the traveller calls Sarha; he describes the capital as a large and fine town, surrounded with an enceinte and bastions of timber.  The court displayed all the state of Mahomedan royalty, and the Sultan’s dominions extended for many days along the coast.  In accordance with Ibn Batuta’s picture, the Malay Chronicle represents the court of Pasei (which we have seen to be intimately connected with Samudra) as a great focus of theological studies about this time.

There can be little doubt that Ibn Batuta’s Malik Al-Dhahir is the prince of the Malay Chronicle the son of the first Mahomedan king.  We find in 1292 that Marco says nothing of Mahomedanism; the people are still wild idolaters; but the king is already a rich and powerful prince.  This may have been Malik Al-Salih before his conversion; but it may be doubted if the Malay story be correct in representing him as the founder of the city.  Nor is this apparently so represented in the Book of the Kings of Pasei.

Before Ibn Batuta’s time, Sumatra or Samudra appears in the travels of Fr. Odoric.  After speaking of Lamori (to which we shall come presently), he says:  “In the same island, towards the south, is another kingdom, by name SUMOLTRA, in which is a singular generation of people, for they brand themselves on the face with a hot iron in some twelve places,” etc.  This looks as if the conversion to Islam was still (circa 1323) very incomplete.  Rashiduddin also speaks of Sumutra as lying beyond Lamuri. (Elliot, I. p. 70.)

The power attained by the dynasty of Malik Al-Salih, and the number of Mahomedans attracted to his court, probably led in the course of the 14th century to the extension of the name of Sumatra to the whole island.  For when visited early in the next century by Nicolo Conti, we are told that he “went to a fine city of the island of Taprobana, which island is called by the natives Shamuthera.”  Strange to say, he speaks of the natives as all idolaters.  Fra Mauro, who got much from Conti, gives us Isola Siamotra over Taprobana; and it shows at once his own judgment and want of confidence in it, when he notes elsewhere that “Ptolemy, professing to describe Taprobana, has really only described Saylan.”

We have no means of settling the exact position of the city of Sumatra, though possibly an enquiry among the natives of that coast might still determine the point.  Marsden and Logan indicate Samarlanga, but I should look for it nearer Pasei.  As pointed out by Mr. Braddell in the J.  Ind.  Arch., Malay tradition represents the site of Pasei as selected on a hunting expedition from Samudra, which seems to imply tolerable proximity.  And at the marriage of the Princess of Parlak to Malik Al-Salih, we are told that the latter went to receive her on landing at Jambu Ayer (near Diamond Point), and thence conducted her to the city of Samudra.  I should seek Samudra near the head of the estuary-like Gulf of Pasei, called in the charts Telo (or Talak) Samawe; a place very likely to have been sought as a shelter to the Great Kaan’s fleet during the south-west monsoon.  Fine timber, of great size, grows close to the shore of this bay,[1] and would furnish material for Marco’s stockades.