Dompu

Dompu was a chiefdom on central Sumbawa in the Lesser Sunda Islands, between Bima and Sumbawa. Its court followed native traditions influenced by Buddhism.

The fourteenth-century Javanese poem Negarakertagama named Dompu among eastern Sumbawa’s principalities. In the seventeenth century its rulers adopted Islam amid Makassar campaigns, and Dompu became a sultanate linked by marriage and alliance to Bima and Sumbawa. In 1815 the eruption of nearby Mount Tambora brought destruction and famine to its lands.