page_title: Spread of Islam
section_title: Southeast Asia
hierarchical_section_title: Spread of Islam / By region / Southeast Asia
caption_attribution_description: English: The minaret of the mosque at Kudus Bahasa Indonesia: Negatif. Menara di Masjid Menara Kudus Nederlands: Negatief. De minaret bij de moskee van Koedoes
context_page_description: The history of the spread of Islam spans about 1,500 years. Muslim conquests following Muhammad's death led to the creation of the caliphates, occupying a vast geographical area; conversion to Islam was boosted by missionary activities, particularly those of imams, who intermingled with local populations to propagate the religious teachings. These early caliphates, coupled with Muslim economics and trading, the Islamic Golden Age, and the Age of the Islamic Gunpowders, resulted in Islam's spread outwards from Mecca towards the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and the creation of the Muslim world. Trading played an important role in the spread of Islam in several parts of the world, especially Indian traders in southeast Asia.
  Muslim dynasties were soon established and subsequent empires such as those of the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks, Seljukids, and the Ayyubids were among the largest and most powerful in the world.
context_section_description: Even before Islam was established amongst Indonesian communities, Muslim sailors and traders had often visited the shores of modern Indonesia, most of these early sailors and merchants arrived from the Abbasid Caliphate's newly established ports of Basra and Debal, many of the earliest Muslim accounts of the region note the presence of animals such as orang-utans, rhinos and valuable spice trade commodities such as cloves, nutmeg, galangal and coconut.
  Islam came to the Southeast Asia, first by the way of Muslim traders along the main trade-route between Asia and the Far East, then was further spread by Sufi orders and finally consolidated by the expansion of the territories of converted rulers and their communities. The first communities arose in Northern Sumatra (Aceh) and the Malacca's remained a stronghold of Islam from where it was propagated along the trade routes in the region. There is no clear indication of when Islam first came to the region, the first Muslim gravestone markings date to 1082.
  When Marco Polo visited the area in 1292 he noted that the urban port state of Perlak was Muslim, Chinese sources record the presence of a Muslim delegation to the emperor from the Kingdom of Samudra (Pasai) in 1282, other accounts provide instances of Muslim communities present in the Melayu Kingdom for the same time period while others record the presence of Muslim Chinese traders from provinces such as Fujian. The spread of Islam generally followed the trade routes east through the primarily Buddhist region and a half century later in the Malacca's we see the first dynasty arise in the form of the Sultanate of Malacca at the far end of the Archipelago form by the conversion of one Parameswara Dewa Shah into a Muslim and the adoption of the name Muhammad Iskandar Shah after his marriage to a daughter of the ruler of Pasai.
  In 1380, Sufi orders carried Islam from here on to Mindanao. Java was the seat of the primary kingdom of the region, the Majapahit Empire, which was ruled by a Hindu dynasty. As commerce grew in the region with the rest of the Muslim world, Islamic influence extended to the court even as the empires political power waned and so by the time Raja Kertawijaya converted in 1475 at the hands of Sufi Sheikh Rahmat, the Sultanate was already of a Muslim character.
  Another driving force for the change of the ruling class in the region was the concept among the increasing Muslim communities of the region when ruling dynasties to attempt to forge such ties of kinship by marriage. By the time the colonial powers and their missionaries arrived in the 17th century the region up to New Guinea was overwhelmingly Muslim with animist minorities.
caption: Minaret of the Menara Kudus Mosque, influenced by both Islamic and mainly Hindu-Buddhist temple-like Javanese structure.
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