Note 35 — Chapter XII · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO.

All the civilised Malays of the Malay Peninsula trace their origin to migrations from Sumatra, especially from Menangkabau, the famous kingdom mentioned above, which is said at one time to have been the most powerful on the island; some of the chiefs of the interior states of the southern part of the Malay Peninsula still receive their investiture from this place. At what period these colonies from the heart of Sumatra settled in the interior of the Peninsula, is matter of conjecture, but Singapore and the southern extremity of the Peninsula seem to have received a colony in the middle of the twelfth century, by the descendants of which Malacca was founded about a century later.35 From its advantageous situation, in the highway of eastern commerce it soon became a large and flourishing city, and there is little doubt but that Islam was introduced by the Muhammadan merchants who settled here.36 The Malay chronicle of Malacca assigns the conversion of this kingdom to the reign of a certain Sulṭān Muḥammad Shāh who came to the throne in 1276. He is said to have been reigning some years before a ship commanded by Sīdī ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz came to Malacca from Jiddah, and the king was persuaded by the new-comers to change his faith and to give up his Malay name for one containing the name of the Prophet.37 But the general character of this document makes its trustworthiness exceedingly doubtful,38 in spite of the likelihood that the date of so important an event would have been exactly noted (as was done in many parts of the Archipelago) by a people who, proud of the event, would look upon it as opening a new epoch in their history. A Portuguese historian gives a much later date, namely 1384, in which year, he says, a Qāḍī came from Arabia and having converted the king, gave him the name of Muḥammad after the Prophet, adding Shāh to it.39