Kolano

Before Islam, the people of Ternate lived in kin groups, each led by a leader called a momole, and the old belief of the northern Moluccas was bound up with the rule of the kolano, the king. Traditionally in 1257 the momole of Ternate's four villages elected Momole Cico king of Gapi, with the title Baab Mashur Malamo.

A legend told that the ancestors of the Malukan kings were four sons born to the Arab Jafar Sadik and a heavenly nymph, Nurus Safa, who founded the royal lines of Bacan, Jailolo, Tidore and Ternate.

Islam reached the court in the late fifteenth century. Marhum (1465—1486) was the first king of Ternate to embrace it, and his son Zainal Abidin (1486—1500) enacted Islamic law and replaced the title of kolano with sultan.