Note 79 — Chapter XII · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO.

According to the Portuguese account79 also the Sultan of Ternate was the first of the Muluccan chieftains who became a Muslim. The legend of the introduction of Islam into this island tells how a merchant, named Datu Mullā Ḥusayn, excited the curiosity of the people by reading the Qurʼān aloud in their presence; they tried to imitate the characters written in the book, but could not read them, so they asked the merchant how it was that he could read them, while they could not; he replied that they must first believe in God and His Apostle; whereupon they expressed their willingness to accept his teaching, and became converted to the faith.80 The Sultan of Ternate, who occupied the foremost place among the independent rulers in these islands, is said to have made a journey to Gresik, in Java, in order to embrace the Muhammadan faith there, in 1495.81 He was assisted in his propagandist efforts by a certain Pati Putah, who had made the journey from Hitu in Amboina to Java in order to learn the doctrines of the new faith, and on his return spread the knowledge of Islam among the people of Amboina.82 Islam, however, seems at first to have made but slow progress, and to have met with considerable opposition from those islanders who clung zealously to their old superstitions and mythology, so that the old idolatry continued for some time crudely mixed up with the teachings of the Qurʼān, and keeping the minds of the people in a perpetual state of incertitude.83 The Portuguese conquest also made the progress of Islam slower than it would otherwise have been. They drove out the Qāḍī, whom they found instructing the people in the doctrines of Muḥammad, and spread Christianity among the heathen population with some considerable, though short-lived success.84 For when the Muluccans took advantage of the attention of the Portuguese being occupied with their own domestic troubles, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, to try to shake off their power, they instituted a fierce persecution against the Christians, many of whom suffered martyrdom, and others recanted, so that Christianity lost all the ground it had gained,85 and from this time onwards, the opposition to the political domination of the Christians secured a readier welcome for the Muslim teachers who came in increasing numbers from the west.86 The Dutch completed the destruction of Christianity in the Moluccas by driving out the Spanish and Portuguese from these islands in the seventeenth century, whereupon the Jesuit fathers carried off the few remaining Christians of Ternate with them to the Philippines.87