ABSTRACT
The Muslim challengers who overthrew Majapahit and established a new Muslim Mataram were not foreigners, but Javanese who had converted to Islam. Maritime Southeast Asia's conversion to Islam was thus part of a more general expansion of the Prophet's religion that accompanied an epoch of Turko-Mongolian hegemony, roughly from 1200 to 1600. Islam in Central Asia had a strong mystical element from its inception, and after the Mongol conquests, Sufism became an integral part of the new Turko-Mongolian culture. During the fourteenth century, Samudra-Pasai became a center of Islamic studies, the first within the island realm, although for the first hundred years of its existence neither this port nor the gradual spread of Islam to other ports had much impact on Majapahit's power. Majapahit's decline in the fifteenth century was paralleled by the growth of Malacca, a new port on the strait that now bears its name.
