Malay World · a Light

A gravestone in Sumatra dates Islam in Southeast Asia

At Pasai, on the north coast of Sumatra, stands the tombstone of Sultan Malik al-Salih, carved with the date 696 of the Hijra, which is 1297. It is the earliest firmly dated evidence of a Muslim ruler anywhere in Southeast Asia, and the stone itself appears to have been imported from Cambay in Gujarat, which says something about who was sailing where. Marco Polo, passing the same coast in 1292, noted that the people of the port of Perlak had become Muslim through contact with merchants. Islam reached the region not by conquest but along the monsoon trade routes, carried by traders and teachers, and it is now the religion of more people in Southeast Asia than in the Arab world.

Samudera Pasai, Sumatra · 1297 CE