Liu Zilin
At the end of 1510, Afonso de Albuquerque had just finished his war in India, successfully occupied the west coast of India, and established a Portuguese colonial base in Goa, where there was already a Christian community. Later, Goa became one of the three major Portuguese bases in the Far East (the other two being Macau and Timor Island).
By the spring of 1511, an armed fleet of Portuguese, Converted Catholic Indo-Middle Eastern-African seafarers, and a small number of Muslim guides, led by Alfonso, set sail from the west coast of India to the Strait of Malacca further east. All the members involved in the voyage knew that the expedition was bound to bring greater wealth to the De Avis family (the Royal Family of Portugal), and that the destination was far more important than the west coast of India.
Alfonso de Albuquerque
It can be said that they were "lucky" – their destination, the rich Sultanate of Malacca, faced two very serious political crises: on the one hand, The Sultanate shah (1474-1528) married Tun Fatimah (circa 1490-1560), who was about 20 years old at the time. This caused great uneasiness among crown princes Ahamd (1490-1513) stationed in the capital of Malacca, who was already at least two years old, and on the other hand, tun Mutahir (c. 1450-1510), who was then the sultan of Malacca, was executed by Sultan Mahmudsha's men. He was executed at the same time as his two sons, three grandchildren, and son-in-law Tun Ali. Tun Ali's wife is Fatima, who will soon become the third queen of the Sultan. The death penalty was not only against the Pandhara family, a large number of Indian Muslims living in Malacca were looted, and some Indian ministers were killed by soldiers to protect their property.
Two events undoubtedly exacerbated the political crisis in Malacca– a very significant challenge for the prince who already had an heir; and another "shuffling" of Indians of a certain size in the country; and more seriously, a European fleet that had defeated the Muslim-Hindu alliance was slowly heading to Malacca. This incident directly led to the division of the Malacca Sultanate, and since then the Malay Sultanates have been in a slump, without reproducing the hegemony of the Malacca Sultanate in controlling the Strait of Malacca. As a result, later scholars regarded the incident as the "sunset in Malacca", and most accused the Sultan of overthrowing the country for self-interest.
However, history is not a simple one-way narrative, and the massacre of "snatching relatives" that occurred on the eve of the collapse of the Malacca Sultanate seems to be a momentary move of the Sultan's "lust for beauty", but in fact reflects the ongoing political dispute since the Sultanate of Malacca - the century-long entanglement between the original royal family of Sri-Vijaya and the magnates of Indian descent. This entanglement, even after the division of the Sultanate of Malacca, has long affected the Sudanese legal system in the Malay Peninsula.
Business and Politics: The Rise of Indian Political Factions in The South Sea
In 1397, in 1397, in order to escape the invasion of Majapahit (the powerful kingdom of Java, 1293-1527), the last Shamriver lord, The Prince of Temasik (present-day Singapore), Parameswara (1344-1414), led a large number of people north to settle in the southern Part of the Malay Peninsula. Five years later (1402), he repelled the first invasion of Siam, successfully established the city, and established the Kingdom of Malacca.
In the later years of Bailimisula's reign, the elderly monarch married a Sumatra princess for himself and his sons (Muslims could theoretically marry four or fewer wives, but the status must be the same, so they were called "flat wives") and accepted Islam as "sultans".
Portrait of Baili Missoula
Since the beginning of large-scale marriages, the Srivijaya family, as an aristocratic class, has accepted Islam as a royal faith on a large scale and has influenced the Malay people from top to bottom. During the reign of the second Sultan Iskandar Shah (recorded in the Ming Shilu as "YishandarSha"), Ma Huan, a Hui translator who accompanied Zheng He to the West, recorded that "all the people of the kingdom of the kingdom were fasted and recited from islam" in Malacca (Mandara).
However, in the early days of the Malacca Sultanate, there was a powerful political force in addition to the Religious influence given to this emerging regime by the Muslim nobility of Sumatra through marriage. These groups of merchants with "dark skin, high noses, and deep eye sockets," known in Malay historical narratives as Kelinga, actually correspond to groups of Indian Muslims living in Southeast Asia, the vast majority of whom are Telugu and Tamil. Their activities in the Malay Islands were already very active before their ancestors accepted Islam. With the activities of Indian traders in the Malay Archipelago, the Hindu-Buddhist belief system, the Pali script and related trade routes have taken root in the Malay Archipelago and the southern Part of the Malay Peninsula.
Early Malay Archipelago Pali script stone carvings, taken by the author in 2013, Jakarta, Indonesia
By the 10th century, as middle Eastern merchant routes were established on the Indian coast, Islam gradually began to operate on the Indian coast – from Sindh and Gujarat in the northwest to Bengal on the east coast, there were large groups of Muslim merchants.
Since this commercial link between the Malay Archipelago and South India had been in operation for nearly a thousand years in the 15th century, there was still a lot of Presence of Muslims of Indian descent at the beginning of the establishment of the Sultanate of Malacca. For example, Muhammad married the daughter of a "karinga" merchant when his grandfather, Bairi Misula, had just converted to Islam and gave birth to Qasim (Qasim, 1410-1459).
However, after the death of his father Iskandarsha in 1424, in order to win the support of his people, Muhammad Shah married a royal woman as queen, and before his death in 1444, he made his young son Sri Parameswara Dewa ("Baili Misula II") crown prince.
The abolition of Chang Liyou caused Qassim to be dissatisfied: he was the Sultan of Malacca recognized by Daming and other surrounding countries, but was replaced by a young half-brother. With the support of his uncle Tun Ali, Qasim staged a coup d'état under the guise of a nobleman, killing his brother, stepmother and his supporters, making him the fifth sultan of the Sultanate of Malacca. In return, Tun Ali became the first non-Malay origin "Pandhara" in the history of Malay cultural circles.
The first thing Qasim did after he ascended the throne was to crush the Siamese invasion from the south and secure the northern Part of the Malay Peninsula. As a result, Qasim was called the "victor" by historians, that is, "Muzaffar", and the Ming Dynasty history books called it "No Answer Fo Na Sha". [Note: Shah is derived from the Persian word for king; Muzafar is both a common Muslim name and an external honorific title for great monarchs. The "Muzafar Shah" in the article, known as Qasim, was the lord of the Malacca Sultanate. Because all the monarchs of the Sultanate of Malacca since Iskandar have followed the islamic monarchical system, since 1414 the Malayan monarchs have had the habit of adding "sha" after their names (or honorific titles). 】
Muzafalsha's succession broke the original Malay aristocracy's absolute monopoly on royal politics– his birth mother was of Indian descent. Under his rule, the enthusiasm of Indians to participate in politics increased, gradually forming a situation of "business and government".
In 1456, Tun Ali died. At the time of the death of this courtier, his eldest son, Tun Mo Tai xiu, was not yet 10 years old. In order to ensure that his faction was not subverted and to unite the Malay-Indian nobility, Tun Ali, on his deathbed, recommended Tun Parak (circa 1405-1498), The Nephew of Baili Missula, as the next Pandhara.
Muzafalsha agreed with his uncle's last words. First, on the one hand, Sultan Muzaffarsha considered his bloodline "impure" – all the sultans had been born to Malay noblewomen and himself the son of the daughter of a "Karinga" merchant; on the other hand, his ascension to the throne was disgraceful – everyone knew that he had planned to kill his brother and stepmother, which would be considered a great rebellion in any cultural circle. In this case, the Sultan must account for the choice of the future ruler.
Second, in 1445 Siam invaded the south, while Muzafalsha was suspected of killing his younger brother as sultan. Under the premise of political instability, Tun Perak and other collateral royal families did not pursue those responsible for the coup, but led their pro-army to kill the enemy and eventually win the war, so Muzafar naturally had a certain respect for Tun Perak.
Tun Perak
Since then, the karinga merchant community has gradually become a powerful political faction that "also serves as a businessman" by maintaining this alliance. It can be said that as a minority ethnic group with the role of "intermediaries", the "Karma" merchant group is very familiar with promoting communication between different civilizations and has become an indispensable intermediary force in the kingdom.
Peaks and Valleys: The Ups and Downs of Dun Mo Tai Xiu's Life
In 1469, mansur Shah, the sixth sultan of the Malacca Sultanate( ming dynasty texts call it "Mangsosha", 1432-1477), had a headache over one thing when his eldest son, Raja Muhammad (known in Ming literature as "Mahammad", 1450-1475), while playing chess with the younger son of Tun Perak, the son of Tun Perak won the game, and the angry Prince Mohammed picked up the chessboard and smashed the opponent to death.
Mansur Shah was worried that the matter would continue to ferment, as a number of ministers had proposed severely punishing the crown prince. Unexpectedly, however, as the father of the deceased, the old prime minister, Tun Perak, immediately reprimanded all the ministers who proposed to punish the prince, especially his brother and other sons. In depressing grief, the elderly Tun Perak proposed that the Sultan divide Prince Muhammad into Pahang to put an end to the controversy.
Meanwhile, Tun Mo Tai Xiu had been lobbying other ministers in the Malacca court for their support of the third prince, Alaudin-Riayat (1458-1488), as the new crown prince. The reason was simple: Tun Mo Tai Xiu's sister married Ala Uddin and gave birth to a grandson of King Mahmud. This incident made Tun Perak feel very worried, and he had a premonition that Tun Mo Tai Xiu would push himself to a desperate end, because the power was like Dun Perak under the powerful royal power, and his son did not dare to shed a tear when he was killed, and Tun Mo Tai Xiu was just the sultan's cousin, and he was not too old to dare to influence the succession of the sultan's royal court. More than once, Tun Perak admonished the Dun Mo Tai Xiu brothers to "be careful in their words and deeds."
In 1477, Mansour Shah died at the age of 45 and Ala Uddin became the new monarch of the Sultanate of Malacca. After sultan Ala uddin ascended the throne, the officials and military discipline of the Sultanate of Malacca were effectively rectified, and although it was only a short reign of 11 years, the young Sultan Ala Uddin was still known as the Ming Emperor by later generations.
In 1488, at the age of 30, Ala Uddinsha was poisoned, the murderer unknown. According to Ala-Uddin's original plan, the next sultan was most likely his young brother or nephew. However, as the crown prince's uncle, Tun Mo Tai Xiu mobilized his courtiers as the "Temenggung" (Malay warrior) and proclaimed Mahmudsha, born of his sister, as the new sultan. At this time, Tun Perak was nominally the "Pandhara" of Malacca, but in fact he could no longer fight against the forces of the "Heavenly Mammoth".
Portrait of Tun Mo Tai Xiu
By assisting his nephew, Tun Mo Tai Xiu reached the peak of his life. Ten years before Tun Perak's death, all decrees from Mahmudsha were in fact passed through the hands of Tun Mo Tai Shu.
Several of Tun Mo Taixiu's sons married royal princesses, allowing his young grandchildren to take the title. Unlike Tun Perak's handling, any royal family that offended his descendants was met with substantial punishment.
However, compared to the arrogant disciples, Dun Mo Tai Xiu paid great attention to his own cultivation. For example, Tun Mo Tai Xiu would change seven sets of clothes at a time, and take a bath three times a day. Since Tun Perak did not allow his immediate descendants to enter politics, and his younger brother who was involved in political affairs was also in old age, in fact, no one at the court could restrain the expansion of Tun Mo Taixiu's power.
Therefore, at that time, all the people in Malacca believed that half of the world in Malacca was "Karinga". The political faction of Indian Muslims posed a great threat to the Malay aristocratic system originally constructed by the descendants of the Srivijaya kingdom.
Map of the Sultanate of Malacca
In 1498, at the age of 93, Tun Perak came to the end of his life. Since the Pandhara is in principle a lifelong execution, Tun Perak has spent 42 years in this position. Before his death, Tun Perak handed his great-grandson a linen robe and a piece of chewed betel nut leaf to signal him not to touch the Kwon Gate again; and when he saw Tun Mo Tai Xiu, Don Perak once again said to him in a very worried tone: "Advise you to stay away from the Kwon Gate, I am really worried that you will suffer the disaster of annihilation!" ”
Even so, in accordance with his promise to Tun Ali, Tun Perak moved Tun MoTaixiu forward in the order of the title of Prime Minister, hoping that the Sultan would still rely on his own uncle and thus weigh the old Malay nobles. In 1500, the Sultan gave the Pandhahara to his uncle Tun Motai. The 50-year-old Dun Mo Taixiu finally got the title of justified after many years of real power.
However, as the political factions of Indian descent grew, they also began to diverge within them. Around 1508, Mahmudsha, who already had an heir, proposed to Tunmetaishu that Tunmetaishu would marry his youngest daughter Fatima to him as queen. Tun Mo Tai Xiu immediately refused, on the grounds that he had already married his daughter to his nephew Tun Ali. Tun Ali was the son of Tun Tahir, the younger brother of Tun Motai. The marriage seemed to most people to be a normal political marriage.
At that time, a pro-Indian Malay prince had warned Tun MoTaishe that if he did not take the sultan's request to heart, he would be subjected to a very serious reckoning. Tun MoTaixiu sternly refused, believing that the Sultan's robbery of a person's wife would be a very serious deviation from Islamic principles, and if he acceded to the Sultan's request, it would be tantamount to apostasy. At the same time, many Ministers of Indian descent tried to impeach Tun Mo Tai Xiu, and before the conflict broke out completely, Mahmoud Shah did not respond positively, which paralyzed Tun Mo Tai Xiu's family.
By 1510, a minister of Indian origin, Gidul Shangshu, accused the Pandhara family of hiding weapons, raising soldiers, and attempting to rebel. Since he had "evidence" before, Mahmoud Shah decided that his uncle was "plotting against him" and ordered the house to be raided.
Tun Hassan, the son of Tun Motaisho, took up the serpentine sword (Kirs), a symbol of Malay power, and declared that the sultan had no right to "raid the prime minister's mendi" for a weak reason. Tun Mo Tai Xiu changed clothes and burned incense as usual, and told his son to lay down his weapons: "If the sultan wants us to die, even if we have great loyalty, we will not be able to escape this fate." ”
Mahmudsha's men seized some weapons and at the same time "discovered" Tun Mo Tai Xiu's "bad letters" and executed Tun Mo Tai Xiu on the grounds of treason.
Also executed were the Tun Hassan brothers, as well as Tun Tahir and (minor) Tun Ali and sons. In the Chronicle of the Orient, the Portuguese record that three grandsons of Tun Mo Tai Xiu were also killed. They were executed in the form of samurai who stabbed the prisoners in the foreheads with snake-striped swords and drained their blood.
Tun Tahir's younger son was also among the executed people at the time, but he was stabbed in the forehead and was pardoned according to traditional Malay law, thus continuing the bloodline of the Tun Ali family. Moreover, some of his grandsons escaped death because of their young age, and they became nobles during the Johor period (1511-1699), using "Pandhara" as the family name, and finally replaced the Malacca royal lineage as the new royal lineage in Malaya, the Pandhara Dynasty (1699-1870), until Abu-Bakr of Johor (1830-1894), the "Duke of Tianmeng" became the Sultan of Johor.
In Malacca's legal system, the emphasis on "loyal kings" is arguably the highest among many Islamic countries. Hang Jebat, a warlord who was deeply trusted by the people at the time, was accused of being a "traitor" in the late years of Mansoursha's administration because he directly accused the sultan in the DPRK, and his friend Handua was ordered to stab him to death on the spot with tears.
Because of the continuation of the Malacca legal system in the sultanates, before the middle of the 20th century, Hanjab was negatively narrated by historians as a "contrarian thief", until the establishment of Malaysia, under the efforts of reformist scholars, Hanjab gradually became a positive military image, considered a hero who dared to question the Sultan.
With the death of Handuber, Handua was mourning
After slaughtering his uncle's family, Sultan Mahmudsha suddenly became "rational" again and instructed Handua's son to "investigate" the case of Tun MoTaisho again—not only to account for his uncle's old subordinates, but more importantly, to justify his marriage to Tun Fatima. According to strict aristocratic rules, the "daughter of a rebel thief" could not become the queen of the Sultanate of Malacca.
Under the "discovery of conscience" of Sultan Mahmoud Shah, he "wept bitterly" to rehabilitate his uncle, and in order to show "shame", the sultan ordered the general to impeach Jidur, who was impeached by Tun Motaixiu, to be "lying on a spike and executed", and a large number of South Indian Muslim merchants were raided and imprisoned. Later, the Sultan married Tun Fatima. Since then, the once-powerful South Indian Muslim faction has collapsed.
By the time Mahmoudsha liquidated the Karinga forces, the Karinga faction had become the Portuguese colonist's sphere of influence on the west coast of India, the western homeland. The invasion of Portuguese colonists completely changed the fate of the Strait of Malacca.
Building Capsizing: Sunset in Malacca
In the spring of 1511, Alfonso de Albuquerque's fleet arrived in the Strait of Malacca, and Malacca requested ming support. The Ming Dynasty always attached great importance to its relations with the sincere tributary state of "Manchuria", and every time the Sultan changed, the Ming Dynasty would send envoys.
For Malacca's call for help, the Ming Dynasty agreed to send troops to help. However, when the imperial court ordered it to arrive in Guangzhou, this order was suppressed by the eunuch Yasan, who was in charge of Guangzhou, and thus did not move. The Fireman Yasan was dissatisfied with the Malacca merchants and the Hui merchants for not paying him bribes, and accepted bribes from Portugal (at the same time, Malacca also had the Fireman Yasan, a Muslim general who was guarding the city when the Malacca Sultanate was about to collapse). Although both are Chinese, they are not the same person).)
Prince Ahmed and Handua were resisting on the front lines, but by this time Sultan Mahmud Shah had fled with Tun Fatima all the way to Johor. The Sultan's escape greatly damaged the morale of the army, and the fire was added to the fire, and the Portuguese musket hit Ahmed, leaving him seriously wounded. At this point, the number of defenders in Malacca was even less than that of the Portuguese invaders combined.
In August 1511, Malacca fell, and the remnants of Ahmet and Handua fled to the border between Malacca and Johor to continue their resistance. The Sultanate of Malacca collapsed and split into many independent or semi-independent Malay sultanates, including Johor (malacca royal family), Pahang (a collateral line of the Malacca royal family), Perak (descendants of Dun Perak's nephews), and Aceh (Champa immigrants).
In 1513, Sultan Mahmudsha sent poison to the front line to poison his eldest son, Ahmet. The problem was triggered by the fact that Tun Fatima gave birth to Alaudin of Johor (1513-1564) as second prince. Since then, Handua's father and son have left their posts in anger and returned to the field.
By the time the Ming Dynasty arrested Yasan the Fireman of Guangzhou and formally examined the Malacca issue (1521, the sixteenth year of Emperor Mingwuzong), Malacca had become a Portuguese colony. Thus, the Ming Dynasty and the "Flangji" (Portugal) began a state of confrontation that lasted for many years. Half a century later, Macau was controlled by Portugal, which brought the relations between Daming and Portugal to a freezing point.
The site of the Portuguese in Malacca
In 1528, Sultan Mahmudsha died and was succeeded by his 15-year-old son, Ala Uddin. With the assistance of Empress Dowager Tun Fatima, the Johor army repeatedly repelled Portuguese attacks, so much so that the Portuguese colonists lamented that they were not afraid of Aceh and the indifferent adventurers, but were extremely afraid of a woman, the Sultan Queen Tun Fatima. Tun Fatima, regardless of the murder of his father's clan, worked hard to help the remnants of Malacca, so that order in the Sultanate of Johor was restored to a certain extent. The queen, a Muslim woman of South Indian descent, became a national hero in the minds of the Malays because of her good governance, and the people briefly forgot about her family's misfortunes.
The image of Tun Fatima designed by later generations
However, shortly after the death of Empress Tun Fatima, Johor was invaded by another sultanate, the Sultanate of Aceh. In 1564, Sultan Ala Uddin of Johor defeated Aceh. Most of the princes were killed in battle, and Ala Uddin himself was beheaded by the Sultan of Aceh; six years later, Sultan Ara-Uddin's son Muzafar Shah II was poisoned, and mahmudsha's lineage was severed and his lineage was annexed to the succession.
In 1699, the young Mahmoud Shah II died of food poisoning, and since he had only daughters at his knees, the Malacca Sultanate was completely extinct, and since then new nobles with different cultural backgrounds have taken over the sultanates of the Malay cultural circle. The bloodline of "Karma Linga" was also integrated into these emerging powers, which continue to today's Malaysia. They were completely different from the South Indian migrant workers brought by the British colonists, both religious and cultural.
Conclusion: The Distant "Karma"
In malaysia today, public opinion discourages the use of the ethnic nickname "Karma Linga" to describe the country's Citizens of Indian descent – a term that has long been used by nationalists to attack Indians. And unlike the historical Karinga, the vast majority of Indians in Malaysian law now believe in Hinduism, and only a few believe in Islam.
Moreover, like the vast majority of Chinese, the vast majority of Modern Malaysian Indians were sent to foreign lands by comprador intermediaries as middle- and lower-class laborers under the colonial rule of British imperialism, which is very different from the social status of Indian merchants (whether early Buddhists/Hindu believers or later Muslims) who actively traveled east. In the process of the Great Navigation Age, through continuous "mixed-ethnic-localization", the "Karma Linga" of that year has been deeply embedded in the current Malay cultural circle.
However, for the so-called "Malay-India" dispute, the author believes that it is not so much a matter of national narrative as it should be regarded as a question of balance of power. As an important class in the Sultanate of Malacca, the Karinga, although it has its regional, ethnic and cultural background, also reflects the economic attributes of a group - that is, as an intermediary elite group of "political and business integration".
Although the historical data is relatively simple, the fact that the sister of the elder Tun Ali was able to marry the grandson of the sultan during the lifetime of the old Sultan BailiMisula clearly shows that this group of Muslim merchants of South Indian descent was no longer an ordinary merchant group at that time; and later Dun Mo Tai Xiu was able to exert power over foreign relatives, and after being executed by the Sultan, he could also trigger many chain reactions, which to some extent also reflected the indispensable importance of the socio-economic "intermediaries" of the Malacca Sultanate.
Therefore, if you are lucky enough to come to Malacca, visitors can appreciate the fusion of different cultures. There are ancient mosques with South Indian characteristics, There is also the Christian community, which maintains Malay-Indian characteristics, and the Peranakan group "Baba Nyonya", which mixes Chinese, Iraqi and Western cultural elements.
The direct Hmong people of Baili Misula have left the stage of history, but their glory can still be deeply imprinted in the above multiculturalism, and the political disputes behind the Dun Mo Tai Thu massacre also reflect the true nature of Malaysian history.
Editor-in-Charge: Zhong Yuan
Proofreader: Yijia Xu