Republic of the Philippines

SULTAN KUDARAT STATE UNIVERSITY

Graduate School
ACCESS, EJC Montilla, Tacurong City

Name: MERRY CRIS L. AGUILAR

Instructor: HUBAIDA MAMALINTA, Ph.D.

Subject:

THE COMING OF ISLAM IN THE PHILIPPINES

Historians ascribe the introduction of Islam to the Philippines to Tuan

Masha’ika, supposedly an Arab religious leader or missionary, who landed on
the island of Jolo in what is today the Province of Sulu in the southern
Philippines, in the mid to late-13th century. One particular writer however,
points out that it is likely that Islam was actually introduced much earlier,
perhaps as early as the 10th century, through Arab traders who subsequently
settled down and married local inhabitants and spread their religion in that
manner.

By the 15th century, most inhabitants of the Jolo/Sulu area had accepted
Islam as their religion, which then led to the establishment of an Islamic State,
referred to as the Sultanate of Sulu, around 1450. The first Sultan of Sulu was
Sayyid Al-Hashim Abu Bakr, supposedly an Arab religious leader born in
Mecca, who married into the family of the ruling family in Jolo at that time, Rajah
Baguinda. The Sultanate was then established as a political organization with
Abu Bakr adopting the formal title of Paduka Mahasari Maulana Al-Sultan
Sharif-ul-Hashim. All subsequent Sultans of Sulu claim descent from Sultan
Sharif-ul-Hashim. At its height, during the early part of the 18th century, the
Sultanate of Sulu held sway over what are now the provinces of Tawi-Tawi,
Sulu, Basilan, the western portion of the Zamboanga Peninsula, the southern
portion of Palawan—all in the southwestern portion of present-day Philippines—
and North Borneo or what is now Sabah in Malaysia.

What is now known as the Republic of the Philippines—into which the

Province of Sulu is incorporated—did not have its beginnings until the second
half of the 16th century, in 1565 to be exact, when the Spanish navigator Miguel
Lopez de Legazpi, landed in the islands and began his colonization. The
 Republic of the Philippines
SULTAN KUDARAT STATE UNIVERSITY
Graduate School
ACCESS, EJC Montilla, Tacurong City

Philippines is named after King Philip II of Spain. It took about a half-century

for Spain to conquer the rest of the islands and therefore the nation-state known
as the Philippines today did not come into existence until the end of the 16th
and early part of the 17th centuries.

Hence, the Sultanate of Sulu as a political entity and sovereign State

ante-dated the establishment of the Philippines by more than a century and
certainly Islam had its roots in what is now the Philippines much longer than
that.

A second Muslim Sultanate was established in central Mindanao, the

main island in the southern Philippines, independent of the Sultanate of Sulu,
around 1515 by Sharif Muhammad Kabungsuan, who originated from Johor in
present-day Malaysia. Sharif Kabungsuan was a son of Sharif Ali Zainal Abidin
who originated from Arabia, travelled to Johor and married a member of the
royal family there. This was the Sultanate of Maguindanao. At its peak during
the late 17th century, the Sultanate of Maguindanao covered the breadth of the
island of Mindanao, from what is now the Davao Gulf in the east to the
Zamboanga Peninsula in the west, from the area of Butuan in the north to
Sarangani in the south, and even extended to what is now North Sulawesi in
present-day Indonesia.