There Were 5 Of Them

With Shariff Hidayatullah, there could be 5 Shariffs as my father used to tell me that there were 5 of them and one of them was in Indonesia. The rest of the Shariff were Brunei, Philippines (where Sulu is), Johor and the other one he was not so sure.

My Imagination

There were many similarities in the names of places in Sabah, then North Borneo or North Kalimantan and that of Java especially west Java, where lies the port of Cirebon and the Cirebon Sultanate.

For example in Sabah he have places like;
Sipitang
Sikuati
Sibuga
Sibatik
Sisipit
Simunul
Sibuku
Sibutu
SiAmil

In Java we have places like'
Cirebon,
Cianjur,
Cipanas,
Ciawei,
Cinkareng (which was just hit by the powerful earthquke) and many others.

The difference is only in the letters but the sound quite similar. As was mentioned earlier people in the past went by the sound and not the words of everything as they had not formal education then.

There had been some twinning or it could have been the same person responsible for those names.

Shariff Hidayatullah of Wali Songo

We have to mention the name of Shariff Hidayatullah, one of Wali Songo or the 9 Saints of Java. He was the only Saints had had the title of Shariff, similar to the title of the Shariff in Negara Brunei and Sulu Kingdom. Could he had some relation to the 4 Shariffs that we had mentioned in earlier post in this blog? With the help of the Sultan Of Demak, he took over Banten in 1424/25 and this date was the date that Shariff Ali was appointed the 3rd Sultan Of Brunei until 1432. Around this time (1450) the Sulu Sultanate was founded too.

The son of Shariff Hidayatullah, Sultan Hasanudin became the first Sultan of Banten and his grand son, Sultan Yusuf followed suit. Shariff Hidayatullah founded the Cirebon Sultanate. Cirebon is located in the northern part of Java Island, about five hours journey by road from Jakarta.

The story I gathered, one of the Shariff sailed back (place not known),but the story teller mentioned Johor. He could be Shariff Hidayatullah as he was also the one sent to China as an Ambassador and married the Chinese princess named Ong Thien.