Sultanate of Palembang

The Sultanate of Palembang Darussalam was a Malay-Muslim state on the Musi River in southern Sumatra, controlling the pepper and tin trade of the island's interior and the Bangka and Belitung islands. Palembang had long been a trading centre: a Chinese account of 1178 records the name, Tomé Pires described it in 1513 as a kingdom ruled by a patron appointed from Java, and the Dutch East India Company attacked it in 1596. The sultanate proper was proclaimed in 1659 by Susuhunan Abdurrahman, whose court, the Kraton Kuto Gawang, was a fortified city of ironwood walls on the north bank of the Musi with Chinese and Portuguese traders settled opposite. In 1659 the Dutch attacked and burned Kuto Gawang, and the court moved to a new palace, Beringin Janggut. For a century and a half the sultans balanced the Dutch, the English and the rulers of Jambi and the Minangkabau highlands, growing rich on pepper, tin and coffee. Dutch pressure increased in the nineteenth century: in 1812 a British force briefly occupied the palace, and in 1821 the Dutch bombarded Palembang and imposed a treaty. The sultanate was abolished by the colonial government on 7 October 1823, and its last ruler, Ahmad Najamuddin IV, was arrested in 1825 and exiled to Banda Neira in the Moluccas.