Bangsamoro preceded Magellan only 20 years

History is 50 percent fact and 50 percent interpretation. But interpreters can fudge the facts, as drafters of the Memo of Agreement on Ancestral Domain do. Malacañang and Moro separatists make it look like the Bangsamoro people have occupied Mindanao-Sulu-Palawan since prehistory. Records debunk them.

The MOA-AD binds “both parties (to) acknowledge that ... ancestral land refer to those under claim of ownership, occupied or possessed, by themselves or through ancestors of the Bangsamoro people, communally or individually since time immemorial.” Further, “that they are the ‘First Nation’ with defined territory and system of government.”

Written and oral tradition of Maguindanaos and Maranaos, whom the Moro Islamic Liberation Front claims to act for, tell the opposite. Their forefathers came to Central Mindanao from Johore, at the Malay Peninsula southern tip, around 1500. In effect, they preceded the Spaniards by only 21 years or so. Thus, Limasawa, Mactan and Cebu already were inhabited then by ancestors of Magellan’s welcomers: Kolambu, Lapulapu and Humabon, respectively. And Luzon already had the Tagalogs, Pampangos, Ilocanos, etc., with whom the Visayans traded. In fact, when the Islamic visitors from Johore arrived, they were met by earlier settlers, the Lumad.

In Readings in Philippine History, Horacio de la Costa jotted down the story from Maguindanao oral literature. The story begins with Arab Sarip Zayna-l-Abidin traveling from Mecca and meeting Johore Sultan Sulkar-nayn’s daughter Putri Jasul Asikin. The sarip and princess wed, begetting Sarip Kabungsuwan. On reaching manhood Kabungsuwan seeks parental blessing to conquer new lands, and sets out with a flotilla of followers. In open sea they come upon strong winds and are strewn in all directions. Kabungsuwan lands in Maguindanao; the rest are scattered to Balunay, Kuran, Tampasuk, Sandakan, Palimbang, Bangjar, Sulug, Tubuk and Malabang,

At this point, de la Costa annotated: “Maguindanao records make mention of a mysterious power which Kabung-suwan and his men possessed of killing someone from a distance by ‘beckoning’ to him. It is quite possible that the strangers brought with them not only a new religion but a new weapon: the gun.”

The account goes on that Sarip Kabungsuwan anchored at Tinundan where they spotted a taro plant and cornstalk floating downriver. There must be people around, they surmised, and soon enough Manumbali, datu of Slangan, walked by with seven hunters. Failing to converse, Kabungsuwan beckoned to them, whereupon one of the men fell dead. Frightened, the others fled. Later the people of Katitwan, having heard of this, came down to see the sarip, but they also could not understand him, and one of them died of the same cause. They returned with Tabunaway and Mamalu, who both understood Kabungsuwan and came into his boat. Tabunaway’s tribesmen joined in, and invited Kabungsuwan to their land called Maguindanao. Kabungsuwan accepted, but on condition that they first convert to Islam, which they did.

Thomas McKenna told the same story in Muslim Rulers and Rebels but based on the tarsila, a written genealogy of the Cotabato sultanates set up in 1511. It appears that Kabungsuwan converted other chieftains and married their daughters. Thus he continued a Johore royal lineage or barabangsa that, thru Zayna-l-Abidin, also descended from Prophet Mohammad. (Citing Cesar Majul’s studies on Mindanao roots, McKenna traced the Johore sultanate to Melaka before driven away by the Dutch.) Written in Malay and Maguindanao using Arabic script, the tarsila ascribes mystical births to the wives of Kabungsuwan and of his son, Sarip Makaalang. Maranao nobles trace their blood to the latter. Many sites, including a new province, are now named after Sharif Kabunsuan, in modern-day spelling.

Accounts attribute to another direct descendant of Mohammad the spread of Islam to Sulu-Palawan. In 1450 Johore-born Arab adventurer Sarip Syed Abu Bak’r arrived in Sulu from Melaka, and married Param Isuli, daughter of Rajah Baguinda. Seven years later he founded the Royal Sultanate of Sulu, of the Prophet’s House of Hashemite in Hadramaut, from which Tausog and Yakan nobility stem. Abu Bak’r is buried in the island of Simunul, outside the country’s oldest mosque.

Quoting Emerson Christie, Robert Day McAmis wrote in History of Malay Muslims that the great Moro wave of immigration into the Southern Philippines is a myth. What really happened is that Muslim Malays, Sulus and Arabs came to Mindanao to fish and to trade while preaching religion. Aboriginal Tirurays, Subanons and Manobos were taken in by the superior technology and literature, and converted.

McKenna described pre-Islamic Mindanao as self-governing but linked clans or bangsa, headed by chieftains. The great Madjapahit and Sri Visayan empires presaged or interacted with them, according to tales. From Chinese court reports, gold was traded in Mindanao and Luzon between 200 BC and 300 AD. That was also a period of migration of early inhabitants, the Lumad, from southern China and continental Malaya. Islam and Christianity came two thousand years later. The real “First Nation” of the islands is Aeta primitive society.

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