British landed in Penang Island

Prior to the English, Penang was originally part of the Malay Sultanate of Kedah. It's known as a harbor for pirates at that time.

In 1786 the sultan of Kedah granted the island of Penang to the British East India Company in exchange for military protection from the Siamese and Burmese armies; until 1867 it was known to the British as Prince of Wales Island.

Captain Francis Light, British naval officer, landed in Penang Island on 11 August 1786 to establish the rule of the East India Company. Deciding on building a fort at that very spot, Light declared that, when ready, the bastion would serve as the main defence post for the island.

By that time, it was inhabited by a few Malays. According to Joseph Kennedy in A History of Malaya, published by MacMillan, "By 1788 the population of Penang was about 1,000, and it increased to 12,000 in 1804, by which time Province Wellesley had been included.

Light's interest in Penang began in 1771, when he proposed the idea of turning the island into a British settlement. The suggestion, which fell on deaf ears at that time, only came under serious consideration twelve years later when Britain struggled with France for naval superiority.

Light landed in Penang Island was the first British beach-head in Malaya, and it presaged the end of Dutch influence on the peninsula.

In 1790, when Sultan Abdullah of Kedah heard that the British would not give protection, he formed an army to get rid of the Dutch and the English. He assembled his men at Prai to retake the island of Penang but was defeated.
British landed in Penang Island

Madrasah Al Mashoor

Syed Sheikh al-Hadi came to Penang in 1893. He then went for further studies at the University of al-Azhar, Egypt in 1897, and returned to Penang in 1899.

In 1919, Syed Sheikh al-Hadi shifted to Penang and established Madrasah Al-Mashoor. He became the first principle of the madrasah.

During his tenure, he played a crucial role in the consolidation of the school in the sense that he transferred it premises from Acheen to Tek Soon Street, where the school got a bigger compound and catered for a large number of students.

In its new premises, the school offered Islamic courses and a set of secular disciplines that were taught in English.

The Madrasah Al-Mashoor was also well known during the British colonial era as a place of radical movement. The madrasah was one of the first Malay-Muslim institutions to ‘pioneer 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.

The all-boys madrasah began in Masjid Melayu Acheh, near the old warehouses and pilgrimage jetty.
Madrasah Al Mashoor

Georgetown, Penang

Georgetown is one of the cosmopolitan port city and the second largest city in Malaysia with more than one million populations, where commercial trading is still its major economic activity.

In 1786, Francis Light occupied Penang. He was a trader for the British East India Company, as a base for the company in the Malay States.

It was the commencement of the British forward movement in the area. It was expected to become a key port city in the island.

Light’s action was neither sanctioned by the East Indian Company nor acceded to by the Sultan of Kedah. When the sultan prepared his fleet in 1791 to take back Penang by force, Light moved first and defeated his adversary.

Light decided to clear jungle at the point of arrival and constructed central thoroughfares converging on Fort Cornwallis, namely Light Street, Beach Street, Chulia Street and Pitt Street.

Penang Ferry Service

The town was built on swampy land that had to be cleared of vegetation, leveled and filled. The British opened and established new tropical spice plantations in Penang to enhance the existing local spice trading activities with products such as cloves, pepper and nutmegs.

Immigrants from Southern China and Southern India were brought in to work as laborers, who later shifted to rubber and palm oil plantation and also to tin mining, as the former monetary economy was not so promising.

Most inhabitants concentrated in the central town, and various groups were segregated according to ethnic living quarters. Europeans resided mainly in the northern part of Penang, especially near Fort Cornwallis.

The majority of Chinese and Indians lived in the central business district, and most Malays lived in the southern part of the central business district.

To the Malays outside Penang and later the peranakan community as well, especially the non-English-educated, Georgetown was an alien term, so the town was called ‘Tanjung’.
Georgetown, Penang