Badau

Badau lies on Belitung, the island east of Bangka between Sumatra and Borneo. Local tradition remembers a kingdom here from the fifteenth century, with Datuk Mayang Geresik as its first ruler. Belitung became a stopping place on maritime trading routes in the seventeenth century, when the kingdom of Balok also arose on the island. Under its rulers Badau was one of several districts governed by local officials, whose descendants later established their own lines of authority.