KEY POINT FOR THE
REDEVELOPMENT OF KOTA JOHOR LAMA
THE KINGDOM OF
JOHOR, 1641-1728: A STUDY OF ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE STRAITS
OF MALACCA
A Thesis
Presented
to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Cornell
University for the Degree of
Doctor of
Philosophy
by
Leonard Yuzon
Andaya
December, 1971
Page 244
To
complicate matters for the Raja Muda, at about 11 o’clock in the morning of 13
March 1709, fire broke out in an atap hut where someone was cooking banana
fritters and spread throughout the entire city until Panchor was reduced to a
heap of ashes. The fire lasted for five or six hours and consumed 3°0 wooden
and atap houses, including the Sultan's istana. The loss of the istana was
especially painful because it had been only recently built and was quite a
magnificent edifice. According to the Hikayat Negri Johor it was 192 feet
in length, with a wooden roof, walls and columns made of carved wood, and the
doors inlaid and outlined in ivory.^ The fort, the gunpowder magazine which contained 2000 pounds of
gunpowder, and all the houses of the Orang Kaya, except the Laksamana's, were
burned down
Page 112
The
destruction and "miraculous" recovery of Johor in 1673 are reported in
the contemporary VOC records, but they are plainly illusions conjured up by
Dutch observers. The latter attempted to report activities in the Malay arena
in absolute and quantitative terms without any understanding of the power
structure within Johor and the functions and the character of a capital of a
far-flung maritime kingdom such as Johor. The capital was merely the
residence of the ruler; except perhaps for the ruler’s balai and the mosque,
the rest of the capital was mainly atap - built houses on stilts which could be
destroyed and rebuilt with very little effort. Mobility characterized the
populations of these settlements, and it was not uncommon to have entire
settlements move from one site to another with little detectable upheaval. When
a ruler decided that a site was inauspicious as a result of sickness, fire, or
war, he would then change his residence and thereby cause an entire settlement
to abandon its atap houses, fruit trees, and crops, and move on. It occurred
frequently in the history of Johor because the kingdom was vast and encompassed
both the Malay peninsula and east coast Sumatra, as well as the islands off
these areas. All of these places offered a potential site for the new capital
of a Johor ruler.
FEDERATION MUSEUMS
JOURNAL
VOLOME
X NEW SERIES
I'
For 1965
JOHORE LAMA EXCAVATIONS, 1960 \
by
WILHELM
G. SOLHEIM II
AND
ERNESTENE
GREEN
Page
2
During excavation and restoration of the fort, some time was
spent in exploration of the total fortified area and the immediate neighbourhood
of Johore Lama as well as other historic sites farther up the Johore River. In the exploration of the fortified
area an unusual grass covered mound was discovered in the east corner of the general area considered by Gibson-Hill as the
possible site of the palace.
Page 3
The city of Johare Lama consisted of two parts at this time,
the kampong called "Corritao," a suburb located on a protrusion of land extending into the
Johore River, east of the mouth of the Johore Lama River, and the fortified
portion of the city, west of the kampong. The fortified
section was a roughly rectangular earth-walled area with an entrance on the
west, the side toward the Corritao. The
strong point of the walled area was a fort located on a point
of land
extending slightly into the Johore River. This point was called Kota Batu and the fort was named Tanjong Batu. The fort, however, was
on the east side of the city, the opposite side from the Corritao suburb. Portuguese accounts mention the artillery
which defendants of Johore Lama possessed. Not only were muskets mentioned,
but also bronze cannons of the types called Moorish basilisk, serpent, lion,
large camel, camellete, and falcon. Many of these were housed in the fort, as
this was the city's strong point.
Page 5
Johore
Lama consists of two parts:' a
suburb called the Corritao or Kampong Johore Lama, located southeast of the
mouth of the Johore Lama River, a tributary of the Johore River, and northwest of the walled portion of the
city; and the fortified portion, a roughly rectangular-shaped area bounded on
the west, north, east and southeast by ridges representing the original
earth wall surrounding the city (Map 1). During occupation the earth wall
extended along
the south side of the
city also, but now has fallen into the Johore River. This fortified area
extends diagonally between two low hills. The southern limit is on the crest of
Kota Batu hill, where the coastline forms a point projecting into the Johore
River. This combination of hill and projection into the river makes the point a
lookout spot, and it is here that the fort, Tanjong Batu, was built. The
northern limit of the fortified area is on the tip of another low hill. The
main portion of the fortified area is on the saddle between these two hills and
between this and the river bank.
ISLAMIC ART IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 830 A.D -
1570 A.D
A Thesis
Presented
to the Fine Arts Department, the graduate School of Arts and Sciences in
partial fulfillments of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the subject of the History of Art
Harvard
University
Cambridge,
Massachusetts
by
Zakaria bin Ali
February, 1990
Page 104
The Islamization of Johore was probably initiated by the
influx of Malays from Malacca. Before departing for the Johor River. Sultan
Alauddin Riayat Syah stopped at Pahang, where the Sultan gave a former palace
and the Bendahara and others dignitaries a house each. After the stay, Sultan
Alauddin Riayat Syah and his entrouge headed for the Johor estuary, encamped at
the mouth of Sering River, an tributary of the Johor River in 1530A.D,
