Sultanate of Cirebon

The Sultanate of Cirebon was an Islamic state on the north coast of West Java, founded in the fifteenth century. Tradition credits Sunan Gunungjati with proclaiming Cirebon's independence from the Hindu Sunda kingdom of Pajajaran in 1482, although the settlement and polity had taken shape earlier, in the 1440s. Its capital lay near the modern city of Cirebon, and the sultanate prospered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a trading port and a centre of Islamic learning. Cirebon sent teachers into the inland Sundanese highlands and, together with Banten, is credited with spreading Islam across West Java. The realm sat on the cultural border between the Javanese and Sundanese worlds, and its court blended influences from both. In 1677 the sultanate split into three royal houses, Kasepuhan, Kanoman and Kaprabonan, and a fourth, Kacirebonan, separated in 1807. Dutch intervention in 1807 brought the states under colonial supervision. Their political authority was finally abolished in 1906 and 1926, when the Dutch created the municipality of Cirebon, but the four kratons survive as ceremonial and cultural institutions.