Kinship, Islam, and Raiding in Maguindanao, c. 1760–1780Haji Umar’s embeddedness within the emerging regional order
could be gleaned from his role in the “return” – likely ransom – of two
European soldiers from Riau. In 1787, the Iranuns of northern Borneo,
previously subjects of the sultan of Maguindanao, participated in the
siege of Tanjung Pinang in Riau to remove the occupying Dutch forc-
es.^70 The Iranuns had been summoned by some Malay chiefs who had
been dissatisfied of the commercial and political restrictions imposed
on them by the Dutch.^71 The invasion resulted in the Company defeat
and retreat to Malacca as well as the capture of approximately fifty sol-
diers and twenty cannon. Haji Umar’s ransom of some soldiers in the
Ternate outpost preceded any Company news from Batavia regarding
the invasion,^72 pointing perhaps to the existence of an effective Islamic
maritime network that linked both ends of the archipelago.
In the middle of this emerging maritime network were the Arab
merchants and sojourners from the Hadhramaut whose numbers and
influence increased “as Dutch power declined in the course of the eight-
eenth century”.^73 The details of the interaction between the Arabs and
the Maguindanaos, in particular and the congeries of “piratical” groups,
in general remain unknown. But in north Sulawesi, some of these Arab-
descended merchants (syarifs and sayyids) had been active proselytizers
among indigenous entrepreneurs and sojourners otherwise referred
to in the colonial sources as “rovers”.^74 Muslim chiefs even “allegedly
- Its adjacent island, Penyengat, notably became a center of Malay (Islamic)
culture in the region in the course of the nineteenth century, the roots of which
likely go back to the previous century. Keng We Koh, “Travel and Survival in the
Colonial Malay World: Mobility, Region and the World in Johor Elite Strategies,
1818–1914”, Journal of World History 25.4 (2014): 571. - Episodes of this event are described in Raja Ali Haji, The Precious Gift = (Tuhfat
al-Nafis), edited by Virginia Matheson Hooker and B. W. Andaya, Tuhfat al-
Nafis (Kuala Lumpur, etc. : Oxford University Press, 1982). See also Carl Anthony
Trocki, Prince of Pirates: the Temenggongs and Development of Johor and Singapore
1784–1885 (Singapore : Singapore University Press, 1979): 28. - NA, VOC 3817, Secret Decisions of the Political Council (Ternate), 10 October
1787 – 6 August 1788, fols. 58–59. - William G. Clarence-Smith, “The Rise and Fall of Hadhrami Shipping in the
Indian Ocean, c. 1750- c. 1940”, in David Parkin and Ruth Barnes (eds), Ships and
the Development of Maritime Technology in the Indian Ocean (Routledge Curzon,
2002): 230. - NA, Ministry of Colonies, 6078, 26 April 1876, L10 no. 38 [Kabinetsverbaal],
Letter of Wolterbeek Muller, Commandant of the steamship ZM Banca to the