(Lecture prepared by Datu Michael Ong Mastura for the launch of his book “The Rulers of Magindanao in Modern History, 1515-1903: Continuity and Change in a Traditional Realm in the Southern Philippines” at Faber Hall, Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City on 04 May 2023. He asked that this piece be distributed before the launch. At the launch, the author, aided by a Powerpoint presentation, simplified this into a “Reader’s Guide to The Rulers of Magindanao.”)
I take great pleasure to present to you the book, The Rulers of Magindanao in Modern History, 1515-1903. The book opens with a question: How likely is it that the ancient Filipinos developed a concept of statehood at pre-colonial contact? The subtitle sets the longue duree central theme: “Continuity and Change in a Traditional Realm in the Southern Philippines”.
It might seem trivial to ask: Are you Readers? Are you a part of the Reading Public in this sweeping era of digital technology? Are we on ‘holiday’ from history? How do we now inject presentconsciousness into the past to reconstruct that past?
The answer lies in an objective, critical viewpoint and ever-present sense for the “personality” in the long-run story of Magindanao pre-colonial state systems marked with continuity as a traditional realm (alam). Change in the old institutions came with the advent of mercantilist expansion, and the long-terms of trade; more so, within the slave raiding system that largely evolved in the Sulu maritime zone.
Genealogy as Construct in Historiography
With Islam came the Arabic alphabet that modified the culture and adat system to develop common lettered Moro heritage. The original superscripts of tarsila and luwaran contained names and place-names that have not been expressed (at the time) by means of Romanic character. The Mastura Superscripts (MSS) were translated in 1903 by Najeeb Saleeby, who used a system of transliteration, which can be easily understood by every English reader applying phonic sound.
As we read the chapters of The Rulers of Magindanao, we must bear in mind that our traditional scholars and scribes adopted a system of writing the tarsila (genealogy), the khutba (oration), and the luwaran (codex) in Magindanao dialect with Arabic characters called “kirim” or “jawa” scripts. Take note that the terminal sound of “ao” in spelling “Magindanao” was used by Saleeby. Other words with the same terminal sound were written with the final “aw” for transliteration. As for “gi”the transliteration cannot correspond to “gui” which is in accordance with Spanish grammar.
Longue Duree in Historiography and Conjunctures
Magindanao was the product of geography and culture rather than of politics or economics. Events occurred over long periods of time with “epochal duration” over decades or centuries but slowly changing between people (orayat), and their maritime culture.
My book does not aim to rethink what history is or history for traction of longue duree course of “movement of ideas”. Early studies on Moro history, law, and religion used ethnographic facts and assumptions (theories) of social anthropologists.
Archaeological settlement entries and inscriptional remains (such as presence of datable pottery or coin) to describe how people chronologically moved in the past is utilized as “dating tool” only to limit the scope of Plan of Study in this book.
In some sense when C. A. Majul typified “constellation of sultanates” in maritime Asia resembling distant past harbour principality or port-polities of Malacca “overlordship” or the princely life of Malay notables reconstructed in the account of O. W. Wolters, the question generated is sociological, not ahistorical.
But if my readers take this point it has method: Not only is Periodization essential in all history writing but in the formal study of history qua historiography. Thus, in Muslim theory, history is made ‘real’ in time to fit the ‘historical moment of its use’ as the direction in the process of change itself.
The modernizing thrust of the 1500s, onward to trends in recorded history of sixteenth-seventeenth maritime Asia, was voluntary migration (merantaw). Sufi masters navigated the Straits of Malacca in the eighteenth century. Shifts in pattern of modernist reform of the nineteenth century coincided with the infusion of seyyids and mushyks of Hadrami-ancestry who married into local aristocracy.
The general theory of corporate group linked by ‘unilinear’ structural ties of core lineage descent in Magindanao and comparable ‘segmentary’ structures in Rajah Buayan point to ‘affinal’ link established between lineages of clan.
My historiographical sketch is presented with historical sequence. Qudarat is ascribed with a reign of 52 years (1619-1671)
In a dynastic realm — where structures of adat as a system embody the law of Islam — Luwaran gave it historical depth of eclectic traces beyond the imaginings of colonial state. A copy written in 1886 was translated in 1903. The original manuscript accompanying the code was compiled from Shafi-i manuals during the reign of Sultan Maulana Kamza in 1775.
Excerpts in Chapter I, Chapter VI. Some Extracts in Chapter VIII.
Yet the ‘un-problematized’ chronology of rulers of Magindanao and Sulu is essential to reconstruct the stages of the Moro wars as substance of history. Memories of the past unravelling its indelible imprint to confirm the present is the vernacular culture of mangaio (raiding system) that harks back to merantaw (looking outward) long-distance voyaging with the influx of sea-oriented Lanun or “Lutao” heritages.
The frame of reference in the pattern of changed outwardly perspective is the work of social science and multidisciplinary scholarship. At some conjunctures, geography and genealogy as historiography serve the purpose of charting the chronology of royal descent and statecraft as well as social stratification (see Figure 8 on page 128).
The Sulu maritime state was congenial to the tributary trading system during the Ming dynasty. It was the presence of Chinese traders in Su’ug (Jolo) that accounts for its evolution into a regional entrepot by 1768. By then, centuries apart, the Magindanao pre-colonial state had turned to the past: “for more rewarding purposes than economic history.”
The Spanish interfered more than once in the succession at Magindanao and Sulu to assure themselves a “friendly” ruler resulting in devastating struggle for power. Meanwhile the Spanish campaign to suppress “piracy” disrupted the continuity of the Sulu sultanate thriving produce-trade with China. (See Map of Spanish Defense Net Against Mangiao Raid Points).
Conjunctures in Iranun-Balangingi slave raiding became essential to the Buginese orang Laut trade network. Coastal people of Lanun origin (derivative i-lanw-en/ i-ranun) were pulled at first to the Company “country trade/” Out-migration of Maranao from the Great Lake had swollen their seaside communities who engaged in slave-raiding activities with their fleet of praws.
I argue in my second Preface that Magindanao generations of 1736-1755 missed out the 18th century great upheavals that the Technical and Critical Age ushered in Cartesian subjectivity and innovation in method. History moved on with emergent phenomenon and constellations of ideas (Descartes was short-circuiting the past).
As for navigation, Fernand Braudel pointed out scientific techniques in conjunction with certain perception of reality. Still Thomas Forrest observed in 1775 that a few Chinese lived among many Magindanao mechanics, vessel builders, and merchants. By 1790 the center of boat-building activity in the coast of Sibugay had shifted away to the Sulu archipelago. Still so the maritime zones were never out of step with the Gunpowder Age in modern history.
My research work assigned the coming of Islam to Mindanao to the “Peregrination Period” in old Malay history. Genealogists personified the saga of Sharif Kabungsuan and the tale of Tabunaway to weave the thread in the ruler’s adoption to Islam because a precedent in Malacca existed.
Evidently it was not just the ruling datus who stride through the pages of the Super Manuscripts. The tarsila in possession of Datu Kali confirms the progenitor of Tabunaway is not a datu; he is a timuway. Tabunaway are called dumatus. The metaphor of Putri Tunina appearing from “bamboo stalk” and Buli from “crow’s egg” do not make the phenomena “historically dubious myths.”
(Parenthetically, this leaves room for the study of history as myth and novelistic device. Thucydides identified myths as unsatisfactory bases for his own work to avoid confusion of ‘factual’ with ‘fictional’ or mythical).
The pattern of changed outwardly perspective is the work of social science and multidisciplinary scholarship. At some conjunctures, geography and genealogy as historiography serve the purpose of charting the chronology of royal descent and statecraft as well as social stratification (see Figure 8 on page 128).
Shinzo Hayase: Mindanao Ethnohistory Beyond Nations imagines a historico-geographical zone between the 16thC and 19thC based on a “chieftain society” in Eastern Maritime Asia. It is a misnomer to speak of “tribe” of Sangir in Sarangani, Bagobo and Kalagan in Davao gulf, and Subanon in Sibugay littoral coast. Yet in terms of geographical area conspicuous type of kinship system nominally formed into local descent group and other lineages of the clan: Manobo and Tiduray.
My work displays Magindanao kinship system by means of a diagram and kinship terminologies. Academically, it is a moot point to highlight the Magindanao area that Beckett had conceptualized a “datudom.” Status of lineage is defined by genealogy in rank order to create structural stability. “Rather than breaking the rule of hypergamy, Rajah Putri married the current Sultan Mangigin who was of appropriate rank but a political cipher” at the onset of American colonial rule.
Area Studies based on fieldwork is a method for interpretation of ethnographic facts—which is overtly anthropological—for historical studies as a discipline.
History as Culture: Myths and Historical Narratives
History as Culture for socio-political purpose applying theories to humanities (anthropology-sociology):
This author agrees with the view that epistemological break ushered in modernity is overtly anthropological. With historical dimension, a few authors try to explore why Muslims misread the genealogy of the concepts and constellations of ideas: i.e. the gap in modern “critical and intellectual current.”
The Problem of Reconstruction and Ibn Khaldun’s asabiyah ….that Islam as a socio-political totality had its day in the past. This cyclical theory of rise and fall of sovereign dynastic rulers shared modern ideas of transformation of the “Quraishi” lineage to nobility-obeyed rulership in general: absolutism.
The Muslim rulers of the generation of 1663 to 1718 had remained more or less politically independent to exercise suzerainty. The Pre-colonial State System in Magindanao flourished from trade with the Dutch Cultural System in “outlying islands” including Talaud, Ternate, Tidore and the Moluccas.
The Period of Great Monarchies and Emperors: (Excerpts in Chapter V, Chapter VII, Chapter VIII, Chapter IX)
The Spanish colonial state was tied to a doctrine of discovery and conquest that represented colonization and ‘hispanization’ (Phelan) stories in modernity. Historians of national history write a requisite narrative to Spanish rule (Cushner) in ways that converge all of Filipino bifurcated past phenomena to unravel rigid taxonomies of identity formation (Corpuz).
Contemporary writers frown upon any sort of “grand narrative of the past.” Postmodernist authors turn to the origins of “the revolution from below” to recover past reality in deconstructing its uses (Agoncillo, Ileto, Schumacher). Truth and historical interpretation unmask historical stereotypes to accurately decolonize historiography to embody revisionism (Constantino).
The establishment of the Politico-Military Government of Mindanao was a sort of cyclicalReconquista in 1893. A Jesuit missionary settlement was set up first at Tamontaka in Cotabato. The Spanish offered to change the regnal title “Sultan of Cotabato.” By inventing a point of marked boundaries, the reduced villages were organized into the Lara and Taviran settlement (see the Summary of Census in 1895 on page 232-35).
History in Postmodernity: De-Constructivist Approach
The Cancel Culture has cluttered historical writing for ‘past usages’ and language awareness. Truth in history is affected by deconstruction and postmodernist theories. Quite the contrary, quoted critics warn the historical profession is likely “to miss the point of the craft.”
(Datu Michael Ong Mastura is a lawyer, a former professor at the Notre Dame University in Cotabato City, a delegate to the 1971 Constitutional Convention, a former representative of Maguindanao’s first district and a senior member of the peace panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that negotiated with the Philippine government. He is a direct descendant of Sultan Muhammad Dipatwan Kudarat of the Magindanao Sultanate. Educated and trained as a lawyer, he was responsible for the codification project of the Muslim Personal Laws that established the Shar’ia Court in the country and was invited as amicus curiae at the Supreme Court. He is founder and president of Sultan Kudarat Islamic Academy Foundation College in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte).
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