The southern end of the Batak country, a corridor of valleys between the Angkola pass and the Minangkabau border.
Gold is washed in these streams and the villages are stockaded against each other rather than against outsiders. The Angkola pass is the shortest crossing of the Barisan in the north, and it is why Padang Lawas can sell to both oceans.
Who he is
- Title
- Heads of the lineages (marga) of Mandailing
- Since
- not known
- Born
- not known
- Family
- not known
- Confidence
- low
No source names the holder for any date near 1 January 1200.
Overlord
None named.
What it holds
- Their villages, rice terraces and forest groves, and the right to sell the forest's goods
How things stand that morning
Not recorded. No king, no capital, no writing; villages under their lineage heads, tied by marriage and feud.
Wealth
Gold of the Mandailing streams; rice; passage tolls at the Angkola pass.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Thin: nothing is written here in 1200; the picture is the campaign board's and later ethnography read back. Hirth and Rockhill read 'Pa-t'a' (a dependency of San-fo-ts'i in the Zhufan zhi) as the Batak country; we could not recheck that reading.
"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.
On the map: Core only.
Sources and studies
- OMNIA board note (a lead only, checked against the sources above)
- F. Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua: his work on the Chinese and Arab trade (1911), table of contents and chapter titles seen; text not reachable
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.