Precolonial Governance and its Idealization in Cotabato

In contemporary Muslim politics in Cotabato, the past inhabits the present in a manner insufficiently expressed by the term "traditionalism." Various idealized versions of the precolonial past are used as models for present-day political action by a wide range of Muslim political actors, from separatist insurgents to Philippine government officials. Recourse to an imagined past for present political guidance is, of course, a common element in contemporary nationalist movements. The extraordinary aspect of its occurrence in Cotabato is the extent to which not only various Muslim separatist factions but also Christian politicians and state functionaries share the perception that the political fate of Cotabato Muslims is tied to their traditional nobility as a result of ancient and immutable bonds. Both proponents and opponents of Muslim separatism tend to assume that ordinary Muslims reverence their highborn leaders (or datus ) for their sacred ancestry and could not imagine politics without them. In this view, any political arrangement to enhance Muslim self-determination in Cotabato must include prominent consideration of the role of the traditional nobility. It is considered preferable to attempt to reform the unsuitable practices of contemporary datus rather than to try to undermine their influence, because the bond between traditional leaders and followers is the epitome of Muslim political culture in Cotabato.^[4]

Little historical scholarship exists by which to evaluate the validity of these perceptions. Although a number of the available scholarly works are quite astute in their political observations (see Ileto 1971; Stewart 1977; Beckett 1982; Adil 1955), none has provided a comprehensive analysis of traditional sociopolitical relations. I offer such an analysis here in order to provide a historical standard by which to measure contemporary political relations between Muslim leaders and followers.

My depiction of political relations in the Cotabato sultanates relies on ethnographic information garnered from interviews I conducted in and around Cotabato City in the mid-1980s. My primary consultants in this matter were four individuals, three of them elders, who were unusually knowledgeable about traditional arrangements.^[5] Two—Datu Mohammad Adil and Datu Kasim—are descendants of the Magindanaon high nobility.^[6] Imam Akmad, an Iranun speaker, is the imam (prayer leader) of the Campo Muslim mosque, and Hadji Abbas is a descendent of the dumatus , a special status group in the Magindanao Sultanate (see below). Each of these informants shared with me oral traditions learned from their elders, as well as their own inferences about the nature of traditional governance in Cotabato.^[7]

I supplement ethnographic material from Cotabato with primary indigenous historical sources from the Muslim Philippines and works based upon them (Saleeby 1905; Adil 1955; Glang 1969; Majul 1973; Hooker 1983; Mastura 1984; Loyre 1991). I rely as well on historical evidence from Western sources (Blumentritt 1893; Combes 1903–19; Saleeby 1905; Dampier 1906; Forrest 1969; Arcilla 1990) and on scholarly works based on those sources (Ileto 1971; Majul 1973; W. H. Scott 1982, 1984, 1994). In addition to information pertaining peculiarly to Cotabato, I also use European source materials and scholarly works that describe precolonial polities in other parts of the Muslim Philippines (Mednick 1965, 1974; Warren 1981; W.H. Scott 1994), the non-Muslim Philippines (W. H. Scott 1982, 1984, 1994), and elsewhere in Islamic Southeast Asia (Gullick 1958, 1987; Milner 1982; Sullivan 1982; Andaya 1993).

From Heterarchy to Hierarchy:The Decline of Local Descent Groups

Pre-Islamic Magindanaon social organization consisted of a number of localized cognatic descent groups, or bangsa ,^[8] that were associated with particular autonomous or semiautonomous ingeds, or localities.

The Magindanaon bangsa were most likely similar to those of the Maranao, the neighboring Muslim ethnolinguistic group of the Lanao Plateau. As described by Mednick (1965), membership in a Maranao bangsa provided access to rights in a specified area—most importantly, usufruct rights in land, or the right to exploit a certain natural resource—as a result of an ancestral association.

In pre-Islamic Cotabato, these large, localized descent groups produced chiefs who, under certain conditions, were able to extend their power beyond their own bangsa and become chieftains or, in exceptional cases, rulers of harbor principalities. With the coming of Islam, however, the bangsa were crosscut, and eventually attenuated, by a separate, societywide aristocracy whose members claimed descent from a common ancestor, Sarip Kabungsuwan, an émigré nobleman. With the establishment of the Cotabato sultanates,^[9] local chieftains became principally interested in establishing the maximum number of descent links to Sarip Kabungsuwan, the prime ancestor. Their new status aspiration was to establish their rank positions in respect to the paramount rulers of the sultanates, who ruled by right of their membership in the aristocratic lineage (barabangsa ) founded by Kabungsuwan. With increased status delineation and relative political centralization, the significance of local ancestors and the power of local corporate descent groups were greatly diminished. While local identity remained strong, local ancestry retained only secondary importance as a criterion for local rule.^[10]

Magindanaon bangsa survived as tupus , or local descent lines. Informants report the existence of forty-two Magindanaon tupus, although none could name more than twenty of them.^[11] It appears likely that while localities (ingeds) remained largely independent entities under the sultanates, local descent lines gradually lost both depth and meaning. The descent line of Sarip Kabungsuwan, the point of reference for ruling datus, became not only the paramount descent line but the only significant one. Tupus seem to have been insubstantial categories that did little more than focus loyalty to place. Bilateral kindreds replaced bangsa as the largest effective kinship units for ordinary Muslims.

Islamization and the Myth of Sanctified Inequality

The coming of Sarip Kabungsuwan to Cotabato is the charter event for the claims of the rulers of Cotabato in the historical period to nobility

and moral authority. The story of the arrival of Sarip Kabungsuwan is told in the tarsilas , the written genealogies that link the royal houses of Cotabato with their progenitor. The term "tarsila" is derived from the Arabic "silsila," meaning name-chain, and the genealogical accounts in the Magindanaon tarsilas not only linked living datus with Sarip Kabungsuwan, their apical ancestor, but also contained supplementary sections tracing the ancestry of Sarip Kabungsuwan to the Prophet Muhammad. The tarsilas were written on paper in Magindanaon or Malay in Arabic script and were possessed by the sultans and all leading datus. Individual tarsilas were frequently recopied for updating or to replace worn copies.

According to the tarsilas, Sarip Kabungsuwan was the son of Jusul Asikin, the daughter of the Sultan of Johore, and Sarip Ali Zain-ul Abiden from Mecca. Thus, Kabungsuwan was the offspring of a princess of the Melaka royal family and, more significantly, the son of a sharif (the original Arabic form of "Sarip"), and hence a direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad. Majul (1973) suggests that the historic Kabungsuwan must have sailed to Mindanao some time after 1511, when the Melaka royal family, to which his mother belonged, was driven from Melaka by the Portuguese and established a sultanate in Johore.

The tarsilas relate how Kabungsuwan arrived by chance at the mouth of the Pulangi River and began to convert local chieftains and their followers to Islam. He married the daughters of some of these chieftains, thus establishing in Mindanao a barabangsa, or royal lineage, whose members claimed a sacred genealogy, tracing their origins to the Prophet Muhammad. The tarsilas report that the first wife married by Sarip Kabungsuwan in Cotabato (Putri Tunina) was found in a bamboo stalk. Kabungsuwan's son, Sarip Makaalang, married a woman who emerged from a crow's egg. The existence of these supernatural children raised the status of the female descent line, thus further distinguishing the barabangsa line from autochthonous lineages.^[12]

Sarip Kabungsuwan founded the Magindanao Sultanate at the coast and his rule passed to his son, Sarip Makaalang. The upstream Buayan Sultanate originated, according to the tarsilas, from a union between the daughter of Sarip Kabungsuwan and a Buayan chieftain. Because the male descent line carries more genealogical weight than the female, the Magindanao Sultanate was able to designate itself the premier royal house of Cotabato, while the rulers of Buayan for most

of its history used the title raja (prince) rather than sultan.^[13] The traditional system of hereditary ranked statuses is also traced to the arrival of Kabungsuwan. This system, in its most general configuration, comprised four tiers. At the apex were the datus—rulers or descendants of rulers. Their ascendant status stemmed from Sarip Kabungsuwan's assumption of sovereignty over Muslim Mindanao (and its dependencies) and from their ability to trace descent from Kabungsuwan and, through him, to the first ruler of Muslims, the prophet Muhammad.^[14]

Passing over, for a moment, the second level, we find on the third tier the endatuan , meaning literally "those who are ruled." The endatuan were the subjects of datus rather than of the realm; they were considered residents of particular ingeds (settlements) and subordinate to specific datus. The status of the endatuan seems to have been negatively defined. They were the followers of (and likely bore some kinship relation to) local chieftains. But unlike their rulers, they were unable to demonstrate sufficient kinship links with Sarip Kabungsuwan, the prime datu ancestor, to qualify as datus.

The second tier was occupied by the dumatus. This intermediate status has not been reported for other Philippine Muslim populations. The dumatus, as they describe themselves today, were neither datu nor endatuan—neither rulers nor ruled. The dumatus are the descendants of Tabunaway, a legendary Magindanaon chieftain who welcomed Sarip Kabungsuwan to Cotabato. The tarsilas record that Tabunaway acknowledged the sovereignty of Sarip Kabungsuwan and his descendants in exchange for certain privileges. The first entitlement was that neither he nor his descendants would pay tribute to any datu. Hadji Abbas expressed the distinction between endatuan and dumatu in his inged this way: "At harvest time the datu sent sacks to the endatuan who were obliged to fill all the sacks the datu gave them. The dumatus were not sent sacks and did not have to provide rice to the datu." The second dumatu entitlement was that no datu could be proclaimed as sultan without the participation of a Tabunaway descendent.^[15] The dumatus have kept their own genealogical records of the Tabunaway descent line, principally to preserve their privileges vis-à-vis the Magindanaon aristocracy. Theirs is the only tarsila in Cotabato that does not trace descent from Sarip Kabungsuwan. The special status of Tabunaway descendants has allowed them to maintain, more so than any other group, their separate bangsa by remaining ancestor focused, self-ruled, and relatively corporate.

The fourth and lowest tier comprised the ulipun , or "disfranchised" (W. H. Scott 1982, 142) persons.^[16] Ulipun were debt-bondsmen whose unfree status resulted from punishment for a legal offense, from failure to pay tribute or repay a debt, or from being sold by relatives (or occasionally by self-sale) into servitude in times of economic crisis. Ulipun status, unlike the other three estates, was, in general, neither ascribed nor permanent. It could, however, be inherited and, in practice, the system inhibited self-redemption by debt-bondsmen, probably because datus favored maintaining a high proportion of bound followers. As Warren (1981) describes the system of debt slavery in another Philippine Muslim polity—the Sulu Sultanate—the debt-bondsman's service to his creditor "did not generally count towards repayment of his debt" (1981, 216). Ulipun status was likely similar in most respects to the position of debt-bondsman described by Warren. Despite their inferior status, the ulipun, as Magindanaons and Muslims, were societal insiders and possessed certain rights, including the right to own chattel slaves (banyaga ). Those ulipun who were members of a datu's retinue were treated as household dependents and were occasionally able to rise to positions of significant responsibility. Banyaga, on the other hand, were despised outlanders who were not included in the system of social rank. They were captives acquired for the most part outside the territory of the sultanates, were usually not Muslims, and had no recognized rights and no social status other than as acquired persons—the property of others.^[17]

The central organizing principle of this system of ranked statuses was maratabat (from the Arabic "martabat," or "rank"). Among the Magindanaon, "maratabat" primarily connotes rank arid secondarily the honor due to rank. Maratabat is the quantifiable essence of status rank and is measured most commonly as a monetary valuation when determining the proper amount of bridewealth (bantingan ) to be exchanged at marriage or the amount of wergild (bangun ) required to avert a feud. It is expressed generally as a gradation of four standard sums required for bridewealth within each of the four ranked estates; datu maratabat is valued at one thousand units, that of dumatus at seven hundred, the maratabat of the endatuan at five hundred, and that of ulipun at three hundred units. These quantities were expressed to me in Philippine pesos by informants but almost certainly referred originally to Mexican silver dollars, used as media of interregional exchange in Southeast Asia as recently as the early American period (Forrest 1969, 279; Gullick 1958, 20 n. 1; Miller 1913, 341).^[18]