Islam during Malacca sultanate

As Islam spread down the coasts of Sumatra – being adopted by the courts of Aru and Deli in the 1400s, it also gained adherents on the peninsula.

It is the ruler of Malacca appears to have adopted Islam with encouragement of the lord of Pasai. According to Sulalat al-Salatin, the dynasty of Malacca was founded around 1400 by Parameswara from Palembang after an interim period in Temasik. It was a first a Hindu Kingdom in 1402 and later converted to Islam with the marriage of the princess of Pasai in 1409.

His marriage also encouraged a number of his subjects to embrace Islam. Later, Parameswara transformed the Hindu Kingdom of Srivijaya into a Muslim Sultanate – the Sultanate of Malacca. He assumed the title of Sultan Iskandar Shah.

Centered in the down town of Malacca, the sultanate stretched from Muslim Malaya settlements of Phuket, Setol, Pattani, bordering Ayutthaya Kingdom of Siam.

By 1413, Malacca had become a fully fledged Muslim sultanate. Islam became established throughout Malacca’s empire, by the end of the 15th century, included all the states of the Malay Peninsula and those on the east coast of Sumatera.

Islam became the region’s principal religion, its rise coinciding with the decline of the Buddhist Srivijaya and Hindu Majapahit empires.

Wealthy Muslim traders were drawn to conduct business there and Malacca also became a well-known center of Islamic scholarship.

The spread of Islam happened at the peak of Malacca’s glory between 1459 and 1477 during the reign of the sixth sultan, Mansor Shah.
Islam during Malacca sultanate

Madrasah in Malaysia

The term madrasah derives from the Arabic root darasa, which means ‘to study’ and is related to the term for lessons, dars. Technically, a madrasah is an institution where lessons are imparted or, in other words, a school.

The earliest form of Islamic education ion the Malay Peninsula was Quranic instruction, conducted in mosque, prayer houses and the homes of learned Muslims since the arrival of Islam in the region.

As Quranic schools gained popularity and the number of students increased, permanent, although often underfunded, schools known as pondok or madrasah were established in villages through the region to provide additional training in the study of Islam for those who had already mastered the reading of the Quran.

While the schools were scattered throughout the Malay Peninsula, the majority were located in the northern states of Kelantan and Kedah.

In 1914 Habib Hassan al-Attas founded Madrasah al-Attas in Johor Bahru and 194 he founded Madrasah al-Attas Ketapang in Pekan, Pahang. The latter was the first Arabic religious school in Pahang.

The setting up of reformed madrasahs in urban centers of the Straits Settlements such as Madrasah al-Hadi in Malacca in 1917, Madrasah Al-Iqbal-Islamiyyah in Singapore in 1908 and Madrasah Al-Masyhor Al-Islamiyyah in Penang in 1919 offered new religious outlook towards education for the Muslims.

These madrasahs were also the first Malay-Muslim institutions to pioneer the methods of the modern printing press, publishing not only religious texts but also journals and magazines that helped to create the fledging imagined community of a literate public in the Malay Peninsula.

Madrasah Al-Masyhor Al-Islamiyyah in Penang initially a school teaching of Quran and other basic Islamic knowledge. It was set-up through the efforts of several Arabs, among them Sayyid Mahzar Aidid, Sayyid Ali Bawazir, Sayyid Umar al-Sagoff, Sayyid Umar Mahzar and Sayyid Hassan al-Baghdadi.

It was named Madrasah al-Mashhor in honor of a respected Sayyid on the island, Sayyid Ahmad al-Mashhor.
Madrasah in Malaysia

Tambralinga attack Sri Lanka (1247)

Tambralinga was a kingdom comprising a considerable area of the Malay Peninsula with Ligor as its capital. Tambralinga became an important center of the Thevada Buddhist School. Pali literature from Sri Lanka regarded Tambralinga as important twelfth century center of Buddhist scholarship.

After the invasion of Rajendra Cola the Srivijaya kingdom has hardly any political control over the Malay Peninsula. Until the thirteenth century Tambralinga was a pivot in politics of the southern Bay, also having asserted its independence on the century.

Dharmaraja Chandrabhanu was a king of the Tambralinga which active period 1230-70. In 1247 he sent an expedition to Sri Lanka with the ostensible aim of obtaining a Buddhist relic and controlled the northern part of the islands.

Dharmaraja Chandrabhanu spent more than 30 years in the conquest of Sri Lanka.

But its move to take over the whole island was frustrated by the Pandyans from south India who attacked Tambralinga in alliance with Ceylon. In 1270 Chandrabhanu attacked Sri Lanka again and was defeated by the Pandays badly enough that Tambralinga had not recovered when attacked by the Siam twenty years later.

Its rapid rise to prominence since the 13th century till beginning of 14th century, Tambralinga had occupied the entire Malay Peninsula and become one of the dominant Southeast Asian States.

By the end of the 14th century, Tambralinga had become part of Siam named Nakhon Si Thammaraj.

Tambralinga attacks Sri Lanka (1247)

History of Tambralinga

Tambralinga is one of the small and shadowy States in early South East Asians history. The area was settled by Indian immigrants early in the first century.

Tambralinga emerges from the end of the tenth and the beginning of eleventh century.

The State is associated with coastal lands round the Bay of Bandon in the narrowing waist of the Malay Peninsula. Sometimes it is referred to as the State in the Ligor area.

Tambralinga sought to cultivate relations with both China and Srivijaya in the eleventh century, to balance dangers from Angkor, and later Pagan, and the Colas of South India. In 1170 Tambralinga sent an independent embassy to China.

Tambralinga became an important center of the Theravada Buddhist school.  Pali literature from Sri Lanka regarded Tambralinga as an important twelfth-century center of Buddhist scholarship.

In 1247, Chandrabhanu of Tambralinga sent an expedition to Sri Lanka with the ostensible aim of obtaining a Buddhist relic, and occupied part of the island.  The invasion occurred when Parakramabahu II was the Sinhalese king ruling at Dembadeniya.

Later in 1258 a Pandya prince, Jatavarman Sundara Pandya invaded Sri Lanka, defeated an alliance of Tambralinga forces.

In 1270 Chandrabhanu attacked Sri Lanka again and was defeated badly enough and had not recovered when attacked by the Thais twenty years later.
History of Tambralinga

History of Singgora (Songkhla)

Songkhla known in historical sources with different spellings such Saingor, Cingor, Singor, Singora as well as Sangor or Singgora, was in the seventeenth century considered an ideal port with its ample shelters for large vessels.

Arab sources cited that southern Songkhla was a seat of Hindu Malay Kingdom, Langkasuka. Langkasuka was first mentioned in the 5th century AD in the ‘History of the Laing Dynasty’ in China in reference to Lang-ya-hsiu, which had sent an embassy to China in 515 AD.

By the seventh century AD, the area of Langkasuka had become part of the Srivijaya kingdom, including Songkhla.

By 1593 Songkhla had been place under the suzerainty of the re-unified Ayutthaya under King Naresuen. 

At the latest by 1642 it was rules by a Muslim who was described by a French visitor as ‘the king of Songkhla’.

Under flourishing trade promoted by Muslim traders, Songkhla quickly developed economically and emerged as a strong political power in the Peninsula.

In 1652 the ruler, a Muslim, refused to come to Ayutthaya to serve public allegiance to the Thai king. In one of the many fierce campaigns which followed, a Thai fleet was dispatched, each vessel smeared with human blood and hung with human heads to terrify Songkhla into obedience.

By 1679 its ruler had finally complied with the order to go to Ayutthaya to pay personal homage.

In 1684 Songkhla was sending her tribute to the neighboring Muslim sultanate of Patani which in her turn, was sending tribute to Ayutthaya.

In 1791, Tengku Lamiddin, king of Patani rebelled against Ayutthaya. The Patani attacked Songkhla. The governor of Songkhla fled to Phatthalung and asked help from Ayutthaya. 
History of Singgora (Songkhla)

Rajendra Chola attacked Malay Peninsula

In the early Christian Era the Malay Peninsula was known as Golden Chersonese. To ancient Indians it was called Suvarnadvipa or Land of Gold.

According to the Malay Annals, the Khmer price Raja Ganji Sarjuna founded the kingdom of Gangga Negara in the 700s. Between the 7th and the 13th century, much of Peninsula was under the Srivijaya empire, which was centered in Palembang on the island of Sumatra.

During the 10th to the 13yth centuries AD the Chola Kingdom of South India, a great naval power protected her Indian merchantmen from the Coromandel Coast in the Strait of Malacca.

In 1025 and 1026 Gangga Negara was attacked by Rajendra Chola I. Before that the Rajendra sent a naval force to attack Kedaram in 1017-18. In the campaign that lasted many years, Rajendra Chola ransacked the city and carried its treasure home to South India.

The 1025 naval raid in Malay Peninsula was display of the power of the Chola king , Rajendra Chola I, who possessed and wielded strong political and military power in India.

This was the result of the rivalry that had developed between the Cholas and Srivijaya; however, the Cholas had exercised no political control over the Malay Peninsula.

Most of the historians concluded that the raid was undertaken to protect the commercial interest of Tamilakam which were perhaps threatened by the attempts of the Sailendra kings of Srivijaya to monopolies the trade to the east because of their control over the ports of the Malay Peninsula.
Rajendra Chola attacked Malay Peninsula