Mandarese

The Mandarese are the Austronesian people of the western coast of Sulawesi facing the Makassar Strait, around Mamuju, Majene and Polewali. Their land was a league of seventeen small kingdoms: seven upriver realms skilled in the mountains, seven estuary realms skilled at sea, and three smaller inland domains. Coastal Mandarese were sailors and fishermen, trading dried and salted fish, coconuts and rice across the strait in their outrigger craft.

Mandar belongs to the Northern South Sulawesi group and was written in Lontara script. In the early seventeenth century Islamisation reached them: Gowa's campaigns of 1608 drew the Mandar coast into the Muslim Makassarese sphere, and the Mandarese adopted Islam while keeping customs close to those of their Bugis neighbours.