ONCE MIGHTY SULTAN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 209, 4 September 1934, Page 8

ONCE MIGHTY SULTAN

e i0 NOW BEREFBT OF POWER. t I* SULL’S AGHD RULER. t RACE OF FIERCE WARRIORS. Little by little the 71-year-old Moslem Sultan of Sulu, whose forefathers once ruled the Southern Philippines F and North Boreo and held back the ■ might of Christian Spain for 300 yeurs, - is losing all power but the vaguest of religious authority. When the Sultan was born, n 1863, • Spain had not yet conquered his realm, > and the feud between Crescent and - Cross still existed as it had when the I Spaniards appeared in the islands in ’ the sixteenth century. The Sulu • islanders are known as Moros, and 1 their Sultan traces his royai descent > back, for 600 years. • The 250 islands in (he Sulu Archipelago. of which Jolo is tho capital, were known to Chinese traders in the first century A.D. The native Indonesian stock was strongly sympathetic to Mohammedan doctrines, first intro duced 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 over 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 in- □ demnity in pearls. Resistance te Spaniards. The Moros were infuriated. For the next 300 years they fought back the Spaniards with piracy, cruel and devastating. In 1876 Spain sent 12 gunboats with 9000 soldiers and artillery ’ and captured Joie. An eight-foot 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 at- • tempt to regain the city rushed the • walks, 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, Pershing and Bullard, the Moros were won over, and by 1.913 had largely surrendered their weapons. Their great fear is of the northern Filipinos, whom, in the past, they have raided, harrier, 'and enslaved. The Moros had a distinct culture even in the 16th. century. They used Hindu syllabaries and the Arabic alphabet. They carved wood and ivory, 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 porcelain from China and Japan. The Diminished Sultanate. From the capital the present Sultan, Hadji Mohammed Jamalul Kiram 11., ruled over 50,909 warlike Mohammedans.. In North Borneo the British have now supplanted him; in the Southern Philippines the United States. But still 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 affairare largely directed by the Princesses Dayang and Tarhata, the latter a niece educated in the United States. About 20 years ago he had a palace guard of soldiers, a retinue of datus an 1 chiefs, clothes of brilliant velvet and silk, a golden sceptre and finger rings set with pearls as large as grains of corn; now he lives in reduced circumstances. plaints of some members of the All Bla'ck party about the Australian referees. Porter confirmed the remarks made in an interview with the Sydney Daily Telegraph last week. When a team won squealing it was bad enough, he said, but when it lost it was worse. Porter said that yhile Mr Irving may have been too technical in his rulings, he was the same to both teams. “I did not see any partiality on either side,” he said, “and con- J gratulated the referee afterwards on ‘ his fine display.”