Pahang Kingdom

The Pahang Kingdom was a Malay state on the east coast of the peninsula that existed from about 1770 to 1881 and is the direct predecessor of the modern Malaysian state of Pahang. It arose from the gradual dismemberment of the Johor Empire, as the hereditary bendahara, the highest minister of Johor, turned his domain in Pahang into a virtually independent principality. Tun Abdul Majid, who ruled from 1770, was the first to be styled raja bendahara, and the area around Pahang became a granted land administered directly by him. In 1853 the fourth raja bendahara, Tun Ali, renounced his allegiance to the Sultan of Johor and became an independent ruler; his death in 1857 provoked a succession dispute between his sons. The younger, Wan Ahmad, defeated his half-brother Tun Mutahir with help from Terengganu and Siam, took control of the main towns and expelled his rival in 1863. Wan Ahmad was proclaimed Sultan of Pahang by his chiefs in 1881, and in the following decades the kingdom entered the British sphere and was eventually incorporated into the federated administration of Malaya, from which the modern state descends.