SULU’S AGED RULER

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 September 1934, Page 12

SULU’S AGED RULER

RACE OF FIERCE WARRIORS Little by little the 71-year-old Moslem Sultan of Sulu, whose forefathers once ruled the Southern Philippines and North Borneo and held back the might of Christian Spain for 300 years is losing all power bu the vaguest of religious authority. When the Sultan was born, in 1863, Spain had not yet conquered his realm and the feud between Crescent and Cross still existed as it had when the Spaniards appeared in the islands in the sixteenth century. The Sulu islanders are known as Moros, and their Sultan traces his royal descent back for 600 years. The 250 islands in the Sulu Archipelago, of which Jolo is the capital, were known to Chinese traders in the first century A.D. The native Indonesian stock was strongly sympathetic to Mohammedan doctrines, first introduced by an Arabian in 1380. Since the Prophet promised glory to those who perished for the faith, the Moros eagerly spread the doctrine by sword ovei’ the Philippines. Then in 1578, after the northern tribes had been subdued, Spain sent a fleet to Jolo to demand of the Sultan that he surrender all his arms, denounce the creed of Islam, surrender the religious leaders and destroy the mosques and, finally, pay to His Majesty of Spain an indemnity in pearls.

RESISTANCE TO SPANIARDS The Moros were infuriated. For the next 300 years they fought back the Spaniards with piracy, cruel and devastating. In 1876 Spain sent twelve gunboats with 9000 soldiers and artillery and captured Jolo. An eightfoot wall with loopholes for rifles was built by the Spaniards as protection against Moro lances and arrows. Once,

it is said, a band of Moros in a frenzied attempt to regain the city rushed the walls, stuffing their dead bodies in the slits. In May,, 1899, American troops took over Jolo. Severe fighting followed, but due to the personal character of - American officers like Leonard Wood, 3 Pershing and Bullard, the Moros were 3 won over, and by 1913 had largely surJ rendered their weapons. Their great ; fear is of the northern Filipinos, whom ; in the past, they have raided, harried and enslaved. , The Moros had a distinct culture l even in the sixteenth century. They I used Hindu syllabaries and the Arabic i alphabet. They carved wood and ivory, i inlaid precious metals, cast cannon of bronze and iron, made sidearms and gunpowder. They built swift boats : and were, master navigators, bringing amber, silver, scented woods and por- • celain fro China and Japan. From the capital the present Sultan i Hadji Mohammed Jamalul Kiram 11., ■ ruled over 500,000 warlike Mohamme- : dans. In North Borneo the British have now supplanted him; in the Southern Philippines the United States. But he dreams of bygone honours. . In 1915 he formally renounced all claims to political power in the islands and promised to discontinue polygamy. He was recognised, however, as the head of the Mohammedan religion in the Philippines. His annual income from the British and the Americans and from rights in the pearl fisheries amounts to £2500. In 1910 he toured the United States, taking with him, it was said £50,000 in pearls. He has no direct heir. His affairs are largely directed by the Princesses Dayang and Tarhata, the latter a niece educated in the United States. I About twenty years ago he had a . palace guard of soldiers, a retinue of datus and chiefs, clothes of brilliant 1 velvet and silk, a golden sceptre and finger rings set with pearls as large as grains of corn; now he lives in reduced circumstances.