KEY POINT FOR THE REDEVELOPMENT OF KOTA JOHOR LAMA

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,