THE EARLY MALAYS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS 47 



via Balabac and Palawan to Manila Bay and the second b\ 

 way of Tawi-Tawi and Sulu to Magindanaw (now Cottabatoj. 

 They appear to have reached Sulu before 1380 and when the 

 Spaniards arrived at the Pasig river, less than two centuries 

 later, they found a Mohammedan prince — Eajah Soliman — 

 reigning in Tondo, now a part of Manila, and Islam quite 

 extensively established there. To the Spaniards who had 

 just succeeded in expelling the Moors from their home 

 peninsula it seemed a religious duty to repeat the process as 

 regards these coreligionists in the Philippines to whom they 

 applied the same term — "Moros." The process was com- 

 pleted in the northern and central Philippines where, except 

 in the mountain regions of Luzon, most of the inhabitants 

 came under the influence of the Spanish Friar Missionaries. 

 But the Malays of the southern Philippines have remained 

 Mohammedan to this day. And the new influence which 

 thus affected them came directly and not indirectly from 

 Arabia. Abu Bekr who introduced Islam into Sulu was 

 a real Arab and so late as 1911 when I visited the Lake Lanao^ 

 region of central Mindanao the military commandant there 

 (Colonel Beecham) told me that the leading Moro of that 

 locality was a man from Mecca. On the other hand among 

 the Moros of to-day are not a few ' ' hadjis ' ' who proudly wear 

 the green turban in token of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land 

 of Islam. 



Among the most interesting monuments of this long 

 domination of Islam in the southern Philippines are the 

 series of legal compilations, often called codes, which Dr. 

 Saleeby discovered and translated. 59 A detailed examina- 

 tion of them would lead us too far afield and besides would' 

 require a separate monograph for adequate treatment. 

 Suffice it here to say that they constitute a curious blending 

 of Moslem law with Malay custom and that, while crude and 

 unsvstematic in arrangement, they contain some rather 

 advanced provisions. They were mainly intended for the 

 Moro panditas (judges) who were unfamiliar with Arabic and 

 therefore unable to read the real Mohammedan law books. 

 But they have introduced not a little of the law of Islam 

 which the American government in the Philippines has re- 

 cognized bv authorizing the Moro Provincial Council to 

 modify the'substantive civil and criminal law ... to suit 

 local conditions among the Moros, " etc. /'to conform . . . 

 to the local customs and usages." 60 



" Studies in Moro History, Law and Keligion, Philippine Ethno- 

 logical Survey Publications, IV, pt. I (1905). 

 ° - Compilation, Acts of the Philippine Commission p. 251. 



