Java's north coast is the working edge of the kingdom.
The charters show the shape of port rule: a juru (overseer) answerable to the king for each landing, officers who register the king's wealth and collect dues, and the banyaga, the merchants. The Kamalagyan plate of Airlangga (Saka 959, 1037) says the Waringin Sapta dam was built to keep the boats running down to the port at Hujung Galuh and to draw foreign merchants. About 1225 Zhao Rukuo's list of Java's dependencies puts Ta-pan (Tuban) and Jung-ya-lu (Hujung Galuh) among them.
Whether a Kediri officer or a local headman answers for Gresik, Pasuruan, Panarukan, Semarang, Jepara or Tegal in 1200 is not recorded; the Muria strait is open water, so Jepara and Demak lie on the inner passage. For the game, each port has a chief; only Tuban and Hujung Galuh are known to be ports at all.
Who he is
- Title
- Harbour overseers (juru) and port headmen, port by port
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not known
- Confidence
- low
No harbour chief is named for 1200 anywhere. Of the eight ports only Hujung Galuh (Kamalagyan plate, 1037; Chinese lists, about 1225) and Tuban (Chinese lists, about 1225) appear in a source near the date; Gresik, Pasuruan, Panarukan, Semarang, Jepara and Tegal are filled in from geography and later lists.
Overlord
Kertajaya, by claim for all but Hujung Galuh
What it holds
- Landing dues, harbour and pilotage fees, the market of the port village, and the local right to hold the foreign merchants
How things stand that morning
Offices in being; no holder is named. The Muria strait is open.
Wealth
Dues on the pepper, cloth, ceramic, metal and spice trade; no figures.
Places of note
- Hujung Galuh: The delta port.
- Tuban: Ta-pan.
- Gresik: Anchorage.
- Pasuruan: Landing at the foot of the Tengger road.
- Panarukan: Last landing before the Bali strait.
- Semarang: The mouth of the Garang.
- Jepara: The northern gate of the Muria strait.
- Tegal: The Cipamali mouth.
Where the sources disagree
- The campaign board entry gresik-shore says Gresik is an anchorage and a fishing shore, not a town, in 1200, and Demak and Semarang the same. We follow that and add that the Leran grave near Gresik (475 AH, 1082, date argued) would show a Muslim presence on that coast.
- The brief names eight ports; six of them are not in any source near 1200.
Evidence: Hujung Galuh and Tuban rest on 1037 and about 1225; the rest is an assumption.
"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.
On the map: Eight seeds of 5 km; only two are attested.
Primary sources for Kediri
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- History of Song, chapters 488 and 489: Jiaozhi, Dali, Champa, Zhenla, Pagan, Srivijaya, Java, Brunei, Chola and Tambralinga, Toqto'a (Tuotuo) and the Yuan history office, from the Song court records (1343 to 1345, from Song veritable records and court diaries). The Chinese court's record of its southern neighbours, compiled from Song archives. Read online
- History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars. Read online
- Old Javanese Charters (the Brandes and Krom corpus), including the Kediri inscriptions of Kamesvara and Srngga, Various (the Kediri kings and their officers), edited by J. L. A. Brandes and N. J. Krom (inscriptions of the 8th to 15th centuries; edited 1913). Kediri (Panjalu) in 1200 is known from a few royal charters on stone and copper, which this corpus first printed: the records of Kamesvara (about 1182 to 1194) and of Srngga, that is Kertajaya (from about 1194 to 1222), among them the Kamulan charter of 1194 and the Palah (Panataran) record of 1197, with the king's titles, his seal, the officials of the court and the villages freed from tax.
- A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
- Notes in Answer to Questions about the Lands beyond the Passes, Zhou Qufei (周去非) (1178, after service in Guangxi). A Guangxi official's notes, written twenty years before 1200, on the south-western frontier of the Song and the countries beyond. Read online
- Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online
- The Description of the Country, called the Nagarakretagama, Mpu Prapanca (1365 at the Majapahit court). A Majapahit court poem of 1365 listed here only for its retrospect. Read online
Sources and studies
- Wikipedia (en), Airlangga (read in this pass): Wringin Sapta dam 1037, Calcutta stone 1041, partition 1045, Belahan
- Wikipedia (en), Surabaya (read in this pass): Zhu Fan Zhi 1225 as the earliest record (Zhongjialu), Hujung Galuh, the 1045 partition
- Wikipedia (en), Zhu Fan Zhi (read in this pass): Zhao Rukuo, about 1225, Hirth and Rockhill 1911
- Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua: his work on the Chinese and Arab trade (1911), chapters Sin-t'o (p. 70) and Shê-p'o (p. 75); the full text would not open in this pass, so every statement from it is recalled and marked
- J. Wisseman Christie, 'Javanese markets and the Asian sea trade boom of the tenth to thirteenth centuries AD', Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41 (1998); recalled, not re-read
- Wikipedia (en), Mount Muria (read in this pass): once an island, Muria strait closed around 1657
- General knowledge of Old Javanese and Old Balinese epigraphy and the archaeology of Java, recalled and not re-read in this pass (Boechari, Poerbatjaraka, Soekmono, Bernet Kempers)
- OMNIA board notes for the place (a lead, not a source)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.