Rajahnate of Cebu

Cebu, also called Sugbu, was an Indianised mandala polity on the island of Cebu in the central Philippines before the arrival of the Spanish, and is often informally called the Rajahnate of Cebu. Chinese records of the Song period knew the place as Suwu, mentioned in the Zhufan Zhi of 1225 among the countries of the southern seas whose people traded agarwood, lakawood, beeswax and tortoiseshell for porcelain, wine, rice, salt, silk and gold. Visayan oral tradition traces the ruling line to Sri Lumay, said to have been of mixed Malay and Tamil descent from Sumatra, who settled in the Visayas with his sons; one son, Sri Alho, ruled Sialo in the south of the island, while another, Sri Ukob, held Nahalin in the north and died fighting Moro raiders from Mindanao. Sri Lumay's scorched-earth defence against slavers is remembered in the name Kang Sri Lumayng Sugbu, "that of Sri Lumay's great fire", later shortened to Sugbu. The polity was a trading centre linked to Borneo, China and the Malay world, and it came to an end with the Spanish expedition of 1565, which established the first permanent European settlement in the Philippines at Cebu.