SULTAN OF SULU

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 July 1936, Page 10

SULTAN OF SULU

AMERICA .LOSES A KING. The United Stales recently lost by death the last King under the Stars and Stripes. Hadji Mohammed Jamalul Kirarn IL. whose Royal realm comprises some two .thousand palm islands and coral atolls in the southernmost Philippines. The Sultan’s entire isle-studded empire is oulv a few square .miles laigei than the small State of Delaware. Not so many years ago it was the home of a race'of pirates .who terrorised the E’ostern seas from Sourabaya to Shanghai, and the Sultan was a power outside as well as within his sultanate. But time and the American flag have changed all this.' The last sovereign of Sulu, though he was born thirty years before Dewey sailed into Manila Bay. was the mildest of men. The only belligerence of which he was ever guilty ■ w,as a mild, broken-Eng-lish “No. no!” to the Civil Governor, appointed by the Governor-General of the Philippines to- administer the affairs of his kingdom. And his chief affronts to society were his weakness for wedlock and showy jewellery. Most of the time he went about Sulu in a faded khaki stengah shifter and a pair of soiled white tennis slippers. But on those dress-up occasions when he gold-buttoned himself into a fresh Palm Beach suit, slipped his feet into patent-leather pumps, and removed his best maroon plus fez from its tissue paper, he overloaded his lingers with pearls and rubies, and stuck at least one begemmed tie-pin into his cravat.

MIRRORED BY SUBJECTS His jewelled splendour as well as his pacifical inn lias been mirrored by his subjects, loyal Malayans of Javanese and Sumatran descent whose ancestors were converted to Mohammedanism about 1.450 A.I). Like the Sultan, they are small, brown men with straight’ brown hair and black, shoebutton eyes. But. unlike him, they go about like their fathers and grandfathers. picturesquely clad in formfitting black sateen tights and snug gold-trimmed jackets, with rainbowhued squares of plaid homespun wound turban-wise about their heads, and betel-nut boxes and silver-handled bolos tucked into their girdles. Despite the fact that the United States stripped the Sultan of all but his spiritual powers, he still managed to surround himself with plenty of glamour. The 156,000 Moslem Malayans or Moros who people his kingdom, vied for his favour. And it was well worth a trip to Jolo. the capital of the sultanate, to sec the older generation of them rub their chubby countenances in the dust as he went rattling 'into town in his flivver truck. Only the American coconut and hemp planters in that part of the Philippines took his approach standing up. To most of them the plump little man bouncing up and down, on the driver’s seat, was primarily famous as the inspiration of George Ade’s musical comedy, “The Sultan of Sulu.’’ They greeted him with a flourish of their solar topees and shouted, “Hey! ’ His answer was a quick command to the native at the wheel to step on the brakes. For the Sultan employed his truck not for what -.trucks usually are employed, but .to convey his friends and subjects on .motor excursions about .the island.

Occasionally, an American halted one of these joy rides hy inviting the monarch to sit in- on a little game of poker at the South Seas Club. Like most Moros, the Sultan was an ardent gambler. Once he had settled himself before a card table on the breeze-swept balcony of the little American clubhouse on the waterfront in Jolb, he would allow nothing to disturb him. The Sultan, though he lost much by gambling, was by ail Sulu standards an extremely wealthy man. He was on the pension roll for GOOO dollars a year; the. British North Borneo Trading Company paid him approximately. 250 dollars a month as rental for His hereditary domain in North Borneo; And he received an additional 3000 dollars as a member of the Philippine Legislature. This did not include the profits from his lands in Sulu which were farmed by his retainers, nor the gifts of cash given him annually' by his most loyal subjects. A human paradox was Moreland’s Sultan. Typically Mohammedan was his attitude towards the women of his

kingdom. With the exception of Baby, his first (and last) school-bred wife, who was ready to empty his harem, until he divorced her, none of his “at least a thousand” (to quote him) wives ever questioned his authority. Yet he was completely dominated by his two nieces. Princess Nurijam. the Dayang-Dayang or Crown Princess of the Sultanate, and Princess Tarhata, a former co-ed at the University of Illinois.

RAN THE STATE For years the American residents of the archipelago recognised the DayangDayang as the power behind his throne. While the Sultan loafed in his country palace at Maimbum, played the carabao races, hunted wild deer, entertained his cronies at coconuttoddy parties, or embarked with his royal suite on rent-collecting junkets to Borneo. Princess Nurijam ran the Government. The only person who has ever challenged hei - authority is her cousin, the Princess Tarliata. Shortly after the latter’s return from Illinois she lost her uncle’s favour by eloping with a ■married headman and helping him lead an uprising of rebels against the Government. But she has since come back. Until the typhoon which swept across the Southern' Philippines in 1932 destroyed his palace, the Sultan dwelt amid much native pomp in a pretentious thatch and clapboard house, forty minutes by motor from Jolo. Like all native residences, it was built high off the ground so that his carabaos and retainers could rest underneath during the heat of the tropical day, and was surrounded by a bal- - 'cony. Mere he often sat at the end of the day with his three remaining wives-r--the two whom S.ulus .'speak of always . as “the old ones,” and the twenty-yegr-old “favourite” he married a few years , ago. From it he could see the white house at the foot of the hill where at least a dozen of his erswhile “favourites” still reside.

This balcony opened into a great barn-like room,, bare except for a white iron bed and a wooden table,' circled -with straight chairs and surmounted by a combination shaving mirror au'l mug of polished nickel. In this par-lour-bed rooni-and-bath the Sultan received some of America’s first citizens —diplomats. Government officials, Senators, writers, and tourists de luxe who made the uncomfortable seven-day journey from Manila to Moroland to glimpse for a few brief moments the only royal ruler under the American flag.