The Sultanate of Malacca
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| Malacca during the Renaissance Period |
Cross references would show that between the latter part of the 15th century and the early part of the 16th century the capital of the Madjapahit Empire had been transferred from Trowulan to Daha (Kediri), then to Demak, then to Malacca, then to Sumatra, then back to Demak, then probably to Johor, and then finally to Brunei and the islands now known as the Philippines due to regional conflicts and to the invasions of the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the British, and the Dutch. It was under the rule of a Javanese-Chinese-descent Sultan Muhammad Shah or Mahmud Shah known also as Bulkeiah in Brunei; as Nakoda Ragam (“singing captain”) in Johor & Luzon; as Gung Anom, Pati Unus, Adipati Yunus, and Prabu Udara in Java; Amir-ul-Umara in Sulu; and as Haring Habagat or Riayat Umabong (spelled Humabon by Pigafetta) in Cebu. He was the son of Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah of Malacca (son of the Parameswara) who upon his father's premature death, in 1488, was installed at a very young age – that is, 8 years old. The regent at that time was the Bendahara (Prime Minister) Perak (known in Luzon as the blacksmith Panday Pera). During his initial years as a young adult, the sultan was known to be a ruthless monarch. The administration of the sultanate was in the hands of an able and wise Perak.
It was during the administration of Perak that a group of five Panglima Awang who served not only as warrior-commander but also as warrior-admiral. These five warrior-admirals were named by traditions not with their real names but according to their number symbolical to their individual characteristics. The number-names of the warrior-admirals below are in Malay-stylized Chinese-Sanskrit-Arabic-Malay switching of words and concept commonly practiced during the Srivijaya and Madjapahit eras.
The number-names of the warrior-admirals are as follows:
1) First Warrior-Admiral: Hang Kasturi
2) Second Warrior-Admiral: Hang Jebat
3) Third Warrior-Admiral: Hang Lekiu
4) Fourth Warrior-Admiral: Hang Lekir
5) Fifth Warrior-Admiral: Hang Tuah
It must be noted that during this period the Malay language was used as the lingua franca of commerce within the empire and it was a practice among the Malays who traded with the Chinese and Arabs to switch names of persons or places into Sanskrit, Chinese, and Arabic homonymous names or synonymous in meaning and vise-versa to give double meanings akin to the characteristic of a certain subject.
The number-names mentioned above are not Chinese names as it will likely imply if interpreted on the present perspective and context that Chinese names carry the surnames first. In this case, it must be emphasized that “Hang” used to address the warrior-admirals is neither a Chinese surname nor a styled Chinese loan-words “huang” (elder) and “hwang” (king). It is a Malay word “awang”, “orang”, or “hyang” styled to sound like Chinese and to mean almost synonymous but attached with double meanings or secret concepts.
It will be discussed briefly as follows:
It will be discussed briefly as follows:
1) Hang Kasturi. Kasturi means in Sanskrit as “musk” which is the fragrance found in the musk deer as in the maxim “the musk deer chases the wonderful smell that is actually inside its own body". A deer if translated into Malay will become “rusa” or “usa” in other branches of Malay used in trade during the period like the Cebuano-Visayan language. In Cebuano-Visayan “usa” could both mean “deer” and “one”. Hence, Hang Kasturi would also mean as “first warrior or warrior number one”. Then if you add “awang” and “usa” it would sound like “wangsa” or “bangsa” which would mean an “aristocrat” or “hyang wisesa” which is equivalent to a “wikramawardhana” which is an admiral; hence, Hang Kasturi would also mean “warrior-admiral number one”. And taking into consideration the Greek meaning of “Kastōr” Κάστωρ, it would mean "beaver" or "he who excels", meaning “number one”. In Greek myth, Kastōr and Pollūx were the twin sons of the goddess Leda who were hatched from an egg. Kastōr was a mortal and half-brother of Pollūx. They were considered as the Dioscuri (“sons of God”) that became the constellation Gemini that was often invoked by travelers and of sailors to seek favorable winds. Kastōr and Pollūx would be the masculine equivalent of the Chinese sea-goddess, Tianfei, invoked for favorable winds by Zheng He. Tianfei would sound very similar to Jambi (Açeh) which would refer to one of the three kingdoms of Sumatra. The S’yair Awang Semaun relates that the first rulers of Brunei were descendants of Dewa Amas of Kayangan, a part supernatural being who descended to earth at Ulu Limbang in an egg. This could be referred to Hajji Abdullah Sulayman who was called as the Damang Sari (or Damong Sari which means “warrior prince”) of Brunei, as the Hyang Wisesa of Daha, and as the Prabu Cakrabuana of Cirebon & Jambi (Açeh). Note that the number-name “Hang Kasturi” does not only imply the cardinal of number but it also implies a character and description of a person.
2) Hang Jebat. Hang Jebat is also identifiable with Hang Biajit or Tun Biajit in the Sejarah Melayu. “Je bat” which means “second or two” in Hokkien has a similar sound with “biajit” which is a corrupted form of the Sanskrit “tyajeth” which means “one has to give up” (for number two). Moreover, there are Sanskrit words related to number two and often used as names of persons within the period like “dvaapara” (that die or side of a die which is marked with two spots) and “adwaya” (without a second). “Adwaya” was used in Java and Sumatra at that time to mean an “admiral” while on the other hand “Dvaapara” sounds similar with the Arabic name Jaafara, which was also a famous name of an Islamic saint Sayyid (Arab traveler) Ja′far as-Sadiq who existed during the period. From this it could be understood that Jafar as-Sadiq was the same person referred to in Malaccan accounts as the “warrior-admiral number two”.
3) Hang Lekiu. Lekiu must be meant to Lio Kio Gurun the Manchu name for the Ryūkyū Kingdom of Japan which played a central role in the maritime trade networks of medieval East and Southeast Asia. In the 14th century, small domains scattered on Okinawa Island were unified into three principalities: Hokuzan (北山, Northern Mountain), Chūzan (中山, Central Mountain) and Nanzan (南山, Southern Mountain). This was known as the Three Kingdoms or Sanzan (三山, Three Mountains) period. It is obvious that number three is being emphasized again. There was an admiral named Khoja Hassan being mentioned in the Malaccan account whose name has a similar sound with Hokuzan, Chūzan, and Nanzan. Hence, it could be concluded that Hang Lekiu or “warrior-admiral number three” was one and the same with the admiral Khoja Hassan. The question now is who among the Walisongo was Khoja Hassan? There is only one clue, the political capital of Chūzan (which sounds more similar to Khoja Hassan) was at Shuri, neighbored the major trade port of Naha and center of traditional Chinese learning, Kumemura. Or it could be from Kamakura which is surrounded as it is on three sides by mountains and was so named after a type of sword called kamayari (similar-sounding with the sword associated with the Panglima Awang which was the taming sari) that was enshrined in a place called Okura; hence, kamayari plus Okura turned into Kamakura. Kamakura (鎌倉市 Kamakura-shi) is a city used to be the former de facto capital of Japan as the seat of the Shogunate and of the Regency. Interestingly with the play of words if Kamakura would be translated from Sanskrit-Persian it could mean “horse-lover” from kama (love) and kura (horse) while Khoja Hassan would sound like Khoda or Quda Hassan which would also mean the same thing while if changed to Nakhoda Hassan it would mean captain-general or an admiral. This warrior-admiral could be likened to or literally a Japanese shogun who must have not returned in Japan in 1498 since it was hit by a tsunami generated from Meiō Nankaidō earthquake that had washed away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan; since then the Buddha has sat in the open air. Both Kamakura and Kumemura is also similar-sounding with the name of Amir Hassan Umar Sayyid, another member of the Walisongo who was either an Arab or an Arab mestizo as indicated by the word sayyid, which means either Arab traveler or Arab mestizo. Or would it be possible that Kamakura at that time was a vassal of the Madjapahit Empire? Probably it must also have a connection with the Javanese concept that Java was an island of Kama, the god of love equivalent to the Latin Cupid and the Greek Eros. Yet there is a great probability that this “warrior-admiral number three” is no other than Sultan Muhammad Shah himself who was also called in his imperial title as Nakhoda Ragam Amir-ul-Umara Hassanal Bolkeiah (in Persian it means, “Singing Captain King of the Southwest Monsoon Bringer of the Fountain of Life”), the “god” of erotic love.
4) Hang Lekir. “Lekir” is Hokkien for “fourth or four”. In Sanskrit there is a concept related to number four and fourth which is the Kali-yuga, the fourth of four repeating ages that form the basic cycles of universal time. Interestingly Kali-yuga has a similar sound of the name of another Islamic saint Sunan Kalijaga or Sunan Kalijogo which derived its nature from the Arabic notion of qadli dzaqa which means "holy leader" in the sultanate. Another interesting to note is that the word “lekir” has also a similar sound with “ilir-ilir” which was a prayer song composed by Sunan Kalijaga. But in Javanese “kali” means river and “jogo or joko” means enchanted or raised up – hence Kali Jogo would mean “raised up from the river”. There was one whose name would suggest that he was that boy, namely Joko Samudra which literally means “the enchanted boy who was raised up from the river-ocean”. The said person was Raden Fatah.
5) Hang Tuah. Hokkien “tuah” which means “elder or big” is the source of “kuya” in Tagalog, another branch of Malay widely spoken as a trade language especially in Luzon, Brunei, and Malacca as historical records would show. If “hang” will be switched back to “awang” and “kuya” will be used instead of “tuah” it will become “awang kuya” which has a similar sound with “orang kaya” which was actually used to address the warriors since its literal meaning is “man-of-war” or a Kşatriya. Out of a number ranging from one to five, five will be the biggest in ascending order which means that “tuah” also denotes big and would really mean “five or fifth”. In Sanskrit, five or fifth is “sthuula” and originally identical with “sthura” which means “large, thick, stout, massive, bulky, big, huge, coarse, gross, and rough” and with “yatha-sthuula” which means dense, dull, stolid, strong, and big”. “Tuah” also in another dialects and branches of Malay would become “tulah”. And interestingly enough another name of an Islamic saint has a similar sound that is, Syarif Hidayatullah which if switch into Malay homonymous name it will become “Si Adwaya Tullah” which will fit exactly to the warrior-admiral’s rank – that is, “Lord Admiral Commander Tullah” – and if only “Awang Tullah” will be used it will sound very similar to “Hang Tuah”.
Lastly,
taking into account that the Malay play of words used here is generally
Malay-Sanskrit switch and most if not all the characters are associated with
the Walisongo who propagated Islam in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and the
Philippines then it must be perceived conceptually and contextually into a
Hindu-Javanese psyche on the Mahabharata. The concept of “Panglima Awang”
or royal bodyguards composed of five warriors has its root on the belief of a
Pandava or the five brothers who are sons of Pandu.
In the Mahābhārat, Book III: Varna Parva, Section 268 the Pandavas are described as follows:
1) Yudhisthira -- possessed a "complexion like that of pure gold, possessed of a prominent nose and large eyes, and endued with a slender make." Master of the spear. He was just, had a correct sense of morality, and was merciful to surrendering foes.
2) Bhima -- tall and long-armed. In a display of ferocity, he was "biting his lips, and contracting his forehead so as to bring the two eyebrows together." The master of the mace, his superhuman feats had earned him great renown. "They that offend him are never suffered to live. He never forgets a foe. On some pretext or other he wreaks his vengeance."
3) Arjuna -- the greatest of archers, intelligent, second to none "with senses under complete control." Neither lust nor fear nor anger could make him forsake virtue. Though capable of withstanding any foe, he would never commit an act of cruelty.
4) Nakula -- "the most handsome person in the whole world." An accomplished master swordsman, he was also "versed in every question of morality and profit" and "endued with high wisdom." He was unflinchingly devoted to his brothers, who in turn regarded him as more valuable than their own lives. The name Nakula generally means full of love.
5) Sahadeva (Sadeva) -- the youngest of the brothers, and like the others formidable in war and observant of morality. Master of the swords. "Heroic, intelligent, wise and ever wrathful, there is not another man equal unto him in intelligence or in eloquence amid assemblies of the wise."
All the characteristics of the Pandavas according to their number are exactly the same with the characteristics of the Malaccan “Panglima Awang” mentioned earlier respectively. But it does not mean that the said warriors were the characters in the Mahabharata itself for they were true historical figures in Southeast Asia between the 15th and 16th centuries.
Based on the identification of the number-named warriors, proper names will be used here in the preceding narratives to avoid confusion.
Around 1494, the time when Tullah had already perfected his natural abilities at self-defense by studying the arnis that he, on his return to Java from his military training in Cebu that he, according to the Cirebon account, had discovered, inside a box hidden in his father’s special room, a Koran or a book about the Essence of Muhammadiyah (haqeqat Muhammadiah) written in golden ink which inspired him to leave the palace and sail to Malacca to study Islam deeper. 110 Along with him were his relatives who had also decided to go with him for his religious yearnings – Abdullah Sulayman, both his uncle and cousin; and Fatah, his half-brother. It was during this time that Perak had first noticed him and his relatives. According to Malaccan account, a band of pirates ran amok, causing havoc in a village, and Perak and his guards' attempts to quell the unrest resulted in further attacks on the Bendahara. The Bendahara's guards fled, but when Tullah and his relatives saw the commotion, they were reported to have killed the group of pirates, thus saving the Bendahara.117 In Cebuano oral tradition, the said pirates were Chinese pirates led by a certain Chiong Li.118 Perak was so impressed by the lad’s courage that he recruited him and his relatives to work at the palace, where they rose in the ranks, eventually becoming feared members of the Sultan's royal guards. He then taught Tullah on the Malay language which was used as the official lingua franca of commerce within the empire and on royal court etiquette. 117
In 1497, when Tullah and the other two musketeers were assigned as laksamanas (admirals) they set a fleet intending to conquer Rajagaluh, a vassal-state of Hindu Galuh – Pajajaran which is in the Sunda Islands. Along this time, Gandasari who was living in Abdullah Sulayman’s palace in Cirebon since she was a child had already grown fifteen and with remarkable beauty. Sulayman was planning to use the beauty of his adopted daughter as bait for Prabu Cakraningrat of Rajagaluh. So he asked Tullah to teach his adopted daughter about Sufism – a branch of Islam which studies magic -- and trained her in the art of war and self-defense of which she paid special attention. By the end of that year when Gandasari had already shown competence in defending herself, according to the Cirebon account, she was sent to fool Prabu Cakraningrat with her beauty and do things necessary to attract him until he would propose marriage with her and by that she would be taken to Rajagaluh not only to see its marvels and excellence but also the detailed security of the kingdom. The plan was a success – Gandasari was married to Prabu Cakraningrat. This paved the way for Abdullah Sulayman to make the necessary plans to bring about the fall of Rajagaluh. To make it short, Rajagaluh was conquered at the end.119 They had also conquered Tidor during that year and Fatah (Djamaluddin) was crowned as the first Muslim ruler of Tidor. It could be very probable that the said admirals were helping Malacca in order to attain their own goals of propagating Islam and expanding their own territories which was not seen by Perak and the Sultan.
Sultan Muhammad Shah became very ambitious that he thought of conquering the Madjapahit Empire not knowing that his own admirals were the ruling class themselves. At that time Madjapahit’s seat of power was centered in a Muslim sultanate of Demak. It would be very difficult for him to conquer it without vassalages within the island. Around 1498, Sultan Muhammad Shah ordered his laksamana Tullah, who was known for his absolute and unfaltering loyalty to his Sultan, to gather the fleets for they would conquer Japara, a vassal state of Demak, and other coastal cities of Java. It was said that Abdullah Sulayman, the Adipati Solok of Japara and the Taming Sari or Damong Sari of Brunei, challenged his nephew, but at the same time his cousin, Tullah in a duel to prove his worth. After a brutal fight, Abdullah Sulayman was defeated, his men flee, and Tullah who would have been entitled to have him executed on the spot as a pirate, treated him with all the respect due to a royal prince. Raden Abdul Rahman took his son’s kris and bestowed it to Tullah as its new owner. The kris which was known as Taming Sari after the name of its original owner was believed to be magical and empowers its possessor with invincibility. When the fleet returned to Malacca, Tullah took Abdullah Sulayman with him and made him as his blood brother and gave him the honor of a Maharaja Sang Setia and became one of the five famous warrior-admirals of the Islamic Madjapahit Empire.120
According to Malaccan account, Tullah handed a letter sent by Raden Abdul Rahman which was addressed to the Sultan:121
Maka titah raja kepada Laksamana, Hai Orang Kaya Laksamana, apa sebabnya maka anak kita pergi ke Melaka? Maka sembah Laksamana. “Daulat Tuanku Syah Alam, patik mohonkan ampun dan karnia: patik tidak amu persembahkan ke bawah Duli Syah Alam melainkan tuanku bertanyatah kepada paduka anakanda.” Maka Adipati Agung pun berdiam dirinya fikir dalam hatinya. Maka baginda pun tahulah akan ertinya sembah Laksamana itu.
Tullah who had referred his own ruler as paduka adinda when addressing the pengiran berunai, displayed further traits of magnanimity of becoming a sultan in order not to be outdone by the adipati agung’s generosity on his departure. When the laksamana returned, the pengiran berunai’s letter was taken in procession by elephant inside the palace compound and all the way to the audience hall as only befits the greatest of kings. But when it came to the gift of five hundred decorative boxes each worth a tahil, the Sultan merely commented: 122
Apa gunanya gendaga itu kepada kita? Mana bicara Laksamanalah itu.
In the same year, Japan had been hit by a tsunami which probably included Luzon and other parts of northern Philippines. It was in this year that marked the death of Perak who was succeeded by a new Tamil bendahara, Mutahir. The death of Perak changed Sultan Muhammad Shah into a more responsible ruler. He created a band of blood brothers known as the saudara. The said saudara were appointed either bendahara or pengiran of the different states of his empire. As an amir-al-bahr (commander of the sea), he organized fleets and with his able laksamanas (admirals) he conquered so many lands. But most of the times conquered them by marrying its princesses either with consent or by force.
In 1503, Mar Elijah, Patriarch of the East Syrian church, had sent three missionaries "to the islands of the sea which are inside Java and to China." 123 One of these missionaries was Jaۥfar. In Cirebon account the said missionary came to Cirebon at the time when Tullah was married to the princess of Cirebon named Nyi Mas Babadan. Tullah was informed about the coming of the pandita (saint) to Cirebon – a Sharif Syam which means “a priest from Syria” which the natives called Pangeran Karangkendal since he first preached in Karangkendal which is located 19 kilometers northward from Cirebon. The pandita was described as a handsome young man having a very long hair which, when it was loosened, would reach the ground and so he always knotted (gelung) his hair – this was the reason why he was also called as Syeikh Magelung (“the Syeikh with knotted hair”). The informant told Tullah that the pandita’s long hair was “invulnerable to all cutting devices; that he wandered from place to place in search of someone who would be able to cut his hair; and should he find someone, he would be willing to surrender to him and become his disciple.”
In 1505, Tullah attended the coronation of Trenggana, the only son of Fatah, as the new sultan of Demak and the birth of Fatah’s daughter with Juzul Asiqin who was named as Kesuma who was later known also as Layla Manjanay (“Lady of the Night”) among the Tausug and the Turks; Lei-la Men-chi-nei in Chinese records; Puteri Gunung Ledang in Johor; Nyi Mas Panguragan, Ratu Ayu, and Ratu Nyawa in Cirebon account; Radin Mas Ayu, Ratna Kalinyamat, Kencana Wungu in Javanesse account; Puteri Sadung and Che’ Siti in Kelantan account; Hara Amihan, in Cebu account; and etc.
The Sultan’s lust for beautiful girls did not always bring him good. It became one of the reasons with his conflicts with the Tamil Bendahara Mutahir. Accordingly, when the Sultan had heard the remarkable beauty of Teja (which means “radiance”), the daughter of Surya Si Amar DiRaja, the ruler of Luzon who had acquired a large parcel of land in Pahang, Malacca for his big plantation of peppers and assumed as Rajah Bendahara of Pahang Inderapura, he immediately went there and proposed for marriage but it was denied. Frustrated, the Sultan, instead, had asked the hand of Fatimah, the daughter of Mutahir, in marriage but the bendahara denied the proposal since his daughter’s marriage to Ali was already arranged and their wedding was already scheduled. Ali was one of the Sultan’s sons. The Sultan became even more furious when Fatimah was married to Ali. Mutahir suspected that anytime he would be sentenced to death so he had plotted a plan on putting an end to the Sultan’s tyranny. So one day while the Sultan was away on his voyages, through his insinuation, he had convinced Ahmad Shah, the eldest son of the Sultan, to usurp the throne. Knowing this upon his return, the Sultan ordered Jaۥfar to kill his son Ahmad Shah which he did, probably because he felt he had no choice. “Fearing for blood revenge against which even the ruler of Malacca could not guarantee protection”, Jaۥfar fled to Pasai and Haru but upon seeing that it was difficult to settle there he sailed to Brunei and married Gandasari who had named him as her Pangeran Soka (“Prince Charming”). According to Javanese accounts, Jaۥfar was “converted to Islam” but it could be doubtful. Probably he had just assimilated his teachings to local culture as what the other Syrian Christian missionaries did in India. Syrian Christians in India and Southeast Asia did not use any pictures, paintings or statues of Jesus or saints in their churches until the arrival of Portuguese for they considered it as idolatry and when they prayed they just clapped their hands and looked at the sky and called the Heavenly Father – Abba. Most of the Syrian Christians who had gone to Southeast Asia were from India and may had been Hindus before they were converted to Syrian Christianity hence they were vegetarians and did not eat meat. This similarity with Sufism must have been misinterpreted by the Muslims in the area as another type of unorthodox branch of Islam.
At that time, Tullah's deep loyalty to and popularity with the Sultan led to rumors being circulated that Tullah was having an illicit affair with one of the Sultan's stewardess Dayang. Frustrated on his denied marriage proposals, the Sultan sentenced Tullah to death without trial for the alleged offense. The death sentence was never carried out, however, because Tullah's executioner, the Bendahara Mutahir, went against the Sultan’s orders and hid Tullah in a remote region of Malacca – in Pahang.
Tullah, while away in exile, sought for a way to return to the king's grace, and decided one way to go about it was to present Teja to His Highness. In order to get close to Teja, Tullah had to first befriend Teja's chambermaid, Dayang Ratna, to whom he offered gifts. Dayang Ratna was easily won over. With her as his ally, he presented a set of exquisite textile to Teja. However Teja swiftly rejected the gift. Left with little choice, Tullah resorted to “using a love potion”, which he got from Dayang Ratna to sprinkle on Teja's seat. The love potion accordingly made Teja fell madly in love for Tullah, and she consented in following him back to Malacca.
Tullah had in fact led Teja to believe that they were eloping, as they left Inderapura without the knowledge or consent of her father. When the Bendahara Inderapura learned that his daughter had eloped with Tullah, he sent his warriors the Laksamana and Seri Maharaja Lela to give chase. In the ensuring fight, Tullah managed to defeat the Bendahara Inderapura's warriors.
During this period, the other jealous Malay ministers accused Mutahir of planning a rebellion. The Sultan wanted to kill him but he could not prove the accusation. It was also the time when Jaۥfar had returned to Malacca but only to hear the news that Tullah was dead, murdered unjustly by the Sultan he served. He ran amok to the royal court to avenge his death. Jaۥfar in the heat of the event had killed Mutahir, which he believed to have executed Tullah, and the family of the bendahara. The Sultan ordered his warriors to kill Jaۥfar but none of the Sultan's warriors dared to challenge the more ferocious and skilled Jaۥfar. The Sultan was unable to stop him ran outside the palace square. Sulayman came to save the Sultan and dashed to Jaۥafar. After a grueling fight, Jaۥfar had been stabbed by Sulayman.
Probably aside from saving the Sultan’s life, Abdullah Sulayman’s killing of Jaۥfar had been triggered by his fear that Jaۥfar was not really converted to Islam and still secretly professing his original faith to Tullah who if not stopped would soon convert the latter to Syrian Christianity and lastly because of Jaۥfar’s infidelity to the Sultan by continuously getting illicit relationships with the Sultan’s concubines which endangered Tullah and probably for other unknown reasons would endanger all of them.
The tragic event happened when Tullah and Teja together with her contingent of chambermaids had arrived in Malacca. Sulayman had explained to Tullah of what had happened. Jaۥfar retreated to Tullah and dying in his friend’s arms said, "Raja adil raja disembah, raja zalim raja disanggah." ("A fair king is a king to obey; a cruel king is a king to fight against".)
Seeing Tullah alive and believing that it was him who killed Jaۥfar, the Sultan had given Tullah full amnesty. The Sultan then prepared a royal welcome for the princess. As the princess was paraded through Malacca, she began to realize that she had been tricked by Tullah into following him to Malacca, and that she was in fact going to be married to the Sultan, not to Tullah. Teja was forced into the marriage, “but the king loved her deeply, and over time, won her love in return”. 125
The Arrival of the Portuguese
During the visit of the Portuguese admiral Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, on his famous voyage intended for the Spice Islands, to Malacca (from 1509-1510), the sultan planned to assassinate him. However, Sequeira learned of this plot and fled Malacca but not without a battle. Diogo Lopes de Sequeira almost died in the hands of Tullah if not with the help of his page, Fernan Magellan. The Portuguese had managed to escape and not later than October 10, 1510, Fernan Magellan was rewarded for his many services with the rank of captain.
In 1511, upon hearing a word from Fernan Magellan of what had happened to Sequeira‘s conquest in Malacca, the famous Portuguese naval officer Afonso de Albuquerque decided to utilize this to embark upon his expeditions of conquest in Asia.126 With Fernan Magellan, Albuquerque sailed to Malacca. Malacca was then subsequently attacked by the Portuguese when Tun Teja was taken ill.
The first battle ensued on July 13, 1511 the feast day of Saint Henry. On that day, Trenggana, who who was visiting the royal court of Malacca at that time to take back Dayang, Sultan Muhammad Shah’s stewardess whom he loved dearly, had been captured by Fernan Magellan.
The Battle of Malacca lasted more or less a month from July to August, 1511.127
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| The Statue of Enrique de Malacca |
By end of that year, Sultan Muhammad Shah had taken over the island of Ternate in the Moluccas and was called there as Prabu Udara. When he was there, the Portuguese friend of Magellan, Francisco Serrao, had been shipwrecked near Ternate. As Prabu Udara, Sultan Muhammad Shah saved the said Portuguese and from thereon the grateful Francisco had enriched the Sultan at the expense of Tidor which was under the jurisdiction of Fatah who was known there as Djamaluddin, being the son-in-law of Zainul Abd-Din of Johor.
Tullah and the Celestial Fairy
At the capture of Malacca, the Sultan and the royal family with his able men and warriors -- such as Tullah, Khoja Hassan, and Sulayman -- retreated to Muar, Johor. Tun Teja who felt seriously ill passed away when the royal family reached Merlimau. Continuing the journey and staying at Johor as refugees, the Sultan had heard that the crown princess of Johor, who was a descendant of Iskandar Dhul-Qarnayn – believed before to be Alexander the Great of Macedonia but recently concluded by many scholars as no other than Cyrus the Great of Achaemenid Persia (559-530 BC) -- and the couple Adityawarman and the Bhre Daha, and the only daughter of Raden Fatah with his principal wife, hence, the rightful heir of the Madjapahit Empire, had arrived from her long journey to China with a ship-load of five hundred amazons. He had heard that the princess they called “celestial fairy” -- for she could bestow the power of leadership over Madjapahit upon any man she would marry -- was living at Mt. Ledang at the Melaka-Johor border and that she possessed the two “monsoons’ orbs” or the “pearls-of-Allah” among the Muslims. The said princess was crowned Madjapahit empress and assumed the imperial Madjapahit title Damhara Amihan after her brother had been missing and ruled Johor.
At once, the Sultan sent Tullah with Abdullah Sulayman to court the puteri gunung ledang (“Princess of Mount Ledang) on his behalf and to get the nobat from her father, whom he did not know to be Fatah, while they proceed on their way to Kampar.
According to traditions, the Princess only agreed to marry Sultan Muhammad Shah if he satisfied a list of requirements, or pre-wedding gifts – such as bridges of gold and silver linking Melaka with the top of Gunung Ledang; seven trays of mosquito livers; seven trays of mite hearts; seven jars of virgins' tears; vat of water from dried areca nuts; a cup of the rajah’s blood; and a bowl of the blood of the sultan's first born son. The said traditions were very similar to the Pampangeño and Cebuano legends about the fairies Mariang Sinukuan and Maria Cacao, respectively, who had requested impossible tasks to a giant suitor they would not want to marry. Tullah knew the tasks would not be fulfilled and was said to be so overwhelmed that he failed his Sultan that he flung his kris into a river and vowed only to return to Malacca if it resurfaced, which it never did.
Later it was found out that the princess was in Sulu disguising as Tullah assumed the throne of the Sultanate of Sulu with the title Ala-ud-Din or Nur-ul-Alam while her father had returned to Tidor. It was known after the said princess had sent a message to the Sultan Batari (feminine form for sultan batara which means “empress”) of Johor, which was referring to Juzul Asiqin, through her bird, not to worry for she was still alive and living in an island known as “Ophir” (referring to Mindanao). 131
In the meantime, Sultan Muhammad Shah had established his new government in Sumatra and was converted to Islam by name but still professing his Buddhist beliefs. He was planning to revive the Srivijayan Empire by taking back all the jurisdictions of Madjapahit. He seized the vacant throne of Demak. Later in that year, the sultan managed to mobilize fleets from Java to Malay Peninsula and tried to seize back the port of Malacca from the control of the Portuguese but failed. Most of the forces composing the fleets of the Sultan were Chinese sent by the Ming Dynasty since the Malay Malacca Sultanate was its tributary state and ally. 132
Believing that the fleet of Fernan Magellan (who was then sent on by the viceroy with Antonio d' Abreu to explore the Spice Islands) -- which left from Malacca at the end of December 1511 and sailed along the north of Java, passed between Java and Madura, left Celebes on their left, coasted by the Gunong Api volcano, touched at Bura, and so reached Amboyna and Banda where they found such abundance of spices – was sent to capture Java, Sultan Muhammad Shah with his fleet sailed back to Demak and stayed there for long to protect it from a possible invasion. There was a report at that time in China that all the Chinese in Java were wiped out by the treachery of the Sultan who poisoned them at a banquet. 133
Pengiran Temenggong
He married Gandasari, the widow of Jaۥfar and raised his friend’s son, who was born two months after his death, as his own son and named him Tugau (who was later known in Brunei and the Philippines as Sulayman). While Abdullah Sulayman acted as the Adipati Agung of Brunei, Tullah was still assigned as the Pengiran Temenggong (admiral) of Brunei’s fleet whose authority covered Borneo, Cirebon & the Sunda Islands, and the Philippine Archipelago. A Pengiran Temenggong, which comprised one of the four viziers of the empire, was supposedly a rank second to the sultan and higher than a shahbandar (the one who collected taxes and tributes from the ships that entered the imperial waters), hence a shahbandar had to report to the Pengiran Temenggong about the said matter but in the case of Sultan Muhammad’s reign who had hired a Chamese Shahbandar as the people of Champa were known for extra-ordinary intelligence at that time, the Shahbandar would report directly to him by-passing the authority of the Pengiran Temenggong and violating some maritime laws being observed in the empire.
According to the S’yair Awang Semaun, Tullah (Awang Si Ayu or Awang Simaun), Abdullah Sulayman (Awang Damang Sari), and Ja’far (Awang Jerambak) were responsible in conquering the Melanau kingdom that stretched from Mukah to Tutong; Java; the entire Borneo; and the entire Philippines. The said conquest was not always about army and navy but it was also done by winning the lands in terms of the most popular gambling sports at that time like the top-spinning and cock-fighting – that is, they won just 40 Madjapahit ships laden with goods by winning in the said sports.
When the Portuguese finally took Malacca in 1512, the resident merchants from Luzon and Brunei held important government posts in the former sultanate. They were also large-scale exporters and ship owners that regularly sent junks to China, Brunei, Sumatra, Siam and Sunda.
On January 6, 1514, Tullah, as the Pengiran Temenggong, sailed back to Malacca for trade. It was noted by Rui de Brito Patalim, Captain-General of Malacca, who wrote to Dom Afonso de Albuquerque in Goa the following:
“Afterwards there arrived three junks from Burney. The people of this island are Luçoes, and from that land was the Tomungo (Temenggong) of this city (Malacca). Two of them belonged to the Luçoe merchants from there and one belonged to the said Tomungo. They brought merchandise and sold it. All courtesy was shown them and they were well treated. Of what they found, they laded the best they could. They left fully satisfied. They are good people and clever merchants. From our conversation and truthfulness they derived much pleasure, and they cleverly showed that this pleased them. They sailed with the monsoon from their country to trade in camphor and other articles. They had been wont to trade with Malacca aforetime, but could not live without this market, whence they take cloth of Cambaya and other merchandise. All these people (from the junks) are related to the Tomungo.” 134
This was the first visit of the Borneans to Malacca after its capture by the Portuguese, so it was an occasion of some importance. The Captain-General would seem to have conversed with them to considerable length, for he was obviously keen to reopen the Brunei-Malacca trade. The interesting fact emerges that, though from Brunei, all these people were related to the nobility of the Malacca Sultanante. It was a fact very accurate.
On the same day Patalim wrote to King Manoel I:
“There came from Burneo to this city (Malacca) three junks, they brought seed pearls and provisions, in addition to other food stuffs. The King is a pagan, but the merchants are Moors. Borneo is a great island, which lies between China and the Moluccas. The people of that island call themselves Luçoes, they are good men and our friends. When trading here they always seek cloth from Cambaya and Quilis (Quilon) on the Malavar coast.” 135
According to Tomé Pires, the Portuguese assigned as the Supervisor of the Spice Trade in Malacca from 1512 to 1515, in his Suma Oriental, the trade between the Portuguese in Malacca and the merchants of Brunei, who were all men, since then was done every year.
The Islamization of Brunei
In the early part of 1515, seeing the economic development in Brunei, Sultan Muhammad Shah along with his fleets had decided to move in to Brunei. And for the first time seeing Kampong Ayer, they all exclaimed, “Baru nah!” which means “No we found it!” Sultan Muhammad Shah or Mahmud Shah was already famed even in Brunei as a cruel tyrant named by the Borneans as Sultan Makatunaw (“the sultan who can melt anything”). An ensuing fight followed between the armies of Brunei and of Sultan Muhammad Shah. Out-numbered, the datus and their armies retreated to other parts of Borneo or to the other islands. Sulayman retreated to Garang near Kuala Labu at the Temburong district not far from Brunei while Tullah retreated to Mindanao.
It must be at this time that the tale about the ten Bornean datus who rebelled against the Sultan and fled to Panay occured. In a Panay manuscript written on a goat-skin by the use of the juice of blackberry as ink (Tagalog “duhat” means blackberry while Malay “dawat or duwat” means ink), known as Maragtas, it is said that the ten Bornean datus led by Datu Puti, who wanted a free life, fled to the island of Panay and established a settlement at its plains at the mouth of the Irong-irong River in exchange of a golden saruk and a pearl necklace given to the Ati (Negro) rulers Hari Marikudo and Hara Maniwantiwan respectively who had moved to the mountains and then established a confederation called Madya-as which had a similar meaning with Madjapahit.
The Sultan who was then known as Awang Alak Betatar among his Buddhist and Hindu followers started, in disguise as a merchant, trading back with Malacca probably to spy and find ways to regain it back from the Portuguese. It was at this time that Tome Pires was informed by the Bornean merchants that the king of Brunei “became a Muslim”. Tome Pires also noted that:
“… it is not very long since the King became a Moor. They seem to be a trading people. The merchants are all men of medium stature, not very sharp witted. They trade with Malacca every year. It is a country with plenty of meat, fish, rice and sago.” 136
In the early part of 1517, Sultan Muhammad Shah sent an envoy named Pengiran Bendahara Seri Maharaja Parameswara (Pateh Berbai) to Bendahara Inderapura Surya Sri Amar DiRaja of his plan to sail to China for an annual tribute and probably to seek help in casting away the Portuguese from the region. Immediately, the bendahara paid the Portuguese 9000 cruzados in gold to retain his plantation of pepper.137 The Portuguese who did not know about the plan accepted the offer. From the said plantation 175 tons of pepper was harvested. It was embarked on one of the ships of the sultan that had arrived from Sumatra. But his fleet to China was somewhat guarded by the Portuguese who for the first time with their own fleet along with the sultan’s paid an official visit to the Chinese Empire. They arrived in China in the latter part of the year.
Due to the Malaccan Sultan lodging a complaint against the Portuguese invasion to the Chinese Emperor, the Portuguese were greeted with hostility from the Chinese when they arrived in China. The Malaccans had informed the Chinese of the Portuguese seizure of Malacca, to which the Chinese responded with hostility toward the Portuguese; and the deception the Portuguese used, disguising plans for conquering territory as mere trading activities, and told of all the atrocities committed by the Portuguese. The Chinese Imperial Government imprisoned and executed multiple Portuguese envoys after torturing them in Guangzhou. After the Portuguese set up posts for trading in China and committed piratical activities and raids in China, the Chinese responded with the complete extermination of the Portuguese in Ningbo and Quanzhou. Tome Pires, a Portuguese trade envoy, was among those who died in the Chinese dungeons.138
On his return, in the early part of 1518, Sultan Muhammad Shah, who had intercepted a message that the “celestial fairy” was alive, immediately searched for the princess in the guise of propagating Islam. He forsook the ancient Buddhist capital at the mouth of the Lawas River and built a new all-Muslim capital on the present site, an action for which there were many precedents. No doubt there had certainly been some earlier settlement on the site of the new Palace at Kota Batu, as artifacts found there prove. He had even gone to Mindanao. According to the Magindanao and Sulu tarsilas, Sultan Muhammad Shah -- who was known as Nakhoda Ragam (“singing captain”), Sharif Kabungsuwan, Muhammad Kabungsuwan, and Rajah Baginda in Mindanao – converted most of the natives of Magindanao and Cotabato into Islam; nearly had a battle in Basilan but was surprised to know that there were already Muslims in the area; and he had learned in Sulu that there was already mosques and Muslim tombs erected and that there were already many Muslim preachers that came there, namely: Sharif Awliya, Tuan Mashaika, Abu Bakr, Kamal-ud-Din, and etc. There was even a certain Nur-ul-Alam or Alaۥ-ud-Din who was suspected to be a woman in manly disguise. According to the Johor traditions, the said princess had “a specially designed signet ring with large diamonds which she always wore on her finger for that ring was the ancient ring of Solomon handed down from generations to the descendants of Iskandar Dhul-Qarnayn (Cyrus the Great of Persia)” and could be detected by it amidst her manly disguise.
This Islamization process of Sultan Muhammad Shah must have started in 1515 but was magnified in 1518-1521 with a main purpose of getting a large number of combatants who would fight against the Christian Portuguese to eradicate them from the empire at the expense of so many lives. In the case of Tullah, he used the head-hunters of Borneo and Luzon as his front warriors who looked at head-hunting as sports or as a religious ritual in honor of the gods – among the Dyaks of Borneo for the pleasure of sports and for the Ifugaos of Luzon for offering to Cain who had beheaded Abel as a sacrifice to Kabuniyan.
The Lords of the Monsoons
It must be between October 1520 and March 1521, the northeast monsoon season, that Sultan Muhammad Shah had discovered the where-about of the “celestial fairy”. According to Cotabato and Sulu traditions, the “celestial fairy” had stayed in Sulu and disguised as Nur-ul-Alam or Alaۥ-ud-Din (titles of Tullah as successor to the throne of the Sulu sultanate which both means “light of God”). It was said that the princess, after being caught from her disguise, when asked by the courier in behalf of the Sultan her hand in marriage, replied that she would only marry a man who could accomplish three tasks – (a) he must win over the other suitors in hand-to-hand combat in Magindanao; (b) he must win over another man in the arnis or kali single-handedly since the fight would be over a single rope suspended above a pit full of crocodiles to serve as their ground and another in which they would hold, which was held in Cotabato; and (c) he must defeat the princess in a wrestling bout at the top of Mt. Tumangtangis, in Sulu. The three tasks showed the remarkable wisdom of the princess in finding ways not to be married with the Sultan. In the first task, it would be possible that all suitors would be killing each other and nobody would stay alive; in the second, at her behest no suitors could survive if she wished to by swinging the rope so that the fighting princes would fall and be eaten by the crocodiles; and the third, it was not really her who would fight in a wrestling bout but the last elephant of Sulu which was living at a swamp in Mt. Tumangtangis and had gone wild. Accordingly, the Sultan passed all the tasks. The princess was even astounded when the Sultan who was about to be trampled by an attacking wild elephant shot it with the “lightning” from his lantaka (a small Bornean cannon). In Malaccan version, the princess had spoken to the Sultan – “I will never marry a man who is as weak and cruel as to oppress his people and murder his own son.” Yet according to S’yair Awang Semaun, the princess was kidnapped by the Sultan to Brunei; in Portuguese account, the princess was captured by Francisco Serrao while escaping to Tidor and was given to his liege lord, Prabu Udara who was no other than Sultan Muhammad Shah himself, as a gift; and according to Pigafetta, based on what he heard from the merchants, Sulu had been tributary to Brunei ever since the ruler of Brunei had seized the two great pearls of which he was so proud.139
The wedding had been scheduled which was set to take place in Cebu for aside from being the seat of Sulu Sultanate at that time, Cebu was the most strategic central point for the people coming from Luzon and from Borneo who would want to converge at the center or at most at the same distance at a period between the end of the northeast monsoon (amihan) and the beginning of the southwestern monsoon (habagat) which would be convenient for both sea-travelers from north and south – that is, the last week of March 1521. Thus, it is probable that the fleet of the Sultan had sailed to Cebu in the second week of March.
Following the tradition of sea-farers, the Sultan and the princess must be married in the Sultan’s ship at the sea by an imam. Probably, Tullah had seen the coming of the Spaniards as a right timing to disrupt the wedding.
The Arrival of the Spaniards
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| Ferdinand Magellan |
On the rainy afternoon of March 26 (Philippine time), while the galleons were on the point of weighing anchor, Antonio Pigafetta, the Venetian chronicler of the expedition, fell into the sea while he was walking at the yard to fish but he was able to hold on the clew garnet of the mainsail which was dangling in the water. As he cried out the natives in a small boat came and rescued him. Had it not, the story of the Battle of Mactan might not been told and known at present.140
Passing through the Sulu Sea, on the night of March 28 (Philippine time), a “fire” had been seen on an island of Borneo. It was a bonfire made by Abdullah Sulayman to cook the jungle fowls and other animals that they had caught from hunting at Kuala Labu in the district of Temburong not very far from his city of Garang, which was bigger than Brunei at that time.141
What the Spaniards saw was the present Brunei-Malaysia border –the Temburong District. From west to east, the Brunei–Malaysia border begins where the watershed of the Baram and Belait river basins meet the South China Sea at a point six nautical miles (11 km) east of Tanjung Baram with coordinates 4°35′20″N 114°5′00″E (4°35′20″N is erroneously transcribed by some copyists of Pigafetta’s manuscript as 9°40′N from its rounded off coordinates of 4°40′ N). It then travels along the watershed of the two river basins for about 30 km to the Pagalayan Canal. It then goes a further 44 km to the Teraja Hills. From there, the border runs along the watershed between the Belait and Tutong rivers on one hand, and the Baram and Limbang (this is mentioned in Pigafetta’s account as Limban) rivers on the other hand. It then proceeds along the watershed of the Brunei and Limbang river basins till it reaches Brunei Bay.
After the Spaniards cast anchored near Kuala Labu, a vinta (or “baroto”) with nine datus in it approached the Trinidad and came alongside. To the surprise of everyone, Trenggana had spoken fluently with the said datus.
Seeing that the Bornean datus were unwilling to come aboard taking a position at a little distance, Magellan who was wishing to establish friendly relations with them, sent out a red cap and other things on a floating plank and was pleased to observe that they picked them up with signs of satisfaction. Immediately, the vinta sailed away to Kuala Labu and reported the incident to Abdullah Sulayman.
Two hours later, two balangays full of warriors approached the Trinidad. “All these people were dark-complexioned, corpulent, and glistening from frequent applications of coconut oil. Their hair was jet black and fell to their waists, while their wild appearance was increased by their custom of carrying daggers, knives, spears, javelins, and shields which were ornamented with gold.”
Abdullah Sulayman was in the larger balangay, “being seated under an awning of mats”.
Trenggana had conversed with Sulayman as the latter came nearer to the flagship but at a little distance. In the absence of translation it could be understood that what they had conversed was about his slavery under the Spaniard and his possible redemption. Under the code of a warrior if captured he must serve his master with honor until such a time that his freedom is given back by his master. Hence, Trenggana could not escape from his bondage. It is also very possible that Abdullah Sulayman had informed Trenggana about the Dayang’s fate and about his sister’s abduction by Sultan Muhammad Shah and her nearing forceful marriage to him. According to some Portuguese accounts, the princess had sent a letter, through her bird, to her mother the Sultan Batari on “not to worry about her for she would be married soon to the feared sultan” which could really mean in reverse – that is, she wanted to be rescued. Tullah might not be aware of that fact at that time had continued his search for the princess in Mindanao.
Abdullah Sulayman then ordered some of his men to go to the Trinidad, telling them that he would not stir from his boat rather than close to the flagship. Magellan made good cheer to those who came to the Trinidad and gave them many things. Wherefore Abdullah Sulayman wished to give Magellan a bar of massy gold, of a good size, and a basket full of ginger. But Magellan thanking the rajah greatly refused to accept the present. Hence, after the rajah’s men had returned to his long boat he immediately departed.
On Black Saturday, March 30, 1521 (Philippine time), Magellan sent Trenggana ashore to Sulayman, requesting him to cause, in return for his money, some provisions to be given for his ships telling him that he had come into his country, not as an enemy, but as a friend.
It is more probable than not that the Madjapahit crown prince, Trenggana, had revealed to the rajah, whom he knew so well, about Spain’s colonization of the islands through Magellan’s expedition. Perhaps the two of them were really planning on how to lay away an impending colonization. So, unknown to the Spaniards, Abdullah Sulayman had sent three of his datus to Mindanao particularly in Butuan to fetch Tullah immediately and prepare the fleets for battle.
Later, Abdullah Sulayman and Trenggana with the other six datus in the same vinta, boarded the Trinidad. Sulayman embraced Magellan, and gave him three porcelain jars covered with leaves and full of raw rice and two large fishes, and gave him also some other things. In return for this acceptable gift, Magellan gave the rajah a garment of red and yellow cloth made in the Turkish fashion and a fine red cap; and to the datus he gave to some knives and to other mirrors. Then Magellan had them served a meal and had Abdullah Sulayman told through Trenggana his desire of becoming Sulayman’s blood-brother through a blood-compact which was called as kasi-kasi. To which the rajah replied that he too wished to be the same with him. Note that it was only a wish and nowhere to be found in Pigafetta’s account that they had done a blood compact which means that they had not really become blood-brothers.
Desirous of impressing the half-naked laksamana with his power and attainments, Magellan showed him his stock of arms and ammunition, his collection of weapons, artillery, armor, etc. He had some of the cannon discharged, at the sound of which the laksamana was greatly terrified, and two of his attendants leaped overboard.
Pigafetta described it in detail:
"Then the captain-general had a man encased in armor, and placed him in the midst of three others armed simply with swords and daggers, who struck him on all parts of the body without harming him. At this sight the king was rendered almost speechless, and when the captain-general told him that one of those armed men was worth a hundred of his own [the laksamana's] without defensive armor, he answered that was a fact. The captain-general said that he had two hundred men who were armed in that manner, and he showed the king his cuirasses, swords, bucklers, etc., and had a review conducted for him. Then he led him to the deck of the ship that is located above, at the stern, and had his sea-charts and compass brought. By means of them he explained how he had found the strait, in order to voyage thither, and how many moons he had been without seeing land, whereat the king was greatly astonished. Lastly, he told the king that he would like, if it were pleasing to him, to send two of his men with him so that he might show them some of his things. The king replied that he was agreeable, and I, Antonio Pigafetta, went with him in company with another.143
It was the big mistake of Magellan in showing the rajah how his men fought and how many would be the equivalent of one Spaniard clad in full armor with the natives. He suggested to Abdullah Sulayman a ratio of 1:100 and revealed that he had 200 Spaniards clad in that armor which meant that the ratio needed by the rajah is 200:2000. It could be understood that he needed 2000 warriors to gather in his fleet for the impending battle.
Then lastly, Magellan asked the rajah whether it would please him if he sends two of his men to the country where he lived that he might show them what other things his country had. The rajah agreed. Magellan sent Trenggana and Antonio Pigafetta. They landed at Kuala Labu which was not very far from Garang, which was still in the Temburong district and was the actual residence of Abdullah Sulayman.
Pigafetta had given the details of the event that followed:
"When I had set foot on shore, the king raised his hands towards the sky and then turned to us, so that we did likewise. The he then took me by the hand, one of his notable men took my companion, and thus they led us under a bamboo covering, where there was an immense balanghai, that is to say, a boat of eighty feet or thereabouts in length, resembling a foist. There we sat down upon the stern of that great boat, constantly conversing by signs, and the king's men stood about us in a circle, armed with swords, daggers, spears, and bucklers.
"The king shortly had a dish of pork and a large jar of wine brought in, and at every mouthful we drank a cup of the wine. The king's cup was always covered, and no one drank of it save himself. Before he took the cup to drink he raised his clasped hands towards the sky, and then towards me. When he was about to drink, he extended the fist of his left hand towards me (so that at first I thought he was about to strike me), and then drank. I did the same, and so far as possible went through the same performance. I learned that they always make those signs when they drink together." 144
Note that Abdullah Sulayman was never mentioned to eat pork and he even had a separate cup for drinking which was solely for his own use avoiding mixing it with the food and wine contaminated with the oil and gravy from the pork.
After the meal was over, Pigafetta employed himself in writing down as many words of his host's language as he could obtain; but not much time was allowed him, for soon the supper-hour arrived and the feasting was resumed. Two large porcelain dishes were brought in, one full of boiled rice, and the other of pork with its broth and gravy. Pigafetta continued:
"We ate with the same signs and ceremonies as before, after which we went to the king's 'palace,' which was built like a hay-loft, set up high from the ground on great posts, and was thatched with banana and palm leaves. To reach the banquet-hall it was necessary to ascend by means of ladders, and once there the king made us sit down, on a bamboo mat, with our feet drawn up like tailors.
"After a long delay, a platter of broiled fish was brought in, also green ginger and wine. The king's eldest son (Karim), who was the prince, sat down near us, and then two platters of fish and rice were brought, so that we might also eat with him. We were already full to repletion, and my companion became intoxicated as the result of so much drinking. The torches, which are made of gums of a tree called Anime wrapped in leaves of palm, now burned low, with flickering light, and the king made us a sign that he was going to sleep. He left the prince with us, and we slept with him on a bamboo mat with pillows made of leaves.145
At dawn, Tullah and the three datus had arrived while Pigafetta was still sleeping. Abdullah Sulayman then woke up Pigafetta and took him by the hand and brought him to the dining hall to partake of refreshments. Abdullah Sulayman introduced Tullah to Pigafetta as “Si Ayu” of Butuan and Caraga – the said places in Mindanao were the ancient ship-building capital of the Madjapahit Empire – who “had just came to visit him and to hunt in Kuala Labu”. Since 1978, remnants of balangays are excavated in Butuan and other parts of the Caraga Region.146 Pigafetta named the laksamana as Raia Siaiu instead of Awang Si Ayu on presumption that all rulers of the islands were rajahs without knowing that there was an existing ranking system and mistakenly named Abdullah Sulayman – who was the laksamana’s cousin, father-in-law, and blood-brother -- as Raia Colambu or Calambu which was obviously a corruption of Kuala Labu which was the name of the place and a confusion of an entry word kulambu in his journal which referred to a mosquito net. It was obvious that there was a misunderstanding between the interpreter and the Italian who were both not fluently acquainted with the Portuguese language. For the Latin-speaking people, Portuguese was the most difficult language. Trenggana only spoke in pidgin Portuguese while Pigafetta was an Italian who found Portuguese a difficult language and even experienced more difficulty in understanding Trenggana’s. When the boats sent by Magellan to fetch Pigafetta and Trenggana had arrived, the two envoys of Magellan departed. And as they departed, Abdullah Sulayman kissed the hands of Pigafetta and Trenggana. Probably he only wanted to kiss the hand of Trenggana but the latter might had ordered him through a signal to kiss Pigafetta’s hand too to avoid suspicion. Tullah and the three datus came with them to the Trinidad.
Tullah had been described by Pigafetta as follows:
"According to their customs he was very grandly decked out; and the most handsome man that we saw among those people. His hair was exceedingly black, and hung to his shoulders, with a silk veil on his head and two large golden earrings fastened in his ears; he wore a cotton cloth all embroidered with silk, which covered him from the waist to the knees; at his side hung a dagger, the handle of which was very long and all gold, and its scabbard of carved wood; he had three spots of gold on every tooth, and his teeth appeared as if bound with gold; he was perfumed with storax and benzoin; he was olive-skinned and tattooed all over." 147
Tullah had told Magellan that pieces of gold of the size of walnuts and eggs were found by sifting the earth in his island which were Butuan and Caraga (referring to the whole island of Mindanao seen as two islands at that time since it is divided by the Agusan River) and all his dishes were of gold and also some portion of his house.
As the following Monday, April 1, 1521 (Philippine time), the eve of Tullah’s birthday, Magellan resolved to celebrate the double event in a manner to impress the Abdullah Sulayman and all his people. He sent his chaplain ashore, with Trenggana to inform the Abdullah Sulayman of his intention to perform a religious ceremonial, but not to dine with him, or visit.
The rajah at once consented to the landing of the soldiers, fifty of whom, without armor, but carrying their muskets and side-arms paraded on the beach in front of the palace. Before they reached the shore six cannon had been fired "as a sign of peace," and the two laksamanas embraced Magellan ardently.
From the sea to Kuala Labu, in the Temburong District of Brunei, can be seen the three hills at the border called at present as the Bornean Triangle -- Long Pasia, Long Bawan and Long Semadoh. Based on the S’yair Awang Semaun, the laksamana went up the hill of Bawan (Long Bawan) – interestingly, at present the said place is predominantly Christian amidst the threats of unprecedented attacks of the ethnic tribe known as Orang Asli – hence, Long Bawan was really the one chosen by Magellan and Tullah. 142
With Tullah and Abdullah Sulayman on either side, Magellan marched his men to a place selected for the ceremonies, and before they commenced sprinkled his royal companions with musk water, at which they were well pleased. They even kissed the cross, when it was elevated, and with clasped hands fell on their knees and worshipped this, probably not the first, Christian symbol they had ever seen. Northern Borneo had already been visited by Catholic and Nestorian priests since the 13th century – probably tolerance of any religion had been exercised within the sultan though Islam was its official religion. In this account it was clearly manifested that Tullah had really embraced Syrian Christianity introduced to him by Jaۥfar. Yet on the other hand, it is also possible that Tullah and Abdullah Sulayman did that either from deference to their guests or as part of a grand deception plan in toppling down the invaders and not because of any real sentiment of religion. When asked by Magellan whether they were Mohammedans or heathens, Tullah answered: “There is no god but God,” – this is the first line professed by every Muslim and Syrian Christian – but it differed on the second line since after the blood-brothers raised their clasped hands and facing the sky they said, “We call him Abba!” Among the Muslim, the second line must be, “… and Muhammad is the Apostle of God.” It might be possible that Tullah had been fully converted to Syrian Christianity or he might be another example of an unorthodox Muslim who had incorporated the Christian doctrine into his Islamic concept of God like his belief in a Nur-ul-Allah (“light of God”) – a belief that Adam as Nallah (hermaphrodite) was the child of Nur Allah (Sky Father) and Nur Ahut (Earth Mother); hence, Adam was both the father and mother of Eve -- which other Muslims would say not found in the Koran but being preached by the Sufi Muslims in Java. The belief in Nur-ul-Allah or Nur- Muhammad, according to other Muslims, is a conflation of Christian beliefs in Christ incorporated to Islam which is contrary to the teachings of Koran. But whatever it is, it could be understood that Tullah was not a fundamentalist or extremist Muslim and what he had was just a simple belief in God existing above the sky – probably he was a practicing Jew as his ancestors were.
Thereat Magellan was very glad, and, seeing that, Tullah raised his hands to the sky and said that he wished if it were possible for him to make the strangers see his love for him. Magellan replied that he did not doubt his love, and to prove it he was going to ask of him a great favor. He desired permission to set up the cross they had brought on the summit of a hill overlooking the harbor, where it should be not only a sign of possession taken in the name of his dread sovereign, but as a token of amity between them. Magellan's real reason, doubtless, for the raising of the cross in such a conspicuous place, lay in the fact that such an act signified actual possession, and allegiance on the part of the natives to the king he served. But he veiled his real motives in the religious ceremony, and he told the laksamanas, through Trenggana, "that he wished to set it up in that place for their benefit, for whenever any of our ships came they would know that we had been there by this cross, and would do nothing to displease them or harm their property. If any of their men were captured, they would be set free immediately, on that sign being shown; and it was necessary to place it on the highest hill or mountain, so that on seeing it every morning they might adore it; and if they did that, neither thunder, lightning, nor storms would harm them in the least”. The brothers thanked him heartily, and said they “would do everything he wished most willingly”.
Near the shore, and overlooking the harbor, rose a verdant, palm-dotted hill with a smooth and rounded crown. It was a site most fit for the erection of that holy symbol of Christianity, and there Magellan resolved to place it. The said hill was Long Bawan, for aside that it met the geographical description it was associated with the legends about Awang Si Ayu (Simaun – it is derived from the Malay prefix “si” which is both used to denote a leader or a district; “magayun” which means beautiful or handsome; “mayun” or “maayu”, good or excellent; and “ayu”, light or bright; he was called in the Legaspi expedition’s account as “Simaggio”, that is “Si Maayu” ). With a host of natives in the van, breaking a path through the tangled tropical vegetation, and himself leading his fifty soldiers, Magellan ascended the hill soon to be made sacred to the religion he professed. The two blood-brothers accompanied him, and while the trio stood apart, watching the proceedings with deep interest, the soldiers detailed for the purpose dug a deep hole and set the cross in position. Less than eight years previously, Balboa, on the isthmus of Darien, had marked with a cross the site from which he had first viewed the Pacific, and now it was Fernan Magellan's privilege, in these far-distant isles of the same ocean, to confirm his sovereign's possession of that vast body of water which he was the first to cross.
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| The Murut People (also referred to as the Tagal People), one of the three largest ethnic groups in northern inland Borneo who were last to renounce head-hunting. The Selurung, one of its 29 sub-ethnic tribes, were the ancestors of the Tagalogs. |
A gilded crown surmounted the cross, and both together typified the spiritual and material sovereignty which Magellan, as a faithful subject of his king and true soldier of the faith, was desirous to extend and to confirm. After it was in position, he reverently knelt at the foot of the cross, and with his soldiers, also on bended knees, listened to the invocation by his chaplain. The moment it was finished a musket was fired, as a signal to the ships, and their cannon boomed a salutation. Volleys of musketry responded from the hill, and, amid dense clouds of smoke, the party descended to the plain at its base, where the soldiers performed martial evolutions and fought a sham battle, greatly to the edification of all the people, who were loath to allow their guests to depart.
Inquiring for larger and richer islands, at which he might carry on a profitable trade, Magellan was told that one of the wealthiest of these was Sugbu (which is also called Cebu), and that there he might obtain the gold and spices he desired, in exchange for his stock of goods in the ships. When he asked for pilots to Cebu, he was told that none was to be had for love or for money, but that if he would wait till the kings had harvested their rice crops one or both of them would go with him gladly. So Magellan not only waited two days, but sent men to aid the farmer kings in gathering their crops. But “the kings were so hospitable to the laborers that all, including themselves, were overcome, it is said, by the liquor they drank, and a further delay ensued”.
Delaying tactic was always a part of the art of war. Tullah together with the nine datus after gathering fleets from Sumatra, Johor, Java, Borneo, Mindanao, Bohol, and other islands in the Visayas had already sailed ahead towards Cebu in preparation of a battle that was already planned. It must be understood that during that period the fleets from Luzon had already arrived in Cebu in preparation of the imperial coronation and wedding ceremony. The Sultan must be informed ahead for the impending problem of Spanish colonization. Trenggana, the crown prince of Madjapahit, had to stay with the Spaniards to avoid suspicion and to serve as a spy. But he too, above all as the real crown prince, must be saved in the end.
The Christianization of Cebu by Sword and Fire
A final departure was made on the fifth day of April (Philippine time), and, while some uncertainty existed as to the points previously touched at by Magellan, all doubts were removed from the time the royal pilots took the helms, as they steered a straight course for the island of Cebu. Many wonders were seen on the way, the observer stated that among the most astonishing being the "flying-foxes," or frugiverous bats, "as large as eagles," the flesh of which, he said, tasted like chicken. Besides turtle-doves and parrots, which were in swarms on certain islands, he mentioned those wonderful birds, the megapodes, or "mound birds," which lay their large eggs in a mound of decaying vegetation, by the heat of which they were hatched. The voyage must have been a leisurely one to have enabled the observer to note these objects by the way.
The port of Cebu was reached on April 8th (Philippine time) and entered with flying colors. Pigafetta related it as follows:
"On approaching the city, the captain-general ordered the ships to fling out their banners. The sails were lowered, as if for battle, and all the artillery was discharged” -- an action which caused great fear to those people. The captain-general then sent a foster-son of his as ambassador to the King of Cebu, with the interpreter. When they reached the city they found a vast crowd of people gathered about the king and trembling in fear from the noise of the lombards. The interpreter informed them that it was our custom, when entering a strange port, to discharge all our cannon, not only as a sign of peace and friendship, but in honor of the king. They were then reassured, but the king remarked that this was a strange custom, and then asked what it was our captain wanted. The interpreter replied that his master was the greatest captain in the world, and was going to the Moluccas by a new route he had discovered; but that he had digressed on the way, in order to visit the King of Cebu, because of the good report received from the King of Mazzava. The king told him he was come in good time, but that it was the custom for all strange ships that entered his ports to pay him tribute, and that it was but four days since a junk which had come from Siam, laden with slaves and gold, had done so. In proof of this statement he pointed to the merchant in charge of the junk, who was present at the time. The interpreter told the king that since his master was the captain of so great a monarch, he did not pay tribute to any seignior in the world, but on the contrary exacted tribute from others. If the king wished for peace, he would have peace; but if war instead, then war it should be!” 148
Thereupon the Shahbandar, who according to the Syair Awang Semaun was a Chamese hired by the Sultan for his intelligence, advised the Sultan to tell the Spanish colonizers that he (the Sultan) was their ruler by saying in Malay: “Kata raia kita.” (“Tell them that you are our king.”)
At that time the people of Southeast Asia called Thailand as Siam; Syria as Syam; and the people of Champa as Cham. Champa at that time was vassal to Madjapahit. It had done intermarriages among the royal class of Java. And it had a strong politico-economic alliance with Sumatra since the attack of the Vietnamese at Vijaya, the capital of the kingdom of Champa. But after the fall of Malacca to the Portuguese, Sultan Muhammad Shah had gained foothold at Sumatra and from there he was reconquering what had been lost. Abu Bakr who was declared by the Sulu tarsilas to have “passed away” in 1480 might not mean to have died but to have gone to other land which was his motherland, which is Champa, but was forced back to his fatherland (Sumatra) to seek military assistance in stopping the Vietnamese who was conquering his kingdom.
Then the said adviser, the Shahbandar, further reminded the Sultan, “These men are the same as those who have conquered Calicut, Malacca, and all Greater India. If they are treated well, they will give good treatment in return; but if evil, then evil treatment, and worse, as they have done to Calicut and Malacca.”
Trenggana had told the Sultan that Magellan’s king, the King of Spain, was more powerful even than the King of Portugal -- that he was the ruler over Spain, and emperor of other countries, and that if he did not care to be his friend, next time would be sent so many men that they would destroy him.
The Sultan answered that he would deliberate with the ruma bechara, his council. Then he had refreshments served, of many dishes, contained in porcelain platters, besides several jars of wine. After that the Spanish envoys and Trenggana returned to the Trinidad and told everything that was spoken.
The upshot of long negotiations which ensued was that the Sultan, the Riayat Umabong, sent Magellan a drop of blood from his right arm, with the request that he do the same for him, in token of blood-brotherhood. This was done, and thus amicable relations were at once established. Karim, the eldest son of Abdullah Sulayman described in Pigafetta’s account as “a prince of pleasing manners and countenance”, was dispatched to treat with Magellan on board his ship. He was received with great honors, and seated beside Magellan in a red velvet chair, while his companions, the bendahara of Cebu, the constable, and eight datus, reclined on mats spread upon the deck.
Asked if they were empowered to make peace, they answered they were. Then Magellan, “who was ever seeking opportunities to further the cause of religion, made an impassioned speech upon the delights of peace, and declared himself an apostle of the Prince of Peace, whose humble servant even was his great and mighty king. He told them of God, who made the sky, the earth, the sea, and ‘all that in them is.’ He informed them that all people living were descended from Adam and Eve, our first parents, and what seemed very strange and new to them -- that every one has an immortal spirit. The good are to be rewarded, he said, and the bad condemned to the pit of fire everlasting.”
These simple children of nature seemed greatly impressed by Magellan's eloquence, and by the arguments he advanced in proof that his religion was the "only true one," and that they should promptly embrace it for the good of their souls. They requested him to allow at least two of his company to remain among them, in order to teach them the true faith; but Magellan replied that he could not do so then, though he had with him a priest of the Most High God who, if they would consent to become Christians, would baptize them in His name. They answered that they would first speak to their king, and that then, doubtless, they would all become Christians, "at which words we all wept for joy," says the chevalier.
Pigafetta related in details:
"The captain-general told them that they should not become Christians from fear, or to please us, merely, but of their own free wills; and that he would not cause any displeasure to those who wished to live according to their own law; but that the Christians would be better regarded and treated than the others! Then all cried out, with one voice, that they were not becoming Christians through fear, or to please us, but of their own free will. Then the captain-general told them that if they became Christians he would leave with them a suit of armor—for so his king had commanded him to do; and he further assured them that if they became Christians the devil would no longer appear to them, except in the last moment at their death.
They said that they could not answer the beautiful words he had spoken, but that they placed themselves in his hands, and that he should consider them as his most faithful servants. Then our captain embraced them, weeping, and clasping one of the prince's (Karim) hands, and one of the King of Mazzava's (Abdullah Sulayman), between his own, he said to them that, by his faith in God and to his sovereign, the emperor, and by the habit of Santiago, which he wore, he promised to give them perpetual peace with the King of Spain." 149
Magellan did not confine himself to the imparting of religious instruction only, but sent a large stock of goods ashore and opened a shop, or market, for barter. Trade was good from the first, and the people were ready to fight for such articles as they were in need of, giving gold for bronze and iron, almost weight for weight. For the less valuable things they gave in barter goats and kids, pigs, fowl, and rice, so that the ships of the fleet once more abounded in plenty. These people were very fair in their dealings, for "they lived in justice, and gave good weights and measures." Their scale was an extremely simple contrivance, consisting of a spear-shaft suspended in the middle by a cord, with a bronze basin hung by three strings to one arm, and a piece of lead, to balance it, on the other. So lavish were they of their gold and precious stones, that Magellan issued an order forbidding promiscuous trading by the sailors, as "there were some who would have given all they had for a small amount of gold, and would soon have spoiled the trade forever."
He listened attentively to what Karim said about the white man's religion, and assented to his proposition to embrace it. Then he clapped his hands again, and four young girls appeared who danced gracefully before the king and his guests, while playing upon sweet-toned Chinese gongs. After this recreation had been indulged in, his majesty declared he must sup, and invited the party to remain; but finally accepted their excuses and allowed them to return to the ship. There they found that two of the sailors had died, and again seeking audience of the Sultan, secured his permission to consecrate a certain space in the centre of the town as a cemetery, and inter their comrades therein.
The funeral ceremonies were made as elaborate as possible, and the Sultan, who pretended to be duly impressed, “promised” to become a Christian on the following Sunday. When the holy day arrived a platform was erected in the consecrated square, decorated with palm-leaves and silken hangings, and here Magellan and Sultan Muhammad Shah met by appointment. The captain-general came ashore with an escort of forty musketeers, two of whom only were in complete armor, and when he landed on Cebu soil all the cannon of the fleet were fired in salute. The Sultan and Magellan embraced, then went together to the platform in the square, where they seated themselves in two chairs, one lined with red velvet for the captain-general, and the other in violet for his majesty.
The Sultan felt that he was between Scylla and Charybdis. Though he was a Muslim his constituents in Cebu were mostly Buddhist worshippers as seen from the excavations of the images of Ganesha, Lokitesvara, Shiva, and etc. It could be even probable that the present church of the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño was actually a Buddhist temple before it was converted into a Catholic church as plainly seen on the statues carved on its walls outside which if it would be examined clearly were of Buddhist style especially the image above the front double doors. The people would retaliate if he changed his policy of religious tolerance within the sultanate. But challenging against the Spaniards meant real destruction and annihilation of the city. The Sultan was adjured to worship the cross which Magellan caused to be planted in the square, and he promised. He was told that he must also burn all the idols, which were made of either wood or clay, in the city which actually represented the ruler and his ancestors. Some were of wood, some of clay. If he would follow the suggestions of Magellan then his image to his Buddhist and Hindu followers as a god-king would be doomed.
The Sultan was finding an alibi in order not to be Christianized or a reason that he could convey to his subjects of accepting Christianity.
The Sultan, through Trenggana, declared that he very much desired to become a Christian but there were some datus under him who objected. They were very bad men, he said, and, what was more to the point, they were so strong that he feared he could not bring them to reason – these “native datus” were actually Tullah and Fatah who played great roles in this war game and the place being referred was Mactan, the naval base of the Madjapahit Empire. What Magellan did not know was that the act of the Sultan was part of a drama in deceiving him to go in the battlefield which had long been planned. But what the Sultan did not know also was the plan of Tullah in rescuing the “celestial fairy” from him.
"Send for them," commanded Magellan, "and I will reason with them." They were sent for, and came, though reluctantly, a 10-year old envoy, Tugao – the son of Jaۥfar and adopted son of Tullah who was known in Cebuano traditions as Malingin, “which means round”, who was later renamed as Sulayman – with two goats as gifts from his father Tullah. Then the boy handed a letter, written on a goat-skin, from Tullah to Magellan saying that “he could not give an abundant gift since he was oppressed severely by a ‘Raya Si Kuala Labu’ who was breathing defiance against the King of Spain”. Tullah was written by Pigafetta as Zula which is another variant aside from Dullah, Dhullah, Dula, Dzullah and Tuah while “Raya Si Kuala Labu” means “the rajah who has come from Kuala Labu” but misinterpreted by Pigafetta as a name and wrote it as “Raia Cilapulapu”. Magellan instructed the boy, through Trenggana, to tell them that unless they promised allegiance to the rajah and to the King of Spain he would have them killed. He threatened to enforce compliance with fire and with sword.
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Traditional
Kebaya wedding dress
for royal
women in the 16th century.
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This “miracle” -- for thus it was considered -- was the means of overcoming all the scruples of his majesty, which then consented to be baptized, and repeated after Magellan that he would ever prove faithful to his majesty the King of Spain, swearing thereto before an image of the Virgin Mary, and in the presence of his followers. The “celestial fairy was baptized and called Juana, after the mother of Charles I; the Sultan received the baptismal name of Don Carlos, after the emperor himself; the Sultan’s nephew, the prince of Luzon, was called Don Fernando; Abdullah Sulayman, John; and the Shahbandar who was called by Pigafetta as “Moro from Siam” which in fact was not from Siam but a Cham, Christopher. In all, more than eight hundred people were "converted" to Christianity and were baptized, in a single morning, after which the ships discharged their lombards, the musketeers their arquebuses, and the king and the captain-general embraced each other like “brothers”. For the part of the Buddhists who were baptized like the “celestial fairy” their conversion could be sincere but for the Muslims like the Sultan it could be a cliché and only by name.
The “celestial fairy” was described by Pigafetta as:
“The queen was young and beautiful, and was entirely covered with a white and black cloth; her mouth and nails were very red, while on her head she wore a large hat of palm leaves in the manner of a parasol, with a crown about it of the same leaves, like the tiara of the pope; and she never goes any place without one of these crowns.” 150
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| T'boli women wear this kind of hat especially during summer. |
The earliest form of Kebaya originates in the court of the Javanese Madjapahit Kingdom as a means to blend the existing female Kemban, torso wrap of the aristocratic women to be more modest and acceptable to the newly adopted Islam religion. Aceh, Riau and Johor Kingdoms and Northern Sumatra adopted the Javanese style kebaya as a means of social expression of status with the more alus or refined Javanese overlords. The name of Kebaya as a particular clothing type was noted by the Portuguese when they landed in Indonesia. Kebaya is associated with a type of blouse worn by Indonesian women in 15th or 16th century. Prior to 1600, kebaya on Java island were considered as a sacred clothing to be worn only by royal family, aristocrats (bangsawan) and minor nobility, in an era when peasant men and many women walked publicly bare-chested. Slowly it naturally spread to neighboring areas through trade, diplomacy and social interactions to Malacca, Bali, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi and the Sultanate of Sulu and Mindanao -- Javanese kebaya as known today.151
These maidens accompanied the queen in order to carry her triple crowns made of palm-straw, like a tiara, of which she displayed several, besides the one she wore on her head. In other account the crowns brought by the two handmaidens were put on plates. Thus, it could be probable that those were not actually crowns but coverings for the two great pearls that were put on plates and were carried by the handmaidens wherever the “celestial fairy” would go.
Following the example of the Sultan, the “celestial fairy”, who must be a Buddhist and had not been converted to Islam, abandoned her idols entirely, but begged Magellan to give her a carved wooden image of Jesus, which he did gladly, telling her to keep it in their place. He then sprayed her with perfumes, and also her women, at which they were exceedingly delighted. That the queen treasured her little wooden image, and after her those who inherited her possessions, may be inferred from the fact that it was found in Cebu more than forty years afterwards, greatly reverenced by the natives, who ascribed many miracles to its presence. Thus the place in which it was found received the name of the "City of the Most Holy Name of Jesus," and a monastery was founded there, in which the image was preserved.
The Blow of the Sudden Storm
A terrible thing happened that shocked the entire Madjapahit royal court and the sultanates:
a) The graveyards which were considered sacred were excavated and looted with all its treasures.
b) Buddhist and Hindu temples were destroyed, looted, and burned.
c) The mosque and house of Abdul Rahman (Brawijaya V) who was called Bulaya (Budaya) in Pigafetta’s account had also been plundered by the Spanish soldiers led by Magellan then burned it to the ground, leaving behind a cross, the duplicate of one which was erected in the consecrated square of the capital. According to Javanese legends Abdul Rahman who had two wives was trapped in his burning palace which was located at the beach. This legend is corroborated with Pigafetta’s account which stated that the city of Bulaya was plundered and burned down and its ruler was killed when his house was burnt by the Spaniards. Pigafetta even narrated the burial ceremony of Abdul Rahman:
“When one of their chief dies: first, all the principal women of the place go to the house of the deceased. The deceased is placed in the middle of the house in a coffin. Ropes are placed about the box in the manner of a palisade, to which many tree branches are attached. In the middle of each branch hangs a cotton cloth; each one sits by a girl who fans her with a palm-leaf fan. The other women sit about the room sadly. Then there is one woman who cuts of the hair of the deceased very slowly with a knife. Another, who was the principal wife of the deceased, lies down upon him, and places her mouth, her hands, and her feet upon those of the deceased; when the former is cutting off the hair, the latter weeps, and when the former finishes the cutting, the latter sings. There are many porcelain jars containing fire about the room, and myrrh, storax, and benzoin, which make a strong scent through the house, are put on the fire. They keep the body in the house for five or six days during those ceremonies; I believe that the body is anointed with camphor. Then they bury the body within the coffin, which is shut by means of wooden nails in a kind of box and covered and enclosed by logs of wood.” 152
d) The fifty virgin princesses who were daughters of different royalties that attended the Madjapahit wedding-coronation-baptism ceremony were all raped and killed by the men of Duarte Barbosa, the brother-in-law of Magellan.
This heinous act by Magellan and his men was unforgivable beyond imagination among the rulers and constituents alike. It had broken any vows of brotherhood and alliance. The battle plan that was laid off and suspended was resumed and started.
The war ritual invoking the twelve divinities of the sun-god Surya and the four divinities of the wind-god Wahyu was conducted, which was not understood by the colonizers. It was a war dance of Sulu which was the original sinulog. This ritual was perfectly described by Pigafetta:
“These people consecrated their swine in a strange ceremony performed by two old women. They first went around the city beating gongs, and carrying two standards made of palm bark. When they had assembled a crowd in the great square, they spread cloths upon the ground and made obeisance to the sun. The hog to be killed and consecrated was bound and placed upon the cloths. Then one of the old women blew a trumpet of bamboo, which she carried; the other bound upon her head a pair of horns, in imitation of those the devil is supposed to wear, and, dancing and blowing her trumpet, called out to the sun. After dancing and trumpeting about the doomed animal for half an hour they were presented with a cup of wine, from which one of them sprinkled the hog in the region of his heart. Then a lance was handed her, which, after much brandishing, was suddenly thrust through the beast from one side to the other, inflicting a mortal wound.
Dipping the tips of their trumpets in the blood that flowed forth in a stream, the old hags went around the circle of by-standers, marking each one on the forehead; then, by means of fire, the hair was removed from the skin, the carcass was cut up, and all the females present invited to partake.” 153
Probably part of the said chants of the two shamans known locally as babaylan is the following shamanistic invocation used until now in the Malay Archipelago: 154
Ah, I utter the name of God with one Alif.
Alif stands at the gates of Heaven.
I spread a welcome at the gates of Earth.
Ninety holy prayers I recite,
And then I will open the pent-up Wind.
Wind as small as a sesame seed,
Wind as small as a mustard seed,
Wind called a golden bouquet of flowers,
Wind called a silver bouquet of flowers,
When it emerges, three brothers strong,
A family of four companions.
The first is called Angin Lahar Ahmad,
The second is called Angin Umara,
The third is called Angin Nur Jila,
The fourth is called Angin Nur Zila.
They arose long ago, in the earliest times.
The Winds put forward the father’s secret.
The Winds still receive the prayers of the past.
The Winds emerge from the tip of eternity!
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Oh, call upon each and every king
To open the way for the Wind Lahar Ahmad,
Wind that stands with one strong faith.
Original kings, royal by nature,
Warrior gods of the royal line,
Winds of our family, winds of our heritage,
Powerful Winds, the Winds show their power,
Pervasive Winds, Winds penetrating,
Awake to raise and put forward your king,
Hear me, each and every one.
The young warrior, the old warrior.
Then Tullah, who was described in Pigafetta’s account as “the bravest and wisest man in the land" which is the very literal meaning of Awang Si Ayu in Malay, led the natives in bringing their idols and laid them at Magellan’s feet -- such as had not been previously destroyed -- and Tullah who had been restored to health by Magellan's intervention finding an image which had been secreted in his hut by an old woman of his family, became so enraged that he chastised her severely. Tullah then led the way to the shore, where several temples were erected in honor of the idols, which he and his followers tore down and destroyed, shouting at the top of their voices, "Castilia! Castilia!" as the Tlascalans of Mexico had done only a short time before, when they marched into Tezcoco with the timber for Cortes's flotilla. But in other translations and accounts what they were shouting was, “Batara! Batara!” which could mean a lot of things like: (a) for the Hindus, the one that had been brought by the Spaniards was the Supreme God, Bhattara Guru; (b) for the skeptics, it was only a child as implied in Cebuano phrase “bata ra” and there was nothing to be afraid of; (c) for the Buddhists it could be the Maitreya Buddha the last and true Buddha that was perceived as a child and would come on the “end of days”; and (d) for all the afflicted, they were asking help from their emperor, the batara. But whatever it really meant for them at that time one thing is for sure – it started the real spread of Christianity in Southeast Asia which made Cebu the cradle of Christianity in Asia. Or it could be the Tausug Islamic shout, “Katimbakan ka ni Allah!” (“You will be punished by God!”) Or they were cursing the invaders by shouting, “Banyaga! Banyaga!” Banyaga would mean a foreigner for the Tagalog but for the Cebuanos it means a heartless tyrant. Or it is probable that they were shouting, “Ksatriya! Ksatriya!” – calling the attention for war. Whatever it was, it must be all pertaining to fury and war.
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It was Magellan's religious enthusiasm that tempted him to court disaster, by mingling in the affairs of the natives. He felt, indeed, that it was his duty to bring all the tribes of the great archipelago under the influence of his church and religion. He had accomplished the conversion and apparent subjugation of Cebu's people so quickly, and had, to all appearances so firmly established Spanish rule and the Catholic faith, that he anticipated no more trouble in dealing with other islands and natives of the Philippines.
The boy Tugao was then sent back to Magellan telling him through the Shahbandar the response of the Awang Si Ayu Raya Si Kuala Labu had said:
“I have no master but myself. I bow before no tyrant king. There is no other king but myself. My allegiance is only to my nation; my service and loyalty to my people. And never shall the Malay race vanish from the face of the earth.” 155
The boy, who introduced himself as the son of “Zula” said that his father owing to the oppressions of the Awang Si Ayu Raya Si Kuala Labu could do no better and requesting the assistance of a boat-load of soldiers for with only a boat-load, he said, combined with his own gallant warriors, he could overcome the rajah and conquer the island for Magellan. Unknown to Magellan, this Zula and Awang Si Ayu Raya Si Kuala Labu were one and the same. It was a war tactic of inviting an enemy to a trap by using bait. Nobody would suspect a little boy to be a participant of deception or trickery but not treachery. Magellan had been considered an enemy ever since the time that: (a) when he was planning to colonize the archipelago in the name of his king which had already been revealed by Trenggana; (b) when he denied to pay tribute upon entering the harbor of the city of Cebu belittling the empire’s sovereignty and declaring war in the name of Spain against those who would force him to do so; (c) when he enforced his religion by force through the use of sword and fire, by burning the houses of innocent villagers, destroying Buddhist stupas, Hindu temples, and Islamic mosques; (d) when his men defied the sanctity of cemeteries by excavating them and looted its treasures; and worst, (e) when his men led by Duarte Barboza raped and killed the fifty virgin princesses of the empire.
In listening to the request of this “sub-chief”, Fernan Magellan allowed his reason to be subjected to religious fanaticism; his desire to promote the general welfare of the islanders to be overcome by a stronger desire for conquest. There was situated, it is thought, the city of Bulaya (Budaya) he had destroyed by fire, and “Raia Cilapulapu” may have been the ruler whose rights he had infringed in so doing, for he could not understand, he said, "why he should do homage to the potentate of Cebu, whom he had so long held under his thumb." He submitted the proposition to his officers, and they, without dissent, were decidedly opposed, especially stubborn being Juan Serrao, veteran of many fights in the East, and a man of tried courage. As usual, however, the captain-general had determined upon his course before calling a council, and, though all were opposed, he had resolved to push matters to a conclusion.
Magellan thus believed that he had made himself an ally of the Sultan and had taken him under his protection -- an act and belief that soon to cost him his life. He could not foresee, however, the terrible consequences of this misstep, though his reason should have warned him against mingling in the strife of these people. He could not understand them, for they were entirely new to him, and they had had their feuds and petty wars for generations. Neither could he estimate their strength nor their valor, both which were great, and were to prove more than he could prevail against, with all his ships and soldiers.
In the Cirebon account, it states, unknown to the Sultan the ruma bichara had convened and agreed to assassinate him for allying with Magellan (who was referred as “Portuguese captain-general”), thus betraying the saudara.
The Battle of Mactan
The little island of Mactan lies off the harbor of Cebu, only a few miles distant, and its invasion was not a matter of difficulty -- provided no opposition was offered. Shortly before midnight of April 26th, Magellan's expedition against Mactan set forth: sixty Spaniards, and about a thousand natives, commanded by the Sultan. With this expedition went also the chief historian of Magellan's voyage, Antonio Pigafetta. Pigafetta had vividly described the battle being an eye-witness himself as follows:
"We reached Mactan three hours before dawn. The captain did not wish to fight then, but sent a message to the natives by the converted Moro (the Shahbandar), to the effect that if they would obey the King of Spain, recognize the sovereignty of Cebu, and pay us tribute, he would be their friend; but that if they wished otherwise, they should wait to see what our lances could do!
"They replied that while we had lances, they also had them, made of bamboo, with points hardened in the fire. They requested us not to attack them then, but to wait till after daylight, as they expected reinforcements, with which they could meet us on more nearly equal terms. This was a ruse, intended to decoy us at once to the attack, for they had dug a long, deep ditch, faced with sharp stakes, and our destruction would have been sure.
"The coral reefs, by which Mactan was surrounded, prevented the approach of the boats near shore, and when morning came forty-nine of us leaped into the water up to our thighs, and walked through it for more than two crossbow-flights before we could reach dry land. Eleven men remained behind to guard the boats and serve the lombards." 156
Magellan himself led the way, with naked sword in hand, and regardless of the missiles of the foe, which soon filled the air around him. The dawn of that morning, Sunday, April 28, 1521 (Philippine time), was the last which Magellan was to witness on earth; but no premonition of disaster oppressed him then. He and his men struggled through the water to shore, and formed upon the sands. Opposed to them were thousands of islanders, who, forming in three divisions, so as to attack the Spaniards front and flank, charged down upon them furiously, brandishing their spears, and yelling like mad.
Pigafetta continued:
"Seeing that, our captain-general sent some men to burn their houses, in order to terrify them; but when they saw them burning, they were only roused to greater fury. Twenty or thirty houses were burned; but two of our men were killed, of the party that made the attempt. So many of them now charged upon us that they pressed us close, and shot our captain through the right leg with a poisoned arrow. On that account he ordered us to retire slowly, but the men, being unaccustomed to defeat, were terrified at such an order, and most of them took to flight immediately—all except six or eight of us, who remained by our captain. Seeing that our vulnerable spots were the legs, as they were exposed, the natives shot only at them, and so many were the spears and stones they hurled at us, that we could offer no resistance.
"The mortars in the boats could not aid us, being too far away; thus we were in a terrible plight. So we continued to retire, for more than a good cross-bow flight from the shore, always fighting up to our knees in the water. The natives continued to pursue us, and picking up the same spears, hurled them at us again and again. Recognizing our captain, so many turned upon him that they succeeded in knocking off his helmet twice; but he ever withstood them, like the good knight he was, and at last we made a stand for more than an hour, refusing to go any farther.” 157
Seeing that, Magellan sent some men to burn the villages in order to terrify the native warriors. Thirty houses had been burned down. Instead of terrifying the native warriors it only heightened their anger. Two of the Spaniards were killed near the houses.
“So many of them charged down upon us that they shot the captain through the right leg with a poisoned arrow; on that account, he ordered us to retreat slowly, but the men took to flight, except six or eight of us who remained with the captain. The natives shot only at our legs because they were naked.” 158
The Sultan had sent four warriors to assist Magellan but they were hit by the mortars coming from the balangay of Tullah. Either they used the lantaka or had stolen mortars from the Spanish ships was not clear.
This act was the sealing of his fate, because, when the natives saw that, they all hurled themselves upon him. Tullah gashed Magellan’s leg with a huge scimitar, which caused him to fall forward upon his face, when they all rushed upon him with their iron-tipped bamboo spears and their scimitars, and thus they ran him through Magellan -- the Spaniards’ “mirror of chivalry, light, comforter, and true guide” -- and killed him.
In the Malaccan account, Tullah used a keris named as Taming Sari. But in Mindanao and in the Arab world since the time of King Solomon of Israel the keris mentioned is not really a kris but the Zulfiqar (Arabic: ذو الفقار Dhū l-Fiqār; also Zulfikar, Dhu’l-fakr, or Thul-fakr), a kampilan. According to the Islamic tradition, the sword called Zulfiqar belonged to Ali, the first Caliph after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Zulfiqar is one of the oldest symbols in Islam and according to Shiites its existence goes back to Adam, who carried it out of Eden down to the Earth. The tradition says that the sword once belonged to Muhammed too, who gave it to Ali before his death. In Christian tradition it is the sword of Saint Michael the Archangel. In the S’yair Awang Semaun, it is stated that Awang Si Ayu had killed a Spaniard who had attacked the Sultanate of Brunei. Tullah was also called in Cirebon account as Fatahilla (“victorious”), hence it is very probable that upon striking his scimitar at Magellan he shouted the Muslim battle cry – “La fatà illa Ali, la saif illa Zulfiqar” which means "there is no victory without Ali, there is no sword except (his sword) Zulfiqar.
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| A Persian Zulfiqar which could be the type of scimitar used by Tullah (Lapu-lapu). |
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| The typical kampilan often used by early warriors in Southeast Asia. |
“Thereupon, beholding him dead, we, wounded, retreated as best we could to the boats, which were already pulling off. Had it not been for our gallant captain, not a single one of us would have been saved, for while he was so desperately fighting, the others had time to retire to the boats. While the savages were most closely pressing him, in sooth, he several times turned round towards us, to see if we were all in safety, as if his protracted resistance was to cover our retreat."159
Thus fell Fernan Magellan, with his face to the foe, sacrificing himself for the safety of his comrades. That he threw away his life for no good cause, having gone to his death through his own stubbornness, does not detract from the heroism of his latest hours, which was nothing less than sublime. He was brave and unselfish to the very last, as we might have expected of the Fernan Magellan who rescued his friend Serrao from the Malays; who remained with his men on that wreck in the Indian Ocean whence all his brother officers had fled.
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| The Battle of Mactan |
When Sultan Muhammad Shah heard of Magellan's death, he is said to have shed tears, and lamented that he could not have saved him by going to his rescue. He had been expressly forbidden to mingle in the fight, as the captain-general wished to show him what Spaniards could do, thus he and his thousand men remained idle spectators of the battle, though by participation they might have turned the scale in favor of their allies. But more probably the Sultan cried over the death of the lost of his alliance with Spain for his ambition to regain Malacca from the Portuguese and to dominate the entire Southeast Asian region as promised by Magellan after he had been baptized and not really because of Magellan. With all the fighting, only twelve of the allies were killed, and fifteen of the enemy, so it appears that Magellan perished in an avoidable skirmish with the underestimated local warriors whom he had boasted that a Spaniard in shining armor was equivalent to a hundred tattooed warriors which proved him wrong in the end. What is more applicable to say is that a wise man is more than a hundred soldiers in full gear.
In the evening during that day, Sultan Muhammad Shah had sent a courier, on the Spanish behalf, to Tullah to give the corpses of Magellan and the other Spaniards who were killed in the battle in return of as much merchandise as he wished. But Tullah answered:
“We will not give up such a man, as they have hoped they will. We will not give him up for all the riches in the world. We will keep him as a monument of our triumph.” 160
It was believed that Magellan had been buried in a subterranean tunnel in Mactan. But it is probable too that he was buried either in Cebu, Butuan, Brunei, or Cirebon since Tullah might have taken Magellan on his return.
Upon the death of Magellan, Duarte Barbosa and Juan Serrao were chosen as the new commanders of the ships. After Barbosa became the commander of the Trinidad he immediately commanded Trenggana to go ashore and help the four Spaniards who stayed in the city of Cebu to carry back the merchandise. But Trenggana who was slightly wounded with a poisoned arrow and had a fever would not go and said that he was no longer a slave since Magellan his master was already dead. Barbosa shouted at him that if he would not go he would be flogged and that he would see to it that if they had returned to Spain he would continue to be a slave of Doña Beatrice, the wife of Magellan. In sullen silence, Enrique arose and received the message, then leaped into a skiff and rowed ashore. Instead of going to assist the men in removing the goods from the warehouse, however, as he had been directed, after delivering the message to the Sultan he lingered at the palace.
Trenggana had told the Sultan that the Spaniards intended to take him captive, after first destroying the town; but that, while they were still unsuspicious, he might forestall them by a massacre. He told the Sultan that if he would follow his advice they would be able to gain the galleons and all the merchandise therein. And that they could avenge the death of the fifty virgins – probably ten of that were daughters of Tullah. So they had arranged a plot of how to do it. Yet unknown to the Sultan, Trenggana had another plan with Tullah – escaping away from the Sultan before he would do the same with them afterwards.
The Massacre in Cebu
On the morning of May 1, the Shahbandar told Barbosa that the jewels – the two pearls-of-Allah -- that the Sultan had promised to send to the King of Spain were ready, and that the Sultan begged them and their companions to come to dine with him that morning, when he would give them the jewels. Twenty-four men excluding Pigafetta went ashore.
The banquet had been prepared. Unknown to the Sultan, Tullah had returned and secretly took away Father Pedro Valderrama to his house which was seen by Juan Carvalho and the constable, Gonzalo Espinosa. Suspecting, the two had returned hurriedly to the galleons. While the Sultan was focused at the banquet, Trenggana took his sister – the “celestial fairy” – and her two ladies-in-waiting; and the four very beautiful musicians, who had entertained Pigafetta upon their arrival in Cebu, of which one of them was Dayang, the favorite stewardess of the Sultan and Trenggana’s captured bride. Then they went to Tullah’s house. From there they went to two separate balangays. The “celestial princess”, her two ladies-in-waiting, Trenggana, and the four Muses went to the larger royal junk commanded by Sulayman’s son while the seven remaining datus (three of them were killed in the Battle of Mactan) on the junk commanded by Tullah. They immediately sailed away.
The two Spaniards succeeded in worming their way through the throng and reached the shore, where they took a boat for the Trinidad. They had scarcely arrived when a great commotion ashore attracted their attention, and looking towards the land they saw their comrades surrounded by clamorous natives, who, with spear and kris, were stabbing promiscuously. One by one they fell, fighting desperately to the last, until there was left only Captain Serrao, whom the natives dragged to the shore, in order to barter his life for cannon and other things they had hoped to gain by surprising the fleet.
The caution and watchfulness of Carvalho alone prevented them from plundering the ships, as he hove up anchor at the first sign of disturbance, and, running abreast the town, poured into it several broadsides. The Victoria and the Concepcion followed suit, and then all sailed out of the bay towards the open sea, without an attempt at the rescue of Serrao, who stood on the shore, whither he had been dragged by his captors, vainly imploring assistance. He was wounded and bleeding, he was the only survivor of the party he and Barbosa had led to its doom, yet his shipmate and boon companion, Carvalho, refused to send a boat ashore for his rescue! At first he wept and implored, while his captors, with daggers at his throat, awaited the response from the ship; but as it became apparent that Carvalho was abandoning him to be murdered in cold blood, he raised a bleeding hand to Heaven and invoked curses upon that comrade, his compadre, who could do a thing so base and cowardly. "I pray God," he cried, "that He may demand my soul of thee, Juan Carvalho, at the last great day of judgment!"
The imprecation ended in a cry of despair, as his ferocious captors bore him to the ground, where they stabbed him to death with their daggers. Speechless from terror, and seemingly incapable of action, the cowardly sailors on board the fleet saw their former friends and shipmates massacred. They also witnessed, as they were borne to safety from the harbor, a great crowd of fanatical natives engaged in tearing down the cross that had been raised so short a time before in the consecrated square. The recantation of the Sultan and his subjects was complete, for they promptly returned to Islam, and the only reminder of the religion they had so transiently professed was the carven image of the Señor Santo Niño which Magellan had presented to the queen.
Twenty-six valiant Spaniards and Portuguese were slain in that massacre, comprised in the list of dead being three captains of the fleet's vessels, a pilot, two notaries, a gunner, a cooper, common seamen, servants, and sobresalientes, or supernumeraries. There was a record in the San Nicolas Church that Father Pedro de Valderrama had become one of its parish priests, thus it was clear that he was excluded in the massacre. Through the negligence of Magellan, he did not only lost his own life, but indirectly brought about the loss of others, when, deprived of their sagacious head, the officials of the fleet unwisely accepted the invitation to that fatal banquet.
Respecting the death of Serrao, an eye-witness says: "As soon as the men in the ships saw the slaughter, they hoisted the anchors and tried to set sail. At that juncture, the savages brought Juan Serrao, one of those whom they desired to ransom, and asked two guns and two bahars of copper for him. Serrao told them to take him to the ship and he would give them what they asked; but they insisted that those things be taken ashore. And the men on the ship, fearing another act of treachery, set sail and abandoned that man there, and nothing more was ever heard of him."
Despite his treachery to Serrao, the wretch whom fortune had placed in command of the flag-ship, Juan Carvalho, was confirmed as captain-general of the fleet. It is claimed by his enemies that it was owing to his desire to acquire supreme command that he so brutally sailed away and left poor Serrao to his fate. Three vessels then comprised the armada, and this small fleet was still further reduced, after the narrow channel between Cebu and Bohol had been passed, by the burning of the Concepcion. This vessel was found to be leaking badly, and as all the ships were then short-handed, owing to the loss of so many men, her contents and crew were divided between the Trinidad and Victoria. These two were all that remained, the first week in May, 1521, of the gallant fleet which had set sail from Seville nineteen months before, for the Santiago’s bones were bleaching on the coast of Patagonia, the San Antonio had deserted her companions in the Strait of Magellan, and the Concepcion was burned to the water's edge off the island of Bohol in the Philippines.
Journey to the Spicy Paradise
On July 9, sailing near to the harbor of Brunei, the Spanish galleons was met by three great balangays decorated in gold, and flying a blue-and-white banner surmounted with peacock feathers. Beneath the banners sat groups of musicians, beating gongs and drums; and in this manner, preceded by stately balangays, and to the sound of martial music, the ships entered the beautiful harbor of Brunei, in Borneo. As soon as the ships had anchored, a fleet of balangays came out to take the passengers ashore, where, to their astonishment, they found a troop of richly caparisoned elephants awaiting them. After they had timorously mounted the beasts, a procession was formed which set out for the sultan's palace, preceded by ten men carrying presents in porcelain jars covered with silk. The streets of Brunei were filled with half-naked warriors bearing swords, shields, spears, and cutlasses, while the great hall of the palace contained hundreds of soldiers clad in cloth-of-gold, with daggers on their thighs adorned with pearls and precious stones.
The sultan was invisible to the strangers, and they were compelled to converse with him through a "speaking-tube" – obviously to avoid detection that he was one and the same with the Sultan who had slaughtered their comrades in Cebu. Yet, Pigafetta had chanced to see him slightly as the curtains that barred him from view were slightly pushed away to accept the presents given by the Spaniards – on a side-view, the tattooed jovial sultan identical in description with the rajah of Cebu was slightly seen. The Sultan sent the Spaniards to their rooms delighted with his graciousness. There, for the first time in many months, they slept on cotton mattresses, "whose lining was of taffeta, and the sheets of Cambaya." This unwonted luxury caused them to sleep till late in the morning, when they were regaled at breakfast with capons, veal, peacocks, and fish, washed down with wine of rice, called arrack, which they drank from dainty cups the size of an egg. They returned to the sea-shore as they had come, on elephant-back, and each man with his hands full of gifts from the sultan.
The city of Brunei was built after the fashion of the ancient lake-dwellers' towns, mainly on piles, above the placid waters of a great bay, with waterways for boats, instead of streets; but the sultan's palace was on dry land. In the river beyond the bay were anchored fleets of war-balangays that had just arrived from Mactan, manned by fierce-looking Malays, which had been constantly increasing in number since the arrival of the ships. Carvalho and Espinosa had been watching them suspiciously several days, for many of them had taken position between the ships and the sea.
One morning, in the last week of July, the three balangays commanded by Tullah and by Karim had arrived from their long journey of hide-and-seek from the Sultan. Tullah commanded the captains of the war-balangays to surround the Spanish fleet. Carvalho being watchful had observed that two hundred or more of the war-balangays suddenly hove up their anchors and started to surround them. No sooner had the war-balangays had done so, the Spanish commanders met them with a discharge of their batteries, then set sail and stood out of the harbor. Many balangays were shattered or overturned, and in open water outside the harbor the royal junk commanded by Karim was captured. Carvalho thought that he was then returning from a plundering expedition and laden with spoils. In exchange for a large portion of his treasure, it is said, Captain Carvalho gave him his liberty, but he retained as captives the three very beautiful girls -- the “celestial fairy” and her two ladies-in-waiting whom Tullah had abducted from the Sultan -- and was taking as a present to the Queen of Spain. Karim’s junk had sailed away to Sabah to keep safe Trenggana who had returned later to Demak and assumed the throne he had left for ten years while Tullah was chasing the Spanish fleets.
When the news of the arrival of Tullah who had “abducted the celestial fairy with the twin pearls of the monsoon winds” had reached Sultan Muhammad Shah, he immediately set off on his royal junk to search for him and get back the damhara amihan and the pearls.
The crafty Carvalho was speedily punished for his dereliction from duty, as, by allowing the prince to go free in exchange for gold, he was prevented from redeeming two of his men who, in the haste of departure, had been left ashore at Brunei. One of these was his own son by an Indian woman of Brazil; yet he left him without any apparent compunction, and probably never heard of him more. It was a long descent from Magellan to Carvalho as commander, and even his countrymen on board the ship could not endure him longer; so they deposed him, sometime during the voyage from Borneo to the Moluccas. They elected Espinosa, the alguacil, commander-in-chief, and Juan Sebastian del Cano captain of the Victoria.
Not long after, the Spanish fleet was following the balangay of Sultan Muhammad Shah whom they thought was going to the Moluccas which route they did not know and whose lands they did not yet has a view. They had noticed that the said balangay pursued and overhauled junk after junk, but all to no purpose, and in their devious wanderings found themselves back again on the coast of Mindanao, which they reached by way of the Sulu Archipelago. Sultan Muhammad who had introduced himself as Sultan Amir-ul-Umara of Sulu had told del Cano that they were searching for his two pearls “that were as big as hen's eggs, and so round that they would not stand still on a table," which according to him had been taken by pirates from Borneo who were sailing somewhere on that sea. When the Sultan heard that the Spaniards were seeking for the Moluccas, he instructed them the direction – southeast of Sulu, ten degrees they must sail, first through the Celebes Sea, then into that of the Moluccas, where they would find the islands Ternate and Tidor, with others, that produced nutmegs, cloves and cinnamon.
Between Sulu and Mindanao, the balangay of Tullah was attacked and captured by Del Cano. The seven datus who had fought against the Spanish soldiers were all slain while Tullah was put in irons. When asked about his identity he told them that as a young boy he was taken by a garuda to a tree at the top of a mountain and he was living inside the hatched egg until he was found by a hunter and was adopted as a son. Del Cano asked him about the legendary pearls of the monsoon winds and he confirmed its existence. Tullah was in despair but when he learned that the Spaniards were in search of the Spiceries, he offered to pilot them there, provided they gave him his liberty and his balangay to command again. Most gladly they promised, for their provisions were failing once more, and after sailing hither and thither so many months, on a quest which it seemed might be endless, they desired rest and refreshment.
Gladly, Tullah, had exclaimed, "Lo, I can take ye there, for I have friends in those islands whom I have visited oft. Among them one of your countrymen, Francisco Serrao, who was my friend, but now is no more, for the King of Tidor caused him to be poisoned as a revenge for kidnapping his daughter and giving her as a gift to his liege lord, the king of Ternate, Prabu Udara. Djamaluddin, the first Muslim king of Tidor lured Francisco Serrao to his island on a pretense of trading in spices, poisoned him, out of revenge."
Then indeed they rejoiced -- though their joy was tinctured with sadness, to learn of the passing away of that gallant Portuguese, Serrao. Upon close questioning of the pirate captain, it was found that he had been murdered the very week that Magellan, his most intimate friend, and Juan Serrao, his brother, met death by violence at Mactan and Cebu. Thus had perished the reckless soldier, Francisco Serrao, who, during at least seven or eight years of his residence in the Moluccas, had maintained an occasional correspondence with his dearest friend Fernan Magellan. To him, more than to any other mortal, Magellan was indebted for the idea of reaching the Spice Islands by sailing westward from Africa, and for information concerning their resources. Francisco Serrao, in fact, not only lighted the beacon-flame that guided Magellan and beckoned him on, but fed that flame for years, in the hope of bringing his friend to him at last. He probably knew of the expedition commanded by Magellan, as the King of Portugal had despatched an armada to the Spice Islands for the purpose of intercepting and destroying it. Only a few months more of life to each, and these old comrades would have met; but the hand of grim Death stretched forth and dragged them both into the grave.
With Tullah at the helm of the flag-ship, the two ships in company sailed across the Celebes Sea -- or, rather, they skirted it, dodging in and out among volcanic islands --until finally, in the morning of November 6, 1521, four lofty islands rose on the horizon. These, Tullah told them, were the Moluccas, of which they had been in search no less than twenty-six months, that being the time that had elapsed since they sailed out of Seville. Two pointed peaks, they said, the conical tips of insular volcanoes covered with a vegetation ravishingly beautiful to behold, were the cloud-wreathed crowns of Ternate and Tidor. As they approached them, fragrant gales were wafted to the fleet, and the weary sailors needed not to be told that here before them, at last, were the long-sought, long-looked-for Islands of Spices!
"Three hours before sunset of Friday, November 8th," says Pigafetta, "we entered the harbor of an island called Tidor, and anchoring near the shore, in twenty fathoms of water, fired off all our artillery as a salute to its king. Next day the said king came to the ships in a proa, and circled about them once. He was seated under a silk awning; in front of him was one of his sons, with the royal sceptre, and a person on each side with a gilded casket and a gold jar, containing betel-nuts and water. The king said to us we were welcome, and that he had dreamt some time before that we were coming; for he was an astrologer, and his name was Almanzor."
There was only one Almanzor during the period – Sultan Muhammad Shah who was also called in Malacca as Mansur Shah. If this hypothesis is correct then Djamaluddin or Raden Patah is more probably one of those who were slain or burnt at the Battle of Mactan and the report that he had poisoned Francisco Serrao must be part of the sultan’s deception scheme.
The Spaniards received the King of Tidor as Magellan had received the Prince of Cebu. The red-velvet chair of state was brought out and sat on deck, he was clothed in a robe of yellow silk, and presented with such articles as beads, knives, mirrors, drinking-cups, webs of linen, bales of silk, the robe in which he was draped, and the chair of state he sat in.
So rejoiced were the commanders and crew at having arrived in these islands much desired, that they would have given the king whatever he wanted; but he himself begged them to desist, as he had nothing worthy, he said, to present them in exchange, for the acceptance of their king, unless, indeed, he sent himself! But he had cloves and cinnamon, and for these the ships had been laden with goods to barter many, many months before. The spices, Almanzor informed his guests, were on the way to the coast, being products of the interior country, and especially of the mountain districts, where the fragrant groves covered hills and vales alike.
So anxious were the Spaniards to please this king of the Spiceries that they presented him with the three beautiful girls for his harem. Unknown to the Spaniards one of those girls was the “celestial fairy” and wife of that sultan. The Spaniards knowing that the sultan was a Muslim, had all the pigs on board the two ships killed, in order not to offend his religious sensibilities. For the Spaniards knew quite well that they were trespassing upon a Portuguese dependency, and that this same sovereign was bound by treaty to trade exclusively with their rivals.
Only by suffrance, they realized, could they procure the precious spices they had come so far to find, and the sultan was treated as though he were, "in very truth, a king." This policy had its effect, as was soon shown by the stream of runners from the country, each one bearing on his back a bale of cloves. The trading then "waxed fast and furious," for not only the factors of the ships began purchasing, but all the common sailors as well, each man being entitled to a quintalada, or percentage of the lading-space aboard ship, ranging from eighty quintals allowed the captain-general, to a quintal and a half for a sailor.
Trading began on the night of November 24, at which time the van-guard of the spice-army arrived. The sultan launched his balangay, with its gorgeous banners and silken awnings, and, with drums beating furiously, circled around the ships, which saluted him repeatedly by discharges of cannon, "for the joy that was felt over the arrival of the cloves." The first loads were scarcely aboard the ships, when the sultan invited officers and crews to join him at a banquet in his palace among the palm-trees on shore; but, with the horrors of Cebu's massacre in mind, the invitation was declined.
The king was not offended thereby, but continued friendly, for there was great rivalry between him and several other sovereigns for the trade and good-will of the Spaniards. In this merry war joined the kings of Ternate, of Batchian, and Gilolo, who vied with each other in their efforts to win the regard of the strangers. The first sent vast quantities of cloves, the second a slave for the Emperor of Spain, and the third skins of the bird-of-paradise, which had never been seen by Spaniards before. These skins were without feet, and this fact, together with their wonderfully beautiful plumage, led the Spaniards to believe what the natives told them: that the birds descended from paradise, where they lived with the souls of the saints; that they never touched the earth, but pursued a strictly aerial existence, ever floating about in the air, not even alighting in trees.
Judging from the regal state of these island sovereigns, they were kings, indeed, and more than semi-savage chiefs. According to the reports gathered by Pigafetta who was in the Trinidad, Almanzor had a palace in town and another in the country, with a hundred wives in each; when he ate he sat alone, or with the wife he loved best, in a high gallery, with the other ninety-nine looking on in admiration; when he had finished, they were permitted to partake, or remove from the table what they liked best and eat it alone in their chambers; he had eight sons and eighteen daughters; but the Moro kings of Gilolo surpassed him, for one rejoiced in the possession of six hundred children, and the other five hundred and twenty-five.
While the Spaniards were so merrily lading their ships with the spices they had come so far to procure, and enjoying to the utmost the material delights of these paradisiacal isles, they were reminded occasionally, by rumors from Ternate that they were yet in a position of peril. These islands were considered appanages of Portugal, because a Portuguese navigator had, first of all Europeans, visited and traded with them. One day there came over from Ternate a Portuguese named Lorosa, who informed them that not long before a fleet of armed traders under Don Tristan de Meneses had been there, looking for Magellan as well as for trade. The King of Portugal had also sent an armada to the Cape of Good Hope, in order to intercept that "renegade," as well as one to the coast of Patagonia; but all had failed to find and capture him. It was almost time, however, he said, for the fleet to return, and in case of its coming the Spaniards would certainly be in peril, for although Portugal and Spain were at peace as to the Iberian Peninsula, they were likely to war over their colonial possessions; and the coming armada was a strong one, far surpassing in tonnage, guns, and men that of the Spaniards.
This information caused the commanders such anxiety that they hurried forward the lading by night and by day. By mid-December both ships had so much cargo that no more could be taken without risk of over-lading, and the king was told that soon they must take their departure. He was both astonished and grieved, says Pigafetta, and immediately went to the flag-ship to express his displeasure.
"He said that we should not depart then, for that was not the season for sailing among those islands. However, if it was our determination to depart then, we should take back all our merchandise, else all the kings roundabout would say that the King of Tidor had received so many presents from so great a king, and had given nothing in return; and that, also, they would think we had departed only for fear of some treason, and would always call him a traitor. Then he had his Koran brought, and, first kissing it and placing it four or five times above his head, at the same time muttering certain words to himself, he declared in the presence of all that he swore, by Allah and the Koran, that he would always be faithful to the King of Spain. He spoke all those words nearly in tears, and in sympathy for him we promised to wait yet a few days longer; but not many, as the time had come to go."
While the sailors were awaiting orders to sail, they amused themselves by making excursions into the country, where they found fruits and flowers in profusion. On one of these trips they met a strange procession consisting almost entirely of women, each woman nude to the waist, but with a silken skirt from the waist to the knees. On their heads they bore large wooden trays filled with food, as also jars of wine. Some of the men followed them and ascertained that they were taking the material for a banquet to the King of Batchian, then a guest of the King of Tidor, who received them sitting on a carpet, beneath a red-and-yellow canopy. Perceiving the Spaniards on their return, some of the women captured several, and refused to allow them their freedom until they had made presents to the company. When the king heard of this adventure, he warned the Spaniards against going abroad at night, as there were certain men in his island who, though headless, could see in the dark, and who rubbed a poisonous ointment on the faces of all strangers they met, from which they fell sick and died.
The inhabitants of the islands in general were so peace-loving and gentle, and the islands themselves so entrancingly sweet and attractive, with their various vegetation and delicious atmosphere, that the strangers felt more disposed to remain than to depart. But the time arrived when, as the winter monsoon had set in, they must take their leave of the hospitable king and his beautiful island. They had found the famed Spice Islands even more attractive than had been represented to Magellan; and many there were on board the ships who sighed at thought of him in his grave at Mactan, while they were enjoying what he had given his life for them to find.
The Rise of the Winds
After the Trinidad had been stranded in Tidor for a leaking that had been discovered for unknown cause but most probably done by Tullah, the Victoria had set sail leaving behind the Trinidad for its future destruction. The Sultan had loaned Captain Espinosa two hundred carpenters, who worked by shifts for months.
In the Malaccan and Javanese accounts, after the Chinese fleet had defeated the Portuguese led by Simão de Andrade at the Battle of Tamao, Sultan Muhammad Shah was inspired to attack the Portuguese fleets in Malacca for the second time with the assistance of forces coming from Demak and from Javanese-Chinese. As the sea-battle begun between the Sultan’s forces against the Portuguese fleets, the “celestial fairy” was intercepted by the Sultan at sea near Johor. According to numerous legends concerning the “celestial fairy”, while she was embroidering at the deck of the ship she was embraced from behind by the Sultan which startled her and accidentally hit his finger with the needle (Johor account). The Sultan who was angered asked her if she’s still a virgin after so many men had already captured her he would not believe that she had remained faithful (Kelantan account). Furious, she retaliated by stabbing him at the chest with a dagger or in other version a hairpin. There were hairpins as sharp as an ice-pick and bigger than a nail used by princesses during that period. The “celestial fairy” then escaped to an ancient Malay city of Ulu Kelantan, not very far from Malacca, and vowed never to marry again. In Ulu Kelantan the “celestial fairy” being a widow was also called in their legends as Che’ Siti (“the widow who controls the inner winds”). The Sultan’s fleet was defeated. In traditions the fleet was hit by a storm which indirectly caused by its defeat. Those junks and merchant ships that did not capsize were captured by the Portuguese armada which was composed of nine vessels. In one of the ships, the Portuguese found the dead body of the Nakhoda Bolkeiah. If Magellan and Serrao had lived at that moment they must have gazed upon the cadaver with grim satisfaction, and have felt that the scheme of revenge for the slaughter of their comrades was to be fulfilled. The Sultan was then remembered by his people as the Pangeran Sabrang Lor which means “the Prince who crossed (the Java Sea) to North (Malay Peninsula)”. The raids helped convince the Portuguese that the exiled sultan's forces must be silenced.
According to Javanese tradition, among the ships overturned by the said storm was Tullah’s. He was stranded on the coast of Jepara and was saved by a Chinese junk captained by a Chinese minister named Tjie Hwio Gwan. When asked by the minister who he was, accordingly, he told the minister that he was a merchant prince from Sumatra and his name was Toyib, the son of Emperor Shah Mughayat king Aceh. The minister had brought Tullah to his residence in a village known as Kalinyamat and adopted him there as his own son and named him Tjie Bin Thang (either means King of Banten or King of Butuan).
If taken into consideration the probability that the ship used by the Sultan to regain Malacca was the Trinidad, his death must fall on April 10, 1522. In the Spanish account, it was reported that the Trinidad left Tidor on April 6, 1522 on its voyage to Panama but met directly in the teeth of the head-winds and howling gales which lasted for five days. The real destination might be Malacca in corroboration with Southeast Asian traditions but the real story might be compelled for political reasons. The crippled Trinidad was captured by a Portuguese fleet under Antonio de Brito. Its timbers were used in the construction of a Portuguese fort in Ternate. Its captain and crew were imprisoned, and treated with such barbarity that no less than fifty of them perished, only four surviving to reach their native land. Espinosa was one of the four who, wasted and wan, arrived in Spain early in 1525.
In Cirebon, Brunei, and Sulu traditions, after the death of Sultan Muhammad Shah in April 1522, the people of Brunei and Sulu had requested Tullah to become their new sultan. He became the second sultan of Brunei under the Muslim title Sultan Sharif Ali (سلطان شريف علي), as defender of Islam and possessor of the powerful Zulfiqar or the Taming Sari. He was supposedly the third sultan of Sulu who was supposed to have the title Ala’ ud-Din or Nur-ul-Allah ud-Din but it was the “celestial fairy” who had assumed the throne and the said title by deceit previously for the reasons already mentioned earlier hence instead of third he became the fifth sultan of Sulu with the title Muizzul-Mutawadi-in. He was known in Mindanao as Maharaja Upo. He was both a son and a grandson of Abu Bakr since the latter married his niece who happened to be the mother of Tullah. However, there are Javanese legends which suggest that he was “a son of his half-sister” for Sharifah accordingly was a twin-sister of Fatah who was delivered later by her mother who died in childbirth. In that version, Abu Bakr (also known as Jumadil Kubra, a feminine form for Abu Bakr) drowned himself in the river upon knowing the incestuous relationship he had committed with his daughter.
Tullah’s reign in Sulu lasted until 1548. During his reign as sultan he became very pious by which he was called as Sultan Berkat (“Blessed Sultan”) in Brunei; Si Maayo (“He who is Good”) in Cebu; Simaun or Si Ayo in Brunei; Ratu Adil or Sultan Adil in Java and Sulu respectively which both means “good ruler”; Mir Shah Raju among the Arabs; and Fatahillah and Sharif Hidayatullah among the Cirebonese. He was the first sultan to build a mosque, and fortified the defense of Brunei by ordering his people to build a stone fortress. Tullah governed Brunei according to Islamic principles and his reign was popular and highly respected. He ruled the Sultanate of Brunei for six years. Following his coronation as sultan, as a Muslim tradition, he traveled to Mecca for a hajj and stayed in Egypt for three years with his ancestral tribe – the Bani Israil (Cirebon account). Within those years, he had ordered a very special crown to be made for the woman he wanted to marry upon his return. It was designed after the legendary phoenix of Egypt – a golden crown decorated with a number of gems (Sulu account).
In 1526 he was met by the Portuguese, Vasco Lourenço, who visited Brunei. He was already known at that time as Sultan Berkat (“Pious or Blessed Sultan”) as opposed to Muhammad or Ahmad who was known as Sultan Makatunaw (“Tyrant Sultan”). It was reported that Vasco Lourenço showed him the piece of goods that he had brought with him, and opened a tapestry of Arras on which was portrayed the marriage of the King of England with the aunt of the Emperor (Henry VIII & Katharine of Aragon). The King was life size with royal robes, scepter and crown, and the other figures were standing round him. When Tullah saw this strange thing he asked what it was, and they explained to him. But he suspected that they were deceiving him and that the Portuguese were sorcerers, and that those were magic figures that they wanted to introduce into his abode, so that they might slay him at night and seize his kingdom. He was, according to the report, was very frightened and ordered that those things at once be taken away, and that the Portuguese should leave the port, for he would have in his kingdom no other king but himself, and that if the Portuguese would remain there, he would punish them. The Portuguese were astonished. Afonso Pires and some Moors sought to remove this suspicion from his mind, but they were unsuccessful and Afonso Pires returned to Malacca, Vasco Lourenço going with him.162 Suspecting that the Portuguese had already known that he was the valiant hero who had killed Magellan and fearful that they would come back and attack him unprepared, Tullah went to Banten. During that time the original settlement of Banten was situated not on the coast, but about ten kilometers inland on the Cibanten River, in the area which is today occupied by the southern suburbs of the town of Serang. It was known as Banten Girang, meaning “Banten-up-the-river" owing to its location. Tullah at first lived in Banten Girang, then part of the Hindu kingdom of Sunda, as ordinary ulama, whose purpose was to spread the word of Islam in that still Hindu town, and used the name Hasanudin.
Although at first well received by Sunda authorities, after news of the Portuguese-Sunda alliance became known, Tullah nevertheless informed Trenggana about the said development. On June 22, 1527, just as the Portuguese fleet was arriving off the coast of Sunda Kelapa, Tullah with his fleet coming from Cirebon attacked the Portuguese armada and captured their ships. Tullah became victorious. Sunda Kelapa by then was renamed as Djakarta which means “glorious victory”.163 After that victory he abdicated the throne of Brunei in favor of his son Tugao who was crowned as “Sulayman” named after Abdullah Sulayman (Prabu Cakrabuana) the hero who was killed by Magellan with his own lance at the Battle of Mactan and who later became a maulana under the name Yusuf. Nevertheless, Tullah had not given up the Sultanate of Sulu for another co-regent.
In that year, Tullah concentrated on reviving the fortunes of the ancient kingdom of Sunda. One of his earliest decisions was to travel to southern Sumatra, which had traditionally belonged to the kingdom of Sunda, and from which the bulk of the pepper sold in the Sundanese region came. He was keen to assure himself of the loyalty of these wealthy areas as soon as possible and to guarantee supplies of pepper for his ports, since it was on this spice that all international trade was based and, hence, in which the wealth of his kingdom lay.
Having established control over the ports and the pepper trade, Tullah decided to build a new capital, to symbolize the new era which was beginning. He chose to construct it on the coast at the mouth of the Cibanten River. That a settlement already existed at this place is evidence by its harbor activities, but at this time the seat of political power was in Banten Girang. The royal city was founded on the delta, formed by the two arms of the river. Two main streets running north-south and east-west divided the city into quarters. The royal palace surrounded by residences of the principal minister of state, was built on the south side of the royal square and the great mosque on the west side. Foreigners, for the most part merchants, had to live outside the royal city -- that is, on either side of the delta.
In 1529 AD, the Sultanate of Atjeh (Acheh) on the northern tip of Sumatra became powerful enough to consider controlling the Straits of Malacca. Luzon ships formed part of the Atjehnese fleet that attacked key settlements along the straits. At the same time, Luzon warriors formed part of the opposing Batak-Menangkabau army that besieged Atjeh.164
In 1546, as the new dynasty was so firmly established, Tullah without hesitation had left the kingdom to take part in a military expedition against Pasuruan in eastern Java, at the request of Sultan Trenggana.165 Trenggana lost his life in this venture, and it is likely that Tullah took advantage of his suzerain’s death and the troubles which ensued to free his kingdom from any further obligations to this royal house. Upon the death of Trenggana, Tullah was crowned as the last Madjapahit emperor and by possessing one of the “pearls-of-Allah” he acquired the titles: Nur Jila and Nur Zila – the winds of freedom and peace. The “celestial fairy” became his co-regent and she directly ruled over Jepara with its seat at Kalinyamat and chose the Chinese minister Tjie Hwio Gwan as her grand vizier.166
On the mainland, Luzon warriors aided the Burmese king in his invasion of Siam in 1547 AD. At the same time, Luzon warriors fought alongside the king of Thailand and faced the same elephant army of the Burmese king in the defense of the Siamese capital at Ayuthaya.167
In 1548, Tullah abdicated the throne of the Sulu sultanate in favor of his son Sulayman, who was crowned in Sulu as Sultan Nasirud-Din I (1548-1568). According to tradition, he also managed the development of the Sunda kingdom as co-regent of his father following the custom long practiced within the empire.168
In 1550, upon the request of the Sultan of Johor, the “celestial fairy” had sent 4,000 soldiers in 40 ships to aid the said sultan in freeing Malacca from the European powers. Accordingly, the fleets from Jepara were later joined forces with the Malay alliance and manage to rally around 200 warships. The combined forces attacked from the north and captured most of Malacca. But the Portuguese managed to retaliate and draw back the Malay alliance to the sea while the troops from Jepara remained on shore but withdrew when their leader was slain. As the battle continued in land and at sea, two thousand soldiers of Jepara were killed. It was worsened by a storm which held the other two ships of Jepara stranded at the shore of Malacca which had given the Portuguese the chance to slay the stranded soldiers. The number of soldiers of Jepara who managed to escape back to Java was less than a half of those who were sent.169
In the same year, the Ming Empire finally put an end to overseas trade altogether. Yet, ironically, the Ming Empire's ban on overseas trade became a blessing to Luzon. The port cities in Fujian and Canton that had been profiting from overseas trade since the Sung Dynasty cannot simply end its trade relations with Southeast Asia just because the central government in Beijing does not see profit from it. Chinese ships from Fujian and Canton continue to smuggle goods out of China. They chose the port cities of Tondo and Manila in Luzon as a drop off point. Ships from other parts of Asia, mostly Brunei and Malacca would then sail to Luzon to pick up their percentage of the Chinese goods.170
Also during this period, Tullah decided to launch the final blow to what remained of the kingdom of Sunda. Sulayman led the attack on Dayeuh Pakuan, its capital city located in modern Bogor. After losing its most important port Sunda Kelapa, the kingdom, already deprived of its trading revenues, was of symbolic importance only. The kingdom put up little resistance and henceforth Banten ruled over the entire territory of the former kingdom of Sunda, which corresponds to most of current Indonesian province of West Java.
The sacred stone (watu gigilang) that was serving as the sovereign’s throne of Sunda kingdom was taken away and put at the street intersection in the royal square of Banten, thus marking the end of the Sundanese dynasty.
Henceforth this stone was to serve as the Banten sovereign’s throne.171
The End of the Madjapahit Empire
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The First Settlements in Cebu
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In 1564, Tullah had asked the regent of Demak, Aryan Pangiri, to send assistance to the Sultanate of Aceh in attacking the Portuguese in Malacca. But the suspicious regent had the envoys killed.172 In the same year, the Portuguese captain-general, Gonzalo Pereira attacked Cebu and Bohol and captured many natives to be sold for slavery. 173
Miguel López de Legazpi's fleet consisting of five galleons and 500 men arrived in the Philippines and landed in the shores of Cebu on February 14, 1565. The Shahbandar, on his balangay with seven datus, who was under the instruction of Tullah, went to Legazpi and advised him that they (the Spaniards) would be more successful if they befriended the neighboring chiefs before attempting to land in Cebu or they would meet the same fate with Fernan Magellan. After a brief struggle with hostile natives, they left the island in search of food, water, supplies and other resources.
While the Spaniards had sailed away, Tullah who was called Simaggio (that is, “Si Maayo”) in the Legazpi expedition’s account met with his brother-in-law, Rajah Tupas, the governor of Cebu, and planned to evacuate the people to the interior away from the city for safety.
On February 22, 1565 they reached the island of Samar guided by Datu Urrao. The Spaniards and their native allies left the island for the nearby islands of Mazaua and Leyte, guided by Datu Bankaw. Their ships drifted to the coast of Bohol on March 16, 1565 where they befriended with Datu Sikatuna and Rajah Sigala. Legazpi made a blood compact with the native chieftain, Datu Sikatuna, as a sign of friendship between the two people. There, the Spaniards obtained spices and gold after convincing the natives that they were not Portuguese.
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Miguel
Lopez de Legazpi
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The Shahbandar guided the said Spaniards on his balangay and acted as their interpreter. Among the said Spanish messengers were Juan de la Isla, Martin de Goiti, and Estevan Rodriguez who described the natives as “these Indians wear gold earrings, and the chiefs wear two clasps about the feet… All the body, legs, and arms are painted and he who is the bravest (Tullah) is painted most”. The Shahbandar turned them over to Tullah who had sailed towards them. Tullah at this time was blackened by constant marauding in the seas against the Portuguese and now against the Spaniards whom he thought at first as another Portuguese invaders.
In order to avoid suspicion, Tullah told the Spaniards, through the Shahbandar, that he was a merchant and he was on his way to India and Malacca though he had the intention to facilitate Legazpi to land in Cebu. He inquired from the messengers what the Spaniards preferred. As the decision could only be made by Legazpi, the Spaniards had Legazpi met Tullah at sea since he was a “trader”. Tullah asked Legazpi if he intended to settle in Cebu and if he desired he must settle in the interior because food was very abundant there and that even the return of the vessel Legazpi to Spain to inform the Spanish king could easily be filled with whatever they wanted to give to the Spanish king.
This was obviously a reverse tactic. Tullah wanted the Spaniards to avoid in going to the interior to give time for the civilians to fully evacuate the city unharmed. Legazpi cautious of what had happened to Magellan thought otherwise – if they would be cut off from the outside and when they misbehaved they would easily be controlled by the natives of Cebu.
Legazpi immediately called a council and it was decided that the fleet should go to Cebu without delay, in order that they might make a settlement and dispatch the flagship San Pedro before the rainy season sets in.
On Easter Day, the fleet set sail for Cebu but being delayed by contrary winds and the tides it did not reach its destination “until the 28th and 30th of April”. It was openly agreed by Legazpi with the Shahbandar and Tullah that the intention of the Spaniards was “to make peace inasmuch as their chiefs had been baptized, and had afterwards been apostatized.
But contrary to what had been agreed, Legazpi, on April 28, 1565, exactly 44 years ago when Magellan was killed in Mactan, bombarded the city of Cebu before landing on the soil which shots burned the houses of the natives. He then sent a group of his men ashore. Finding the city vacated, thinking that the natives ran away upon hearing the explosions of the cannons, the said group of men burned the city, of which “about 100 houses were burned”. Then Legazpi and his men settled near the seashore contrary to the advice of Tullah. The soldiers were quartered in the houses remaining after the fire.174
Tullah, with 100 men, guided Legazpi and his men towards the palace of the “celestial fairy”, the present-day Basilica Minore del Santo Niño, where they found the image of Señor Santo Niño covered with a white cloth in its fine cradle with fresh flowers. Tullah who had introduced himself as “Si Maayu” (Simaggio in Spanish account) or as “Mir Shah Raju” (Mermeo in Spanish account) took the image and gave it to Legazpi. When Legazpi saw it, “he fell on his knees, receiving it with great devotion. He took it in his hands – kissed its feet; and raising his eyes to heaven he said: ‘Lord, thou art powerful to punish the offenses committed in this island against thy majesty, and to found herein the house, and holy church, where thy glory and honor, and the exaltation of the Holy Catholic faith.’ And ordered that this sacred image be placed with all reverence in the first church that should be founded, and the city where it was found be called the City of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. It gave great happiness and inspiration to all to see such an auspicious beginning, for of a truth it seemed a work of God to have preserved so completely this image among the infidels for such a long time; and an auspicious augury in the part where the settlement was to be made.” 175
The Spaniards had searched for Rajah Tupas, the governor of Cebu, who had treated with Fernan Magellan in 1521 as representative of Sultan Muhammad Shah. But the natives had vacated the city since the arrival of the Spaniards in February. According to Balamban oral tradition, the “celestial fairy” (Hara Amihan) with Rajah Tupas and some of the soldiers had managed to escape by way of the Combado-Lusaran river tributary system. The “celestial fairy” had sailed away back to Java from the old town of Balamban which was used to stand at the coast of Nangka, a barangay of Balamban, before it sank to the sea around 1870’s.176 Unable to treat with Tupas, the Spanish envoy announced that the Cebuanos had submitted to Spanish Suzarainty 44 years before and were rebellious Spanish subjects. The Spanish sacked the town and began construction of a stockaded camp and took possession of the whole island of Cebu in the name of Spain.
On May 8, 1565, Tupas with a thousand warriors armed with “long, sharp iron lance, throwing sticks, shields, small daggers, wooden corselets, corded breastplates, a few bows and arrows and culverins” presented himself at the Spanish fort and agreed to formalize a treaty. But Tupas was bewildered after hearing what Legazpi had told, “We come thither for the King of Castilla, whose land this is, who had sent other people here before, but they had been killed – as for instance, Magallanes. But everything will be pardoned if you will become our friend.” Tupas acceded with the peace proposal but did not return at the appointed time to conclude the preliminaries after finding that those men were not Portuguese but Spaniards, the same “bad men” who did not have a word of honor. Tupas sent the aged, mothers, and children deeper into the hills away from the Spaniards. A body of men was then sent out by Legazpi who had captured twenty of the natives, among them were Birorang Kinis, the niece of Tupas who was kept hostage by the Spaniards. But she had been freed after Tupas ordered her release. A Spaniard named Pedro de Aranda had been killed during that incident.
Legazpi resolved to send Urdaneta back to New Spain, both to try and find an effective return route across the Pacific, and to try and obtain help for the new colony from New Spain. Between his departure from Cebu on 1 June 1565, and his arrival in Acapulco, New Spain, on 8 October 1565, Urdaneta discovered the northern, eastbound, return route from the Philippines to New Spain which made possible the establishment of the Manilla galleon trade.
After knowing that the San Pedro had left and after receiving a letter of apology from the Spanish king addressed to Tullah as king of Cebu for the lootings done by Magellan and his men, Tullah and Tupas who had found it an opportune time to sign a treaty sent the Shahbandar, Cid Hamal, to negotiate with Legazpi on June 2, 1565, a day after the Spanish flagship left.
“Legazpi expressed his sorrow that the natives were fleeing to the mountains and would not give credence to the friendship and peace offered them in the name of the king, by the Castillians. Word was sent to Tupas that Legazpi regretted the necessity of warring with the natives and that when they wished to return, they might do name the governor and captain residing the island, and to receive the latter whenever he should come to the islands, towns and houses – whether for peace or for war, without any resistance or hostility, to fulfill his commands, and not to withdraw themselves from this dominion, now or in the future. This they promised for themselves and their future descendants, under risk of falling under and incurring the penalties which should be imposed in case of treachery and treason against their king and lord.”
Showing his sincerity with the peace treaty, Tupas told Legazpi that “his wife and daughters would like to come to see him, because they had a great desire to know him. He replied that he would be very glad and that Tupas should bring them whenever he wished; accordingly Tupas did so after a few days.”
It was described by Legazpi that “the women came by themselves in procession, two and two, and the one last of all. After this manner came the wife of Tupas (Hara Si Hupay), with her on the shoulder of two principal women, with a procession of more than sixty women, all singing in high voices. Most of them wore palm leaf hats on their heads and some of them garland of various kinds of flowers, some were adorned with gold, and some with clasps on their legs and wearing earrings, armlets and gold rings on their hands and fingers. They were all clad in colored petticoats or shirts and shawls, some of them made of taffeta.”
Within this period Tupas had sent some of his datus to other islands to inform the other chiefs about the presence of Legazpi in Cebu so that they could strengthen their defenses and for possible offenses they would make to get rid of the Spaniards.
A few days after the coming of Hara Si Hupay and the other women, Tupas sent Birorang Kinis (Jandulaman in other account), the widowed daughter of Tullah, to Legazpi and was baptized Isabel in honor of Isabel Garces, Legazpi’s deceased wife. Later, she married Master Andrea Calafata, a Greek calker. Andrea is a masculine name among the Greeks equivalent to Andrew. The said wedding was officiated by Fray Diego Herrera. On that day during the wedding, Tullah had sent his eight datus from Sulu to spy within the Spanish settlement and fort. On their vinta, Muhammad ul-Halim, the grandson of Tullah who was still a Pangiran Buddiman at that time, the leader of the said datus asked the permission from Legazpi to trade with the Spaniards if they would trade with them. They told Legazpi that they learmed of the Spanish settlement in Cebu through the Shahbandar who had been sent to Panay to buy rice for the fort and that they did no harm to anyone and were possessed of a great quantity of silver and small coins and they came to find out the manner of trading. The said datus kept on coming to the port of Cebu. One day while trading for pearls, one of them had sneezed for which reason they declared that they could not buy according to their custom for if they did, they would sin therein. The said datus induced two junks from Mindoro “to come to trade at Cebu and told about the good treatment afforded to them”. And they had gone to Tanjay too “to get some provisions”. Probably trade was only made as an alibi by Tullah but in the actual sense, the said datus were sent as envoys to recruit combatants against the Spaniards if they would misbehave like Magellan did.
After some delay, the treaty was formalized on July 3, 1565. The said treaty signed by Tupas in behalf of Cebu and by Legazpi in behalf of Spain provided the following:
1) On condition, that the chief who killed Pedro de Aranda by treachery should not enjoy this peace and friendship, until he had appeared before the said governor to make his plea and whose punishment the governor said he reserved for himself.
2) On condition, that if the said Tupas and chiefs asked the said governor for the aid of his men against any Indians hostile to them, who were making or should make war upon them, the said governor was obliged to give them aid, protection and reinforcement of men for it. Likewise, if the said governor should request people from the said Indians, they would be obliged to volunteer to fight against his enemies. All the spoils taken when the said Spaniards and Indians were acting in consent should be divided into two equal parts, of which the said governor and his people were to have one part and the said natives the other.
The signing of the treaty was sealed by a blood compact between Tupas and Legazpi.
“Legazpi promised the natives that for the first year they pay no tribute for the King of Castille had no need of their possessions, nor wished more than that they recognized him as Lord, since they were his and within his demarcation. As this was made clear, Tupas and his men curtsied in recognition of the agreement and upon seeing this Legazpi promised to protect and defend as such.”
Historian William Henry Scott characterizes the treaty as "... actually the terms of an unconditional surrender... a kind of prototype of the unequal treaties which western nations were to fasten on Oriental peoples for the next three centuries."
On November 28, 1565, the people of Cebu had witnessed the weakness of Legazpi’s leadership and his cruelty even among his men. Some of Legazpi’s soldiers and servants conspired to seize the San Juan, one of the galleons composing the Spanish fleet, and making first a cruise through the islands, to seize “the junks of Borneo, Luzon and Mindoro, trading among the islands”. The mutiny had every appearance of succeeding for the master of the San Pablo had in his care all the artillery, powders, and ammunition aboard the ship. The master of San Pablo divulged the conspiracy of the master-of-the-camp, Mateo del Sanz, who immediately informed Legazpi. Pablo Hernandez, a native of Venice, head of conspiracy fled, first making an ineffectual attempt to assume the ecclesiastical garb, in order that he might not be lost; he gave himself up, and was hanged.
It could be understood that Tullah who had known the Portuguese captain-general, Gonzalo Pereira, who was assigned in Malacca, had informed the latter about the presence of the Spaniards in Cebu so that the Portuguese would indirectly help the Cebuanos get rid of the Spaniards. Thus, on September 18, 1565, a small vessel of Portuguese captained by Antonio Ronbo da Costa (Antonio Rrumbo de Acosta in Spanish) arrived at the port of Cebu. He had with him a letter from the captain-general telling Legazpi that their army was near the port of Cebu. And on September 30, 1565, the said captain-general entered the port of Cebu with a heavy fleet of Portuguese and demanded that the Spaniards went with them to India and that they should leave the islands since they were within the demarcation of the king of Portugal.
Two years later, in 1567, about 2,100 Spaniards and Mexicans arrived in Cebu under orders of the Spanish king. They built the Fuerza de San Pedro (Fortress of Saint Peter), which provided a haven for arriving Mexican ships and protection from hostile natives. Between March and June 1567, the Portuguese at Amboyna were reinforced by Pereira with twelve ships while the inhabitants put the friendly peoples of Atire and Tavira to the sword.
Tupas and 25-year old son Pinsuncan, were baptized on March 21, 1568. Tupas was renamed Felipe after Philip II while Pinsuncan was renamed as Carlos.
The Spanish settlement in Cebu was regarded with great jealousy by the Portuguese established in the Moluccas. In October 1568, the latter sent an armed expedition to break it up. Exchanges of letters between Pereira and Legazpi followed within the intervals of October 14, 19, & 21. Pereira and Legazpi had carried on protracted negotiations. The latter claimed that he had come to make new discoveries for his king; to propagate Christianity and ransom Christians held captive by the heathen in those regions; and that he regarded the Philippines as being within the jurisdiction of Spain. Pereira insisted that the islands were of Portugal under the Treaty of Tordesillas and stated that if he was mistaken he would depart from the islands, promising to transport them to India, and offering them all aid and kindness, if they would accede to this demand. Legazpi refused.
Within that interval, the warriors of Taguima (now known as Basilan), under the leadership of Tullah, attacked the unsuspecting Portuguese who were trading at the Moluccas. They took the Portuguese galleon and killed a number of Portuguese. Those who were captured alive were taken to Sulu and were sold out to the new reigning sultan, Muhammad ul-Halim, who was a “friend” of the Portuguese. It is to be recalled that the merchants coming from Taguima who traded at the Moluccas were oppressed by the Portuguese and more often cheated by the latter. Hence, their act was a sort of retaliation or revenge. Within that period too, the Catholics at the islands of Morobachan (now Batjan), Anboyno (now Amboina), and Celebs (Celebes but now known as Sulawesi) were harassed by the Muslims, according to the report. Thus, on October 19, 1568, Pereira had sent a letter addressed to the king of Ternate to investigate on the matter.
The Portuguese attacked Cebu and proceeded to blockade its port, to secure that no food aid and weapon supplies will reach the Spanish settlement, making the island of Cebu as another site where the Spanish and the Portuguese Empire clashed for world colonization. The Portuguese blockaded the Spaniards upon all sides and the galleys and pinnaces aforesaid had sacked, fired, and burned all the neighboring villages, and killed the natives and inhabitants, without exempting even women and children, in the towns of Gavi (in Mactan), Cotcot, Lilo-an, Danao and Mandaue. The battle lasted for few days but the blockade lasted for months.
In a series of letters to their respective kings, both Legazpi and Pereira blamed each other on who started to fire. Both were claiming that they only started to fire as a result of the attack of the other.
On June 5 & 8, 1569, the Portuguese attacked on Cebu and wrecked a Spanish vessel dispatched to Spain with a cargo of spices. And again on July 1, Gonzalo Pereira had made another attack.
Later, Legazpi was informed that some of his men were killed in Mactan. He informed Tupas that he wanted to wage war against Mactan and asked him to send troops to aid him but Tupas told him not to wage war against Mactan for he had already sent his men to secure food from the said island. Then when Legazpi learned that some of his men were also killed in Baybay (Leyte) by the warriors coming from Mactan who had migrated to the former after the Battle of Mactan and that he wished to wage war against them, again, Tupas told Legazpi the same thing. In that way, war was avoided. But Tupas unable to tolerate the banditry of the Spaniards who kept on saying they wanted to go-a-trading but had no merchandise to barter with and the usurpation of Legazpi who proclaimed himself as governor of Cebu had thought of ending it by trickery. He had collaborated with his datus and his sister Birorang Batungay in executing a plan of poisoning the Spaniards which they found to be drunkards.
The next day, Birorang Batungay who garbed herself in men’s clothing went with some of the chiefs at the trading center where the men of Legazpi always went in big groups. They traded a great quantity of palm wine to which the Spaniards gave themselves with good appetite, saying that they did not miss the wine of the Castille but could not refuse the local wine which they found better than the former even though it was already forbidden by Legazpi since some of them had become sick. Birorang Batungay who found the Spaniards rude squeezed some poisonous vine into the jars of palm wine until it was found that most men of Legazpi died of poisoning.
An investigation on the tragedy was done but still Legazpi could not pinpoint the culprit. Soon after, all the natives were called and required to confess their sins to the Spanish priests in order to catch the criminal. The confessions should never be divulged according to the Catholic dogma – the reason why all of the natives went to confess. Birorang Batungay who confessed was hanged.
On September 1, 1569, the warriors led by Tupas attacked the Spanish settlement from all directions from the land. The fight continued for months until Legazpi felt they would lose to the fierce natives. In the dark evenings most of the Spaniards would stay in their boats and pataches for safety while few of the men would be left to guard their fort. This was discovered by the natives and coincidentally Gonzalo Pereira patrolled the seas of Cebu now and then and saw the Spanish galleons there and during these patrols they fought side by side with the natives against the Spaniards. The Portuguese though did not fight continuously and lengthily since they had to return to India for reinforcement whenever it would be needed. They were only on patrol to their “territories”. The Spaniards were trapped – the natives on land and the Portuguese at sea.
On March 23, 1570, Legazpi and his men moved to Panay to establish a second Spanish settlement. But the warriors coming from Cebu chased after them and continued attacking them until they were driven to Luzon on May 1, 1570.177
The Spaniards led by Martin de Goiti who were sent from Cebu by Legaspi arrived in Luzon on May 8, 1570 and camped on the shores of Manila Bay for several weeks. While forming an alliance with the Muslim tribal chiefs, on May 24, 1570, after disputes and hostility erupted between the two groups, the Spaniards occupied the villages of Tondo where they were greeted with thousands of warriors. There, they defeated most of the tribes of Karim (known as Rajah Matanda in Luzon), the son of Abdullah Sulayman (Prabu Cakrabuana); Tullah (known as Lakan Dula in Luzon); and Sulayman, the “son” of Tullah. The Spaniards marched their armies towards the Pasig River, and occupied the villages in Manila on June 6, 1570 and burned the settlements. Guerrilla warfare broke out following the battle, which continued for about ten months. The Spaniards fortified themselves in the area and constructed their military barracks of Fuerza de Santiago (Fortress of Saint James), which became their outpost for trade with Mexico.
On October 19, 1570, while Fernando Riquel, chief government notary of Spain, was building some gabions on the river of Cebu City, for the defense of certain pieces of artillery, which Legazpi had ordered to be mounted there, Pereira, who had anchored at the port had sent him a letter demanding him to stop working on the gabions. The following day, to please Pereira, Legazpi ordered the work to be stopped. Yet on the next day again, in the morning, Pereira had sent another letter demanding the demolition of the said gabions for it seemed to be a menace to him and his fleet for if not he would take it for granted as a declaration of war. In the afternoon, the Portuguese galleys and small boats came ashore; battered down the said gabions with a great number of guns; and continued until sunset.
However, when it became clear that Legazpi and the Spanish would not leave the Philippines, Pereira decided to give up and went back to Malacca. Despite having a supreme force against Legazpi, Pereira would not dare have any loss on his part because Portuguese possessions in Moluccas were being attacked by local enemies too. Even if Pereira beat Legazpi, he will risk the entire Moluccas which is more vital to Portugal than their claim of the Philippines.
Pereira’s attack in Cebu marked the last time that the Portuguese tried to capture the Philippines from Spain.
The Spaniards gained control of the settlements on June 24, 1571, after the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi in Manila, who agreed to a peace agreement.
The Spanish colonization paved the way for the establishment of Manila as a permanent settlement and capital city of the Spanish East Indies. He later explored Pampanga, Pangasinan and founded several Spanish cities in Luzon between the periods of 1571-1573. De Goiti, along with other soldiers was granted with haciendas (estates) for the lands they had conquered, by Philip II of Spain.178
On August 20, 1572, Legazpi died passing the control of Luzon to his 13-year old nephew Juan de Salcedo.179
In September 1573, Pereira had been ordered to Malacca to crush the “celestial fairy” at Jepara but refused for want of adequate equipment and returned to Lisbon. There was confusion among some “historians” who suggested that Pereira went to Moluccas and died there after his attacks on Cebu.180 Yet, the earlier Gonzalo Pereira who was assigned as governor of Moluccas in 1530 and was murdered by the inhabitants of Ternate in 1531 was obviously a different person.181
In 1574, Tristào Vaz de Veiga was appointed commander at Malacca.182 In that year too, Diego de Sanbucho was sent to Moluccas as its new appointed governor only to find out that the fort at Ternate had already been destroyed by the inhabitants. It was found out that a certain Portuguese killed the king of Ternate and captured the king’s son, Francisco, and three relatives namely Enrique, Pablo Desa, and Jordan de Fletes were taken to India and then to Malacca. Raged with fury, the people of Ternate attacked and surrounded the fort until the Portuguese who were there died of hunger. Those who had fled with their families and cattle settled in Ambon or in Malacca. Later on, those who went to Malacca had transferred to Ambon. The people of Ternate demanded from the Portuguese the return of Francisco, the prince of Ternate, and only by then that they would make peace-talk and return back the fort to them. Though the Portuguese had to stay at Ternate for the next century their hold at Moluccas, the whole of Asia, had gradually diminished due to that revolt at Ternate.183
On June 21, 1574, King Philip II of Spain had bestowed on Luzon the New Kingdom of Castille and on Manila that of “Distinguished and Ever Loyal City”. Soon after that almost the entire Luzon was subjugated to the Spanish crown under the leadership of the 16-year old Juan de Salcedo by marrying lot of princesses. The natives were easily converted to Christianity.184
In October 1574, the combined fleets of Aceh lead by its admiral Ki Demat and the 300 ships containing 15,000 soldiers of Jepara sent by the “celestial fairy” attacked the Portuguese at Malacca again, particularly the Porta da Santiago. But it was beaten. Jepara troops immediately opened fire from the strait then penetrated on land the following day and built defenses. But the Portuguese had able to destroy the defenses and set 30 ships from Jepara on fire. The Portuguese denied any peace talks and confiscated the six ship-loads of supplies coming from Jepara. Weakened, the combined fleets of Aceh and Jepara retreated. Only about a hundred ships were able to return to Jepara. Though twice defeated, the “celestial fairy” had shown an example of bravery by which she was described by the Portuguese as “Rainha da Joparra, Senhora poderosa e rica, da kranige Dame” which means "Queen of Jepara, a rich and powerful woman, a brave woman".185
Still in the same year, De Goiti fought in the war during the invasion of about 3,000 Chinese sea pirates who had sailed from the South China Sea. Their leader, Limahong, besieged the Spanish settlements in Manila. De Goiti was killed by pirates, who massacred most of the Spaniards in the villages. Most of the Spanish reinforcements came from Vigan and Cebu. Martín de Goiti's second in command, Juan de Salcedo left Ilocos Sur, after hearing the news and traveled to Manila where he discovered their settlements had been ceded to the pirates. Salcedo's forces attacked and drove the pirates out of Manila. Limahong and his fleets retreated to Pangasinan where they re-organize their forces. Probably, Limahong was not really a pirate but a general sent by the Ming emperor to aid Tullah in subjugating the Spanish invaders.
In 1575, Salcedo's army marched north to Pangasinan, in pursuit of the pirates, and besieged them for three months. There the Spaniards captured Limahong and his fleets in the river of Pangasinan and were executed. The following year Salcedo died at the age of 27.186
In 1578, Sebastian, the king of Portugal, was killed in a battle at Morocco against the Muslims leaving without heir to the throne. King Philip II of Spain being the son of Princess Isabel of Portugal, the wife of Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, claimed the throne. And in 1581, he enthroned himself at Lisbon as the king of Spain and Portugal. That union lasted until 1640.187
In 1591 AD, the Cambodian king, Phra Unkar Langara, sent a gift of two royal elephants, gems and horses to the lords of Luzon to petition them to aid him in the war against Siam.188
In 1593, the Spaniards from the Philippines had built a fort at Ternate. In the next 50 years, Manila was managing the trade while the Spaniards were ruling the Moluccas with the assistance of the Pampangeños from Luzon.189
The fall of Madjapahit Empire occurred in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Decline has been attributed to: (a) the entrance of Islam into Java's politics and (b) the conquest of European explorers like the Dutch, Portuguese, British, French, and Spanish with the battle-cry of propagating Christianity but in reality of the ambition of controlling maritime trade over Southeast Asia.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF BALAMBAN
Balamban according to oral traditions was one of the polities or city-states that composed the pre-Hispanic kingdom called Hinulawan which means “Land of Gold”; the other polities were the present-day Toledo, Naghaling (Asturias), Bagakawa (divided between Asturias and Tuburan), and Tuburan. During that time, according to oral history, the seat of government was at the city-state known as Balambang which was located at the sea-coast of the present Barangay Nangka of Balamban. “Balambang” is a Javanese-Malay word for “seat (of government)” which was later became a name of some places in Java like Balambang in Madura and a lot of places named Blambangan which were all originated from the same root word “balambang” and a name of a tree which originated from Java.
Most probably the said city-state named Balambang was already known in antiquity not as a settlement but as a source of gold mostly by the Javanese, Phoenicians, Jews, Indians, Arabs, Greeks, and Chinese. Based on Southeast Asian history, it could be assumed that settlements of migrants coming from Java, Sumatra, Brunei, and China took place during the period between the establishment of the Srivijaya and Madjapahit empires. The old town of Balamban which was the sunken Balambang was evidently established during the Madjapahit era.
According to the past town historian of Balamban -- the late Romulus Gerali Cabahug -- the site where the present town is located was once known as Kangma, as oral traditions pointed out, and he believed that it was established by the ancient Javanese based on the relics excavated at Cambuhawe in the 1950’s.190 Nevertheless the name Kangma only suggests that the place was an ancient settlement of Tibetans who had been known in history to have traveled by sea in going to Sumatra for the study of Buddhism during the Srivijayan era, to propagate Tibetan Buddhism during the Singhasari era, and to escape from the Mongol invasions during the Madjapahit era. Tibetan influence in Balamban is not only evident in the Tibetan loan words but also in some animistic beliefs and Buddhist concepts of spiritual beings, ancestral worship, esotericism, the use of horses and the tartanilla or parada, and even in physical traits.
It is also interesting to note the similarity of some Chinese beliefs with the local folk beliefs. Like for example the belief in a giant clam called “tangub” and a giant octopus called “mantaga” that inhabited the rivers which is still an existing belief in some riverine barangays like Cantuod, Cantibas, Duangan, Hingatmonan, Liki, and Cabagdalan. In Chinese mythology, the shen or chen is a shape-shifting dragon or sea monster believed to create mirages. Shen 蜃 meant the "clam-monster" that miraculously transformed shapes. According to Chinese folklore191 swallows are a favorite food of both Chinese long 龍 and shen 蜃 dragons. This explains the Chinese saying, "Hence if people eat swallow's flesh they should not go out and cross a river (dragons will eat them if they do)." Eberhard192 equates the shen 蜃 with the jiaolong 蛟龍 "flood dragon; crocodile" and compares tales of both these dragons attacking cattle in rivers. In 1596, Li Shizhen in his Bencao gangmu (Chinese materia medica) describes the shen or chen 蜃 under the jiaolong entry, with quotes from the Yueling and Lu Dian's Piya:
A kind of crocodile shaped like a huge serpent. Horned like a dragon, with a red mane. Below the middle of the back it has scales inversely arranged. It lives on swallows. It spurts forth clouds of vapor in huge rings. It appears when it is going to rain. The fat and wax is made into candles which have a fragrant smoke noticeable 100 steps away, and ascend in layers in the air. The Yueh-Ling says the pheasant metamorphoses into a Ch'un when it enters the water. Lu Tien says that serpents and tortoises together produce tortoises but cohabitation of tortoises and pheasants produce Ch'un, although they are different animals they are moved by the same influences. Other records refer to its relationship to the clam.
Based on the oral tradition of the barangays Duangan and Cantibas as retold by the 51-year-old Pedro Pacquiao of Cantibas, it is a local belief that a certain Chinese general named Mengki went to Duangan with a company of soldiers searching for a pearl held by the giant clam monster (tangub) and for a subterranean tunnel leading to China. Accordingly when Mengki and his soldiers found the giant clam monster and the subterranean tunnel spilled some kind of chemical on the water and casted a magical spell which created the giant octopus (mantaga) that guarded the giant clam monster and its pearl. Some other characteristics and descriptions of these creatures are already mentioned in Unit III under the said three barangays. Historically, the said Mengki was the envoy sent by Kublai Khan to Java between 1280 and 1293. He could also be the same “Mampur” in almost forgotten legend who was said to be a rich Chinese merchant who had gone to Balamban to trade during the pre-Spanish era. Most people of Balamban would always say, “Panahon pa man nang Mampur,” (“That is during the Mampur’s era”) if a certain topic is already old or obsolete but mostly could not identify who is Mampur when asked.
It could be concluded that Chinese (which probably started in the 3rd century BCE) and Mongol contacts were still evident in Balamban even until the period between the 13th and 16th centuries CE.
But most likely, as local traditions point out, Balamban as Balambang was really named after Balambangan a variant of Blambangan (another variant was Balumbungan). Balambangan was a vassal Hindu kingdom of the Madjapahit Empire and a regional trade center. After Madjapahit Kingdom ceased to exist in the last quarter of the 16th century, it became an independent kingdom and, as such, the last Hindu kingdom of Java. In order to defend itself from the troops of the Sultanate of Demak, which tried to occupy it, Balambangan asked for help from Balinese kings, which caused it to lose its independence to Balinese kingdoms. During this time Balambangan was deeply influenced by Balinese culture. After around 150 years of Balinese occupation, the Sultanate of Mataram gained control of the territory and renamed it Banyuwangi. It is very probable then that most of the Balambangan nobles had sailed as far as Balamban to escape away from the Sultanate of Mataram and from the on-going battles between Javanese and Portuguese in the latter half of the 16th century and re-established their kingdom in the northwestern part of Cebu which is Balamban – evident to this is the similarity of the existing local superstitions and oral traditions with Hindu Bali and Java.
Oral traditions point out that Balamban is a favorite haven of Muslim pirates coming from Mindanao, Brunei, Java, and Sumatra during the Spanish colonization. Yet, during the latter half of the 16th century under Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, Balamban was not yet penetrated by the Spaniards who were focused on the eastern and southern part of the island of Cebu. Hence, most of the people coming from southern Cebu, Bohol, Negros, and Mindanao were still migrating to Balamban at that time. Oral history even pointed out that Hara Amihan (christened Reina Juana) had escaped from Legaspi’s invasion of Cebu City to Brunei by way of Balamban through the river tributary system in between the mountains in 1565.
According to oral traditions, the Spaniards, who were chasing after Hara Amihan, arrived in Balamban and went to the old town of Balambang by crossing the Combado River to cross to Nangka which was on the other side of the river through “balang-balang” which was mentioned in Unit II. The act of “balang-balang” by the natives was named by the Spaniards as “brazo de combado” which literally means “curved arms”. Thus the river was probably named originally as “Rio del brazo de combado” which later on became more popular as “sapa sa Combado” (Combado River) while the settlement at the side of the river opposite to Nangka was then called as Combado from either the corruption of the Spanish name of the river or the Spanish term for “balang-balang”. The old town of Balambang was then converted into a Christian Spanish pueblo.
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the people of Balamban even though they probably had already been Christianized elsewhere they still practiced their animistic beliefs. The people still practiced “pagdiwata” or offering crops or anything to the elemental spirits for a favor either from a bountiful harvest or invoking for such. In Barangay Gaas, all the inhabitants even until now are doing the “harang” during the month of May. “Harang” is like an act of killing a pig along the Cebu Trans-Central Hi-way to be offered to the mountain spirits in return for the bountiful harvest year-round. It is like a modern-version of hog-killing ritual done by a babaylan or priestess witnessed by Antonio Pigafetta in Cebu. The people still worshipped the elemental spirits ruled by a mountain-river goddess T’ang An who was also called as Maria, who was believed to own merchant ships which caused flooding of all the rivers in Balamban as those traversed the river tributary system either sailing to the mountains or to the sea, docked at Barangay Cabagdalan. The legends that abound her were in fact a conflation of memories of the long-forgotten ancient fluvial civilization of Cebu during the biblical times when the Queen of Sheba was still ruling the Southeast Asian region and of the glorious and mighty Madjapahit Empire that had transferred its seat of power in Cebu at the turn of the 16th century when Damhara Amihan, the “celestial fairy” who was also called in Javanese account as Mariam, was ruling the said empire.
The Colony of the Philippines would then continue as a Spanish possession for the next 330 years, briefly interrupted by British Occupation in 1762 – 1767.
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