An old royal cemetery at Pekan in Pahang
W.D. Barnes’s short note describes the “Makam Chondong,” an old royal cemetery at Pekan, Pahang, and discusses the possible identity of its occupants, most notably Sultan Mahmud of Pahang.
Summary
Barnes documents the physical features of the Makam Chondong: a platform of earth approximately 50 feet square, three to four feet high, surrounded by a shallow ditch, with brick-faced sides (the bricks being flat tiles measuring ten inches by five by two and a half) (p. 35). The graves are all on the northern side of the platform. The Tungku Besar recalled seeing the name “Mahmud” in gold letters on one of the stones about twenty years earlier, but all inscriptions had since been chipped away, presumably to recover the gold (p. 35). A fragment of stone was identified by the Federal Geologist J.B. Scrivenor as fine-grained sandstone of no particular interest (p. 35).
Barnes identifies Sultan Mahmud as the fifth ruler of Pahang, son of the first raja Sultan Muhammad Shah, mentioned in both the Sejarah Melayu and the Bustanu-s-salatin, with the posthumous title Marhom di-hilir, placing the cemetery at approximately the beginning of the 16th century (p. 36). He also briefly notes two other old cemeteries at Pekan: the Makam Nibong, containing female graves with an Arabic inscription in a lapidary’s style, and the Ziarat Raja Raden, which a local student of history tentatively attributed to Sultan Abduljalil of Johore (c. 1700), though Barnes considers this pure guess-work (p. 36).