Sulu archipelago

Who holds it

Title

No overall chief: the chiefs of the anchorages and the boat communities, each answering for their own boats

Since

not pinned

Born

not known

Family

not known

Confidence

low

Nothing is written about the rulers or headmen of this country for 1200. The structure is read from geography and from ethnography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

What it holds

• The Jolo anchorage
• Pearl shell and trepang grounds
• The boat people's anchorages

Allies and rivals

The Sulu pearl chiefs and the Sama-Bajau (Sulu pearl chiefs, Sama-Bajau).

How things stand that morning

Not described for 1200; the villages are presumed to be farming, fishing and selling what the rivers and forests give.

Wealth

Pearls, pearl shell, tortoise shell, trepang; no figures.

Military

Not known; boats, spears, shields and blowpipes in the later record. No numbers.

Threats

• Feuds and raiding between villages
• Flood, drought or fire
• A change in the trade that comes by sea

Places of note

• Jolo: Chief island's market (a later name).
• Siasi: Island of the middle chain.
• Bongao: Tawi-Tawi (a later name).
• Isabela (Basilan): Basilan coast (a later name).

Where the sources disagree

• The ethnic names used here (Ibanag, Ilocano, Tagalog, Bisaya, Maranao and the rest) are later labels, most of them recorded by the Spanish from the 1560s on; the ethnic map of 1200 is not known. The word barangay (a community under a datu) is also of the Spanish record.
• The Sulu sultanate (about 1450) and the Brunei claims over Sulu (fourteenth century) are later.

Evidence: Geography and later ethnography only; no text of the period describes this country.

On the map: A rough outline of the people's country; the real extent of any village group in 1200 is not known, and nothing here is a border.