Article

The Melaka Malay Diaspora in Makassar, c 1500–1669

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The Melaka Malay Diaspora in Makassar, c 1500–1669

W. Cummings (1998) reconstructs the history of the Malay community in Makassar from the early sixteenth century to the fall of Gowa in 1669, arguing that the relationship between Malays and Makassarese was far more complex than the standard narrative of a mutually profitable trading alliance and shared Islamic faith suggests. Drawing on Makassarese chronicles, court records, Dutch Dagh-Registers, and unpublished Malay and Makassarese manuscripts, the article traces three distinct phases in the evolution of this diaspora community and identifies several dimensions—tension, limited commercial monopoly, and a dispersed settlement pattern—that the conventional account overlooks.

Summary

The article addresses a significant historiographical gap. While scholars had long noted that a Malay community existed in Makassar—most famously through the figure of the scribe Ence’ Amin and the Sj’air Perang Mengkasar—and that it was involved in the Maluku spice trade, the actual history of that community was largely unknown. Cummings divides the period into three phases: a pre-1561 era of sparse and sometimes conflictual contact; a middle period (1561–1632) marked by the establishment of a permanent, autonomous Malay quarter, the conversion of Gowa and Tallo’ to Islam in 1605, and commercial prosperity; and a final period (1632–1669) in which the arrival of a Patani noble transformed the community’s composition and its relationship to the Makassarese court, culminating in the alliance against the Dutch and Bugis in the Makassar War.

The core argument is that the standard story of a smooth, ever-deepening partnership is incomplete. Cummings highlights three complicating factors. First, the relationship was subject to disruption and individual tension, from the uncomfortable position of the Makassarese-Malay I Mangalai to the machinations of Karaeng Karunrung, who contrived to have the entire Malay community exiled. Second, Makassarese rulers never permitted Malays to monopolize trade; the lontara’ bilang record multiple Makassarese harbormasters, and Malays functioned as agents and middlemen rather than exclusive controllers of commerce. Third, the Malay presence was not confined to a single quarter in the city of Makassar but extended across a belt of coastal communities including Sanrabone, Cikoang, and others, forming a network of small settlements linked to both the city and overseas Malay worlds.

A further and perhaps most significant point is that neither community assimilated into the other. Makassarese converted to Islam and some learned Malay, but they never “masuk Melayu”; they did not shift their ethnic identity. Malays, for their part, never abandoned their attachment to a homeland in the western archipelago—Ence’ Amin referred to himself as a foreigner in his own syair. Intermarriage produced a small class of bilingual, bicultural intermediaries, but the two communities remained fundamentally separate, each retaining its own written traditions, cultural confidence, and social hierarchy.

The article is informed by a wide range of primary sources. The Gowa Chronicle (Wolhoff and Abdurrahim 1959) provides the foundational narrative of the 1561 settlement agreement and the 1605 conversion. The lontara’ bilang court records supply dated entries on the deaths of Malay officials and the names of Makassarese syahbandar. The Dutch Dagh-Register offers external confirmation of Malay commercial activity. Unpublished manuscripts—particularly the Sanrabone text on Islamization, MS 200a (an anonymous Malay history of the community), the I Mangalai narrative, and genealogical records in the ANRI collections—provide the most granular evidence of community life, internal dynamics, and the persistence of distinct Malay identity across generations.

Key Findings

  • The permanent Malay settlement in Makassar was established around 1561 (a date from MS 200a; the Gowa Chronicle only places it within Tunipalangga’s reign of 1546–65). The founding agreement, negotiated by a Malay named Anakoda Bonang, granted four specific privileges: the Karaeng would not enter the settlement, not ascend into Malay homes, not demand payment for children in divorce, and not confiscate goods for crimes committed by Malays (p. 108).
  • The conversion of the rulers of Gowa and Tallo’ to Islam is precisely dated in the Gowa Chronicle to the ninth day of Jumadele’auwal, a Friday in year 1016 AH, corresponding to 22 September 1606 CE (p. 110). The lontara’ bilang record the deaths of at least three Malay religious officials in 1660 alone: I Dato’ Kadi Abdul Maula (17 February), I Dodoti, the jurubasa (18 March), and Anci’ Jenala’, Kadi of Somba Opu (7 September), the last replaced by Fakhi Dambo Abdurrahim on 2 October (p. 111).
  • Of at least nine syahbandar (harbormasters) recorded in the lontara’ bilang, only one—Enci’ Hussein in a 1615 entry—was clearly Malay; the rest were Makassarese, indicating that Malays did not hold a monopoly over the oversight of Makassar’s trade (p. 110).
  • An English report of 8 February 1625 stated that most merchants sailing from Makassar to Maluku were Patani and Johor Malays living “by the thousands” in the city, while Makassarese themselves seldom sailed far (p. 110). In 1634, a Dutch blockade trapped forty Malay and Javanese ships in Makassar’s harbor (p. 110).
  • The Sanrabone manuscript records that the first mosque in that community was built between 1012 and 1015 AH under the direction of Datu’ Mokotta, a Malay from Pagarruyung, and describes its dimensions as four arm-spans on each side and two arm-spans tall (p. 113). A genealogy of Datu’ Mokotta’s descendants extends eight generations in one manuscript and thirteen generations in another (ANRI 77/17) (pp. 113–14).
  • More than two dozen seventeenth-century Islamic manuscripts in Arabic, Malay, and Makassarese are preserved at the ANRI Wilayah Sulawesi Selatan, testifying to the intermediary role Malays played in transmitting Islamic doctrine to Makassarese converts (p. 111).

Conclusion

Cummings’s definitive takeaway is that the Malay-Makassarese relationship, while often characterized as a simple symbiosis of trading partners and co-religionists, was in fact a multi-layered and sometimes fraught association in which Malays occupied several distinct niches—commercial agents, religious teachers, mosque officials, and cultural influencers—without ever achieving exclusive dominance over any single domain. The relationship preserved the identity of both communities across a century and a half of close contact, and the Malay presence should be understood not as a single settlement in one port but as a dispersed network of coastal communities. This more nuanced picture, Cummings argues, corrects an over-simplified narrative and offers a more accurate chapter in the broader history of the Malay diaspora throughout the Indonesian archipelago.

Context

  • Primary archival collections consulted include the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (ANRI) Wilayah Sulawesi Selatan (lontara’ bilang, unpublished Makassarese and Malay manuscripts), the British Library (MS 12351), the Universiteits Bibliotheek Leiden (Cod. Or. 7136), and the published Dagh-Register. The article’s main historiographical contribution is to move beyond the Gowa-centric framing that has dominated the field and to incorporate evidence from peripheral communities such as Sanrabone and Cikoang, while also drawing on the only prior substantive treatment of the subject, Abdurrahim’s brief 1956 article (p. 106, n. 1).

References