Sultanate of Bima

Its history is a case study in how a small island sultanate was drawn into the Dutch system — not by conquest but by contract, and not once but three times, in 1669, 1905 and 1909.

At a glance

When did Bima become Muslim?

In 1621 — precisely, on 7 February 1621, when Sultan Abdul Kahir professed the faith, according to Noorduyn's study of the Bima chronicle. The date is fixed by conversion of the Islamic calendar: 15 Rabi' I 1030. Makassarese expeditions had reached Sumbawa in 1618 and 1619, and a further campaign followed in 1626; the tradition's dates of 1609 and 1640 are scribal errors for the same events.

Abdul Kahir reigned until his death on 2 December 1640, and his successors made Bima a Makassarese ally and a Muslim state with a court, a mosque and a chronicle of its own.

What was the 1669 contract?

The treaty that tied Bima to the Dutch East India Company, signed on 1 October 1669 and preserved in Heeres's Corpus Diplomaticum. It granted the Company a monopoly of sappanwood and cassia, fixed the price of rice at eighty measures of fifty-four pounds per coyang, banned Makassarese shipping from Bima's ports, and included a mutual clause forbidding either party to convert the other's subjects.

It is a small document with large consequences

: it made Bima a supplier of rice and forest products to Batavia and cut it off from its Makassarese neighbours, and it established the contractual relationship that lasted until the twentieth century.

What was Bima society like?

A stratified island society of nobles, commoners and slaves, organised around the sultan's court, the mosque and the village. The nobility held titles and land, the commoners farmed rice and raised horses, and the sultan's authority ran through local headmen and religious officials. Islam was the law of the court, but the older Austronesian customs — marriage alliances, ancestral ritual, the exchange of cloth and gold — remained embedded in it.

The chronicle records the court's ceremonies, its genealogies and its wars, and it gives the sultanate a history that most of its neighbours lack. It also records the Dutch contracts, which is how the entry can date them precisely.

What happened in 1905 and 1909?

The colonial takeover, in two stages. The Dutch parliamentary papers show that political contracts with Bima, Sanggar, Sumbawa and Dompo were signed on 31 December 1905, and supplementary contracts followed in March 1909, when the afdeeling of Bima was transferred from Celebes to Timor. The year 1908, often given as the end, is when Sultan Ibrahim signed in Batavia and the Ngali, Dena and Kala revolt began.

What is the legacy?

A regency, a chronicle and a mosque. Bima is a regency of West Nusa Tenggara; the sultanate's mosque and tombs survive; and the Bima chronicle is one of the principal sources for the history of Sumbawa and of Makassarese expansion.

Common myths about Bima

Timeline of Bima

What the map shows next

At 1758 on the map Bima is a Dutch-contracted sultanate, and Gowa has long since fallen.

At 1889 on the map the colonial state is closing in, and the Dutch East Indies covers the archipelago.