Makassar Malay

Makassar’s Malay traders were key handlers of Southwest Sulawesi’s main exports (rice and slaves) and of the spices shipped from Maluku to the Straits of Malacca.

Both Portuguese and Makassar sources state that by the early 16th century, Malay Muslim traders had settled in Makassar and other places on the southwest coast of Sulawesi.

There was a theory that the Malays certainly are well known for their role in spreading Islam to Makassar. The presence of a Malay community was impetus for Tunijalloq to build the first mosque in Mangallekana and encourage Muslims to make the hajj, for example.

It was a Minangkabau Malay named Katte Tungallaq who led Karaeng Matoaya and Sultan Alauddin Tumenanga ri Gaukanna in their profession of faith in 1605.

Malay frequently served as religious officials and teachers in seventeenth-century Makassar as well.  In 1638, VOC chief merchant, Henrick Kerckerink, described how European merchants were protected by the King, and noted that the local community of Malays was held ‘in high esteem, having their houses in the settlements scattered among the houses of the Makassarese’.
Makassar Malay

State of Gowa

About 1530 the Makarese state of Gowa began to expand its power over its neighbours by conquest. By the mid-sixteenth century Gowa had established itself at the head of loosely united empire and had emerged as a major trading power in eastern Indonesian.

In 1605 the king of Gowa adopted Islam. The ruler of Gowa publicly pronounced the Islamic profession of faith in September 1605. In a society where rulers were the focus of social life and its norms, other Makarese quickly followed these rulers.

Apparently the invitation to the Bugis state of Bone and other states to adopt the new faith was rejected. Gowa responded with a series of campaigns in 1608-11, as a result which Islam was imposed throughout the Bugis-Makarese area.

During the seventeenth century these trends and the general pattern of Gowa’s expansion and rising power continued at an even swifter pace.

At the end of these wars Gowa was the predominant state of South Sulawesi. Its ‘empire’ like other Indonesian states, was founded on military supremacy but was not a tightly centralised system of domination.

Sultan Hasanuddin (reign 1653 to 1669) was the last independent ruler of Gowa, and the one who saw the debacle of the Makassar Wars (1666-1669), which ended in Gowa’s subjugation.
State of Gowa