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Malacca
KNOWLEDGE OF Malacca
"He who is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice."--Barbarosa, Portuguese adventurer.
Thus began the wondrous journey of Malacca into historical fame and prominence. Its fortunes and misfortunes were destined by geography or, more precisely, by water.
The city entered the pages of written history in the 1390s with the founding of a Malay Empire by Parameswara, a fugitive Sumatran prince. He could not have chosen a better place to set up his kingdom for Malacca sits on the pulse of divine waters flowing between two important oceans--the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The first sultan shrewdly crafted a lucrative enterprise on the needs of passing traders and Malacca became “the richest seaport with the greatest number of merchants and abundance of shipping that can be found in the world, as a Portuguese seaman then witnessed.
It was the golden age of Malay culture. A time when the courtly elite carried golden jewel-studded krisses, a weapon which has come to symbolise Malay royalty, and monarchical deeds and glories were meticulously compiled by court-appointed scribes into a series of chronicles, now known as Sejarah Melayu or the Malay Chronicles and considered a classic in Malay literature. A source of considerable pride and nostalgia in modern Malay minds, the illustrious epoch relives in an impressive array of exhibits and replicas to be found at Malacca’s Sultanate Palace, the Museum of History, and Museum of Literature.
A three-jewelled eunuch had much to do with the good fortunes of the pioneer sultanate in Malaysia. In 1405, Admiral Cheng Ho, the legendary Ming Dynasty envoy, sailed into Malacca's harbour in great style and grandeur with a crew of 37,000 in 317 ships, a display of power and prestige unheard of then. A tributary relationship soon developed and Parameswara was recognised as the king of Malacca by the “Son of Heaven. For the next 100 years, the Sultanate continued to prosper as a Ming Protectorate, greasing the wheels of maritime trading.
Malacca was Admiral Cheng’s logistical headquarters for a total of seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433, when he navigated his navy to such distant and exotic places as Ceylon, the Maldives, Mecca and Zanzibar. He was later deified by overseas Chinese, and the Sam Poh Kong Temple was dedicated to his memory. In the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, an inscription in stone commemorates his visit to the Chinese cemetery on Bukit Cina, where Ming-era Chinese tombs, withered nameless by rain and time, still stand in fortuitous numbers, being among the oldest and rarest Chinese relics in the country.
Thus began the wondrous journey of Malacca into historical fame and prominence. Its fortunes and misfortunes were destined by geography or, more precisely, by water.
The city entered the pages of written history in the 1390s with the founding of a Malay Empire by Parameswara, a fugitive Sumatran prince. He could not have chosen a better place to set up his kingdom for Malacca sits on the pulse of divine waters flowing between two important oceans--the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The first sultan shrewdly crafted a lucrative enterprise on the needs of passing traders and Malacca became “the richest seaport with the greatest number of merchants and abundance of shipping that can be found in the world, as a Portuguese seaman then witnessed.
It was the golden age of Malay culture. A time when the courtly elite carried golden jewel-studded krisses, a weapon which has come to symbolise Malay royalty, and monarchical deeds and glories were meticulously compiled by court-appointed scribes into a series of chronicles, now known as Sejarah Melayu or the Malay Chronicles and considered a classic in Malay literature. A source of considerable pride and nostalgia in modern Malay minds, the illustrious epoch relives in an impressive array of exhibits and replicas to be found at Malacca’s Sultanate Palace, the Museum of History, and Museum of Literature.
A three-jewelled eunuch had much to do with the good fortunes of the pioneer sultanate in Malaysia. In 1405, Admiral Cheng Ho, the legendary Ming Dynasty envoy, sailed into Malacca's harbour in great style and grandeur with a crew of 37,000 in 317 ships, a display of power and prestige unheard of then. A tributary relationship soon developed and Parameswara was recognised as the king of Malacca by the “Son of Heaven. For the next 100 years, the Sultanate continued to prosper as a Ming Protectorate, greasing the wheels of maritime trading.
Malacca was Admiral Cheng’s logistical headquarters for a total of seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433, when he navigated his navy to such distant and exotic places as Ceylon, the Maldives, Mecca and Zanzibar. He was later deified by overseas Chinese, and the Sam Poh Kong Temple was dedicated to his memory. In the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, an inscription in stone commemorates his visit to the Chinese cemetery on Bukit Cina, where Ming-era Chinese tombs, withered nameless by rain and time, still stand in fortuitous numbers, being among the oldest and rarest Chinese relics in the country.
Chapi