Sulu Province, Philippines Genealogy Genealogy

Asia Philippines  Sulu Province

Guide to  ancestry, family history and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records.

Sulu Province, Philippines

History

Brief history: Inhabiting the shores and coast of the many islands which constitute the Sulu Archipelago, the people of this Philippine province historically take to a seafaring way of life. Long before Miguel Lopez de Legaspi of colonial Spain colonized Cebu in the early 1500s, foreign sea traders were already familiar with the busy waters of the Sulu Archipelago. When Manila and Cebu were still building their humble settlements, Jolo Island’s capital of Jolo was already a busy city, being one of the most important trading center in the Philippines with growing trade between its inhabitants and the Chinese merchants.

The early population of the archipelago had been influenced by the introduction of Islam toward the end of the fourteenth century by three historic men named Makdum, Raja Baginda, and Abu Bakr.

The Sultanate of the Sulu Archipelago began to rise as a system of government in those days, with Raja Baginda being its first supreme ruler. Abu Bakr succeeded him afterwards, firmly establishing Mohammedanism and effected governmental reforms. The presence of foreign forces in the Sulu islands brought about several conflicts that caused the fall of the first organized state in early Philippines. For 300 years, beginning from the 16th century, the Suluans, as the people of the Sulu Archipelago are called, fought all alien forces that had attempted to dominate them and change their way of life.

The first armed conflict staged by the Suluans was against the Spaniards, around 1578, when Captain Esteban Rodriguez de Figueroa conducted an expedition against the Muslims. The "Moros," as the Spaniards liked to call them (relic of the Moors’ 900-year conquest of Spain), retaliated by pillaging the coastal towns in Visayas and Luzon under Spanish control. This Muslim hostility caused the Spanish government to send at least five military expeditions to Jolo for punitive retaliation. The fourth expedition, led by Governor-General Corcuera in 1638, resulted in the first Spanish occupation of Jolo. The fighting, which lasted for three and a half months, forced the Suluans to flee their capital. Corcurera occupied the town, reconstructed its forts, and left a Spanish garrison behind. However, in 1646, this garrison was recalled to Manila and Jolo was thereby abandoned.

During the nineteenth century, the Spanish made a second occupation of Jolo. Spain eventually evacuated Jolo and the Sulu Archipelago for good in May 1899, and turned over the local government to the Suluans. Foreign domination of the archipelago continued during World War II when the Japanese occupied the Philippines. These short anecdotes of the area’s history have made the Sulu Archipelago what it is today.

Nowadays, with more Suluans being educated by the government school system, the normal reaction of fierce resistance to anything foreign has given way to an attitude of understanding and compromise, resulting in a mix of the old and new, a cornucopia of the east and west influence. This peaceful coexistence has been immortalized in the province’s official emblem, where the Cross-symbols of Christianity harmoniously blends in with the Crescent & Star, symbolizing the Islamic faith.

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