Quote:
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Originally Posted by MABAGANI
In Moro culture, owning a fine sword or wealth did not exempt datus from fighting with his men or family...leadership also meant warrior prowess
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Interesting quote from a historical article showing the interrelationship of Brunei and Ternate to the Moro Sultanates, and royal warriorship-
"Rajah Balatamay's story is one of the finest in the glorious years of the
sultanates.
Balatamay, who was from Buayan (Cotabato Upriver Valley) and Maguindanao
(then comprising most of Mindanao), was exiled to Sulu after he killed
Spanish Ambassador Melchor Lopez, a co-signatory of Sultan Kudarat to a
Spain-Maguindanao Treaty ceding parts of Mindanao to Spanish claims on Islas
Pilipinas in 1645.
His close friend Wasit gave Balatamay the highest defense post of the Sulu
sultanate and subsequently sent him to Brunei to lead the combined
reinforcement of Maguindanao and Sulu. He was to help Brunei's Sultan Saiful
Rijal quell a rebellion mounted in his kingdom by Visayan settlers.
It was said that the triumphant defense of the Brunei sultanate prompted
Rijal to reward the sultanate of Sulu with his government's property in
North Borneo, the Sabah territory (which Malaysia, declaring independence
from Britain, annexed in 1961), while the sultanate of Maguindanao was given
a territory in Ternate in what is now Indonesia.
*Blood evidence*
Kudarat's annexation of Ternate having been rewarded his sultanate bears
blood evidence in his descendants among the Diocolano family in Maguindanao,
whose matriarch was the princess of Ternate.
Returning to Sulu after almost two decades in the Brunei war, Balatamay
learned that his father-in-law was determined to enthrone his child by the
Sulu princess even if the child turned out to be a girl.
Balatamay declined to anoint his young daughter to reign over Sulu as
Pangian Ampay Putri Kabira after her grandfather. (Pangian is the feminine
title equivalent to the masculine sultan).
The son-in-law's opposition prompted the Sulu sultan to call for bloodshed
in a gladiators' fight of sorts: should there be none to take the challenge
of the sultan to fight his hardest fighting warrior, then it would become a
one-on-one fight between the father-in-law and the son-in-law—a kind of only
one wish, yours or mine, should prevail.
Datu M'gkap of Buayan took up the cudgel for Balatamay and won over the Sulu
warrior. But still, Balatmay submitted to his father-in-law, who still had
ultimate power to decide over the affairs of Sulu. Some historians say the
ascension to power of Pangian Ampay Putri Kabira remains an unresolved case
to this day in the Sulu sultanate's council, the Ruma Bichara."