THE ORIGINAL COMMUNITY in Pulau Pinang was indigenous or Malay-Muslim, similar to the case in any state or region on the Malay Peninsula. This fact is
integral to the geographical, historical and social character of the Malay Archipelago, and acts as a reminder about the twists and turns of historical narratives, of vested interests, and of the assumptions and prejudices involved.

Challenging Colonial Narratives

This is not an essay written by a historian. Let me begin with what we expect to hear—that Pulau Pinang has always been associated with trade and commerce, as
well as an inter-ethnic melting pot. Pulau Pinang, from whichever perspective one chooses, manifests much fluidity and eclecticism in its past (and present).

However, such a place cannot but suggest alternative histories. These are, in fact, slowly emerging. Over the last two decades, we have seen a growth in consciousness about the past, and in the wish to reclaim or rewrite it.

It had earlier been assumed that Pulau Pinang had no history worth mentioning before the coming of the English East India Company. The island was said to have before that been inhabited only by a “band of native fishermen”, who were occasionally referred to as “pirates and wild natives”. Such descriptions are common in books on the island’s history, and in tourist literature and brochures about the island. This is misrepresentation at best, and standard Eurocentric
denial of agency in “the Other” at worst.

Another common error is the belief that the earlier name of Pulau Pinang was Pulau Kasatu. This is a misreading of early texts. The name Pulau Pinang has been
around for many centuries. Portuguese 16th-century maps spelt Pulau Pinang as Pulo/Poloo Pinaom. This is clearly a foreign transliteration of Pulau Pinang—and
not of Pulau Kasatu.

The latter is, in fact, associated with Nakhoda Ragam, from the 1600s. Scientifically, events over the centuries which took place on the other side of the
Strait of Malacca should to good epistemic advantage be understood to be relevant to Pulau Pinang. Furthermore, the geography and strategic location of the island could not but have positioned it for regional social, economic and political significance. Its population over the centuries would have been tied to the populating of Kedah, and of Kedah Tua. Today, one can clearly see Gunung Jerai, the landfall for mariners, on the mainland. People would have passed or domiciled
on the island at various points, and they would almost certainly have been subjects of kingdoms such as Srivijaya and Langkasuka. A common view, held among local and foreign historians such as Leonard Andaya, is that the earliest population was from Acheh. Now, must the inhabitants in Pulau Pinang have come from somewhere? That appears to me to be a question interesting only in discussions about prehistory.

Of greater significance to modern history, the people living in Pulau Pinang before 1786, or traversing across the channel between the island and what is now
Seberang Perai would, with great probability given the proximity of Kedah, have been subjects in some sense to that sultanate. There is no need to assume that they
“came” or “escaped, fled from Kedah” or the “mainland” or “migrated from Acheh” or Sumatra. The historicity and semantics involved here need to be studied seriously, and discredited from academic and policy discourses.

The often-used phrase of these early people having “landed” or “settled on the island” are necessarily misrepresentations as well; in fact, this resonates the colonial position that the world consisted largely of terra nullius. Equally worth noting is that “founding” or “discovering” are categories employed to justify
European exceptionalism.

The Eurocentric narrative accords founder status to Francis Light. In effect, this casts other perspectives into deep shadow, alienating them and making them
hard to conceive.

Revisiting the history of the communities who inhabited the island before 1786 remains an imperative in drafting Malaysian history. The history of Pulau Pinang did not begin in 1786. To say so grossly distorts the overall Malay narrative and Malay self-understanding. Pulau Pinang is, of course, not alone. While the
circumstances may differ, both Pulau Pinang and Singapore are both curated to be “history-starved”.

In a 2007 paper presented at a seminar on Ahmad Ibrahim titled “Lifting the Veils: The Mystique (Mistake) of Penang Legal History”, authors Bashiran Begum Mobarak Ali, Noriah Ramli, and Siti Junaidah Muhamad raised legal discrepancies surrounding the British occupation of Pulau Pinang. It has often been claimed that the legal history of Malaysia, in general, and Pulau Pinang specifically begins with the British occupation of the island in 1786 and with the three Charters of Justice: 1807, 1826 and 1855.

Pulau Pinang’s legal history did not begin from 1786. There was a legal system in existence on the island prior to 1786, or 1807. This can be perceived from the way of life of the local community, and their adat (customs) and laws claimed punca kuasa (source of authority) from the Kedah Sultanate. There is really no evidence that they were “pirates”.

In 1605, there were already rules relating to port management in Kedah. The Kedah government drafted these based on Islamic law modified by the Adat Temenggong on matters related to marriages, divorce, custody, land dealings, and criminal or civil offences. The British, as pointed out by Abu Haniffa, had failed
“to look at the Al-Quran, the basic textbook of all these laws that was and is still applicable”. These customary laws, just like the common law of England, were basically common law.

Ties to Kedah

The character of Malay-Muslim society in Pulau Pinang must be seen against the background of the larger polity and territory. The Kedah sultan was indeed the sovereign of both land and sea routes between the Indian Ocean and the southern reaches of the Malacca Strait. In his foreword in Maziar Mozaffari Falarti’s Malay Kingship in Kedah: Religion, Trade and Society, Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies C.A. Trocki describes Kedah as one of the most durable dynasties in Southeast Asia (if not the whole Islamic world). Falarti’s study of Kedah’s traditional history pioneered the idea of its connections to South, Central and West Asia. The book brings to our attention the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa—much neglected and often dismissed as mythical—as textual foundation for the spiritual legitimacy of the dynasty. Its use of indigenous literary, oral and cultural sources, hitherto doubted and ignored by scholars in the understanding of Kedah and, by extension, the Malay world and Southeast Asia, gives vital insights to the significance of ideas and events. Pulau Pinang is integral to the Merong Mahawangsa narrative.

There is also the link between Kedah and the indigenous Orang Laut, or the Bugis-Makassar, Ilanun and Siak-Minangkabau. Significantly, these peoples were engaged in the Kedah/Pulau Pinang story. Significant in Falarti’s work are two aspects: firstly, its referencing of Kedah as a maritime power in Southeast Asia, and secondly, its many references to Pulau Pinang.

Falarti, unlike earlier scholars of Malayan or Kedah history, does not see Pulau Pinang as an entity separate from the sultanate.

Kedah’s connections outwards equipped it with essential cultural and social links by land to Pattani, to Nakhon Si Thammarat and to old Siam further north, as well as to the Malay territories mostly to its south and southeastern borders; and by sea to Sumatra, Burma, Angkor, the Mon principalities, China, India and Persia; not to mention Europe. It is argued that Kedah traditionally acted as a regional exchange hub. Contrary to its present image as a padi-planting state, and having a history that covers not much more than the Lembah Bujang and the Siamese invasions of the 18th and 19th centuries. Kedah was eclectic. There had been an intermingling of peoples, goods and cultures over the centuries. Kedah’s sea and overland routes enabled a regular exchange of traditions, literature, languages and sciences.

In Raja Ali Haji’s Tuhfat al-Nafis, we find Syed Ali, the Siak sea lord, leaving Siak in the Strait of Malacca solely to ambush Songkla in the Gulf of Siam on behalf of Kedah. The Siak-Minangkabau/Bugis-Makassar rivalry in Kedah was intertwined with Raja Kechil and the early history of Pulau Pinang. Falarti notes that there were Minangkabaus on the island, aligned traditionally with Siak. There were also Minangkabau settlements in Seberang Prai around 1780. In the first half of the 18th century, Pulau Pinang was invaded by the Orang Laut and the Bugis. Falarti suggests that Nakhoda Nan Intan (originally from the Minangkabau heartland of Payakumbuh), who settled in Batu Uban on the island in the 1730s, had either asked for the help of Siak’s sea lords or Kedah’s ruler.

Pre-Colonial Settlements

Batu Uban—one of the earliest urban centres on the island—is central to the history and narrative of Pulau Pinang. It was pioneered in 1734 by Nakhoda Nan Intan or Haji Muhammad Salleh, who was from Kampung Bodi (Buadi) in Payakumbuh, Sumatera. According to Norman Macalister’s (1803) informant, in the first 20 years of 1700, about 60 years before 1786, Pulau Pinang had a population of about 2,000.

Total ignorance of the significance of Batu Uban in Pulau Pinang’s history saw its significance fade from historical consciousness. This is true also of other settlements such as Sungai Pinang, Jelutong and Sungai Nibong. Batu Uban has now virtually been levelled except for Masjid Jamek, with its more than 500-odd graves, sandwiched between a highway named after a chief minister and some high-rise structures. This lack of due regard has erased a past that is crucial to the understanding of Pulau Pinang’s traditional society and its linkage to Kedah.

Only the mosque is gazetted. Behind it lies a burial ground established in 1734 by Nakhoda Nan Intan. Batu Uban in the early 1700s was not only a place—it was also a town and a port, established earlier than the one in what is now George Town, what was then Tanjong Penaga. The mosque—the earliest in the state and one of the earliest on the peninsula—is not mentioned in books on mosques or in tourist brochures and pamphlets.

The early peoples residing in places like Batu Uban, Tanjong Tokong, Jelutong and Dato’ Kramat have been rendered faceless and nameless, or worse, people without history and genealogy.

This raises an important point: Condescension towards a place, towards the history of a place, tends to lead to it being marginalised in public policies. Short cuts in exploring regional histories, along with a refusal to accept that national history has to be intertwined with regional histories, have been destructive—to Pulau Pinang and Kedah; and certainly to Malaysia and its overall historical depth. Pulau Pinang is a case study of a history betrayed by historians.

Abdul Aziz Ishak’s Mencari Bako remains generally unknown, even among historians and heritage advocates. Chapter one begins with the emphasis that, by 1786, of the many inhabitants on the island, most comprised of Malays originating from Eastern Sumatera.

“Mereka dipercayai menetap sejak tahun 1700 lagi, dan adalah benar bahawa di Batu Uban, Dato’ Keramat dan Jelutung sudahpun terdapat tanah perkuburan Islam semasa Light mendarat.” (Abdul Aziz Ishak, 1983: p.12)—“They are believed to have settled since the 1700s, and it is true that in Batu Uban, Dato’ Keramat and Jelutong, there were already Muslim burial grounds at the time Light landed.”

Malays were also domiciled in Tanjong Penegri and Kelawai (Kuala Awal). Tanjong Tokong, to the north of Tanjong Penaga, was already populated by Malays and by Jawi Peranakan from the mainland.

In his account, Jonas Daniel Vaughan (1825–1891) documented information from the “Narrative of Haji Mohamed Salleh”. Apart from his function as Superintendent of Police for Pulau Pinang, Vaughan was also interested in the lives and cultures of the local communities. But the Haji Mohamed Salleh of his writings was about a different person from Haji Muhammad Salleh@Nakhoda Nan Intan, who was from Kampong Bodi (Buadi), Payakumbuh, in the Minangkabau heartlands. The narrative refers to a Haji Mohamed Salleh who hailed from Brunei, and was thus known as Haji Brunei. The account contains names of places such as Penaga, Dato’ Keramat, Batu Uban, Jelutong and Gelugor.

What follows are brief accounts of early place names in Pulau Pinang according to Vaughan’s Haji Mohamed Salleh Narrative:

Tanjong Penaga. The name Tanjong Penaga was mentioned early in the narrative as a place seen by Francis Light to be suitable as a settlement, port and fort. The name was subsequently changed to Fort Cornwallis. It is significant that the focus for developing Tanjong Penaga was to replace the old port of Batu Uban.

Dato’ Keramat. This is the territory first named in the Haji Mohamad Salleh Narrative, although there was no mention of any Malay settlement there. However, in a document by C.J.S. Maxwell (1885), based on land records kept at the Register of Surveys 1795, Dato’ Keramat was said to be the earliest settlement in Pulau Pinang. J.C. Pasqual in the 1922 Penang Gazette, cited by Clodd (1948:46–47), also said that:

“Malay tradition assigns a considerable population to Penang before the British period. According to this tradition, an area on the present island known as Dato’ Keramat was at one time a separate island in a swampy area. The rapid recession of the sea combined with the silt brought down by the Penang river have since joined it to the main island. There is also a record that before the foundation of Penang as a British settlement its inhabitants numbered some thousands who were massacred by order of one of the Sultan[s] of Kedah because of their piratical attacks. When Light landed in 1786 he found only a small remnant of Malays at Dato’ Kramat. In 1795, a grant of this clearing was given to Maharaja Setia who claimed that he was a relation by descent of the Dato’ Kramat who cleared the ground ninety years before.”

Batu Uban. The Narrative made an error as to the year Batu Uban was opened, but the name Batu Uban was said to have originated from several large rocks whitish in colour, and with growth that resembled graying hair on a human head. Another account was that before the appearance of the name “Batu Uban”, the place was called Batu Bara, reflecting family and trade contacts to Batu Bara, in Sumatera Utara.

According to Omar Farouk Shaeik Ahmad (1978), Batu Uban was a place where Arabs from Hadhramaut and other parts of the Arab world came to trade or be engaged in missionary activities. The mosque next to the beach, now 290 years old, was the focal point for religious activities. Batu Uban was also an important education centre.

The vocabulary of the history of Pulau Pinang is in great need for rearrangement. Representations of early Pulau Pinang society need to be inclusive of its Malay antecedents who converged from surrounding regions. Preceding 1786 are the important years of 1749 and 1734—these point to a history and heritage that we have forgotten. Batu Uban was the earliest settlement—and already a cosmopolitan place then. It did not develop “from the backwaters to a modern settlement”. From Batu Uban, its progressive population radiated to Tanjong Penegeri and Tanjong Penaga—referred by the local population as Tanjong—and along the coast toward Sungai Nibong, Sungai Ara and Bayan Lepas.

The history of Pulau Pinang is not a simple one about the opening up to free trade; it is not as simple as the development of George Town as a multicultural and cosmopolitan centre of the region. It is more than the claims that “Malays from Kedah, Perak, Patani and Sumatra settled here,” or that “the Penang Malays comprise[d] the Achenese, Minangkabaus and Javanese.” Pulau Pinang’s history, deeply intertwined with the Malay-Muslim heritage of the region and the Kedah Sultanate, is a complex one that predates colonial encounters. Recognising this will honour more clearly the legacy of its earliest communities.