ABSTRACT
The relationship between the Ottomans and the Malay polities is constructed on the basis of the centrality of the former. Although the Ottomans were considered as a novel actor in the Indian Ocean since the inception of the sixteenth century, the latter, principally belonging to a maritime region, had been substantially participating and contributing to the constructive partnership with other actors from the littoral ocean. This paper proposes longue durèe as a conceptual perspective to reevaluate the historical relationships between the Ottomans and the Malay world covering from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Verily, some principalities and/or states in the Malay world had crucial tendencies to construct a greater unity between their own sovereign polities and the Ottomans. If the constant correspondences led by the attempts of the Malay polities are evaluated comparatively and analytically, a new point of view would be discovered through a new conceptualization of Pan-Islamization. The priority of the Malay polities to initiate political engagements via various channels with the Sublime Port throughout the centuries was based on not only their realization of the mundane power of the Ottomans, but also their ascription of religious status to the latter. Revisiting and utilizing critically the available archival and authentic materials proving the existence of the multiple correspondences between two geographies in opposing directions of the Indian Ocean are believed to open an opportunity for the reinterpretation of the so-called ‘well-established relationships.’
