When the Portuguese ousted Sultan Mahmud Shah from Malacca in 1511, the great Malaccan Sultanate came to an end. The Malay royals retreated inland and established the Old Johor Sultanate around the Johor River. Their power peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries but they were constantly moving up and down the Johor River to counter attacks from the Acehnese, Bugis, Dutch, English, and Portuguese. Lawrence and I are preparing a documentary about the Old Johor Sultanate, so today we went in search of locations to fill in missing bits of our story. The principle visible signs of the Old Johor Sultanate are the gravesites of the important players as there is little in the way of solid structures to see. We have already visited the area around Kota Tinggi so you can read up on that by clicking here.
Near the Johor River south of Kota Tinggi is Bukit Seluyut which is the resting place of Sultan Muzaffar Shah II who ruled from 1546 to 1570. He was the Second Sultan of Johor but died by poisoning, so being a Sultan was not necessarily a good thing to be. According to Google Maps, we needed to drive south from Kota Tinggi on Route 92 and turn right through palm oil plantations for 20 min. We followed the directions until the road simply ended nowhere! Looks like we might do better to find this location from the river rather than the road. Although we failed to find Bukit Seluyut, we had a lovely drive through mature palm oil trees lit by the morning sun. And we even came across a few small rubber tree plantations; I didn’t know these still existed on such a small scale.
As we headed back towards the main road, we came to a crossroads and decided to follow another road just to see where it went. We ended up by the riverside via Kampung Sungai Sembilang.
A new public jetty has recently been built here and we pondered on why here? If you imagine sailing up the Johor River from the Johor Straits (between Malaysia and Singapore), where would you chose to land? The coast line was endless seemingly impregnable mangrove forests. Perhaps here there had been a small break in the forest, enough for ships to land?
Anyway, it was a good place to stop and eat our picnic lunch (we are SO British!!!) before driving on to our next destination of Johor Lama.
Johor Lama was one of the most important locations for the Old Johor Sultanate and remants of the old fortifications can still be found there (see my report from 2016). For this visit, we wanted to visit Kampung Johor Lama and the riverside north of Kota Johor Lama nearer to Sungai Johor Lama as this is where the Portuguese may have landed. It must have been a huge city in its time if the number of gravesites scattered around the kampung are anything to go by. When you park by the riverside, you can see that the river is still a strong part of life here.
We found the public pier from which you could take boat trips, but nothing much was happening on this Weds afternoon and there was nowhere open to get a drink.
One curious thing I have noticed from my photos of jetties is a lack of symmetry in local architecture! For the jetty in Johor Lama (photo above), there are 5 columns on the left and 6 columns on the right of the walkway. And, for the jetty at Kampung Sungai Sembilang (photo left), there are 4 columns on the left and 3 columns on the right. Perhaps someone can explain this mystery?
While loitering around this area, a young couple came to talk to us because they were nature guides and, seeing our cameras, thought we were looking to photograph birds. It turned out they had taken over the Amani Resort and were starting up a venture in ecotourism (Panz Village). They were experts on local history and wildlife, so we had a long conversation with them. We learnt of a place called Kubu Budak, which is the green patch in the photo below.
Kubu Budak was a Childrens’s fortress, built by the local children. It would have been used when Kota Johor Lama was under attack by the Portuguese or Acehnese. This is at the mouth of Sungai Johor Lama and the water level here is relatively shallow, especially at low tide as you see in the photo below.
There is still a community of Orang Laut (sea gypsies) living nearby, and one can hire a boat to visit them. Lawrence will probably do that later but I get too seasick to do this. You may think the Johor River looks calm, but it was quite windy today and you could see plenty of wind action the river.
The Orang Laut are a crucial part of the story of the Old Johor Sultanate because theirs was still a maritime-based business. The Malays didn’t keep a standing navy as such, but when attack was threatened, the Orang Laut would be summoned to the rescue. They were strong believers in the power of the Sultans, stemming back to their perceived origins with Alexander the Great (now that’s another story). So, when the childless Sultan Mahmud Shah II was assassinated in 1699, and the Malacca-Johor Dynasty truly ended, the support of the Orang Laut started to wane and the fortunes of the Old Johor Sultanate gradually faded. Not much is heard of the Old Johor Sultanate in the 18th century, in fact it takes the arrival of the British in Singapore in 1819 to stir things up around here! That too is another story which you can read about here.
Click here to return to Travels in Malaysia 2019.
Click here to return to Helen Gray’s homepage.