Kedah Sultanate

The Kedah Sultanate is a Malay Muslim monarchy in the northern Malay Peninsula, traditionally founded in 1136 by Sultan Mudzafar Shah I according to the Kedah Annals. That chronicle, compiled in the eighteenth century, is the main source for the dynasty's early history and is unreliable for its first centuries; an Acehnese account instead places Kedah's conversion to Islam in 1474. The region had been a centre of trade and Hindu-Buddhist settlement long before, with the Bujang Valley and the Merbok estuary showing occupation and Indian Ocean commerce from the early centuries CE. Kedah alternated between autonomy and submission to stronger neighbours, especially Srivijaya, Siam and later the Malay sultanates. Its position on the rice-growing northern plain and its access to the strait made it valuable, and Alor Setar became the capital. Siamese pressure in the nineteenth century forced the sultan into exile for two decades before he was restored in 1842. In 1909 the Anglo-Siamese Treaty transferred Kedah's external affairs to Britain, turning the sultanate into a British protectorate. The monarchy was suspended during the Malayan Union and restored within the Federation of Malaya.