A Brunei Sultan of the Early Fourteenth Century

The discovery of a fourteenth century Arabic gravestone of a Muslim sultan in Brunei has very interesting implications for the history of Islam in Brunei and more broadly in Malaysia and Indonesia. It strongly suggests that Brunei was an established Muslim kingdom from 1301 onwards, thus raising new questions about the spread of Islam and the influence of China as well as Arabia, Persia and India in the expansion of Islam as a world religion.