The Untouchable Sultan, Brunei
Retelling Magellan’s Southeast Asia
Upper left corner: 崑崙 / Kūnlún, possibly generic name for a far place
500 years ago on July 15th, 1521, Magellan’s crewmen received the audience of a wealthy Muslim monarch. It would be half a century before any monarch so far East would actively practice Christian culture and ritual. The following short story retells an Italian man’s firsthand account of the experience. It also draws inspiration from additional anthropological sources on the era.
Brief notes on modern connections and broader history follow after the narrative.
The party of voyagers passed under the jowls of the cannons shaped into monsters’ heads that leered out from the wall, its towers, and its gate. Antonio Pigafetta squinted upward at them from the back of the elephant that had carried him, Carvalho, and little Carvalhinho up from the riverside.
“Fifty-six,” Captain-General Carvalho said softly. He had counted the cannons.
As the shadow of the gate fell over them, Antonio looked ahead and watched the pale haunches of the leading elephant emerge into light. Around it was an open courtyard of bare dirt. Just as on the road behind them, spearmen stood tall around the courtyard perimeter with bare chests and white silk lined with gold wrapped around their waists.
Pigafetta’s gaze drifted across the wide space, past rows of thick steps made from thick bamboo, and finally to a broad façade of bamboo slats between dark timber columns. The slats were plain and lightly colored, but each column was intricately carved with patterns varying from graceful flowers to entrancing abstract shapes. The facade rose to an overhanging thatched roof.
The White Elephant ahead made a loop around the courtyard while the other elephants — one carrying Pigafetta, the General, his attendant, Carvalho, and Carvalhinho; the other carrying Elcano, Espinosa, and the two “Griegos” — knelt in the center. Antonio absentmindedly steadied himself as the elephant lowered to its knees. He had to take his eyes off the palace when he slipped down from the giant creature’s shoulder.
A whistle from Carvalho grabbed Antonio’s attention and he reached up to help young Carvalhinho to the ground. Carvalho senior thudded to the dirt a moment after, but Pigafetta was already crossing the plaza towards the palace steps. Two guards stood tall on either side of the open door. And a crowd of older men decked in gold jewelry and fine silks were coming out on the steps to greet the party. Each had many gemstone rings on their fingers and gold hanging from their earlobes. Some had necklaces and arm-rings of pearls.
Over his shoulder, Pigafetta heard the attendant to the General of Brunei announce them and invite Carvalho inside. As he followed, the Italian man gazed all over the carvings in the architecture. He only occasionally glanced around at the local lords to return their looks and nod his head in greeting as he ascended the steps. Soon they were all passing into the shade of the palace.
On the inside, the carved pillars reached high up to rafters of the same thick timber. The uppermost layer of thatch roofing reached over the tops of the walls with space for air to pass through. Warm sunlight fell through two broad windows high in the walls to each side.
Across the smooth wood floor, more spearmen wearing white silk wraps stood guard along the walls. The lords of Brunei shuffled in and seated themselves with crossed legs on the near end of the hall. The opposite end of the hall was half the distance a crossbow could fire, Pigafetta judged. He could perceive people sitting in dim light that passed through a wall of silk behind them; they were thin curtains draping from the high ceiling to the floor.
Carvalho had already sauntered past but the General’s attendant, their guide, rushed ahead and placed a hand lightly against Carvalho’s vest, stopping him. Though his eyes had not yet adjusted, Pigafetta saw the attendant smiling and gesturing towards the floor behind Carvalho.
And then the tall curtains parted, letting in light. The distant silhouette of a man sitting on cushions appeared in the center of another hall, smaller than the vast space where Pigafetta stood, and higher by several steps. A large opening in the far wall was throwing light down on this man, the Sultan, making visible an outline of a man’s upper body.
A shadow moved next to the Sultan, reaching for something on a low table in front of them: it seemed to be a young boy sitting close next to him. The Attendant had suddenly turned and begun an elaborate bow. He seemed to raise his hands before his face and lift each foot one at a time, then finally reach his hands forward still clasped together. He quickly instructed the voyagers of the Armada in the same ritual, and Pigafetta and the others tried to oblige very awkwardly. Then they took their seats against the hard wooden floor, lining up in a row alongside each other, with the attendant seated a few steps ahead of them.
Looking again up the hall, Antonio could now see that several women sat behind the Sultan and the boy. But no other man was anywhere near the ruler, apparently.
Their guide began to speak in his mix of Malay and broken Portuguese accented by gestures. He explained how the Captain-General would “speak” with the Sultan. He waved toward a man sitting halfway up the hall and indicated, as far as Pigafetta could make out, that the other man was of higher rank than him.
“He speaks to the Sultan for you?” João Carvalho interrupted. But the Malay man shook his head no.
“That man speaks to… the General’s brother over there.” He gestured toward another man further away. This one was scowling in a dimly lit corner below the steps. He seemed in Pigafetta’s eyes to be older, more rigid, and more stoic than the first messenger.
“He speaks into a… a…” The man rolled his hands in the air awkwardly. “…A sumpitan,” he finally said.
“Zarabatana,” Pigafetta offered. A blowpipe.
And the Malay guide nodded. “He speaks through the blowpipe to the man next to Sultan.”
“Our gifts,” Carvalho said curtly while staring down the length of the palace to the distant Sultan of Brunei.
The guide nodded modestly and waved the gift-bearers forward — the locals who had carried their offerings in jars in front of the elephants on the path up the hill. The first higher-ranking man approached and met the twelve gift-bearers a few steps further ahead. They stopped in an orderly row and each placed their jars on the floor, then shuffled backward with eyes cast down until they were behind the voyagers again.
The royal intermediary had taken a single jar and was walking up the hall towards the General’s brother, who then carried the jar up the steps. And finally the silhouette of the boy next to the Sultan rose, walked over to pick up the silhouetted jar, and returned with it to his cushions next to the ruler.
In this way, formal negotiations began between the Holy Emperor’s Armada de Molucca and the Moro Sultan of Brunei. Antonio Pigafetta patiently observed the exchange of goods acquired by Spain in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle-East; each offering was delivered across the two halls in the same laborious process. And then messages of peacemaking and trade requests were passed between Captain-General Carvalho and the Sultan. Pigafetta had earlier asked his guide what they call their ruler here in Brunei. The Malay had answered that he is called many things: Nakhoda Ragam, Bolkiah, Sultan Kelima… But the one most memorable to him was Raya Siripada, which Pigafetta was made to understand meant “King Laughter.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The deck of the Raya-Matu’s jong ship rocked beneath the feet of Mabilis. The young swordbearer steadied themselves against the rail and peered far across the water to watch. There, ships from Luzon and Borneo were engaging together against enemy ships from the other side of Brunei Bay. The sounds of war gongs and drums beat across the distance accompanied by the occasional shout, or the rising shanties of furious rowers as they charged their parao boats into the storm of arrows and spears.
“You’re not training today?” The navigator Salam said from close by. Mabilis would have been startled if not for the way that’s Salam’s voice was always so calm and steady.
Mabilis frowned, almost offended at the question, “What’s the point in training when there’s REAL fighting happening right there?” The young warrior pointed with their lips toward the sea skirmish.
Salam laughed lightly and asked just as innocently, “isn’t the point to get ready for that? So isn’t now as good a time as any?”
Mabilis frowned harder and exhaled.
After a few moments, Salam said, somehow even more calmly than before, “Don’t rush, Mabilis. The fight will always come.”
“The fight hasn’t come this whole time!” Mabilis threw back, a bit more angrily than intended; a bit more urgently. “This whole trip Ake hasn’t joined ONE fight. What kind of Raya doesn’t even lead the battle?”
Salam’s voice came out flat now, more emotionless: “Raya-Matu is leading a war campaign… He’s leading several battles…”
Mabilis scoffed, “leading from behind?”
“Leading from behind,” Salam repeated, as if it were a rhetorical question.
“When the blockade is fully established,” Salam began to explain, “more of Sultan Bolkiah’s ships will join the Armada of Borneo. Then the raids will begin. That’s where the Raya-Matu will really earn their grandfather’s blessing.”
“So that’s when Ake-po will have to be a real leader.” Mabilis stated.
Salam of Sulawesi looked at Mabilis of Manila for a moment and said quietly, “That’s when you’ll get your fight, kaibigan…”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Upstream, behind the city, up the mountainside, and behind the stone wall, in Sultan Bolkiah’s palace, Pigafetta and six other members of the Armada de Molucca still sat reverently on the floor of the great hall.
Servants in plain ankle-length shirts shuffled forward from behind them. The negotiations had dragged on for what felt like the entire afternoon. And not because they were complicated; in fact they were quite simple. But the series of steps just to pass a single message more than made up for that. And now, after the Armada’s gifts had been delivered to the crown and trading rights had been granted, the servants were draping a folded cloth across each man’s left shoulder. Pigafetta examined the soft fabric given to him: it was crimson silk patterned with gold threads. When each voyager had received one, the General’s Attendant explained that these were gifts from the Sultan, a sign of benevolence to welcome their business in his country. Each servant then took the silks back again, to carry downhill for them.
With that, Antonio Pigafetta knew that their interview was concluded. And successfully so. Still stocked with food from Palawan, now the fleet might acquire some goods of real value. But more importantly, they would have time and resources to acquire navigators to show them the way to Molucca.
The attendant made another series of bows toward the royal shadows across the great hall. Before he’d stood up straight again, a curtain quickly closed behind the silhouetted Sultan and obscured him in darkness.
This is part 7 of Retelling Magellan’s Southeast Asia
Next Chapter: Water City, Brazil to Brunei 1521
Previous Chapter: Follow the White Elephant, Brunei
Today the Brunei Darussalam’s Sultan and Prime Minister is named Hassanal Bolkiah. Though his ancestor reportedly have demonstrated a multi-cultural attitude in rule, doing trade in elephants with Buddhist Thailand, and in musical gongs with China, today’s 29th sultan has brought international controversy by advocating for execution of LGBT citizens as capital punishment for homosexuality.
In 2019, George Clooney led a boycott of hotels around the world owned by Brunei Internal Group. This resulted in Hassanal Bolkiah announcing a moratorium on the death penalty for homosexuality. This is an extension of a moratorium on the death penalty in general that has been in place for 2 decades. However, the legal code can still be enforced with “fines, whipping or jail,” according to an anonymous gay man in Brunei interviewed by CNN.
In May 2020, 11 countries of SE Asia including Brunei voted against a UN Moratorium on the use of the death penalty.
What happened in 23 generations of a dynasty that changed? What stayed the same? What role did European interactions, interventions, and outright wars play?
Brunei once ruled the entire coastline of Borneo, which is the world’s 3rd largest island. After the Castilian War between the Brunei Empire and the Spanish Empire, Brunei was reduced to 5,765 sq km (2,226 sq mi), now the world’s 32nd smallest country. Robert Day McAmis wrote in 2002:
In the early days of Spanish colonization of the Philippines the battle lines were drawn between Muslims and Christians in Southeast Asia. This was looked upon by the Spanish as a continuation of the “holy war” they had fought against the Muslims in their homeland for over seven centuries. In this way the stage was set for Spanish-Muslim Wars in the Philippines which continued intermittently from 1578 until the end of the Spanish period in 1898.
Christian laws brought to SE Asia have also been inhumane regarding homosexuality. BBC News senior digital journalist and news editor Tessa Wong traces anti-LGBT legislation in many former British colonies of Asia to the British-made Indian Penal Code Article 377, itself modeled on Britain’s so-called Buggery Act.
Brunei was a British Protectorate for about a century, from 1888 to 1984.
Although Brunei occupies a small corner of a region that is itself a small corner of the world map and of worldwide politics, it hosts dynamics familiar to Western history past and present.
SOURCES
Robert Batchelor (2013) The Selden Map Rediscovered: A Chinese Map of East Asian Shipping Routes, c.1619, Imago Mundi, 65:1, 37–63, DOI: 10.1080/03085694.2013.731203
Brunei — The World Factbook. CIA.gov. July 28, 2021 (Accessed August 3, 2021).
Country Names in Chinese (2021). FreeChineseLessons.com. Accessed Aug 2, 2021
Hallman, Carly The 100 Smallest Countries in the World. TitleMax.com. Accessed Aug 2, 2021
Federspiel, Howard M. (2007). Sultans, Shamans, and Saints: Islam and Muslims in Southeast Asia, University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978–0824830526
Guillemard, Francis (2008). Magellan. Viartis ISBN 978–1906421007
McAmis, Robert Day (2002). Malay Muslims: The History and Challenge of Resurgent Islam in Southeast Asia, Eerdman. ISBN 978–0–8028–4945–8
Photo: © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Terms of use: CC-BY-NC 4.0. For more information, please see https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/terms/
Pigafetta, Antonio (1524), tr. and ed. by Skelton, R.A. (1994). Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation. Dover Publications. ISBN 978–0486280998
Schafer, Edward H. (1985), The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 978–0–520–05462–2
Sejarah Sultan-Sultan Brunei (2015). Negara Brunei Darussalam Department of Curriculum Development and Ministry of Education. ISBN: 978–99917–2–673–1
Westcott, Ben and Wright, Rebecca (May 6, 2019). Brunei backs down on gay sex death penalty after international backlash. CNN. Accessed Aug 1, 2021.
Wong, Tess (Jun 29, 2021). The British Colonial Law that left an anti-LGBTQ legacy in Asia. BBC. Accessed Aug 3, 2021
