Ternate

The Ternate dynasty ruled the clove island of Ternate in the Moluccas, originally as the Kingdom of Gapi. The island's four villages were led by clan chiefs called Momole; tradition says that in 1257 they elected Momole Cico as their first king, with the regnal name Baab Mashur Malamo, and the rulers later took the title Kolano. Clove sales to Arab, Malay and Chinese merchants made Ternate and its rival Tidore the wealthiest polities of eastern Indonesia, though much of their wealth was spent warring with each other. King Marhum became the first Muslim ruler in the 1460s, and his son Zainal Abidin enacted Islamic law and replaced the royal title with Sultan around 1486.

The Portuguese, brought to the island by Sultan Bayan Sirrullah in 1512, built a fort but fell out with the court; after they murdered Sultan Hairun, a five-year siege ended with their expulsion in 1575 under Sultan Baabullah, whose reign carried Ternate's influence to Sulawesi, Ambon, Timor and the southern Philippines. Spain seized the island in 1606 and the Dutch built their own fort there in 1607, dividing the Moluccas between them. Sultan Sibori Amsterdam's war against the Dutch ended in defeat and a vassal treaty in 1683; a British occupation of 1810 gave way to Dutch rule again in 1817, and in 1824 Ternate became the capital of a Dutch residency spanning Halmahera and the New Guinea coast.