The Advent of Muhammadanism in the Malay 

 Peninsula and Archipelago. 



By E. 0. WlNSTEDT. 



Muhammad died in 632 A.D. By the year 915 A.D. Aral) 

 "traders had voyaged to Kedah, and it is related 1 that they found 

 there a, large and important port for trade. It is highly impro- 

 bable that they made many converts; but undoubtedly some of 

 them married native wives and Muhammadanism must have made 

 headway in the port itself. 



In 1292 A.D. Mareo Polo visited Sumatra. He relates how 

 he found Muhammadans in the port of Perlak, but that the people 

 ■of Samudra 2 and Pasai were still heathen. In Mareo Polo's day 

 Kedah had fallen from its previous estate as a trading port and 

 Pasai had taken its place. The Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai {J. R. 

 A. S., S: B. f No. 66, pp. 9-15) gives a story of Merah Silu ruler 

 of Pasai marrying a daughter of the ruler of Muhammadan Perlak 

 and taking the title of Sultan MalikuVSalleh on his conversion 

 to Muhammadanism; and this story is corroborated in the seventh 

 chapter of the Sejarah Melayu. Sultan Malikiv's-Salleh died in 

 1297 A.I). At that time Pasai was the chief trading port in 

 "these seas. 



To this day are preserved Muhammadan tomb-stones at Pasai, 

 dated 14:07 A.U. They have been identified by a Dutch archaeologist" 

 ■as coming from Cambav in India: and they bear the closest re- 

 semblance to tomb-stones at Grisek in Java and at Bruas, the site 

 of an old Malay kingdom between Perak and the Dindings. Of 

 course, the early missionaries were not only Arabs but Indians 

 from Gujerat and Malabar or Kalinga as it was then called. And 

 "the Sejarah Melayu furnishes confirmatory evidence of the custom 

 of bringing tomb-stones from India to Malavan countries (Chapter 

 VII). 



The Sejarah Melayu records (Chapters XX and XXXII) 

 how there was constant intercourse between Pasai and Malacca. 

 In his " Commentaries/' Affonso d' Albuquerque gives a native 



1 ' ' Cathay and the way thither, ' ' Col. H. Yule, c.b. (London, Hakluyt 

 Society, 1866). 



- In 1346 Ibn Batuta found the king of Samudra an ardent Moslem. 



3 "De grafsteenen te Pase en Grissee vergeleken met dergelijke monu- 

 menten uit Hindoestan" by J. P. Magnette, Tij'd. Bat. Gen. LIX (1912), 

 p. 536 and p. 208. 



Jour. Straits Branch R. A. Soc, No. 77, 1917. 



