who escaped the purge either fled into the mountains or set sail. This flight of Muslims by sea from Quanzhou and elsewhere in Fu-jian into Southeast Asia in the 1360s was to greatly stimulate the development of Islam in the Southeast Asian region.

In the 1370s, not much more than a decade after the purges and massacres began in Fu-jian, Muslim tombs began to appear in Java. Most of these were devoted to elite figures apparently intimately involved with the administration of the Majapahit state. The first of the Islamic gravestones(maesan), which are found at Trowulan and Trayala near ancient Majapahit,has an inscription dated to Śaka 1298 (equivalent to 1376 CE) and the dates of subsequent gravestones extend into the third quarter of the 15thcentury.［25］They are inscribed with the Śaka year in ancient Javanese script on one side of the stone, and with pious Islamic inscriptions in Arabic on the other. Given what we know of the situation in Quanzhou in the 1360s and the links already established between Champa and Quanzhou in this period, the existence ofthe tomb of Puteri Cempa (the Campa princess) in Trowulan［26］, dated to 1448 C.E., underlines the likelihood that these graves belong to Muslims who fled the conflagrations in southern China in the 1360s, and were then engaged in various capacities by the Majapahit court, maintaining links with both Champa and the southern Chinese ports. The sudden appearance of a group of Muslims, intimately tied to the Javanese administration is otherwise dif fi cult to explain. It is possible that this Puteri Cěmpa was Haji Ma Hong Fu’s wife,whom Parlindungan’s “Annals of Semarang and Cirebon” tell us, “had passed away and was buried in Majapahit according to Islamic rites” in or just before 1449.［27］Earlier references in these Annals tell us that Haji Ma Hong Fu, who had his origins in Yunnan, had been married to the daughter of Haji Bong Tak Keng, who had been appointed by the Ming commander Zheng He as a representative to Champa.［28］Separately, at Surabaya, the Pěcat tanda, that is,the “head of the market” at Terung was also a Chinese person employed as an of fi cial by the Majapahit court, and it was he who protected the young Muslim who had come from Champa and who would later become Raden Rahmat.［29］

While Damais and others believe that the persons interred in the graves at Trowulan and Trayala were Javanese［30］, the possibility should also be considered that these were persons from abroad who had given their allegiance to the Majapahit polity. Nascent polities on Java also suggest new arrivals during this period. Demak (淡巴) on the northern Javanese coast first appeared in the Chinese historical record in 1377［31］, and is also recorded as having sent“tribute” to the Ming court in 1394. The founding or expansion of this pesisir polity by refugees in the 1360s or 1370s also conforms to all that we know of it. In addition, Javanese texts record Muslim leaders coming to Java from Champa, and settling in the three most important early centres of Islamic propaganda –Surabaya (Ngampel), Gresik (Giri) and Cerbon (Gunung Jati).By the early 15thcentury, with the arrival of further observers on the ships of Zheng He, we read that Gresik had over 1,000 “Chinese” families, likely including the Muslim people of diverse ethnic origins who had fled from Fujian.

Ma Huan, a Muslim who accompanied Zheng He on several voyages,included Java in his fi rst-hand descriptions, later published under the title Yingyai sheng-lan (or “Supreme Survey of the Ocean Shores”). Of Java, which he visited on the 1413-15 mission, he noted:

Thе соuntrу соntаins thrее сlаssеs оf реrsоns. Onе сlаss соnsists оf thе Мuslim［32］реорlе; thеу аrе аll реорlе frоm еvеrу fоrеign kingdоm in thе Wеst whо hаvе fl оwеd tо this рlасе аs mеrсhаnts; аnd in аll mаttеrs оf drеssing аnd еаting, thеу аrе аll vеrу сlеаn. Onе сlаss соnsists оf T’аng реорlе,［33］аnd thеу аrе аll реорlе frоm Guаngdоng аnd frоm Zhаngzhоu аnd Quаnzhоu аnd suсh рlасеs, whо fl еd аwау аnd nоw livе in this соuntrу; thе fооd оf thеsе реорlе, tоо,is сhоiсе аnd сlеаn; аnd mаnу оf thеm fоllоw thе Мuslim rеligiоn, fоllоwing thе рrесерts аnd fаsting. Onе сlаss соnsists оf thе lосаl реорlе; thеу hаvе vеrу uglу аnd strаngе арреаrаnсе, tоuslеd hаir, аnd gо in bаrе fееt. Thеу аrе dеvоtеd tо dеvil wоrshiр, this соuntrу bеing аmоng thе ‘dеvil соuntriеs’ sроkеn оf in Вuddhist bооks. Thе fооd whiсh thеsе реорlе еаt is vеrу dirtу аnd bаd.［34］

Two major points emerge from Ma Huan’s account. The first is that by the early part of the 15thcentury, there were already quite a large number of Muslims, both Chinese and those from further west, resident in Tuban, Gresik,Surabaya and Majapahit on the northern coast of Java, but that the “local people” had not adopted the religion. The second is that many of the Chinese Muslims in Java had “ fl ed” from China, endorsing the thesis that they had fl ed the repercussions of the “Isfahān rebellion” in Quanzhou.

The likelihood that the earliest Javanese mosques were modelled on Chinese forms has been suggested by De Graaf and Pigeaud, citing the similarity of the top ornament (mastaka) of the mosques and the pinnacles of Chinese stupas and pagodas. They note: “It could be expected that the first mosques in Java built by Chinese Muslims were imitations of Chinese pagodas.In their homeland in China or Indo-China pagodas were erected and used by various religions. This supposition is corroborated by the Malay Annals’ story about the cooperation of the Chinese shipbuilders of S ě marang in the building of the first mosque of Dě mak.” They also note the absence, in the earliest Javanese mosques, of the surambi, or front gallery, found in later mosques, and also suggest this as having originated in Chinese architecture.［35］

Evidence from Sumatra also supports the argument for a flight of hybrid Persian-Arab-Cham-Chinese Muslims out of southern China into maritime Southeast Asia during the 1360s. Recent archaeological surveys and excavations in Barus reveal that the earliest Islamic tombstone found there dates from 772 AH/1370 CE［36］, which fits excellently with the chronology proposed above. The name of the woman buried beneath the tombstone – Suy –may be Chinese, while the inscription itself contains Persian grammar and Arabic terms. Thus, the 1360s likely saw the return of an Islamic community to Barus following the driving out of the earlier community in the 11thcentury by the C ō las.

Brunei’s adoption of Islam in this period is reflected in the gravestone of a 14th-century Sultān, named “Mahārājā Brunī”, found in the Residency cemetery in Bandar Seri Begawan. Links between that community and China are indicated by the fact that the gravestone was certainly manufactured in Quanzhou and transported to Brunei, as it is almost identical to those carved in China and, like them, is also made of diabase and inscribed completely in Arabic. In Terengganu, a stone inscribed in Malay written in Arabic script and dating from the 14thcentury suggests that Islamic law was being practised (or at least promoted) in this estuary of the Malay peninsula. In both these places,there is evidence that Islam had been a recent arrival, and that the process of adjustment was still taking place. The Brunei Sultan, for example, was still being entitled Mahārājā［37］, while the Terengganu inscription referred to the Almighty by the Sanskritic name “Dewata Mulia Raya” alongside the name Allah. In addition, the Terengganu law code provided for differentiated fi nes depending on social rank, a practice unknown to more orthodox Islam. Kern suggested that “we have here a stone inscription from a convert, undoubtedly assisted by someone learned in the law, among a population yet to be converted.”［38］The same phenomenon is manifested in two late 14th-century gravestones at Minye Tujuh in north Sumatra for the daughter of Sultān Al-Malik Al-Zāhir［39］, which have inscriptions in both Arabic and in Old Malay written in an Indic-inspired Sumatran script.

Thus, the late 14thcentury can certainly be seen as a period of wideextension of Islam within Southeast Asia, as well as of hybridity and synthesis.Apart from those manifestations noted above, Chinese texts note the existence of other Islamic rulers including Sultan “Melayu Da-xi”, ruler of Samudera in 1383 and Sultān Zayn al-Ābidīn, who had assumed the throne of that polity by 1419; Sultān Husayn, the ruler of Aru in 1411; and Muhammad Shāh, the ruler of Lambri in 1412. Thus, by the beginning of the 15thcentury, the northern and eastern coasts of Sumatra were the location of at least three Muslim polities.We remain unsure whether the extension of the presence of Islam in the northern half of Sumatra was the result of the raids by Sultān Al-Malik Al-Zāhir and his successors or other processes.

The Ming Maritime Missions

By the end of the 14thcentury, it thus appears that the in fl ux of Muslims from Southern China as well as the activities of rulers in the north of Sumatra had already begun to change the religious nature of Nusantara.［40］It was at this juncture, following the coming to power in China of the usurper Ming emperor Yong-le, that another southward push from China was to occur. The voyages of the eunuch Muslim admiral Zheng He, which extended over the period 1405 to 1435, have attracted a wide range of explanations as to their impetus and function. The most appealing is that the usurping emperor Yongle needed to boost his legitimacy by extending Ming power over as great an area as possible.［41］The sending of these vast armadas under the command of Zheng He and other eunuch of fi cials was intended to bring the known maritime world to submission. Thereby, a pax Ming could be established, trade nodes and routes to the West could be controlled, and both political and economic power would reside in the hands of the Ming emperor. It was thus that these missions proceeded along the trade routes which the Arabs and Persians had been using for centuries, all the way to the East coast of Africa.

The prominence of Muslim traders and Muslim polities along the existing trade routes may have influenced the decision to have Muslims lead thesemassive missions, each of which comprised up to hundreds of ships and up to 30,000 troops. Like Zheng He, some of the other senior commanders were Muslims, as were many of the soldiers and seamen who accompanied the missions. It was thus at this time, in an effort to soothe the remaining Muslims of Fujian, to aid the conscription of interpreters and pilots for the eunuch-led armadas and to facilitate links with those who had fled southwards, that the Yong-le emperor issued a proclamation in 1407 that no more violence was to be perpetrated against Muslims. “No of fi cial, military or civilian personnel shall despise, insult or bully [Muslims] and whoever disobeys this order by doing so shall bear the consequences.”［42］

The Ming missions were certainly not intended by the Ming court to have a religious proselytizing function, but given the religious af fi liations of many of the senior members of the missions, it would not have been surprising if there had been efforts to encourage the adoption of a new religion among some of the political leaders met on the voyages. These missions had the added unintentional effect of linking together the major Muslim communities in southern China and those throughout Southeast Asia and India, with the societies of the great Islamic centres of West Asia. Many of the rulers, or at least senior envoys from places visited in Southeast Asia and beyond were carried in the Ming ships to the Chinese capital together with envoys from Islamic polities further west—Cochin, Hormuz, Aden, Dhofar and even Mecca. Awareness of the extent and in fl uence of Islam in these areas may have contributed to the ongoing Islamisation in Southeast Asia.

The Ming naval forces de fi nitely became engaged in the politics of Java in the early part of the 15thcentury. Chinese texts inform us that two competing rulers of Java –a Western king and an Eastern king -- were engaged with the Ming state in the early years of the century. The Ming naval forces were apparently in close contact with the Eastern ruler before he was killed by the Western ruler in 1406. The Western ruler also killed 170 Ming troops involved with the Eastern kingdom, for which the Ming court demanded 60,000 ounces of gold as compensation. As the Eastern king was likely the ruler of Majapahit,we might surmise that the Western king ruled a newly-emergent coastal polity,probably in Semarang-Demak［43］,where a new power base had arisen around the Muslim refugees who fl ed from Fujian to Southeast Asia in the 1360s and 1370s.［44］

This scenario lends credence to the otherwise quite contentious Malaylanguage Peranakan chronicles of Semarang and Cerbon “discovered” and published by Mangaradja Parlindungan in the 1960s. Parlindungan’s account,supposedly derived from the Chinese community archives in these cities,depicts a wide-ranging early 15th-century network of Chinese Hana fi Muslims,spread through polities all over Southeast Asia, and tightly connected to Ming agents such as Zheng He. These Chinese Hana fi communities were supposedly established in Palembang, Sambas, Malacca, and Luzon, as well as all along the north coast of Java—Ancol, Cirebon, Lasem, Tuban, Semarang, Gresik, and Joratan. The account further assigns Chinese origins to some of the Islamic saints of Java, including Sunan Ngampel and Sunan Giri, as well as to Njai Gede Pinatih, the Great Lady of Gresik.［45］

It needs to be af fi rmed that much of the Parlindungan account is in accord with the evolution of the Chinese Muslim communities overseas as reflected in the foregoing account. People did flee from Quanzhou to various ports in Southeast Asia in the late 14thcentury, and the links which Parlindungan suggests are congruent with other sources he was unlikely to have known. The 15thcentury Xi-yang fan-guo-zhi actually stated that all of the Chinese in Java were Muslims［46］, and within Java there are traditions of Chinese participation in the Islamisation of Java.［47］The Sino-Javanese envoy Ma Yong-long (Ma Yong-liang) is well-attested in other sources, but most interestingly, another of the leaders of the Javanese Hana fi community as reported in Parlindungan’s work -- Gan Eng Cu – is found to have a correlate only in the Ming veritable records (Ming shi-lu) which would not have been available to Parlindungan. Of Gan Eng Cu, the Parlindungan account reads:

1423: Hаji Воng Tаk Κеng trаnsfеrrеd Hаji Gаn Eng Сu frоm Маnilа /Philiррinеs tо Tubаn/Jаvа tо соntrоl thе fl оurishing Hаnа fi tе Мuslim соmmunitiеs in Jаvа, Κukаng аnd Sаmbаs. Аt thаt timе, Tubаn wаs Jаvа’s mаin роrt, with thе kingdоm оf Маjараhit аs hintеrlаnd. Hаji Gаn Eng Сu bесаmе а kind оf соnsul-gеnеrаl оf thе Сhinеsе gоvеrnmеnt, thе Мing Emреrоr, hаving соntrоl оf аll Мuslim Сhinеsе соmmunitiеs in thе sоuthеrn Nаn Yаng соuntriеs inсluding Jаvа,Κukаng аnd Sаmbаs……［48］

In the Ming veritable records, we read of Gong Yong-cai (龔 用 才 —in Hokkien “Giong Eng-cai”), a Chinese envoy from Java, travelling to the Ming court in 1429, and receiving robes from the Chinese emperor, exactly as was recorded of Gan Eng-cu in Parlindungan’s work.［49］This reference opens up the possibility that these annals do provide us with new factual material on Sino-Javanese Islamic networks of the 15thcentury.

Regardless of the veracity of this account, we do observe in this period the beginning of a new age of Islamisation along the Javanese northern coast.［50］We have evidence of Islam in Gresik by 1419［51］, and further evidence of the religion’s gradual growth along this coast. These pesisir communities were to become some of the most powerful agents of Islamic expansion in Southeast Asia both during the 15thcentury and beyond. Demak is depicted in some accounts as having waged jihad against other pesisir polities through the 15thcentury.［52］

But would any of this have been possible without the southward flow of Muslims out of Quanzhou to Java and elsewhere in Nusantara, as a result or warfare and purges in the last quarter of the 14thcentury? We can never know.What can be affirmed is that that movement of Muslim persons –diverse in ethnicity—to Southeast Asia from the ports of Fujian during this period was a key event in the making of Southeast Asian Islam.

■NOTES

[1] For a fuller discussion of the spread of Islam to Southeast Asia prior to 1500, see Geoff Wade, “Early Muslim expansion in South-East Asia, eighth to fi fteenth centuries”, in The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 3 - The Eastern Islamic World Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by David O. Morgan and Anthony Reid (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2010), pp. 366-408.

[2] Pierre-Yves Manguin, “The Introduction of Islām into Champa”, in The Propagation of Islām in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago, edited by Alijah Gordon (Kuala Lumpur:Malaysian Sociological Research Institute, 2001), pp. 287-328. See p. 311, n. 12.

[3] The “Persian and Arab traders” referred to here is a generic reference to peoples from the Middle East trading on ships crewed by people of a likely diverse range or ethnicities and religions.

[4] Recorded in the Jiu Tang shu, or “Older History of the Tang Dynasty”, in juan 10. The term Da-shi (大食) derives from the Persian name Tazi, referring to a people in Persia. It was later used by the Persians to refer to the Arab lands. The Chinese used it from the Tang dynasty until about the 12thcentury to refer to the Arabs.

[5] Michael Flecker, “A ninth-century AD Arab or Indian shipwreck in Indonesia: first evidence for direct trade with China”, World Archaeology, 32, no. 3 (February, 2001): 335-354.

[6] Note, by comparison, the 10,000 Muslim population of Chaul (= Saymur), the main port for the Konkan coast as given by al-Mas’udi. Wink suggests that the exodus of Arabs from China at this time was responsible for the rise of the major ports in the isthmian region,particularly Kalāh. See André Wink, Al-Hind, the making of the Indo-Islamic world, 3 vols.(Leiden & New York: E.J. Brill, 1990-2004), Vol. I, p. 84.

[7] The oldest mosque in Quanzhou reputedly dates from the 11thcentury when the port began to rise in importance.

[8] Al-Idrîsî, Opus Geographicum, edited by E. Cerulli et al., 4 vols. (Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1970-74, p. 62. Cited in Michael Laffan, Finding Java: Muslim nomenclature of insular Southeast Asia from Śrîvijaya to Snouk Hurgronje, Asia Research Institute Working Paper Series, No. 52 (Singapore: National University of Singapore,2005). p. 22, n. 65. This term Zābaj was a generic reference to the ports of Sumatra and surrounding areas, and is the apparent origin of the Chinese name San-fo-qi for Sriwijaya.

[9] The assumption is that the of fi cial surnamed Pu was, like other members of the Pu clan, a Muslim. There reportedly exists in Leran, East Java an Islamic gravestone dated AH 475(1082 C.E.) for a woman, the daughter of Maimun. However, there is no fi rm evidence that the gravestone originated in Java, with suggestions that it was possibly being brought there as ballast. See Ludvik Kalus and Claude Guillot, “Réinterprétation des plus anciennes stèles funéraires islamiques nousantariennes: II . La stèle de Leran (Java) datée de 475/1082 et les stèles associées”, Archipel 67 (2004): 17-36.

[10] This is noted in He Qiaoyuan 何喬遠, Min Shu閩書, (Fuzhou: Fujian People’s Press,1994),juan 152.

[11] For the most detailed available account of Pu Shou-geng, see Kuwabara Jitsuzo "On P'u Shou-keng", Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko II (1928): 1-79 and VII(1935): 1-104.

[12] For further details of these events, see Billy K.L So, Prosperity, region, and institutions in maritime China: The South Fukien pattern, 946-1368 (Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000); Hugh Clark, “Overseas Trade and Social Change in Quanzhou through the Song” , in Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000 - 1400,edited by Angela Schottenhammer (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001), pp.47-94; and John Chaffee,“Muslim Merchants and Quanzhou in the Late Yuan-Early Ming: Conjectures on the Ending of the Medieval Muslim Trade Diaspora”, in The East Asian ‘Mediterranean’:Maritime Crossroads of Culture, Commerce, and Human Migration, edited by Angela Schottenhammer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008), pp. 115-132.

[13] Personal communication from Li Tana. For original text, see Chen Ching-ho, 陳荊和(編校) Đại Việt sử ký toàn th(Critical edition) 校合本《大越史記全書》, 3 vols. (3 本). Tokyo:1985-86. pp. 348-49。

[14] One apparent victim of the battles at this time was Pu Ha-ting, a Sayyid of the 16thgeneration and builder of the Xian-he Mosque in Yangzhou, who died in 1275. See D. D.Leslie, Islam in Traditional China: A Short History to 1800 (Canberra: Canberra College of Advanced Education, 1986), p. 48.

[15] Suwedi Montana, “Nouvelles données sur les royaumes de Lamuri et Barat”, Archipel 53(1997): 85-96. See p. 92. There remains much dispute over the dating and other aspects of this gravestone.

[16] “This kingdom, you must know, is so frequented by the Saracen merchants that they have converted the natives to the Law of Mahommet—I mean the townspeople only, for the hill people live for all the world like beasts…”Henry Yule (trans. and ed.), The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East (London: Murray,1929), Vol. II, p. 284.

[17] For further details of the gravestones, see Elizabeth Lambourn, “The formation of the batu Aceh tradition in fi fteenth-century Samudera-Pasai”, Indonesia and the Malay World 32(2004): 211-248; and Claude Guillot & Ludvik Kalus, Les monuments funéraires et l’histoire du Sultanat de Pasai à Sumatra (Paris: Association Archipel, 2008), pp. 177-78.

[18] See A.H. Hill, “Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai”, Journal of the Malayan Branch, Royal Asiatic Society 33, no. 2 (June 1960).

[19] H.A.R. Gibb, The Travels of Ibn Battuta A.D. 1325-1354, Translated with revisions and notes from the Arabic text edited by C. Defrémery and B.R. Sanguinetti, completed with annotations by C.F. Beckingham (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1994), Vol. IV, pp. 876-77.

[20] See Lambourn, “The Formation of the Batu Aceh Tradition”.

[21] The name of a Cham temple complex (Po Klaung Garai) located at Phanrang in what is today Ninh Thuận Province. It comprises three towers dating back to about 1300, built during the reign of Cham King Jaya Simhavarman II. Yamamoto Tatsuro, “On Tawalisi as Described by Ibn Battuta”, in Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko VIII(1936): 93-133. See p. 117.

[22] Lit: “Diverse peoples.”

[23] Chen and Kalus suggest an alternative -- that the term “yi-xi-ba-xi” should be reconstructed as ispāh and that it derives from the Persian term sepâh, meaning “great army”. See Chen Da-sheng and Ludvik Kalus, Corpus d’Inscriptions Arabes et Persanes en Chine –1. Province de Fujian (Quanzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen) (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Geuthner, 1991). See p. 45, note 151. However, if their proposal was the case, the final Chinese character would be superfluous. Isfahan is the only feasible origin for this expression, particularly as read in Hokkien, the characters provide “Yik-si-ba-he.”

[24] It is also likely not coincident that another senior person whom Ibn Battūta met in Quanzhou was Shaykh al-Islām Kamāl al-Dīn, “a pious man” who indeed came from Isfahān. Was he the other leader of the rebellion “A-mi-li-ding” (= Kamāl al-Dīn )?

[25] See Louis-Charles Damais, “Études Javanaises: Les tombes Musulmans dates de Tralaya”,Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient 48 (1956): 353-415. See listing and dates of the graves on p. 411.

[26] The grave remains today an Islamic pilgrimage site.

[27] Hermanus Johannes de Graaf & Theodore G. Th. Pigeaud, Chinese Muslims in Java in the 15th and 16th Centuries: the Malay Annals of Sĕmarang and Cĕrbon, edited by M.C. Ricklefs,Monash Papers on Southeast Asia No. 12 (Melbourne: Monash University, 1984), p. 20. I am assigning this text more veracity than hitherto given to it for reasons detailed below.

[28] De Graaf and Pigeaud, Chinese Muslims in Java in the 15th and 16th Centuries, p. 14. This fits wonderfully with the date of the Trowulan grave, but those who are suspicious of the Parlindungan source might point to the fact that Damais’ article on the graves waspublished in 1956, while Parlindungan’s work Tuanku Rao within which the “Annals”are contained, was only published in 1964, allowing for the grave date information to be incorporated in the latter work.

[29] Denys Lombard and Claudine Salmon. “Islam and Chineseness” in The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago, edited by Alijah Gordon, pp. 181-208. (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Sociological Research Institute, 2001), p. 184. See also the correlation in Javanese texts between Champa and the spread of Islam as detailed by Manguin in “The Introduction of Islam into Champa”, pp. 294-95.

[30] Merle Ricklefs notes of these graves: “The use of the Indian Śaka era and Javanese numerals rather than the Islamic Anno Hijrae and Arabic numerals to date several gravestones leads to the presumption that these mark the fi nal resting place of indigenous Javanese followers of Islam rather than of Muslims from elsewhere. Moreover, on several of these stones are found distinctive sunburst medallions also found on other forms of Majapahit art, suggesting that these were in fact the graves of members of the Majapahit royal family.” See M. C. Ricklefs, Mystic Sythesis in Java: A History of Islamization from the Fourteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries (Abingdon: EastBridge, 2006), p. 13.

[31] Geoff Wade (trans.), Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: An Open Access Resource (Singapore:Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore,2005).

[32] The term used was “Hui-hui,” likely derived from Hui-gu, the term by which the Chinese knew the Uighurs.

[33] Chinese persons.

[34] J.V.G. Mills, Ma Huan, Ying-yai Sheng-lan [1433]: the Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1970).

[35] De Graaf and Pigeaud, Chinese Muslims in Java in the 15th and 16th Centuries, p. 153.

[36] See Ludvik Kalus, “Chap XV: Les Sources Épigraphiques Musulmanes de Barus”, in Histoire de Barus, Sumatra: Le Site de Lobu Tua, II Étude archéologique et Documents, edited by Claude Guillot, pp. 303-338 (Paris: Association Archipel, 2003). For the tombstone cited,see pp. 305-06. Thanks go to John Miksic for drawing my attention to this tombstone. A recent update on the Islamic vestiges at Barus can be found in Daniel Perret & Heddy Surachman (ed.), Histoire de Barus III Regards sur une place marchande de l’océan Indien (XIIemilieu du XVIIe s.) (Paris, Association Archipel & EFEO, 2009), pp. 582-88

[37] The title Maharaja was still in use for the ruler of Brunei in the early 15thcentury.

[38] R.A. Kern, “The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago”, in The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago, edited by Alijah Gordon (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Sociological Research Institute, 2001), pp. 23-124. See p. 36.

[39] Either the same sultan whom Ibn Battuta had met in the 1340s, or his son.

[40] Slametmuljana also examined the role of Chinese Muslims in the Islamization of Nusantara, but included some uncon fi rmed sources. See Slametmuljana, “Islam before the Foundation of the Islamic State of Demak”, Journal of the South Seas Society, 27, no. 1& 2 (Dec 1972): 41-83. My thanks to E. Edwards McKinnon for bringing this source to my attention.

[41] The claim that Yong-le and other Ming emperors were closet Muslims is unsubstantiated by any accepted source. For such claims, see Yusuf Chang, “The Ming Empire: Patron of Islam in China and Southeast and West Asia”, Journal of the Malaysian Branch, Royal Asiatic Society 61, no. 2 (1988): 1-44.

[42] Chen Da-sheng陳達生, Quan-zhou Yi-si-lan jiao shi-ke泉州伊斯蘭教石刻 (Islamic Stone Inscriptions from Quan-zhou), (Quanzhou: Fujian People’s Press, 1984). See pp. 11-13.

[43] Demak fi rst appeared in Ming texts (under the name Dan-ba) in 1377, which gels well with the thesis that it emerged as a base for the Muslim refugees who fl ed from Southern China in the 1360s. See Geoff Wade, Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: Entry1883. http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/entry/1883.

[44] Relevant materials can be gleaned from the Ming Shi-lu, Ming-shi and Shu-yu-zhou-zi-lu. The last of these works notes that the majority of Chinese who sojourned in Java were Muslims.

[45] See De Graaf and Pigeaud, Chinese Muslims in Java in the 15th and 16th centuries; D.A.Rinkes, Nine Saints of Java, translated by H.M. Froger, edited by Alijah Gordon (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Sociological Research Institute, 1996); and Rinkes, Nine Saints of Java;and Tan Yeok Seong, “Chinese element in the Islamisation of Southeast Asia—A study of the story of Njai Gede Pinatih, the Great Lady of Gresik”, Journal of the South Seas Society 30, nos. 1 and 2 (1975): 19-27.

[46] Lombard and Salmon, “Islam and Chineseness”, p. 183.

[47] Slametmuljana, Runtuknja Keradjaan Hindu-Djawa dan Timbulnja Negara-negara Islam di Nusantara (Jakarta, Bhratara,1968) as quoted in Lombard and Salmon, “Islam and Chineseness”, p. 184.

[48] De Graaf and Pigeaud, Chinese Muslims in Java in the 15th and 16th centuries, pp. 15.

[49] De Graaf and Pigeaud, Chinese Muslims in Java in the 15th and 16th centuries, pp. 15-16.

[50] For further details of which, see Lombard and Salmon, Islam and Chineseness, pp. 115-117.

[51] J.P. Moquette, “De datum op den grafsteen van Malik Ibrahim te Grisse”, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde LIV (1912): 208-14. Again the gravestone derived from Cambay.

[52] De Graaf and Pigeaud, however, write of a tradition which holds that the fi rst Muslim ruler of Demak, (who was of Chinese origin) did not emerge until the last quarter of the 15thcentury. See Hermanus Johannes de Graaf & Theodore G. Th. Pigeaud, Islamic States in Java 1500-1700 ('s-Gravenhage: KITLV, 1976), pp. 6-8.

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