The Sulu Archipelago and its people, by Sixto Y. Orosa ...

CHAPTER TWO

THE LONG FEUD WITIH SPAIN
THE POWER OF SULU
ACCOUNTS of pre-Mohammedan times in the Sulu
Archipelago are unreliable and conflicting A Sulu
legend tells us that the first inhabitants were Buranum,
hill people from Borneo who settled at Maimbung and
it is a common belief among the people that Alexander
the Great and several of his officers once ruled in Jolo
During the fourteenth century, Samals and Bajaos from
Johore irimigrated in large numbers to the coasts of
Sulu, where their descendants remain. The hill people,
or Sulus proper, although outnumbered, held their own
fairly well against the newcomers and took many of
them captive. Moros from Mindanao, especially from
Lanao, also came as immigrants.
Even prior to the advent of Magellan, Sulu pirates
were the terror of the Visayas and Luzon. They held
slaves, who were taken as captives or received as tribute,
and these slaves were assimilated into the bulk of the
population of Sulu.
In the year 1380, Makdum, a noted Arabian judge,
introduced the Mohammedan religion throughout the
Sulu Archipelago. The ruins of the mosque e built at
Tubig-Indangan, on the island of Simunul, still remain.
He died at Sibutu, where the people still venerate his
grave. Later, about the year 1390, Raja Baguinda
arrived at Buansa and successfully continued the work
of ZMadum, making himself ruler. It is said that he
brought writh him a pair of elephants, the ancestors of
a herd long since exterminated that once roamed