Sultanate of Maguindanao

The Sultanate of Maguindanao was the Mindanao river state from 1515 to 1899, ruling the Cotabato basin from langsat wood palaces. Sharif Kabungsuwan, a Johor prince of Arab blood, landed about 1515, married into the local chiefs and founded the line; Islam spread upriver with the trade, and the sultan's authority ran as far as his cannon could be poled. The seventeenth century belonged to Kudarat, sultan for fifty years, who united the river mouths, beat Spanish armadas sent against him, and played Dutch against Spaniard for guns and cloth: the Spaniards never took his land in his lifetime. After him the sultanate fragmented among datus, and Sulu's shadow grew over the coast. The Spanish built forts they could not leave; the datus signed treaties and broke them. Datu Uto, last of the great chiefs, held the Americans off until 1899 with lantaka cannon and river forts. The American colonial state then dissolved the sultanate's temporal powers, keeping the datus as landlords: Maguindanao's four centuries as a Muslim state in the Philippine south ended, though its mosques, its brass and its Maranao neighbours carry on.