Palembang

The Javanese kept the old Śrīvijaya port on a short leash. When a ruler of Palembang sent envoys to the new Ming court in the 1370s, Majapahit answered in 1377 with a fleet that crushed the revolt, and the battered port fell into the hands of Chinese pirates under Chen Zuyi. Zheng He's treasure fleet destroyed them here in 1407, and the Ming made Shi Jinqing ruler of the "Old Port", as the Chinese called Palembang.

Islam took hold when a nobleman from Demak settled here and built a palace walled in ironwood on the Musi. Pepper then drew the Dutch East India Company, which won a monopoly of the trade in 1642; after an attack on a Dutch ship, a Dutch fleet burned the city in 1659, and that same year its ruler proclaimed himself sultan. Under the sultans Palembang rose again as a city of the river, its houses lining the Musi, some of them on rafts, and Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin I's Great Mosque standing above them, until the Dutch took it in 1821.