Malays played a significant role in pre-Hispanic Philippine history. Malay involvement in Philippine history goes back to the Classical Era with the establishment of Rajahnates as well as the Islamic era, in which various sultanates and Islamic states were formed in Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago, and around Manila.
Malays made large contribution to Philippine history, and influenced modern-day lifestyles of Filipinos. The Malay language was the lingua franca of the archipelago prior to Spanish rule due to the religious history of the Malay Archipelago.
Although the modern Philippines does not have a huge majority or minority of Ethnic Malays today, (Filipinos who identified as Ethnic Malay make up 0.2% of the total population), the descendants of Ethnic Malays have been assimilated into the wider related Austronesian Filipino culture, characterized by Chinese and Spanish influence, and Roman Catholicism, with others into the Moro Muslim population. Malay cultural influence is still strong in the culturally conservative regions of Mindanao, southern Palawan, the Sulu Archipelago, and to some extent in rural of the Visayas and Luzon, where much Malay involvement and intermixing came during the classical era.
In the modern day, the closest cultural population to Malays are the Moro peoples, the native Islamized populations of the Philippines that inhabit Mindanao, Sulu Archipelago, south Palawan, parts of Visayas and Metro Manila and its environs. They follow a culture and lifestyle somewhat similar to Malays (predominantly in dress code and religion), although this culturally differs in the areas that these groups follow traditions native to or unique to the Philippines, such as cuisine, traditional music, and language (which belong to the Visayan, Danao, and Sangiric branches of Philippine languages, and Sama-Bajaw languages). At present, Malay is spoken by a minority of Filipinos, particularly in Palawan, Sulu Archipelago and parts of Mindanao as a second language, mostly in the form of trade and creole languages, particularly Sabah Malay.
Interaction between the natives of the Philippines and the Malay Srivijaya Kingdom (as well as the Javanese kingdoms of Majapahit and Medang) are recorded by the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, which dates approximately 900 A.D. This steel plate was written in a mix of Old Tagalog, Old Malay and Javanese. Among the Malays, the classical Philippine kingdoms also interacted with other native peoples of Indonesia, including the Minangkabau and Javanese.
The first-recorded Malay in Philippine history was Sri Lumay, although accounts him are mostly in Visayan folklore. Sri Lumay was born in Sumatra, an island in Indonesia with a high Malay-population, and was of mixed Malay and Tamil descent.[2] He settled in somewhere in modern-day Visayas. Sri Lumay established the Rajahnate of Cebu. His sons also ruled nearby regions and kingdoms.
Upon the Islamization of the southern Philippines, Sri Lumay was known to have resisted the Islamic expansion, and enacted a scorched-earth policy for the Moro raiders.
In the 16th century, the Islamization of the Alam Melayu (literally "Malay realm") was near-complete and its influence had spilled into the Philippines. Sharif Kabungsuwan, a native of Johore migrated to Mindanao where he preached Islam to the inland natives - and established the Sultanate of Maguindanao.[3] His descendants provided Mindanao with a fierce resistance to Spanish occupation, one of his descendants, Muhammad Dipaduan Kudarat is known as a national hero in the Philippines.
The late 15th century and through 1521 is filled with preachers of Islam, particularly Malays, along with Arabs, Persian, Chinese Muslim and Indian Muslims spreading Islam in the southern Philippines. During the reign of Sultan Bolkiah of Brunei, the Bruneian armies attacked the Kingdom of Tondo and established the Kingdom of Selurong, or Seludong where modern-day Manila is located. This was a Bruneian satellite state, and was placed under the rule of Rajah Sulayman, a native Muslim from the Manila area.
Rajah Sulayman came from a long line of rulers, of mixed Tagalog and Malay descent. His grandfather for example, Salila, was a descendant of the Bolkiah family from Brunei.
Malay became the regional lingua franca of trade and many polities enculturated Islamic Malay customs and governance to varying degrees, including Kapampangans, Tagalogs and other coastal Philippine peoples. According to Bruneian folklore, at around 1500 Sultan Bolkiah launched a successful northward expedition to break Tondo’s monopoly as a regional entrepot of the Chinese trade and established Maynila (Selurong) across the Pasig delta, ruled by his heirs as a satellite.[4]
Bruneian influence spread elsewhere around Manila Bay, present-day Batangas, and coastal Mindoro through closer trade and political relations, with a growing overseas Kapampangan-Tagalog population based in Brunei and beyond in Malacca in various professions as traders, sailors, shipbuilders, mercenaries, governors, and slaves.[5][6]
The Sulu Archipelago was an entrepôt that attracted merchants from south China and various parts of Southeast Asia beginning in the 14th century.[7] The name "Sulu" is attested in Chinese historical records as early as 1349,[8] during the late Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), suggesting trade relations around this time.[9] Trade continued into the early Ming dynasty (1368–1644); envoys were sent in several missions to China to trade and pay tribute to the emperor. Sulu merchants often exchanged goods with Chinese Muslims, and also traded with Muslims of Arab, Persian, Malay, or Indian descent.[7] Islamic historian Cesar Adib Majul argues that Islam was introduced to the Sulu Archipelago in the late 14th century by Chinese and Arab merchants and missionaries from Ming China.[8][9] The seven Arab missionaries were called "Lumpang Basih" by the Tausug, and were Sunni Sufi scholars from the Ba 'Alawi sada of Yemen.[10]
Around this time, a notable Arab judge, SunniSufi and religious scholarKarim ul-Makhdum[note 1] from Mecca arrived in Malacca. He preached Islam, particularly the Ash'ari Aqeeda and Shafi'i Madh'hab as well as the Qadiriyya Tariqa, and many citizens, including the ruler of Malacca, converted to Islam]].[11] A sultan of Brunei, Sultan Bolkiah married a princess (dayang-dayang) of Sulu, Puteri Laila Menchanai, and they became the grandparents of the Muslim prince of Maynila, Rajah Matanda. Manila was a Muslim city-state and vassal to Brunei before the Spanish colonized it and converted it from Islam to Christianity.[citation needed] Islamic Manila ended after the failed attack of Tarik Sulayman, a Muslim Kapampangan commander, in the failure of the Conspiracy of the Maharlikas, when the formerly Muslim Manila nobility attempted a secret alliance with the Japanese shogunate and Bruneiean sultanate (together with her Manila and Sulu allies) to expel the Spaniards from the Philippines.[12] Many Tausugs and other native Muslims of Sulu Sultanate already interacted with Kapampangan and Tagalog Muslims called Luzones based in Brunei, and there were intermarriages between them. The Spanish had native allies against the former Muslims they conquered like Hindu Tondo which resisted Islam when Brunei invaded and established Manila as a Muslim city-state to supplant Hindu Tondo.
In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan arrived in Visayas where he encountered Rajah Humabon, one of Sri Lumay's descendants. Humabon accepted Roman Catholicism, and urged his rival Lapulapu to allow Europeans. Magellan used his Malay servant, Enrique of Malacca to converse with the natives. Magellan and Enrique both perished in the Battle of Mactan.
Pan-Malayan movement
Throughout the 300 years of Spanish colonization, any sort of Malay identity was lost in assimilation, even in the Muslim south where Arabic was the favored and promoted language over Malay. José Rizal, an avid pan-Malayan nationalist spearheaded a movement to "re-unite" the natives of the archipelago with that of its southern neighbors in what would today become the countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore and Thailand.
This type of "Malayan" movement was significantly different than the one that took place in British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. While those movements were focused on the lone ethnic group originating from Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, Rizal envisioned a larger pan-Austronesian nation, what would later become coined as the Malay race. Rizal's movement was known as the "Indios Bravos", ("Brave Indians"). Rizal had actually tried to learn Malay, but he was executed in 1896, therefore never getting a chance to fully revive the Malay language in the Philippines;[13] President Manuel L. Quezon chose Tagalog as the basis for the evolution and adoption of the national language of the Philippines on December 30, 1937.
Wenceslao Vinzons, a Filipino politician and guerrilla leader during World War II, was another noted pan-Malayan nationalist. He found the Perhimpoenan Orang Melayu ("Pan Malay Alliance") at the University of the Philippines.
It is for this reason that definition of "Malay" in the Philippines differ from that of its southern neighbors, therefore making it difficult to get an accurate estimate of who contains descent from the actual ethnic group. As for "Malay race", this would cover approximately 90,000,000 natives in the Philippines.
In the late 15th century through the 16th century, the Islamisation of the Malay realm also influenced the Philippines, and the Malays introduced Islam. Sharif Kabungsuwan, a Johor-born native of Malay and Arab descent introduced Islam. Rajah Sulayman, the ruler of Seludong, was a Muslim convert.
During the Spanish occupation, the a small minority were converted to Christianity, Roman Catholicism to be specific. Enrique of Malacca, a Malaccan Malay who accompanied the Portuguese conquistador Ferdinand Magellan to Cebu, was a convert to Roman Catholicism, though he wasn't converted in the Philippines and was already a Catholic convert upon arrival. Rajah Humabon, a descendant of Sri Lumay, as well as Lakan Dula of Tondo, both converted to Catholicism and were given the names "Carlos".
Modern misconceptions
It is understood in Indonesia and Malaysia that Malays, as in the ethnic group, are those who speak Malay as a native language.
This leads to misconceptions about the ancient rulers of the Philippines. Lapulapu for example is sometimes claimed to have been a Malay Muslim, though he was most probably ethnically Cebuano and his religious background most probably animist like his neighboring ruler Rajah Humabon. Though the Bangsamoro follows a Malay-influenced culture, they are also mistakenly called Malays by the majority of Christian Filipinos.[citation needed]
Muhammad Kudarat - grandson of Kabungsuwan, halted Latinization of Mindanao by Spanish conquerors
Jamalul Kiram III - claimant heir to the Sultanate of Sulu, though the majority of his descent was Tausūg, he claimed to have a common ancestor with Brunei's current sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. This was however been denied by the Bruneian counterparts.[16]
↑ Also Karimul Makhdum, Karimal Makdum or Makhdum Karim among others. Makhdum came from the Arabic word makhdūmīn, which means "master".
Related Research Articles
The history of the Philippines dates from the earliest hominin activity in the archipelago at least by 709,000 years ago. Homo luzonensis, a species of archaic humans, was present on the island of Luzon at least by 134,000 years ago.
The military history of the Philippines is characterized by wars between Philippine kingdoms and its neighbors in the precolonial era and then a period of struggle against colonial powers such as Spain and the United States, occupation by the Empire of Japan during World War II and participation in Asian conflicts post-World War II such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The Philippines has also battled a communist insurgency and a secessionist movement by Muslims in the southern portion of the country.
The Sultanate of Sulu was a Muslim state that ruled the Sulu Archipelago, costal areas of Zamboanga City and certain portions of Palawan in the today's Philippines, alongside parts of present-day Sabah, North and East Kalimantan in north-eastern Borneo.
The Tausūg, are an ethnic group of the Philippines and Malaysia. A small population can also be found in the northern part of North Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Tausūg are part of the wider political identity of Muslim Filipinos of western Mindanao, the Sulu archipelago, and southern Palawan, collectively referred to as the Moro people. The Tausugs originally had an independent state known as the Sultanate of Sulu, which once exercised sovereignty over the present day provinces of Basilan, Palawan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga City, North Kalimantan and the eastern part of the Malaysian state of Sabah. They are also known in the Malay language as Suluk.
Islam in the Philippines is the second largest religion in the country, and the faith was the first-recorded monotheistic religion in the Philippines. Historically, Islam reached the Philippine archipelago in the 14th century, through contact with Muslim Malay and Arab merchants along Southeast Asian trade networks, in addition to Yemeni missionaries from the tribe of Alawi of Yemen from the Persian Gulf, southern India, and their followers from several sultanates in the wider Malay Archipelago. The first missionaries then followed in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. They facilitated the formation of sultanates and conquests in mainland Mindanao and Sulu. Those who converted to Islam came to be known as the Moros, with Muslim conquest reaching as far as Tondo that was later supplanted by Bruneian Empire vassal-state of Maynila.
The Sultanate of Brunei or simply Brunei was a Malay sultanate, centred in Brunei on the northern coast of Borneo island in Southeast Asia. Brunei became a sovereign state around the 15th century, when it grew substantially after the fall of Malacca to the Portuguese, extending throughout coastal areas of Borneo and the Philippines, before it declined in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first ruler or sultan of Brunei was a Muslim. It became a British protectorate in the 19th century.
The Castilian War, also called the Spanish Expedition to Borneo, was a conflict between the Spanish Empire and several Muslim states in Southeast Asia, including the Sultanates of Brunei, Sulu, and Maguindanao. It's also considered as part of the Ottoman-Habsburg War, and that war is the beginning of relations between Ottoman and Brunei in 1560 to 1578.
In early Philippine history, the Tagalog settlement at Tondo sometimes referred to as the Kingdom of Tondo, was a major trade hub located on the northern part of the Pasig River delta, on Luzon island. Together with Maynila, the polity (bayan) that was also situated on the southern part of the Pasig River delta, had established a shared monopoly on the trade of Chinese goods throughout the rest of the Philippine archipelago, making it an established force in trade throughout Southeast Asia and East Asia.
Akí, also known as Rája Matandâ, was King of Luzon who ruled from the kingdom's capital Manila, now the capital of the Republic of the Philippines.
In Philippine history, the Tagalog bayan of Maynila was one of the most cosmopolitan of the early historic settlements on the Philippine archipelago. Fortified with a wooden palisade which was appropriate for the predominant battle tactics of its time, it lay on the southern part of the Pasig River delta, where the district of Intramuros in Manila currently stands, and across the river from the separately-led Tondo polity.
The recorded history of the Philippines between 900 and 1565 begins with the creation of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription in 900 and ends with the beginning of Spanish colonization in 1565. The inscription records its date of creation in 822 Saka. The discovery of this document marks the end of the prehistory of the Philippines at 900 AD. During this historical time period, the Philippine archipelago was home to numerous kingdoms and sultanates and was a part of the Indosphere and Sinosphere.
The earliest recorded history of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, dates back to the year 900 AD as recorded in the Laguna Copperplate Inscription. By the thirteenth century, the city consisted of a fortified settlement and trading quarter near the mouth of the Pasig River, the river that bisects the city into north and south.
The Rajahnate of Cebu or Cebu also called as Sugbu, was an Indianized Raja monarchy Mandala (Polity) on the island of Cebu in the Philippines prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. It is known in ancient Chinese records as the nation of Sokbu (束務). According to Visayan oral legend, it was founded by Sri Lumay or Rajamuda Lumaya, a minor prince of the Tamil Chola dynasty. He was sent by the Chola emperor from southern India to establish a base for expeditionary forces, but he rebelled and established his own independent polity. The capital of the nation was Singhapala (சிங்கப்பூர்) which is Tamil-Sanskrit for "Lion City", the same rootwords with the modern city-state of Singapore.
Religions in pre-colonial Philippines included a variety of faiths, of which the dominant faiths were polytheist indigenous religions practiced by the more than one hundred distinct ethnic groups in the archipelago. Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam were also present in some parts of the islands. Many of the traditions and belief systems from pre-colonial Filipino religions continue to be practiced today through the Indigenous Philippine folk religions, Folk Catholicism, Folk Hinduism, among others.
Brunei and the Philippines have formal diplomatic relations. Brunei has an embassy in Makati, Metro Manila while the Philippines has an embassy in Bandar Seri Begawan.
Malay is spoken by a minority of Filipinos, particularly in the Palawan, Sulu Archipelago and parts of Mindanao, mostly in the form of trade and creole languages, such as Sabah Malay.
Warfare in pre-colonial Philippines refers to the military history of the Philippines prior to Spanish colonization.
In the Philippine languages, a complex system of titles and honorifics was used extensively during the pre-colonial era, mostly by the Tagalogs and Visayans. These were borrowed from the Malay system of honorifics obtained from the Moro peoples of Mindanao, which in turn was based on the Indianized Sanskritized honorifics system in addition to the Chinese system of honorifics used in areas like Ma-i (Mindoro) and Pangasinan. The titles of historical figures such as Rajah Sulayman, Lakandula and Dayang Kalangitan evidence Indian influence. Malay titles are still used by the royal houses of Sulu, Maguindanao, Maranao and Iranun on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. However, these are retained on a traditional basis as the 1987 Constitution explicitly reaffirms the abolition of royal and noble titles in the republic.
↑ Pigafetta, Antonio (1969) [1524]. First voyage round the world. Translated by J.A. Robertson. Manila: Filipiniana Book Guild.
↑ Scott, William H. (1994). Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society. Katipunan Ave, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. p.192. ISBN971-550-135-4.
↑ Quiling, Mucha-Shim (2020). "Lumpang Basih". Journal of Studies on Traditional Knowledge in Sulu Archipelago and Its People, and in the Neighboring Nusantara. 3. Retrieved 20 May 2023.
↑ de Marquina, Esteban (1903). "Conspiracy Against the Spaniards: Testimony in certain investigations made by Doctor Santiago de Vera, president of the Philipinas, May–July 1589". In Blair, Emma Helen; Robertson, James Alexander (eds.). The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898. Vol.7. Ohio, Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company. pp.86–103.
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