South Africa Malay

The name South Africa Malay is perhaps something of a misnomer as it refers to the followers of the Islamic faith whose forefathers were brought to the South Africa as slaves from Malay Archipelago, over 300 years ago. South African Malays are mixed Malay, Indian, Sinhalese, Arab, Madagascar and Chinese origin.

Most Malays live in or around Cape Town in South Africa. From the 1920s onwards, the ‘Malay community, was constructed as a distinctive Afrikaans-speaking community close to, but not part of, the politically dominant white population.

Cape Town, South Africa

The Muslims of the Western Cape have been constructed as members of a larger Malay diaspora. In 1903 the South African Muslim Association was formed to promote the cause of more schools for nonwhite and Muslim socioeconomic interests.

However it obtained limited support from the clergy and was short-lived. Its successor, the South African Malay Association of Muhammad Gamiet, appealed to the Fremantle Education commission in 1910 that transmission of Islamic value and culture would be the primary objective for Muslims establishing their own schools.
South Africa Malay

Mempawah kingdom

West Borneo has been in the history of humans for a long time. There were at least three sultanates that existed in West Borneo, and they were the Sultanate of Pontianak, the Sultanate of Mempawah and the Sultanate of Sambas.

The Bugis Kalimantan was important in the past as they had their own sultanate in Mempawah. One of the founders of Mempawah sultanate, Opu Daeng Manambon, had family links to other sultanate in the province – Pontianak, Sambas and Tanjungpura sultanates which spread the Bugis’ influence further.

Opu Daeng Manambon was originally from Bugis sultanate of South Sulawesi. According to Hikayat Opu Daeng Manambon, the Bugis adventures spread the archipelago after Dutch occupied Makassar in 1667. This hikayat recounts the tale of five Bugis brothers who traveled through the Malay world; one becoming yang dipertuan muda of Riau- Johor., while others dispersed.

The second brother, Opu Daeng Manambon, visited Sukadana, where he married a daughter of the sultan whose mother came from the ruling family of Mempawah. Later this Daeng Menambon moved to Mempawah and became its ruler.

In the past times Mempawah was a subordinate kingdom of the kingdom of Tanjung Pura. During the Dutch colonial period, the Dutch government appointed Pontianak Sultanate as the Dutch representative to preside over all the kings in West Kalimantan.
Mempawah kingdom

History of Banjarmasin

Banjarmasin’s history reached back to when Indian traders founded the Hindu Negara Kingdom north of here during the thirteenth center.

Within seventy years, its rulers were marrying into the powerful Majapahit Empire and Banjarmasin was part of the Hindu kingdoms of Negara Dipa and Negara Daha, a vassal of Majapahit.  

Javanese-style court was established at Negara Dipa in the 13th century. By the 15th century the capital had move to Negara Daha and during these centuries the Hindu Banjar kingdom was a power along coast of Borneo.

The fall of the Majapahit in the late 1470s saw Negara disintegrate into small city-states.

These were unified fifty years later after a local prince Pangeran Samudera, enlisted military assistance from a recently Islamized Java and conquered the region, converting to Islam and shifting his capital south to the lower Barito River at Banjarmasin on 24 September 1526. Pangeran Samudera later became Sultan Suriansyah or Panembahan Batu Hambang.

The Dutch opened trade there in 1606. In the early 17th century, Kalimantan became a scene of conflict between the British and the Dutch, ostensibly over the British flourishing pepper trade.

By the late 1820s the colonizing Dutch had concluded treaties with various small west-coast states, including parts of the Banjarmasin sultanate.
History of Banjarmasin

History of Negeri Sembilan

Negeri Sembilan is almost landlocked bounded by Selangor to the North, Pahang to the east and Malacca to the south, and a western coastal strip of less than 50 kilometers.

Established historical studies pertaining to Negeri Sembilan’s pre-Islamic origins are unanimous on the point that the earliest inhabitants of Rembau are aboriginal Malay horticulturist largely of Jakun stock.

It is well known that Negeri Sembilan became a permanent settlement of Minangkabau from Sumatra Island.

Around 1500s and perhaps even earlier, Indonesian immigrants – mostly Minangkabau navigated the Straits of Malacca, sailed up the Linggi and Rembau rivers and founded settlements both in Negeri Sembilan and just across its southern border in Naning.

They initially lived under the protection of the rulers of Malacca, but with fall of Malacca to the Portuguese, the Minangkabau sought protection from the sultans of neighboring Malay rulers of the Johor-Riau Empire.

Minangkabau rulers made no effort to summon their people back, but a sense of a group identity remained strong and still in the late eighteenth century Minangkabau communities in the peninsula received their leaders from their original homeland.

The royal families of Negeri Sembilan still regard themselves as descendants of royal families from Pagaruyung.

In 1773, Raja Melewar, a Minangkabau prince from Sumatera, was appointed the first head of state (yang di pertuan besar) of Negeri Sembilan.

Out of this initial union emerged a loose confederation of nine luak (fiefdoms).

As late as 1824 the kings of Negeri Sembilan were taken directly from the royal house in Pagaruyung.

After Raja Melewar’s death, the titles of yang di pertuan besar was taken by a succession of Sumatera chiefs, until a series of protracted tin-related wars in 1824-32 led to severance of political ties with Sumatera.
History of Negeri Sembilan

Origin of Brunei

Barunai of Sanskrit origin comes from the word Varuna. In its Malay context, it referred to a nation of seafarers and traders.

The hypothesis of Brunei by Nicholl in 1980 related to Empire of Funan collapsed due to Khmer advance, the Sailendra family fled to Borneo some time in 680s. They settled on the shores of Brunei Bay at the mouth of the Lawas River. Later they built new capital of Srivijaya known as Burni and P’o-ni or Fo-ni in Chinese.

P’o-ni continues to be mentioned in Chinese sources and it appears to have occupied part of the First Division of Sarawak and to have extended into West Kalimantan.

Old Brunei was a nation of Malay-Hindu-Buddhists, according to a Chinese account, believed to be an early China reference to Brute Oki Brunei was aid to have similar Malay-Hindu-Buddhist traditions and customs as Funan or Kumlum.

Alak Betatar is known as the first Muslim Ruler as well as the founder of the original Brunei state. After accepted Islam he changed his name to Sultan Muhammad Shah (1363-1402) in honor of Prophet.

The second sultan, Sultan Ahmad, was the first to name ‘Brunei’ from the word ‘Barunah’.

Following conversion to Islam, Brunei became a powerful trading center from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, claiming suzerainty over the whole island of Borneo and parts of the southern and central Philippines.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Brunei was in serious decline, and its influence and control were restricted to northern Borneo, to what today are Sarawak, Brunei, Labuan and Sabah.

In 1888, when North Borneo became a British Protectorate, Brunei became a British Protected State.
Origin of Brunei