Tidore

The Tidore are the people of Tidore Island and neighbouring parts of Halmahera. They speak Tidore, a non-Austronesian North Halmahera language closely related to Ternate. Their rulers, titled Kië ma-kolano, Ruler of the Mountain, headed Duko, one of the four kingdoms of Maluku, traced by local tradition to an eleventh-century kingship.

Islam became the state religion in the late fifteenth century under Sultan Jamaluddin, and Sultan al-Mansur received the first Portuguese visitors in 1512. Rivalry with Ternate drove the Tidore into alliance with Spain, while their suzerainty ran over southern Halmahera and western Papua.

Spain withdrew in 1663, leaving Tidore within the Dutch orbit. In 1780 a treaty reduced it to a Dutch vassal, provoking Prince Nuku's thirty-year revolt, which briefly restored Tidorese power after 1797 before the Dutch retook the island in 1806.