There is a thirteenth-century Chinese text called the Treatise on the Various Barbarian Lands (Zhu fan zhi 諸蕃志) that has information about a place on the island of Java that it calls “Sujidan” 蘇吉丹.
I think that this is the only time this term appears in Chinese sources (other than in later works that cite the Zhu fan zhi) and I’m curious to know where it was.
The geographic information about this place in the Zhu fan zhi is as follows:
“There is a mountain that rises sharply up and is called Baolao Crag (Baolao’an). Before barbarian ships reach here, they first see this mountain. From the mountain top rise up five peaks, and at times there are clouds that cover it.”
有山峻極，名保老岸。番舶未到，先見此山。頂聳五峰，時有雲覆其上。
Presumably this would be referring to a mountain near the coast. There is some other information in this text that leads me to think that Sujidan was someplace on the western end of Java.
Google Earth is very helpful but it has its limitations. At the moment I am trying to find a way to make 3D projections from satellite imagery to see if they can provide a view from the sea that is better than what Google Earth can provide.
While it is possible to do so, there are a few steps involved and it has taken me a while to figure out how to perform those steps by bringing together parts of the process from different video tutorials on YouTube.
Nonetheless, the 3D projections that I have been able to make do provide me with a stronger sense that this is probably the area where Sujidan was located. However, I still need to do some more work to figure things out with more certainty.
In any case, I made a video about the process. I did so in part so that I would be able to remember what I did, but also because it is hard to come by tutorials that lay out all of these steps, and so hopefully this will help someone who is trying to do something like this.
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glad to have you back mr kelly. where have you been?
Thank you! Oh, I’ve just been busy with various things. 🙂
Hello Professor.
Just want to say that I love your work, and I really appreciate your tremendous contribution to our understanding of pre-modern Southeast Asian civilizations and history. I was just wondering though, could you do something about the precolonial Philippines? Cuz honestly, there are very few surviving written records about our precolonial past. There are also a bunch of colonial-minded scholars who invalidate our pre-colonial past and, what’s even worse, they try to attribute every Hindu-Buddhist artifact found in our islands to nearby countries just because they are not aware of the pre-colonial presence of Dharmic religions in our islands. There’s even a theory that “Zabaj” was a polity somewhere in Luzon, but I was enlightened due to your meticulous research.
I wonder, do you have any theories about the certain polity recorded by Ibn Battuta called “Tawalisi” on his way to China? I think the Philippine claim is also valid, considering during the 14th century, the pre-colonial kingdoms in the Philippines flourished along with the Eastern Indonesian kingdoms. There was also a direct trade route between Quanzhou and the Philippines at that time, which Ibn Battuta could have used on his way to Yuan China from Mul-Jawa [Sumatra/Java]. Arabs have charted most of the mainland Southeast Asian kingdoms at that point, so this polity (which was not referenced elsewhere) could well refer to a place somewhere in the Philippines.
Also, I was wondering if you have any knowledge about the “Ma-i” polity mentioned in Zhu Fan Zhi and Dao Yi Zhi Lue as well as the “Sandao”/”Sanyu” polity? These have been suggested by many scholars to be pre-colonial Philippine principalities, but their exact locations and identities are still not fully established. Crossreferencing Ming Chinese records like Voyage with a Tail Wind (Shun Feng Xiang Song) could be helpful, but we lack scholars who are proficient enough in Middle Chinese to verify them.
Thank you so much! Looking forward to your response.