ABSTRACT
The Mongol invasions and the development of the Thai state upset the Khmer supremacy in mainland Southeast Asia. Before Trailok's time, the Thais were divided into a number of principalities, whose chiefs paid nominal homage to the king of Ayuthaya. The Majapahit glory lasted only about seventy-five years, although the state lingered on until it was slowly liquidated by the advance of Islam in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Large-scale propagation and acceptance of Islam in insular Southeast Asia became possible only after a similar development had taken place in India. A war of succession between 1401 and 1406 weakened it at a time when a new state, Malacca, which would eventually be the most responsible for its decline, emerged. The conversion of Malaya and the diffusion of Islam in the archipelago as a whole came about with the establishment of a new empire based on a new city, Malacca.
