Melaka Sultanate

The history of the town of Melaka is full of the glorious past of Malaysia. Melaka probably was established in the thirteenth century as a small fishing village occupied by the Orang Laut (seafaring Malays). Its humble existence then as a collection of mud huts and dugouts is thought to have spared it the fate of Palembang in Sumatra and Singapore in the mid-fourteenth century: both were razed and their inhabitants massacred by the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit, the greatest local power of the time.

Thus, Melaka became the refuge for people who escaped from Singapore and Palembang. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the township that had begun as a fishing village had become a cosmopolitan trading center with a walled cluster of huts upon the hill overlooking the harbor. Currency dealt in was tin, and the trade was in tin, resin, and jungle produce. The population was little more than a few thousand. The local chief was Hindu by faith and bore the Indian title of permaisura (king).

According to the Malay Annals that chronicle the courtlier version of the foundation of Melaka, the fugitive king of Singapore, Iskandar Shah, rested in the shadow of a tree at the mouth of the River Bertam. When he asked the name of the tree, he was told it was "Melaka." The king liked the name of the tree and the place and so decided to settle there. This king secured his power by paying visits to China to gain recognition and by converting to Islam. Malay tradition has chronicled the name of the first Muslim ruler of Melaka as Muhammad Shah. Another legend claims that this fugitive king from Singapore was Parameswara, one of the petty princes of a vassal state of the Majapahit empire who had thrown off his allegiance and was forced to flee. He took refuge in Singapore and subsequently assassinated the ruler. Parameswara ruled Singapore for five years before being overthrown by dissatisfied natives and forced to flee until he reached the mouth of the Melaka River.

Muhammad Shah died about 1414 CE and was succeeded by his son, Iskandar Shah. The son reigned for the next ten years and continued to visit China as well as pay tribute to the emperor. During his reign, Melaka continued to be a trading center in the region.

The line of trader princes ended with the ascension to the sultanate of Raja Kasim, who took the title of Mudzafar Shah. This first sultan stopped attending to trade, sent envoys to China, and did not go in person. Instead, he levied tolls on the trade in the port to wage war against little hamlets on the coast and eventually inland. Sultan Mudzafar Shah is believed to have conquered the territories of what are now neighboring states of Pahang, Kampar in Perak, Siak, and Indragiri. Thus was created the new Melaka. This was the golden age of the Melaka sultanate when its rulers reigned over territories to the north, south, and east of the port of Melaka. By then, the township of Melaka had seen settlements spring up in abundance—Javanese, Tamils, and Burmese traders had all set up quarters.

Sultan Mudzafar Shah died in 1459 CE and was succeeded by his son, Raja Abdullah, who assumed the title of Sultan Mansur Shah. The reign of this ruler has been regarded as the most glorious of the Melaka sultanate because of the conquests achieved and the legendary heroes produced during this period. By 1460 CE, Melaka had been transformed from a primitive and semiaboriginal village, when it had been a fringe of houses along the sea and riverfronts backed by orchards and rice fields. At the height of its glory in 1460, it was a bustling cosmopolitan seaport town. Chronicles describe the government as stern, severe, and corrupt. Historians describe the Melaka sultanate as a city of the strong where no weak citizen would be free. So all sought patrons, the mightier the better, in the belief that it is safer to pay blackmail to one robber than to many. Every law but one was broken daily; that one law was that no man might raise his hand against his king. Heroes of Malay chronicles belonged to this period of the Melaka sultanate, among them Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat.

The policy of war and conquest begun by Sultan Mudzafar Shah and his son, Mansur Shah, was fatal for a small trading station like Melaka because it placed severe burdens on its merchants, who had to finance the war campaigns. When the Portuguese sailed into Melaka in 1509, they found a town of foreign settlers who were willing to rise in revolt against their Malay masters. The first foray by the Portuguese was resisted by the Malays in Melaka. But the second, which was led by Viceroy d'Albuquerque in 1511, resulted in Melaka being seized by the Portuguese and the sultan fleeing to Pagoh, from which he was also forced to flee eventually. Sultan Mahmud Shah was the last of the Melaka rulers. The sultanate of Melaka, which in 1500 had ruled much of the Malay Peninsula from Kedah to Patani and the Lingga Archipelago, had lasted less than one hundred years.

Harrison, Brian. (1954) Southeast Asia: A Short History. London: Macmillan.

Wilkinson, R. J. (1923) A History of the Peninsular Malays with Chapters on Perak and Selangor. Singapore: Kelly and Walsh.

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