Banjar

Banjar grew among the waterways of southern Borneo, where the Martapura meets the great Barito and boats carry goods between the interior and the Java Sea. The river port became the center of a sultanate whose merchants traded the pepper of the surrounding country. Houses, markets and landing places followed the channels through the low, wet landscape.

According to the #italic Hikayat Banjar#!, Prince Samudera sought refuge here during a struggle with his uncle, ruler of the inland kingdom of Negara Daha. With military aid from Demak in Java, he prevailed and accepted Islam, becoming known as Sultan Suriansyah. The new court joined the political traditions of the interior to the trade of the coast. Dutch merchants reached Banjarmasin in the early seventeenth century, seeking control of its pepper. Competition over trade and authority shaped relations between the sultans and foreign companies. The court's principal residences shifted upstream, but the river port remained a center of commerce, linking the forests and cultivated lands of Borneo with ships arriving from across the seas.