While the Musalmans of Java were plotting against the Hindu Government and taking the rule of the country into their own hands by force, a revolution of a wholly peaceful character was being carried on in other parts of the Archipelago through the preaching of the Muslim missionaries who were slowly but surely achieving success in their proselytising efforts. Let us first turn our attention to the history of this propagandist movement in the Molucca islands.
The trade in cloves must have brought the Moluccas into contact with the islanders of the western half of the Archipelago from very early times, and the converted Javanese and other Malays who came into these islands to trade, spread their faith among the inhabitants of the coast.[73] The companions of Magellan brought back a curious story of the way in which these men introduced their religious doctrines among the Muluccans. “The kings of these islands[74] a few years before the arrival of the Spaniards [[388]]began to believe in the immortality of the soul, induced by no other argument but that they had seen a very beautiful little bird, that never settled on the earth nor on anything that was of the earth, and the Mahometans, who traded as merchants in those islands, told them that this little bird was born in paradise, and that paradise is the place where rest the souls of those that are dead. And for this reason these seignors joined the sect of Mahomet, because it promises many marvellous things of this place of the souls.”[75]
Islam seems first to have begun to make progress here in the fifteenth century. A heathen king of Tidor yielded to the persuasions of an Arab, named Shayk͟h Manṣūr, and embraced Islam together with many of his subjects. The heathen name of the king, Tjireli Lijatu, was changed to that of Jamāl al-Dīn, while his eldest son was called Manṣūr after their Arab teacher.[76] It was the latter prince who entertained the Spanish expedition that reached Tidor in 1521, shortly after the ill-fated death of Magellan. Pigafetta, the historian of this expedition, calls him Raia Sultan Mauzor, and says that he was more than fifty-five years old, and that not fifty years had passed since the Muhammadans came to live in these islands.[77]
Islam seems to have gained a footing on the neighbouring island of Ternate a little earlier. The Portuguese, who came to this island the same year as the Spaniards reached Tidor, were informed by the inhabitants that it had been introduced a little more than eighty years.[78]
According to the Portuguese account[79] 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 [[389]]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 [[390]]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]
From these islands Islam spread into the rest of the Moluccas; though for some time the conversions were confined to the inhabitants of the coast.[88] Most of the converts came from among the Malays, who compose the whole population of the smaller islands, but inhabit the coast-lands only of the larger ones, the interior being inhabited by Alfurs. But converts in later times were drawn from among the latter also.[89] Even so early as 1521, there was a Muhammadan king of Gilolo, a kingdom on the western side of the northern limb of the island of Halemahera.[90] In modern times the existence of certain regulations, devised for the benefit of the state-religion, has facilitated to some extent the progress of the Muhammadan religion among the Alfurs of the mainland, e.g. if any one of them is discovered to have had illicit intercourse with a Muhammadan girl, he must marry her and become a Muslim; any of the Alfur women who marry Muhammadans must embrace the faith of their husbands; offences against the law may be atoned for by conversion to Islam; and in filling up any vacancy that may happen to occur among the chiefs, less regard is paid to the lawful claims of a candidate than to his readiness to become a Musalman.[91]
Similarly, Islam in Borneo is mostly confined to the coast, although it had gained a footing in the island as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century. About this time, it was adopted by the people of Banjarmasin, a kingdom on the southern side, which had been tributary to the Hindu kingdom of Majapahit, until its overthrow in 1478;[92] they owed their conversion to one of the Muhammadan states that rose on the ruins of the latter.[93] The story is that the [[391]]people of Banjarmasin asked for assistance towards the suppression of a revolt, and that it was given on condition that they adopted the new religion; whereupon a number of Muhammadans came over from Java, suppressed the revolt and effected the work of conversion.[94] On the north-west coast, the Spaniards found a Muhammadan king at Brunai, when they reached this place in 1521.[95] A little later, 1550, it was introduced into the kingdom of Sukadana,[96] in the western part of the island, by Arabs coming from Palembang in Sumatra.[97] The reigning king refused to abandon the faith of his fathers, but during the forty years that elapsed before his death (in 1590), the new religion appears to have made considerable progress. His successor became a Musalman and married the daughter of a prince of a neighbouring island, in which apparently Islam had been long established;[98] during his reign, a traveller,[99] who visited the island in 1600, speaks of Muhammadanism as being a common religion along the coast. The inhabitants of the interior, however, he tells us, were all idolaters—as indeed they remain for the most part to the present day. The progress of Islam in the kingdom of Sukadana seems now to have drawn the attention of the centre of the Muhammadan world to this distant spot, and in the reign of the next prince, a certain Shayk͟h Shams al-Dīn came from Mecca bringing with him a present of a copy of the Qurʼān and a large hyacinth ring, together with a letter in which this defender of the faith received the honourable title of Sultan Muḥammad Ṣafī al-Dīn.[100]
In the latter part of the eighteenth century one of the inland tribes, called the Idaans, dwelling in the interior of north Borneo, is said to have looked upon the Muhammadans of [[392]]the coast with very great respect, as having a religion which they themselves had not yet got.[101] Dalrymple, who obtained his information on the Idaans of Borneo during his visit to Sulu from 1761 to 1764, tells us that they “entertain a just regret of their own ignorance, and a mean idea of themselves on that account; for, when they come into the houses, or vessels, of the Mahometans, they pay them the utmost veneration, as superior intelligences, who know their Creator; they will not sit down where the Mahometans sleep, nor will they put their fingers into the same chunam, or betel box, but receive a portion with the utmost humility, and in every instance denote, with the most abject attitudes and gesture, the veneration they entertain for a God unknown, in the respect they pay to those who have a knowledge of Him.”[102] These people appear since that time to have embraced the Muhammadan faith,[103] one of the numerous instances of the powerful impression that Islam produces upon tribes that are low down in the scale of civilisation. From time to time other accessions have been gained in the persons of the numerous colonists, Arabs, Bugis and Malays, as well as Chinese (who have had settlements here since the seventh century),[104] and of the slaves introduced into the island from different countries; so that at the present day the Muhammadans of Borneo are a very mixed race.[105] Many of these foreigners were still heathen when they first came to Borneo, and of a higher civilisation than the Dyaks whom they conquered or drove into the interior, where they mostly still remain heathen, except in the western part of the island, in which from time to time small tribes of Dyaks embrace Islam.[106] When the pagan Dyaks change their faith, it is more commonly the case that they yield to the persuasions of the Muhammadan rather than to those of the Christian missionary, or, having first embraced Christianity they then pass over to Islam, and the Muhammadans are making zealous efforts to win converts both from among the heathen and the Christian Dyaks.[107]
In the island of Celebes we find a similar slow growth of [[393]]the Muhammadan religion, taking its rise among the people of the coast and slowly making its way into the interior. Only the more civilised portion of the inhabitants has, however, adopted Islam; this is mainly divided into two tribes, the Macassars and the Bugis, who inhabit the south-west peninsula, the latter, however, also forming a large proportion of the coast population on the other peninsulas. The interior of the island, except in the south-west peninsula where nearly all the inhabitants are Muhammadan, is still heathen and is populated chiefly by the Alfurs, a race low in the scale of civilisation, who also form the majority of the inhabitants of the north, the east and the south-east peninsulas; at the extremity of the first of these peninsulas, in Minahassa, they have in large numbers been converted to Christianity; the Muhammadans did not make their way hither until after the Portuguese had gained a firm footing in this part of the island, and the Alfurs whom they converted to Roman Catholicism were turned into Protestants by the Dutch, whose missionaries have laboured in Minahassa with very considerable success. But Islam is slowly making its way among the heathen tribes of Alfurs in different parts of the island, both in the districts directly administered by the Dutch Government, and those under the rule of native chiefs.[108]
When the Portuguese first visited the island about 1540, they found only a few Muhammadan strangers in Gowa, the capital of the Macassar kingdom, the natives being still unconverted, and it was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that Islam began to be generally adopted among them. The history of the movement is especially interesting, as we have here one of the few cases in which Christianity and Islam have been competing for the allegiance of heathen people. One of the incidents in this contest is thus admirably told by an old compiler: “The discovery of so considerable a country was looked upon by the Portuguese as a Matter of Great Consequence, and Measures were taken to secure the Affections of those whom it was not found easy to conquer; but, on the other hand, capable of being obliged, or rendered useful, as their allies, by good usage. [[394]]The People were much braver, and withal had much better Sense than most of the Indians; and therefore, after a little Conversation with the Europeans, they began, in general, to discern that there was no Sense or Meaning in their own Religion; and the few of them who had been made Christians by the care of Don Antonio Galvano (Governor of the Moluccas), were not so thoroughly instructed themselves as to be able to teach them a new Faith. The whole People, in general, however, disclaimed their old Superstitions, and became Deists at once; but, not satisfied with this, they determined to send, at the same time, to Malacca and to Achin,[109] to desire from the one, Christian Priests; and from the other, Doctors of the Mohammedan Law; resolving to embrace the Religion of those Teachers who came first among them. The Portugeze have hitherto been esteemed zealous enough for their Religion; but it seems that Don Ruis Perera, who was then Governor of Malacca, was a little deficient in his Concern for the Faith, since he made a great and very unnecessary delay in sending the Priests that were desired. On the other hand, the Queen of Achin being a furious Mohammedan no sooner received an Account of this Disposition in the people of the Island of Celebes than she immediately dispatched a vessel full of Doctors of the Law, who in a short time, established their Religion effectually among the Inhabitants. Some time after came the Christian Priests, and inveighed bitterly against the Law of Mohammed but to no Purpose; the People of Celebes had made their Choice, and there was no Possibility of bringing them to alter it. One of the Kings of the Island, indeed, who had before embraced Christianity, persisted in the Faith, and most of his Subjects were converted to it; but still, the Bulk of the People of Celebes continued Mohammedans, and are so to this Day, and the greatest Zealots for their Religion of any in the Indies.”[110]