Islam came in the context of an Islamicate civilization brought by mystics and merchants. The former are associated with Sufism and the latter with more ritualistic Sharia’a based Islam of the Sunni Shafii school of jurisprudence.
Pattani was not known to the Islamic world before it was Islamized. A Pasai Muslim Sheikh Syafialudin once cured Raja Indra on the condition that he would be converted to Islam.
Raja Indra took the name Mahmud Shah with the title of Sultan. Islam spreading as far as north as Songkhla. The Malay dialect of Jawi became the main language of the deep south and Islam came to replace Buddhism in the region of southern Thailand.
The Pattani Sultanate was a populous and prosperous Muslim kingdom in the Malays Peninsula until it fell under Thai control in 1786.
It was suggested that the pondok system which was also developed in other parts of the Malay peninsula, originated from Pattani. The historians point out that the pondoks in Pattani were very prestigious and their more advanced students were welcome as teachers elsewhere.
The spread of Islam in Pattani
