Sumbawa

The Sumbawa people, or Tau Samawa, are the Austronesian inhabitants of western and central Sumbawa and surrounding islands, distinct from the Bimanese of the east; they write their language in Bugis or Malay script. Their chiefdoms were tributaries of Majapahit in the fourteenth century and later came under Balinese influence. By the sixteenth century Sumbawa exported fragrant wood, honey, rice and horses, and traded with the Dutch as early as 1605.

The Samawa polity, ruled by the Dewa Awan Kuning dynasty, fell under the protection of the Makassarese kingdom of Gowa. Its chiefdoms united into the Sultanate of Sumbawa in 1648; in 1673 the Makassarese deposed a ruler who broke his treaty with Gowa, ending the dynasty.

The ruling family adopted Islam in the seventeenth century. It spread in the nineteenth, when the court used religious reform to rebuild authority after the Tambora eruption of 1815.