Article

Note on the opening of relations between China and Malacca, 1403–05

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Note on the opening of relations between China and Malacca, 1403–05

Syed Naguib al-Attas published this brief note in 1965 as a targeted correction to Wang Gungwu’s influential 1964 essay on the opening of Sino-Malaccan relations in 1403–05. Al-Attas challenges Wang’s identification of the Muslim traders who brought Malacca to the attention of the Ming Emperor Yung-lo as south Indian (Malabar) merchants, arguing instead that they were Persians from the province of Jilan (Gilān) on the Caspian Sea.

Summary

The article addresses a single but consequential question in the historiography of early Sino-Malaccan diplomacy: the ethnic and geographic origin of the Muslim traders received in Nanking who prompted the Chinese court to recognise Malacca as an independent kingdom. Wang Gungwu had concluded, on theoretical grounds consistent with the prevailing view of Indian predominance in Southeast Asian Islam, that these traders were from the Malabar coast and that their interest in Malacca was purely commercial. Al-Attas counters this by building a case from toponymic and textual evidence that the traders were Persian.

The central piece of evidence is the Persian name Shahr-i-Naw (“New Town”) applied to Ayut’ia, the Siamese capital founded in 1350. Al-Attas argues that if Persians had only learned of the city fifty or a hundred years after its founding, the name “New Town” would be meaningless or contradictory; it must therefore reflect knowledge acquired soon after 1350, implying a substantial Persian presence in the Muslim community of Ayut’ia. This is corroborated by the appearance of the name in a 1462 navigational tract (Ibn Majid’s Hawiyat al-ikhtisar) and in the Matla’u’l-Sa’dayn of the Persian historian Kamalu’l-Din ‘Abdu’l-Razzaq al-Samarqandi (1413–1482). Al-Attas further resolves a long-standing puzzle about the 16th-century Malay Sufi Hamzah Fansuri, who was known to have lived in Shahr-i-Naw and read classical Persian Sufi texts: he must have learned Persian from the Persian community there.

The identification of the traders’ origin is then confirmed through the Chinese rendering of the leader’s name. The Emperor’s comment records “Haji Ma-ha-mo Ch’i-ni,” while an abbreviated report gives “Ch’i-la-ni.” Al-Attas demonstrates that both forms are correct transliterations of Jili and Jilani respectively, referring to the Persian province of Jilan (Gilān) on the southern Caspian coast. The overland return route through China, the imperial grant of safe-conduct credentials for “officials on their way,” and the reference to the traders having “come from afar” all cohere with a Persian origin but are difficult to reconcile with a Malabar one. The commercial motive remains consistent with Wang’s: Persian traders centred at Shahr-i-Naw would gain from Chinese recognition of Malacca’s independence, which would free them from Siamese interference in their trade.

Key Findings

  • Ayut’ia was founded in 1350; the Persian name Shahr-i-Naw appears in a navigational tract dated 1462 (Ibn Majid, Hawiyat al-ikhtisar, ms. Arabe 2292, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) and in the Matla’u’l-Sa’dayn of ‘Abdu’l-Razzaq al-Samarqandi (1413–1482), indicating continuous Persian familiarity with the city from its early decades (pp. 261–263).
  • The leader of the trader party, recorded in Chinese sources as “Haji Ma-ha-mo Ch’i-ni” (full report) and “Ch’i-la-ni” (abbreviated report), is identified as Haji Muhammad Jili/Jilani, i.e., a native of Jilan (Gilān), a Persian province on the south shore of the Caspian Sea between Ādharbāyjān and Tabaristan (p. 264).
  • Tome Pires (Suma Oriental, 1512–1515) records Persian merchants from Khurasan, Jilan, Tabriz, and Shiraz trading in Malacca via Hurmuz and Cambay, confirming the commercial network al-Attas reconstructs (p. 265, n. 20).
  • The imperial instruction to the Ministry of Rites to “give them the credentials to ensure that the officials on their way will not obstruct them” indicates an overland route through China, consistent with a Persian origin but implausible for Malabar traders (p. 264).
  • Wang Gungwu’s original essay appeared in Malayan and Indonesian Studies, ed. J. S. Bastin and R. Roolvink, Oxford, 1964, pp. 87–104 (p. 260, n. 1).

Conclusion

Al-Attas concludes that the Muslim traders who catalysed the opening of Sino-Malaccan relations in 1403–05 were Persians from Jilan, not south Indians from Malabar, and that their commercial interest in securing Chinese recognition of Malacca’s independence from Siam was the direct motive for bringing the port to the Emperor’s attention.

Context

  • The article draws on Persian historical and literary sources (Ta’rīkh-i-Guzīda of Ḥamdu’llāh Mustawfī al-Qazvīnī, 1330; Matla’u’l-Sa’dayn of ‘Abdu’l-Razzaq al-Samarqandi), the Arabic navigational tract of Ibn Majid (1462), and the Chinese imperial records cited by Wang Gungwu, alongside Pires’s Suma Oriental.
  • Historiographically, the note represents an early challenge to the “Indian predominance” paradigm in Southeast Asian Islamic history, substituting a Persian-centric explanation grounded in toponymic and prosopographical evidence.

References