Historiography and Shifting Interpretations of the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II

Historiography and Shifting Interpretations of the Death of
Sultan Mahmud Syah II

Timothy P. Barnard
Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 89,
Part 2, No. 311, December 2016, pp. 1-23 (Article)
Published by Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2016.0022

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/640444

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JMBRAS, DECtEhMeBDEeRa2t01h6oVfoSlu8l9 tPaarntM2,aNhummubedrS3y11a,hppI.I1|–213

Historiography and Shifting
Interpretations of the Death of

Sultan Mahmud Syah II

Timothy P. Barnard

Abstract

The sultan of Johor, Mahmud Syah II, was murdered in 1699. This was a key event
in Malay history, and the story has been recounted in a variety of texts, ranging
from traditional hikayat to comic books and films. In each instance, new elements
and explanations were added to the tale. These details, and the perspectives they
represent, allow for an examination of how literature and history—while ostensibly
describing events as they happened—rarely do so solely for the sake of erudition.
History is written to explain the present and inscribe the future, even when it
concerns a murder that took place more than 300 years ago.

The Author

Timothy P. Barnard is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at
the National University of Singapore. He specializes in the environmental and
cultural history of island Southeast Asia and has published books and articles
on eighteenth-century state formation, Malay identity, Malay film, and the
environmental history of Singapore. He is the author of Multiple Centres of Authority
(KITLV, 2003) and a history of the Singapore Botanic Gardens entitled Nature’s
Colony (NUS Press, 2016).

E-mail: [email protected]

Keywords

Historiography, Malay texts, Johor, Riau, Sultan Mahmud Syah II 

2 | Timothy P. Barnard

Introduction

In 1699 Sultan Mahmud Syah II, the ruler of Johor, was murdered. The death of the
childless Sultan ended a line of sovereignty that stretched from Johor back through
the Melaka sultanate and possibly to Srivijaya. In its aftermath, the rulers of Johor
had to contend with shifting loyalties and new migrant groups—particularly
Minangkabau and Bugis—in eastern Sumatra and the Riau Islands that resulted in
changes in cultures, societies and political leadership that still influence the region
today. This act of regicide, thus, can be considered to be one of the key events in
Malay history, as new rulers assumed power while important tenets of the society
were violated, beginning a process in which other groups began to assume an
identity as Malays, stake a claim to rule polities along the Melaka Strait, and
transform the culture of the region during the early modern period.

The death of Sultan Mahmud II was an event that could not be ignored in
written accounts of the period, although it was an abhorrent event in Malay society
and culture, as it was a fundamental turning point in the subsequent history of
the region. For over 300 years there have been descriptions of this act of regicide
in a variety of sources that represent the materials that any historian of the Malay
world must consider. The first accounts came from reports of European visitors
and local court diaries, and represent the closest witnesses to the event, or at
least discussions of it that occurred shortly afterward. A century later, accounts
of the murder entered the realm of traditional literature, from oral tales to written
court histories (hikayat), in which the actors and consequences were explained in
a manner that gave meaning to the world they inhabited. Finally, in the twentieth
century, accounts of the death of Sultan Mahmud entered academic studies of the
Malay past as well as popular media, such as comics and films. In each instance,
the tale supported an interpretation of these distant events that reflected the
concerns of the society in which it was written.

In her study of centuries-old Javanese texts, Nancy Florida has argued that
the writers of history are ‘inscribing the future’ when writing about the past.1
This is also applicable to the various accounts of the death of Sultan Mahmud. The
writing of history of the Malay world is one in which historians, interpreters of the
past, must negotiate between oral tales, ancient texts, and government documents,
while considering events in a context that allows the reader to understand their
surroundings while also pointing toward the society they hope to attain. The
authors of these accounts provide different perspectives in their descriptions
of events, and their re-telling of this tale reflects attempts to explain the world
around them. Whether the author is a merchant, government official, court scribe
or nationalist influences not only the account we receive, but also their reasons for
explaining it in such a manner. Just as interpretations of the ultimate significance
of the events in 1699 have varied over time, as is to be expected, descriptions of the
event have also shifted and changed, and this will be the focus of this article. These
shifting descriptions, as well as new details and accounts that have been added,
expose the various ideals and desires of the societies that re-told it, thus providing
insight into how accounts of the past are used in the Malay world. Through a
consideration of these sources, a better understanding of how one event—the death

1 Florida (1995).

the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II | 3

of a sultan—reflects changing attitudes and identities in the southern region of the
Melaka Strait, as well as the historiographical perspectives and historical sources
used to explain it, can be better understood. Before these variant versions are
interpreted, however, the significance of a murder of a sultan in the Malay world
needs to be explicated.

The Context, the Significance

The core region of the Malay world is an area that includes the various states along
the Melaka Strait and the southern regions of the South China Sea. It is an area in
which historically there have been numerous polities, which are usually centred
on river mouths and engage in trade. Due to their location along vital routes of
commerce, they have been exposed to global influences with regard to culture,
politics and society. This exposure has made Malay states among the most diverse
in the world for over a millennium. This cosmopolitan nature was particularly
true in the pre-colonial era, when Malay rulers and their societies placed a great
emphasis on receiving outsiders.

One of the key elements in Malay identity has been the ability of people to
become Malay—or ‘masuk Melayu’—not only in the sense of accepting Islam
but also embracing Malay culture. Prior to the nineteenth century Malay identity
was particularly focused around the relationship of individuals with the sultan.
Anthony Milner has described this situation as ‘ke-raja-an’, as one could not think
of an identity beyond that of being the subject of a ruler, or raja.2 This focus on
placing the individual in relation to the sultan is a common theme in oral and
textual traditions. Perhaps the most famous example of this theme can be found in
the Sulalat al-Salatin, which is more commonly known as the Sejarah Melayu. This
text, which glorifies and documents the genealogy of Melakan rulers, emphasizes
the loyalty that a ruler should expect from his followers, which was provided
in exchange for a secure environment in a region of deep forests and numerous
waterways. This was to be the basis for political and social interaction in kerajaan
throughout the region.3

The loyalty of the followers to the sultan—the basic social contract in the
Malay world—is one of the key ideological elements of Malay identity prior to
the colonial period. This mutual understanding/mutual consent, which was
continually emphasized in oral and textual tales, brought some order to a disparate
region of trading settlements along the Melaka Strait, which were filled with a
variety of reasonably distinct communities representing the cosmopolitan and
open nature of the region. It is through such tales, continually performed orally
and maintained in the courts, that rulers were able to infuse these ideals into their
followers. Thus, although settlements were filled with not only a variety of ethnic
groups, such as Bugis, Minangkabau, Javanese, Chinese, Arab, Indian and even
the occasional European, they could be designated as ‘Malay’ since the rulers who
oversaw trade and guaranteed its security followed these basic cultural tenets.
These Malay rulers reigned through not only their command of a common safe
and secure trading environment, but also through their charisma (semangat). This

2 Milner (1982).
3 Malay Annals (2009: 16); Chambert-Loir (2005).

4 | Timothy P. Barnard

nebulous quality was expressed throughout the Malay world as ‘daulat’, which
represented the supernatural power that guaranteed the wealth and prosperity
of the entire population, since a ruler’s daulat would encompass all of the ruler’s
subjects.4

While all rulers possessed daulat, the rulers of Melaka possessed a particularly
powerful version within the Malay world. Their genealogy—emphasized and
perpetuated in texts such as the Sulalat al-Salatin—traced their position, and
charisma, back to Srivijaya. This great trade empire, which dominated the Straits
region beginning in the eighth century, was centred in southeastern Sumatra.
Broadly, the Srivijaya Empire was a thalassocracy, an empire and government
based on trade, as it consisted of a series of loosely united and linked ports that
had access to both the forest products of their hinterlands as well as goods from
India and China. Through their control over the Orang Laut, or sea peoples, as well
as other orang asli (indigenous) groups, the ruler oversaw a system of trade that
funnelled valuable goods into his ports. The control over these groups was based
on the belief in a ruler’s daulat.

With the decline of the Srivijaya Empire in the thirteenth century, the cultural
matrix of international trade, control over forest products, religious beliefs and—
most importantly—daulat of the ruler was transferred to its successors, for a short
period at Temasek (now Singapore) and eventually Melaka. Although there were a
number of kerajaan in the Malay world, many were forgotten as Melaka became one
of the premier world ports of the fifteenth century. During this period genealogical
tales that linked the rulers of Melaka to their Srivijayan forebears (culturally, if
not in reality) reinforced their greatness. As these tales were written down, and
orally reinforced in a variety of ways—public performances, speeches, folk tales
and bedtime stories—they became the accepted method for understanding the
relationahip between the rakyat (people or masses) and the sultan.5

With the fall of Melaka to the Portuguese in 1511, the ruling class of Melaka
fled, along with many of their followers, to the southern regions of the Melaka
Strait. As their capital shifted from eastern Sumatra to Bintan Island to Johor, they
were continually under attack from both Portuguese and Acehnese forces. Under
these circumstances, the need to emphasize the ties of loyalty that placed the sultan
at the apex of society grew. Texts such as Sulalat al-Salatin and Hikayat Hang Tuah
became part of early, palace-based Malay literature, particularly in the southern
Melaka Strait. More importantly, within a political and social realm, these texts
reinforced the idea of ruler’s daulat, something that had to be restored following
the fall in Melaka’s fortunes after 1511. This resulted in an elevated position for the
ruler, who would act as a unifier of society, and to oppose him would bring with
it certain death, or at least years of tortuous pain. This was not only highlighted
in literary texts, but also in law codes, which made it illegal to question the sultan.
To oppose the ruler reached the level of an unthinkable sin, and was encapsulated
in the term derhaka, or treason. As quoted in the Sulalat al-Salatin, this was an
abhorrent act, as ‘it is the custom of Malays that they shall never be disloyal to their
Raja’ (‘kerana adat Melayu tiada pernah derhaka’).6

4 Wolters (1999: 15–26); Andaya (1975).
5 Wolters (1970).
6 Malay Annals (2009: 163); Liaw (1976: 170–1).

the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II | 5

Derhaka, however, did occur. The most famous example, albeit obscured in
the realm between facts and tales, was the rebellion of Hang Jebat (or, in some
versions, Hang Kasturi) against the Melakan sultan for his inability to see through
the machinations of his nobles and unfair treatment of Hang Tuah. At the end of
this tale, however, Hang Jebat is killed; his derhaka is deplorable and, according to
traditional interpretations of the text, his punishment was rightfully deserved. If
derhaka, opposing the sultan, was such a repulsive act in the Malay world, then
why would anyone in Johor contemplate killing the apex of their society, Sultan
Mahmud, in 1699? Furthermore, how would members of the society justify it in the
traditional texts that reinforce the ruler’s position in society, and allow for Johor to
continue functioning as a viable trade port and polity?

Contemporary Accounts of a Sultan’s Death

Johor in the late seventeenth century was at the height of its power. Although its
rulers had been unable to return to Melaka, they had assisted the United (Dutch)
East India Company (VOC) in 1641 in successfully expelling the Portuguese from
the port. Through an alliance with the VOC, Johor was able to gain access to trade
goods—particularly weapons—that allowed it to gain control over almost all of
the polities (negeri) in the southern Melaka Strait. As Johor expanded its control
over smaller negeri in the region, conflicts with local leaders occurred. With access
to European weapons and the riches of trade, however, Johor was able to gain the
upper hand. Much of this expansion occurred under the leadership of the Paduka
Raja Abdul Jamil, the laksamana (admiral) of Johor in the 1680s, whose position of
power was enhanced when Sultan Ibrahim of Johor died in March 1685, leaving as
his sole heir his son, Mahmud, who was too young to rule. In his stead, the Paduka
Raja acted as the regent. Over the next twelve years, regents effectively ruled Johor,
with the Paduka Raja doing so for several years followed by Bendahara (a high
official, the equivalent of a prime minister) Sri Maharaja Tun Habib Abdul Majid
until the latter’s death in 1697.7

The death of the bendahara in 1697 allowed Sultan Mahmud Syah II to assume
power over Johor. The results were disastrous. The sultan was approximately 17
years old at the time, and exhibited a ‘cruel nature’ and ‘sadistic tendencies’, with
VOC accounts noting that they believed the young sultan to be ‘ungoverned’ and
in possession of a ‘strange humour’. Ultimately, VOC reports concluded Sultan
Mahmud was one ‘who occupies himself mainly with all sorts of mean pleasures
and indecent behaviour’.8

Hints at difficulties with Sultan Mahmud as a ruler appeared prior to 1697.
In 1695 Alexander Hamilton, a Scottish sea captain, visited Johor. According
to Hamilton, the sultan, whom he estimated to be 20 years old at the time, was
‘viciously inclined… corrupted by adulation and flagitious company that… became
intolerable’.9 Hamilton continued with his description of the sultan’s behaviour as:

7 Andaya (1975); Barnard (2003).
8 While the VOC sources are mentioned in the main text, the easiest method of accessing

their accounts is through the work of Leonard Andaya (1975: 182–3).
9 Hamilton (1997: 74).

6 | Timothy P. Barnard

According to custom, [I] went to compliment His Majesty with a present,
in which was a pair of screw-barrelled pistols. He desired me to prove
them with a shot, to try how far it would penetrate a post that was at
the gate, which I did… The next time he went abroad, he tried on a poor
fellow on the street how far they could carry a ball into his flesh, and shot
him through the shoulder.10

Sultan Mahmud Syah II also exerted his personal will over visitors and the rakyat
alike. According to Hamilton:

He was a great sodomite, and had taken many of the orang kaya or nobles’
sons by force into his palace for that abominable service. A Moorish
merchant… had an handsome boy to his son, whom the king one day
saw, and would needs have him for a catamite. He threatened the father
that if he did not send him with good will, he would have him by force.11

These various activities resulted in problems within the ranks of the ruling class,
and in the years following his visit, according to Hamilton, Sultan Mahmud
‘continued his insupportable tyranny and brutality’.

This behaviour, according to European visitors, led to the murder of Sultan
Mahmud, as he was killed due to his mistreatment of a daughter of one of the
Orang Kaya, or oligarchic elite. It began with an attempt by his mother to seduce
him away from the company of males. The Sultan’s mother:

persuaded a beautiful young woman to visit him with her embraces, but
he was so far from being pleased with her conversation that he called his
black guard, and made them break both her arms for offering to embrace
his royal person. She cried, and said it was by his mother’s order she came,
but that was no excuse.

Next morning he sent a guard to bring her father’s head, but he being an
orang kaya did not care to part with it, so the tyrant took a lance in his
hand, and swore he would have it; but, as he was entering at the door, the
orang kaya passed a long lance through his heart, and so made an end of
the beast.12

This account highlights many of the details of the story that would be repeated
over the next four centuries. The primary components of the tale are that Sultan
Mahmud Syah II was a sadistic ruler who was uncontrollable; the sultan was killed
following a violation of a relative of an Orang Kaya; and the bendahara took his
place in Johor under the title of Sultan Abdul Jalil Riayat Shah IV.

Hamilton was not the only European reporter of events in Johor that
supported this basic version of events. One such account of the death of Sultan
Mahmud appeared in London in 1714, and it followed the outline of the murder in
Hamilton’s version. Some ten years earlier, a group of English sailors had become
shipwrecked in Johor. When they arrived in the main port, they were told of
events that had recently happened. As the author, Walter Vaughan, reported after

10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.: 75.
12 Ibid.: 760.

the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II | 7

his return to England, Sultan Mahmud was remembered, ‘by the inhabitants of
Jehore… [for] being a very Tyrannical Prince, who never miss’d a Day without
killing one or other with his own Hands on very frivolous Occasions’. For Vaughan,
the murder was scandalous as ‘this present King had Murthered the other with
his own Hands; that he who is Datto Bandaro at the Death of the King succeeds in
the Throne’.13

While Hamilton met Sultan Mahmud, and Vaughn heard tales told in the
port a few years after the murder, there are also accounts in the VOC archives of
the murder that were written closer to the events. The Dutch trading company
first learned of the murder in October 1699 when a Muslim trader arrived in
Melaka and told VOC authorities that Sultan Mahmud had been murdered with
the approval of most of the Orang Kaya. It was reported that this occurred due
to Sultan Mahmud’s practice of forcing the wives of Orang Kaya to appear before
him and then mistreating them. This provoked one of the Orang Kaya—with the
assistance of 30–40 armed men and the approval of the other Orang Kaya—to
attack the Sultan one morning while he was riding through the market on the
shoulders of a servant. After initially being stabbed by the Orang Kaya, the other
men fell upon the Sultan and stabbed him to death. According to the same VOC
report, Sultan Mahmud Syah was dragged naked to the bendahara’s residence
(balai), where the body lay exposed until late afternoon. Later that night, Sultan
Mahmud was wrapped in cloth, taken away and buried with little ceremony.14

A rather dry account of the murder of the Sultan of Johor also can be found
in a Malay-language source from the period, the Peringatan Sejarah Negeri Johor,
a description of events in Johor between the 1670s and the 1750s. Most likely a
diary that provided notations of significant events in the kerajaan, which would
later be used in the development of more elaborate syair (narrative poems) and
hikayat, the Peringatan Sejarah Negeri Johor simply notes that Sultan Mahmud was
killed. ‘Sultan Mahmud died, as he was killed at Kota Tinggi in the state of Makam
Tauhid and the rule (kerajaan) of Sultan Abdul Jalil Sha ibni Datu’ Bendahara
began.’15 No description of how it took place, or the motivations, is explained in
this contemporary Malay text.

The various accounts of the murder recorded soon after the events are fairly
straightforward, and have many similarities with regard to a violent act directed
toward the Malay sultan. In this regard, the absence of any concern with regard to
derhaka, a key component in traditional Malay texts, is interesting. Sultan Mahmud
is portrayed as a sadistic ruler, and his actions led his own ruling elite to commit
murder, in contemporary accounts of the events. These accounts also reflect that
such acts of violence against the Malay ruling elite were relatively common in Johor
during this period. This is also supported in existing European reports. According
to VOC accounts, it was widely understood that Sultan Mahmud’s father, Ibrahim,
was poisoned in 1685. Three of his wives were the main suspects, and they were

13 Vaughan (1714: 66); Barnard (2015: 260–1). I would like to thank Jan van der Putten and
Annabel Teh Gallop for bringing this source to my attention.

14 Andaya (1975: 186).
15 My translation. The original is: ‘maka Sultan Mahmud pun mangkat terbunuh di Kota

Tinggi dinegeri Makam Tauhid dan kerajaanlah Sultan Abdul Jalil Sha ibni Datu’
Bendahara akan naiknya’ (Peringatan Sejarah Negeri Johor, 1973: 44).

8 | Timothy P. Barnard

subsequently killed.16 In addition, in 1688 Bendahara Sri Maharaja Tun Habib
Abdul Majid did not simply replace the powerful laksamana, the Paduka Raja
during the period of Sultan Mahmud’s regency. On the orders of the Bendahara,
the Paduka Raja and other members of his family had been executed. As stated in
the Peringatan Sejarah Negeri Johor, ‘Sultan Mahmud ordered Tun Tima and several
of his military officers (hulubalang) to come with him… and waged war; when he
went ashore he captured his two children… and killed both of them.’17

The extent of such violence across a region in which the nobility has
traditionally been portrayed as living in relative harmony with the people
is extraordinary. Violent deaths and intrigue, however, were common in the
Johor court, and perhaps most Malay courts, in the late seventeenth century.
Contemporary accounts, whether written by VOC administrators interested in
maintaining commercial and diplomatic relations, an adventurous English country
trader, or even a Malay traditional diary, point toward such events as normal
activities. It is the similarity in these texts that is remarkable. Looking beyond
the dry reporting of the murder in the Malay text, they all state that an Orang
Kaya murdered Sultan Mahmud. While they do not identify the killer, they agree
that it occurred in public and with the approval of much of the rest of the Johor
ruling class. The reports of Western observers label the motivation as lying in the
‘unbearable tyranny, the growing number of arbitrary murders and his outrageous
behaviour towards the wives of the Orang Kaya’.18 It was not until the nineteenth
century, when the events of 1699 had entered the realm of folktales, moving away
from forms of writing that can be related to reporting, that a more elaborate
explanation of the events took place.

A Wife, a Jackfruit, and Popular Nineteenth-Century Accounts

One of the hallmarks of nineteenth-century Malay literature was the desire of
Western scholars to collect court texts. A number of well-known works were
commissioned, written and transported to libraries and learning institutions
throughout Europe, particularly England and the Netherlands. The most famous
of these texts for subsequent generations of scholars was Sulalat al-Salatin, which
John Leyden translated into English and Thomas Stamford Raffles eventually
published as the Malay Annals, or Sejarah Melayu. It was one of many. The legacy
of this era was the preservation of many important syair and hikayat, which were
then considered to be authoritative versions of events. As the date on which these
texts were originally recorded is difficult to determine, they are usually dated to
the year in which they were copied, not first recorded. As they were handed down
and re-copied, and came to represent the common historical heritage of a court,
they became the conduit for how events would be understood. In the process, they
also reflect how the rulers of a society would like events to be portrayed among the

16 Andaya (1975: 136).
17 My translation. The original is: ‘maka dititahkan oleh Sultan Mahmud Tun Tima dengan

beberapa hulubalang mengikut dia… lalu berperanglah terdampar didarat lalu dapat
dua beranak… lalu dibunuh keduanya’ (Peringatan Sejarah Negeri Johor, 1973: 44).
18 Andaya (1975: 186).

the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II | 9

populace.19 The same is true with the death of Sultan Mahmud, as new historians
wanted to explain the past to make sense of their nineteenth-century present while
not implicating those in charge of maintaining the texts and ruling the society.

Among the texts Europeans collected during the nineteenth century was a
tale of the Siak polity, known as the Hikayat Siak, which is a variant of Sulalat al-
Salatin. Tengku Said copied the most famous recension of this tale for Hermann
Von de Wall in 1855, and Muhammad Nuruddin Acheh subsequently re-copied
it in Batavia in 1893. The Hikayat Siak is an important text because it traces the
origins of an eastern Sumatran polity through Johor, and uses the death of Sultan
Mahmud as one of the key events in the development of the polity. This is because
Siak’s founder, Raja Kecik, traced his legitimacy through Sultan Mahmud, whom
Raja Kecik claimed was his father and whose murder was the primary motivation
for Raja Kecik’s attack on, and subsequent defeat of, Johor in 1718.20

The Hikayat Siak is based on tales that were written down in the court of
Mempawah, in western Borneo, which was ruled by an exiled branch of the Siak
royal family in the nineteenth century. While many of these tales were over a
century old, they reflected a collective memory of events in 1699. In these tales, it is
of interest that many of the motivations mentioned in contemporary reports of the
events are echoed in the text recorded over a century later. Beyond the motivations,
however, is the important issue of the consequences for this event. The account of
the 1699 murder in the Hikayat Siak exposes the concerns of a newly founded Malay
state that looks toward the glory of Melaka and its legacy as a template for rule,
and a willingness to use the past to legitimize its continuing presence in eastern
Sumatra.

According to the Hikayat Siak:

Akan baginda, tiada boleh beristeri The ruler would not have a wife
karena berbini akan peri. Tiada because he had taken a fairy as his
perduli akan kerajaan, pulang kepada wife. He did not care for his polity,
Bendahara memegang perintah while the Bendahara held the reins
negeri. Akan baginda itu, gila dengan of state. The ruler was obsessed with
bini peri itu. Dan jika baginda melihat his fairy wife. If he saw a woman
perempuan yang baik rupanya, benci with a fine appearance, he was filled
sahaja, sebab peri itu dekat baginda. with hate under the influence of the
Dan akan segala orang besar-besar, fairy. And, in his nobles he had no
baginda tiada perduli. Dan yang interest. The one who protected the
memelihara akan baginda itu, orang sultan was Sibija Wangsanya. It is he
besarnya, Sibija Wangsanya namanya. who protected the ruler.
Itulah yang memelihara baginda.

19 Maier (1988).
20 Barnard (2003: 55–73); Andaya (1975: 250–78); Ali Haji (1982: 40–60); Hikayat Siak (1992:

125–30, 274).

10 | Timothy P. Barnard

Hatta, kepada suatu hari, Sultan Then, one day, when Sultan Abdul
Abdul Jalil Syah beradu siang hari. Jalil Syah was sleeping during
Maka datang orang persembah the day, a man brought a jackfruit
nangka. Dan kepada itu waktu, as tribute. At that time, the wife
bini Megat Seri Rama masuk ke of Megat Seri Rama entered the
dalam karena ia bunting tujuh bulan. palace because she was seven
Serta dilihat nangka itu, terlalulah months pregnant. When she saw the
ingin hendak makan nangka itu, jackfruit, she was overcome with a
tiada dapat ditahan rasanya. Maka hunger for it; she could not restrain
bini Megat Serama pun datanglah, herself. Thus, the wife of Megat
mendapat akan Penghulu Istana, Serama came over to the head of
mintak nangka barang satu hulas. the palace guard and asked for one
Maka fikir Penghulu Istana, ‘Dari piece of jackfruit. The head of the
sebab ia buntinglah, maka sangat palace guard thought, ‘because she
berkehendak ini.’ Maka lalu is pregnant, she must really want it’.
diambil akannya satu hulas. Maka He then took one piece and she ate it.
dimakannyalah.

Setelah sudah, maka baginda After that, the ruler awoke from
pun bangun dari beradu…. Maka his bed…. Then the ruler… saw the
baginda… lalu terlihat kepada jackfruit and he ordered that the
nangka, lalu baginda suruh ambil. palace guard be brought before him;
Maka Penghulu Istana pun datang, the palace guard came with the
membawak akan nangka. Lalu jackfruit. He then told how he took
dipersembahkannya, mengambil satu a piece of the jackfruit and gave it
hulas, memberi bini Megat Serama, to Megat Serama’s wife because she
kerana ia mengidam hendak makan craved a piece.
nangka.

Tatkala itu, baginda di dalam At that time the ruler lost his mind
tiada ingat, kepada waktu bulan as if the moon had just risen. After
baharu timbul. Setelah baginda the ruler heard the report of the
mendengar sembah Penghulu Istana, palace guard, the ruler heard the
maka baginda mendengar sembuh pleas of the palace guard, then the
Penghulu Istana, maka baginda pun ruler laughed. The ruler ordered,
tertawah. Tuah baginda, ‘Suruhlah ‘Summon Megat Serama’s wife,
panggil bini Megat Serama itu, aku I wish to see her child as it is he
hendak melihat anaknya, iakah who ate the jackfruit.’ Thus, Megat
yang makan nangka itu.’ Maka Serama’s wife was summoned, and
dipanggillah bini Megat Serama she came. Then, her stomach was
itu. Maka ia pun dating. Maka lalu sliced open. And, that child that was
dibelah perutnya. Dan itu anak yang in her stomach was sucking on the
di dalam perut itu mengisap nangka jackfruit piece. Thus, Megat Serama’s
itu. Maka bini Megat Serama pun wife died. And, Megat Serama heard
mati. Dan kedengaranlah khabar that his wife had died, killed by the
kepada Megat Serama bininya mati, Sultan, and it was not her fault.
dibunuh Yang Dipertuan, tiada
dengan satu salahnya.21

21

21 Hikayat Siak (1992: 108). Author’s translation.

the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II | 11

Thus, the motivations for murdering Sultan Mahmud, as understood in pre-
colonial Malay society, were presented. The wife of an Orang Kaya, Megat Sri
Rama, had been killed for taking a piece of jackfruit that had been reserved for the
sultan. As the woman was pregnant, and the piece of jackfruit was found in the
child’s hands, the murder has an additional layer of poignancy. In addition, this
plot twist allows for authors to represent the vicious nature of Sultan Mahmud
that all contemporary descriptions report, while his possible preference for boys is
explicated with the presence of a mythological and mystical being (peri) who was
his wife.

This account, most importantly, also contains the identification of a single
person who committed the treasonous attack on Sultan Mahmud. While
contemporary accounts proclaimed the murderer to be an Orang Kaya, and usually
a group of them, in these newly emerging accounts the killer is identified as Megat
Sri Rama, a high official. Most importantly, he is not one of the main ministers of
state who would benefit from the murder. Finally, Megat Sri Rama is away from
the capital when his wife is murdered, and thus he does not immediately hear of
his wife’s death.

The role of Megat Sri Rama, and his absence from the inner circle of power
in Johor, also came to be an integral part of other traditional Malay accounts.
According to the Hikayat Negeri Johor serta Pahang, a traditional text copied in 1917,
Sultan Mahmud had ordered Megat Sri Rama to Linggi on a military expedition.22
Upon his return to Johor, however, Megat Sri Rama learns of the death of his wife
and unborn child. The bendahara tells Megat Sri Rama this news, and his response,
according to the Hikayat Siak, is, ‘I will commit derhaka. If Datuk wants to become
the ruler, this is the time.’ The bendahara immediately meets with the temenggung
and explains, ‘Look at He who is our Lord, we can no longer let him be our lord,
because we are ruled by a crazy man.’23 They agree to follow the wishes of Megat
Sri Rama due to the intolerable rule under which they have been living. After
meeting with the other Orang Kaya (‘orang besar-besar’), an agreement is reached in
which Megat Sri Rama will be allowed to commit derhaka. The group only feared
the dissent expected from Sri Bija Wangsa. They called for this loyal follower of
the sultan to appear before them, and trick him into thinking the Sultan believes
he wants to commit derhaka. Sri Bija Wangsa then proclaims, ‘there has never been
a Malay who has committed treason against his lord’. Accepting that the Sultan
has condemned him, Sri Bija Wangsa allows himself to be ritually killed due to
the shame.24

The short tale of Sri Bija Wangsa echoes back to the Sulalat al-Salatin with
its arguments concerning the audacity of derhaka. The placement of his tale is
highlighted to balance the tensions between justifiably acting against a tyrant and
cultural conventions prohibiting treason. It also reflects the widespread ill feelings
toward Sultan Mahmud. Although the Sultan has ‘only’ killed someone who

22 Fawzi (1983: 39).
23 My translation of: ‘dan hamba Datuk derhaka sekali ini. Dan jikalau Datuk hendak

menjadi raja, kepada inilah waktu’; and ‘Dan adalah seperti Duli Yang Dipertuan, tiada
boleh kita pertuan, kerana kita ini berajakan orang yang gila’ (Hikayat Siak, 1992: 109).
24 My translation of ‘tiada adat hamba Melayu derhaka dengan tuannya’ (Hikayat Siak,
1992: 109–10).

12 | Timothy P. Barnard

violated his prerogative, the various court nobles agree that he has overstepped
the mark. While maintaining the adat that such texts continually emphasize and
glorify, the pengarang (composer) is able to explicate the dire situation that Johor
officials faced in 1699 while also tempering it with the traditional warnings of
such activities. While mysterious deaths and murders had occurred among Johor
royalty for generations, this was one that could not be forgotten in the official
histories, particularly one that supported a court that saw itself as a successor to the
legacy of Srivijaya–Melaka–Johor. If the daulat—or sovereignty—of the ancient and
mysterious Srivijaya polity was to continue, the basic structural elements of loyalty
to a ruler needed to be reinforced, even when its artificial nature had been exposed
by the events of 1699. Since the murder could not be ignored in the literature, the
consequences needed to be emphasized.

With the remaining Orang Kaya in agreement that Sultan Mahmud needed to
be eliminated, the plan to attack him fell into place.

According to the Hikayat Siak:

Dan waktu sembahyang Jumaat pun And as the Friday prayers
sampailah. Dan penjulang baginda approached, the carriers of the ruler’s
pun sudah sedia. Maka baginda pun sedan were prepared. The ruler
naik julang, lalu berangkat sembah then climbed into the sedan so he
yang Jumaat. Serta sampai di pintu could proceed to Friday prayers. As
gerbang, maka Bendahara segala he reached the entrance gate, the
Orang Besar-besar menanti. Maka Bendahara and all of the other nobles
Megat Seri Rama pun datang, lalu awaited. Megat Seri Rama also came.
berdatang sembah, katanya, ‘Patik He arrived and presented himself,
derhaka tuanku,’ lalu diparangnya, saying, ‘Your servant commits treason
kena hulu baginda, keluar darah my lord’, and he attacked with his
putih, memancar serperti santan dan parang, hitting the ruler’s head. White
kulit kepala menudung ke muka, dan blood spurted like milk squeezed
baginda pun bertitah, ‘Hai, Megat from a coconut from his scalp and
Sri Rama engkau derhaka.’ Baginda covered his face, and the ruler stated,
mintak lepas akan kepada orang ‘Behold, Megat Sri Rama, you are
yang menjulang dan dilarikan oleh committing treason.’ The ruler
orang menjulang. Maka lalu ditikam ordered his sedan carrier to release
baginda, penjulang pun mati. Dan him but he carried the ruler away.
baginda sampai di tanah. So the ruler stabbed him and the
sedan carrier died. The ruler fell to
the ground.

Maka Megat Seri Rama datang, Megat Seri Rama approached, and
lalu ditikamnya baginda, lalu kena he stabbed the ruler, hitting his side.
rusuk baginda. Maka Megat Seri Then Megat Seri Rama ran; he was
Rama pun larilah dan dikejar oleh chased by the ruler, who could not
baginda, tiada dapat. Lalu dilotar catch him. Then, the ruler threw his
baginda dengan kerisnya, kena celah keris at him, which struck between
jari kakinya. Maka Seri Rama kena his toes. Thus Megat Seri Rama was
bias keris baginda itu, tiada terjalan stricken by the poison of the ruler’s
lagi. Maka ditakdirkan Allah Taala, keris and could no longer walk. As
tumbuh rumput di celah lukanya, God had willed, grass grew from the
empat tahun, hidup tiada, mati tiada, wound for four years, between life
menanggung seksa dan derhakanya. and death he suffered, such was the
torture for treason.

the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II | 13

Dan baginda pun lalu dibawak The ruler then was carried inside
oranglah masuk ke dalam Istana…. the palace…. The ruler then died,
Maka baginda pun mangkat, lalu and he was buried at Kota Tinggi.
ditanamkan oranglah di Kota
Tinggi.25

25

Thus, while the majority of Johor nobles are complicit in the death of Sultan
Mahmud, the murder is the responsibility of one person, Megat Sri Rama. This
allows the Bendahara and Temenggung to assume the positions of Sultan and Yang
Dipertuan Muda in the polity without any guilt, while Megat Sri Rama suffers
the fate of one who commits derhaka, experiencing a painful wound to his foot in
which grass begins to grow, a condition that lasts for years. Beyond an accounting
of the consequences of murdering a sultan, which corresponds to the pedagogical
and cultural intentions of these texts, the murder as described in the Hikayat Siak
follows the basic outline as set down in accounts written soon after the events.

The nineteenth-century texts, however, create additional details that inject
new vibrancy into the story that reflect the concerns of the pengarang as well as
changes in the society. Among the new features of the tale in the Hikayat Siak is
that Sultan Mahmud was being carried on a palanquin when he was stabbed.
When combined with the Hamilton and VOC versions, which in the former claims
the Sultan was stabbed with a long lance and in the latter while being carried on
one servant’s shoulders through the market, even local accounts reflect that the
Sultan was killed in public. Another interesting aside to the descriptions is the
date of the murder. None of the contemporary reports claim that the murder took
place on a Friday while the Sultan was on his way to the mosque for prayers. While
the murder took place sometime in August 1699, the actual day is uncertain. The
latter accounts that describe Sultan Mahmud as being on his way to the mosque for
prayers, however, add sanctity to the story and his heritage. Whether the murder
occurred on a Friday was unimportant to writers in the eighteenth century. It was
not a significant enough point to record. The nineteenth-century stress on this plot
point reflects a focus on Islam within the states that sponsored the maintenance
of the text, along with a concern for the consequences of opposing a ruler.26 This is
further emphasized in a more famous account of the murder of Sultan Mahmud,
which appeared in the 1860s and used the Hikayat Siak as a source. This text is the
Tuhfat al-Nafis.

Written by a member of the Riau elite, the Tuhfat al-Nafis is a transitional
text in Malay literature. The author, Raja Ali Haji, was a friend, confidant and
assistant to Hermann von de Wall, who had been tasked with the development of
a Malay–Dutch dictionary and a Malay grammar for the colonial government of
the Netherlands East Indies. Due to this relationship, Raja Ali Haji had access to
the various texts that the German was collecting for the government. Among these
texts was the Hikayat Siak, which Raja Ali Haji combined with other accounts to

25 My translation from Hikayat Siak (1992: 112).
26 The Peringatan Sejarah Negeri Johor (1973: 44) only reports that it took place in hijrah year

1111. According to the Tuhfat al-Nafis, the murder took place during the month of Safar

(Ali Haji, 1982: 42, 323; Barnard, 2009).

14 | Timothy P. Barnard

develop a form of writing that compared sources in a modern manner.27 By taking
a more traditional hikayat, and comparing it to other sources, Raja Ali Haji was able
to create another version of the murder, one that reflected the aims and concerns of
mid-nineteenth-century Riau. Befitting such an approach, he mentions that there
are three conflicting accounts of the events. From these three accounts—which
follow the Hikayat Siak for the most part—Raja Ali Haji is able to infuse his own
spin on the events of 1699.

In his account, Raja Ali Haji describes how the sultan murdered Megat Sri
Rama’s wife for eating a piece of jackfruit; how Megat Sri Rama was upset upon
learning of these events and ‘wept and anger overcame his sense of reason’; how
he approached the bendahara proclaiming his desire to commit derhaka; and, how
Megat Sri Rama attacked the sultan on his way to Friday prayers.28 In the Tuhfat
al-Nafis version, however, Megat Sri Rama is killed immediately due to a keris that
the sultan throws hitting the attacker. Thus, the version in the Tuhfat al-Nafis does
not focus on the event as one cloaked in derhaka in which the attacker suffers grass
growing out of the wound. In addition, Sultan Mahmud dies immediately; he is
not carried back to the palace or mosque, where he can state his last wishes. As
the Tuhfat al-Nafis is a text that justifies the presence of a Bugis elite in Riau, and a
Malay nobility descended from the Bendahara who replaced Sultan Mahmud, the
daulat of the court—and the underlying treason that led to its emergence—was not
to be questioned nor the focus of any lingering doubts.

The death of Sultan Mahmud as depicted in these two texts—the Hikayat
Siak and Tuhfat al-Nafis—became the standard for how the events of 1699 were to
be understood in the Malay world for subsequent generations. The continuing
focus—or purposeful avoidance—of the issue of derhaka reflects a difference that
can be traced to the goals of the texts and how the courts that produced them
were inscribing their future. Both texts began to infuse an Islamic element into the
tale, reflecting how the religion had become an increasingly important element in
Malay identity. The ruler now had to prove that his presence was no longer based
on a magical daulat, but his right to rule the people through justice, and being
accountable to God. As Islam grew as the bond of the society, moving political
legitimacy away from an unquestioned ruler, religion became a key motif in the
death. Sultan Mahmud may have been sadistic in his treatment of Megat Sri Rama’s
wife and unborn child, but he was murdered while trying to fulfil his obligations
as a Muslim; he was going to the mosque for Friday prayers.

The two versions of events depicted in the Hikayat Siak and Tuhfat al-Nafis,
however, were not the only account of these events written in the nineteenth
century. At the time that Hermann von de Wall was working with Raja Ali Haji
collecting texts and developing grammars and dictionaries, the highest Dutch
official in Riau was Eliza Netscher, who would write a history of Johor and Siak,
and Dutch relations with the two polities. The work, De Nederlanders in Djohor
and Siak, was published in 1870 and was the key historical source, particularly
for Westerners, on the region for almost a century. Although Netscher was well
known for his use of a combination of VOC archival material and traditional texts,
he based his account of Sultan Mahmud’s murder on the Hikayat Siak and Tuhfat al-

27 Barnard (2001); Lawrence (2006); van der Putten and al Azhar (1995).
28 Ali Haji (1982: 42).

the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II | 15

Nafis, reinforcing how these texts would become the dominant conduit for the tale
in the region. Despite using these two traditional Malay texts, Netscher provides
only a basic outline and dryly describes that the motivation was ‘a high noble’s
wife, who hungered for a piece of jackfruit reserved for the Sultan, and eaten it
without his permission, had been sliced open on the ruler’s orders’.29 Although
Netscher’s account brought the story back to Europe, it was quickly forgotten as
a footnote in the region’s history. The role of new details in twentieth-century
accounts, based around the tale of a wife, her desire for a piece of jackfruit, and a
vengeful husband, remained and continued to add to the tale and reflect changes
that Malay society was undergoing.

Scholarship and Independence in the Twentieth Century

The events in Johor in 1699 fell into anonymity in the early twentieth century. They
were hidden in relatively obscure Malay texts, stored away in archives in Europe,
or in the pages of limited edition books or histories that were not reprinted for
years. The Hikayat Siak, for example, was kept in various institutions in Leiden,
London and Jakarta, with few knowing of its existence. As scholars interested
in the region’s history focused more on the movement and desires of Europeans,
or read through the Sulalat al-Salatin as it came to be ‘the’ history of ‘the’ Malays,
events in the early modern period faded into obscurity. It was not until the 1930s
that the tale would appear again in printed texts. When it did re-emerge, the
murder of Sultan Mahmud would have to fit into new political and social contexts
in which it was consumed.

The tale of the murder of Sultan Mahmud first re-surfaced in History of
Johor, which the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (MBRAS) originally
published in 1932. The author was Richard Winstedt, a scholar who played an
important role in the development of the colonial educational system in Malaya.
In 1931 Winstedt became the General Advisor to Johor. During this period
MBRAS was experiencing financial difficulties, and following a promise of an
annual contribution of $250 from the Johor government, and a one-time additional
contribution of $700, Winstedt’s History of Johor appeared as the December 1932
issue of the Society’s journal. His Jawi version of the Tuhfat al-Nafis followed in the
April the next year.30 Winstedt, who was familiar with the literature of the region,
combined both Alexander Hamilton’s description of events as well as the Tuhfat al-
Nafis for the first time, but in many respects he echoed Netscher’s earlier account,
which had melded the traditional account with a few Western observations, in this
instance Alexander Hamilton’s, while Netscher had used VOC reports.31 Winstedt’s
key contribution, however, was to re-introduce the tale to scholarly audiences, who
would use it as a vital component of their understandings of the Malay world in
histories that would be written in the decades that followed.

Changes in how history was understood and re-told in Southeast Asia after

29 ‘eene hoog zwargere vrouw, die haren lust naar eene enkele pit van eene voor den
Sulthan bestemde nangka-vrucht niet had kunnen bedwingen, den buik te laten
opensnijden’ (Netscher, 1870: 42).

30 Andaya (2003: 26); Choy (1995: 96–9).
31 Winstedt (1992: 56–8).

16 | Timothy P. Barnard

World War II occurred alongside the independence movements in both Indonesia
and Malaya, and were promoted by both foreign and local scholars who looked at
these materials in a new light as they began to look beyond glorified accounts of
a European presence to better understand local history or, as John Smail famously
dubbed it, ‘autonomous history’.32 While their focus was not specifically on the
death of Sultan Mahmud, scholars who were not linked to the colonial enterprise,
nor justifying their presence as rulers, began to use these texts as the sources for
their studies. Primary among these was Leonard Andaya, who was interested in
studying the history of Johor in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century with
a focus on the forces that shaped it during the period.33 In this quest, he used both
Malay texts and European archival materials as legitimate sources of the past,
referring to each and understanding their contexts. With regard to Malay texts,
philologists, such as Virginia Matheson Hooker and R. Roolvink, assisted Andaya
by bringing attention to the Tuhfat al-Nafis and Hikayat Siak. The transliteration
from Jawi of both texts, and the translation into English of the Tuhfat al-Nafis,
allowed for their exposure to new audiences. Using these sources, Andaya came
to the conclusion that the death of Sultan Mahmud was a turning point in Malay
history. The derhaka committed in 1699 severed the daulat of Johor–Melaka rulers.
As Andaya posited, ‘The ruler was no longer the ‘sacred lodestone’ around which
the community evolved and gained its meaning and purpose.’34 Andaya’s focus on
the story allowed for previously obscure texts to come to the fore where the public
was able to consider them as relevant accounts of a past in which Malays are the
focus, while explaining the rise of new diverse polities along the Melaka Strait in
the eighteenth century.

While the work of Western scholars with this material shifted understandings
of sources and accounts of Southeast Asian history, they did little to reflect new
versions of the tales and how they were being used to understand the twentieth-
century Malay world. While they were written in the Malay language, they were
Western-style approaches to local history that simply focused on the facts. Most
prominent among these new Malay-language histories was Haji Buyong Adil’s
Sejarah Johor, which the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka published in 1971 as part of
a nationalistic approach to create local histories in Malay. In this respect, these
histories—almost all written by Haji Buyong Adil—are a response to those MBRAS
sponsored in the 1930s. These histories broke little new ground. Although a
nationalistic historian wrote the history of Johor in Malay, the account of Sultan
Mahmud’s murder mirrors that of Winstedt, the colonial scholar from Britain. In
his account, Haji Buyong Adil lists the major events in Johor during this period
with headings that introduce each section. For the events of 1699, he directly quotes
the Tuhfat al-Nafis, which had quickly become the authoritative text of the events.35
A similar description of the murder of Sultan Mahmud can be seen on the other
side of the Melaka Strait in Sejarah Riau, an Indonesian textbook that was produced
in the 1970s.36 While accounts in Malay discuss the role of Megat Sri Rama and the

32 Smail (1961).
33 Andaya (1975).
34 Ibid.: 190).
35 Buyong (1980: 94–6).
36 Lutfi et al. (1977).

the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II | 17

vengeance over his wife’s death, and the role of a piece of jackfruit, they are quite
dry, harkening back to the almost diary-like approach found in the Peringatan
Sejarah Negeri Johor. At most, these accounts were part of the legacy of Raja Ali Haji.
Their goal was to go back to describe events with the necessary scholarly footnotes
and citations to support their versions, removing the playful nature of traditional
Malay writing.37

While official histories were becoming dry accounting of facts, with little
discussion of the implications of the event, new forms of the tales were being
produced through more popular forms of expression, such as theatre, juvenile
literature and film. These popularized forms represent modernized public
performances, much like hikayat and syair in the pre-modern era. In these
new formats the murder of Sultan Mahmud would gain new traction, as it
became a metaphor for events and making them applicable to the modern age.
These versions centred the events in a milieu of decolonization and growing
nationalism, in which the creators of histories infused the tale with commentaries
on modernity and individuality as they questioned the status quo in society and
offered possible alternatives. As film, popular novels and comics were becoming
new forms of conveying cultural and historical information to mass audiences,
previously unimagined in their extent, their producers often turned to hikayat
for source material. Just as Raja Ali Haji had begun to question and change the
tale, using Islam as the background, in these versions modernity and the politics
of independence influenced the plots. In the process these traditional tales were
updated, as they began to question the relationship between rulers and subjects in
an independent society, instead of reinforcing the infallibility of the ruler. Among
the many tales that were in these new artistic forms was the murder of Sultan
Mahmud in 1699.38

Sultan Mahmud Mangkat Dijulang (Sultan Mahmud who Died while Being
Carried Aloft) is a 1961 film made in Singapore at Cathay Keris Studios that K.
M. Baskar directed with Nordin Ahmad as Megat Sri Rama and Maria Menado
as his wife, and based on a popular play from the 1950s. Salleh Ghani wrote the
screenplay for the film, and M. Amin stars as Sultan Mahmud. The film follows
the basic outline of Sultan Mahmud’s murder in the Hikayat Siak and Tuhfat al-Nafis.
In the film version, however, Seri Bija Wangsa is not a loyal retainer of the Sultan,
but a jealous and conniving noble, while Megat Sri Rama is from outside court
circles. He is a commoner, who achieves his laksamana status due to his ability in
fighting Lanun pirates. This quick rise to fame creates jealousy in the court, which
Seri Bija Wangsa tries to exploit. This conniving noble spreads rumours of further
Lanun attacks, which Megat Sri Rama is sent to address. Seri Bija Wangsa then
attempts to seduce Megat Sri Rama’s wife, although she is in an advanced state of
pregnancy; he is rejected. Since her husband is away for a long period of time, due
to his responsibilities related to his service to the sultan, Megat Sri Rama’s wife
has difficulty finding food and sustenance. The insensitivity of the court nobles
forces the pregnant woman to convince a man who guards a jackfruit tree that is
reserved for the sultan to give her a piece, despite his concern for the consequences.
When the sultan discovers the missing piece of fruit, he does not laugh and calmly

37 Maier (2004).
38 van der Putten and Barnard (2007).

18 | Timothy P. Barnard

request the presence of Megat Sri Rama’s wife, as in the traditional tale; he flies into
a furious rage demanding that she be brought before him. The Sultan demands that
his nobles kill her. When one retainer refuses to kill the woman, Seri Bija Wangsa
stabs the servant and then kills the wife of Megat Sri Rama.

The film, up to his point, has already started to focus on new elements in the
tale. Seri Bija Wangsa is not a loyal retainer, but an equally unstable retainer who
easily manipulates Sultan Mahmud. Instead of the noble, righteous defender of
daulat, Seri Bija Wangsa—the loyal defender of the sultan in nineteenth-century
accounts—is now the antagonist who hinders the rise of a charismatic individual.
This shift in focus away from the rights reserved to royalty to the pettiness of
court politics, and how it is contrary to exemplary Malay adat, is reflected in the
fury that Sultan Mahmud exhibits. He does not speak in a calm voice; he does
not deserve respect. These scenes move beyond a tale that is rooted in the Tuhfat
al-Nafis to one that reflects the understanding of a modern Malay society in the
1950s. This modern element becomes even more apparent following the death of
Megat Sri Rama’s wife. The debate now turns to whether or not Sultan Mahmud
should be killed.

Upon his return to the court in Sultan Mahmud Mangkat Dijulang, Megat Sri
Rama is determined to murder the sultan in the name of justice (‘keadilan’). When
he approaches the bendahara with his plan, it is the bendahara who proclaims
that contemplating derhaka is a serious violation of adat. The bendahara thus subtly
supports the ruler in the sense that he is not overtly opposed to his rule; the
bendahara does not manipulate events behind the scenes, as in Hikayat Siak and
Tuhfat al-Nafis. Because of this, the debate is no longer about derhaka. It is now about
justice and the fair treatment of all subjects in the state—or as Megat Sri Rama and
his allies claim, his perjuangan (‘struggle’, a covert Indonesian-inspired reference for
the Independence movement)—reflecting ideals of modernity and equality that
were sweeping through Indonesia and Malaya at the time. It was a period in which
ideas of how the individual fits within society, without sultans, took place. Justice
(keadilan), a complex blend of Muslim ideology and nineteenth-century colonial
ideals, was now more important than daulat, and such ideals would be spread
through film to a mass audience.

The film Sultan Mahmud Mangkat Dijulang represents a new form of story
telling, an updating of the hikayat tradition, that moved the form away from the
control of the royal courts and into the hands of nationalists. Thus, the tale has
shifted from an explanation of how Johor came to be ruled by a bendahara, and
the consequences of derhaka. In a modern world of independent nations, the tale
now is about justice and the rights of the individual. Sultans would now have to
follow the rules, just as any member of the rakyat would be expected to do. The era
of ‘feudalism’ was over.

The re-telling of the story in new formats, and with a new justification, was
mirrored in other forms of literature that were produced in New Order (1967–98)
Indonesia. These tales used the death of Sultan Mahmud in 1699 as reflective of a
society in which New Order values were to be upheld. The tales also focused on
the Indonesian-based (at least in a modern context) ruler of the Siak polity who
claimed Mahmud was his father; this ruler was Raja Kecil—or ‘Kecik’. In the
1967 novel Radja Ketjil: Badjak Laut di Selat Melaka (Raja Kecil: Pirate in the Melaka
Straits), H. Rosihan Anwar—a prominent Indonesian journalist for a number of

the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II | 19

periodicals and a founder of PERFINI (Persatuan Filem Indonesia—the Indonesian
Film Association)—describes a world of violence from which the protagonists
must move beyond to forge a new society. In the novel Rosihan describes a scene
in which Raja Kecil oversees the Johor court following his conquest of the state
in 1718. While ordering the capture of various nobles from the recently defeated
state, he reminisces about the recent history of the polity and how the nobles had
killed Sultan Mahmud, and the reasons for doing so. Among the tales he mentions
are those an ‘English’ sea captain named Hamilton, who witnessed a number of
sadistic acts that Sultan Mahmud committed, relate to the future Siak ruler. Raja
Kecil also recounts tales of jackfruits and murdered wives, until he concludes,
‘conspiracies, murders, and cruelty were common in Johor’.39 When asked whether
he should avenge those who had killed Sultan Mahmud, Raja Kecil responds,
‘What has happened must be forgotten and now we must create a new history for
the kingdom of Johor.’40 Written during a period in which the killings in Indonesia
related to events in 1965 were still fresh in the memory, this plea for peace and new
beginnings—while also referring to the Hamilton and traditional versions—places
the murder of Sultan Mahmud in a modern context of a nation emerging from a
period of intense violence. It was no longer about the struggle for independence
and modernity, but moving beyond the atrocities many had witnessed in the
previous few years.

The New Order era in Indonesia, which originated from this violence, was a
period in which there were concerted attempts to document the various cultures
throughout the Archipelago. Cultures and their artefacts—including its tales—
were categorized rigidly into a supposedly rational and logical order, but often
devoid of local meaning or context. During this period each province produced
books containing compilations of folk tales or descriptions of traditional musical
instruments that were common in the region and labelled as part of the dominant
ethnic group of that province. The list of these books is endless. As part of this
process Riau was designated as ‘the’ Malay province, and employees of the
Department of Education and Culture moved throughout the region collecting
information to fit the template for the books that were sent from Jakarta. Beyond
the efforts of the Department of Education and Culture, local authorities also
copied this system in an attempt to document their own cultures. The tale of Sultan
Mahmud’s murder appeared within the pages of these books, and continued to fit
the tenure of the times.

A fairly straightforward re-telling of the murder of Sultan Mahmud—based
on the eighteenth-century tales of jackfruits and vengeful husbands—appeared in
one of these books in the late 1980s. It was written as part of the effort to focus on
local histories as part of the larger national meta-narrative. The author of Raja Kecil:
Raja Siak Pertama (Raja Kecil: The First King of Siak), Sudarno Mahyudin, much like
H. Rosihan Anwar, was a journalist. However, he is from eastern Sumatra where
many of the events took place. As he brought a local tale to national attention, he
incorporated the various tales that existed in both oral and written traditional
literature. The rendering of the tale erased any local context or significance. It now

39 Anwar (1967: 30–2).
40 Ibid.: 33.

20 | Timothy P. Barnard

fit into the Indonesian narrative of resistance and national heroes.41
Another example of how the tale was updated to fit contemporary contexts,

and larger political concerns, can be clearly seen in a Malaysian comic book
produced in 1996. Laksamana Bentan (The Admiral of Bentan) is part of a ‘klasik’
comic book series of in the mid-1990s—which included titles such as Puteri Gunung
Ledang and Badang—that the company Komik Creative reproduced to allow wider
access to traditional tales of the Malay world. While the tale of this comic follows
the plot of the 1961 film, with its tale of jackfruit eaten and rulers murdered, the
focus of this tale is not on a struggle for justice and independence, but the stubborn
nature of the sultan. Based on his inability to treat his subjects fairly and with
humility, the sultan must die. The death of Sultan Mahmud—according to the
author—is a result of his ‘kesombongan’ (arrogance), which is displayed in numerous
panels in the comic book as his advisors plead with him not to murder the wife of
one of his most loyal warriors.42 When he confronts the sultan, Megat Seri Rama
is reminded that it is adat (tradition) for followers to not question the actions of
a sultan. Megat Seri Rama responds that the ruler no longer should receive the
loyalty of the masses since he no longer acts with respect towards his subjects. This
response—in the mid-1990s—echoes the attempts of the Mahathir government to
limit the powers of the sultans in the Malaysian constitution following a series of
embarrassing incidents involving royal families, including reportedly the murder
of followers. In such a manner a traditional tale is updated to fit the political
context of the time in which it is re-told, and point toward a society in which an
ideal future is being inscribed.

The inscribing of the future continued in the 1990s with the development of
local histories that fit a larger Indonesian context, and were rooted in the goals
of the late New Order period. This occurred under the auspices of Grasindo,
a subsidiary of Gramedia, which published a series of folk tales from various
regencies (kabupaten) throughout Indonesia. Among these books was Cerita Rakyat
dari Bintan, which B. M. Syamsuddin edited. The final tale in the collection, titled
‘Datuk Putih Laksemana Bentan’, describes the events in a fashion similar to the
film Sultan Mahmud Mangkat Dijulang, just as the Malaysian comic of the same
period had. In this account, the two main characters are Datuk Putih and his wife
Wan Anom, who travel from Bintan to Johor, where the Sultan proclaims Datuk
Putih to be the laksamana. When Datuk Putih is ordered to fight Lanun in the
region, he asks for and receives the assurance of the Sultan that his wife will be
looked after, since she is pregnant. The rest of the tale follows the film plot. As a
conclusion, however, Syamsuddin writes:

The biography of Laksemana Bentan itself is present in a variety of forms.
There is the story that focuses on ‘Sultan Mahmud Who Died while being
Carried Aloft’. There is the story ‘The Laksamana Bentan’s Keris’ and
there is also one that is known as ‘Megat Seri Rama’. Nevertheless they
all revolve around the same concept, which is the historical tale about ‘the
curse for seven generations’ that Sultan Mahmud Syah II, who is buried at
Kota Tinggi, Johor, placed on Datuk Putih, who had the title Laksamana
Bentan and is buried at Bukit Batu in Bintan Tua.

41 Mahyudin (1987); Barnard (1994); Barnard (1997).
42 Adi (1996: 32).

the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II | 21

At another level, this story contains educational value. In it is a description
that if you do not fulfil your promises the results are always terrible.43

The tale has shifted once again. It has become a morality tale about keeping
promises. Previous foci of the story, ranging from violence, daulat and derhaka to
justice and the struggle of the modern individual, are shunted to the side as the
responsibilities of citizens to be honest under the New Order, and move beyond
the violence that had given birth to it, are featured. While the tale continues to be
told, and will undergo countless future transformations, in each instance the facts
described will be allowed to shift to fit new goals and ideals.

Conclusion

In 1699 a court noble murdered Sultan Mahmud, the ruler of Johor and a
descendant of the rulers of Srivijaya and Melaka. The death of Sultan Mahmud led
to a re-configuration of the Johor ruling family. As he was childless, the Bendahara
rose to take Sultan Mahmud’s place as the head of state, leading to an era of conflict
and change in the eighteenth-century Malay world. Beyond these basic statements,
little is known about the facts and motivations of the actors as well as the details of
the murder. The closest account of the event was related second hand by a trader
who stopped in Melaka in October 1699. Since then, depictions of the murder have
been expanded with numerous details added that reflect the desires of those who
tell the tale again. While the consequences were many, the details of what ‘really’
happened on that date will never be known; that is fine. The study of literature and
history is not about ‘what actually happened’ but an understanding of how the past
has been used to shape our understanding of current society. It is the consequences
of actions, and their interpretations, that is the cornerstone of any history.

As an examination of the various accounts of the murder of Sultan Mahmud
has shown, the authors use the tale to emphasize the core values of the societies
that produced the texts. Whether it is the Islamic rationality of Raja Ali Haji,
the focus on derhaka amongst the pengarang of the Hikayat Siak, or the modern,
nationalistic world of Salleh Ghani, the flesh that they place on the skeleton of
the tale presents a reflection of their own society. In the process they are writing
about the past to explain current circumstances in Malay society. History, while
describing the past, is rarely about explaining events solely for erudition. It is
written to explain the present and inscribe the future, even when it is about a
murder over four hundred years ago.

43 My translation of: Riwayat Laksemana Bentan sendiri berbagai macam peng-
gambarannya. Ada penggambaran yang berpusat pada ‘Sultan Mahmud Mangkat di
Julang’, ada juga yang manamakan ‘Keris Laksamana Bentan’, dan masih ada pula
yang menyebut ‘Megat Seri Rama’. Namun pergertiannya satu, yakni kisah bersejarah
tentang ‘sumpuh tujuh kerturunan’ pihak Sultan Mahmud Syah II kerabat Kota Tinggi
Johor, sepihak lagi Datuk Putih gelar Laksamena Bentan kerabat Bukit Batu Bintan Tua.
Di sisi lain, cerita ini mengandung nilai pendidikan. De dalamnya tergambar bahwa
memungkiri janji itu selalu berakibat buruk (Syamsuddin, 1995: 54).

22 | Timothy P. Barnard

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