Misool, formerly spelled Mysol (Dutch: Misoöl) or Misol, is one of the four major islands in the

Raja Ampat Islands Raja Ampat, or the ''Four Kings'', is an archipelago located off the northwest tip of Bird's Head Peninsula on the island of New Guinea, in Indonesia's Southwest Papua , Southwest Papua province. It comprises over 1,500 small islands, cays, and sh ...

Southwest Papua Southwest Papua ( id, Papua Barat Daya) is a province of Indonesia, and is a fraction of Western New Guinea. Despite being named southwest, it is a misnomer and this province is actually located in the northwest edge of Papua. The area that belo ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

. Its area is 2,034 km². The highest point is 561 m and the main towns are Waigama, located on the island's northwest coast, and Lilinta on the island's southeast coast. The inhabitants speak the

Ma'ya language Ma'ya is an Austronesian language of the Raja Ampat islands in West Papua, Indonesia. It is spoken by about 6,000 people in coastal villages on the islands Misool, Salawati, and Waigeo. It is spoken on the boundary between Austronesian and P ...

Biga language Biga is a heavily Papuan-influenced Austronesian language spoken in Southwest Papua, Indonesia in the south of the island of Misool Misool, formerly spelled Mysol (Dutch: Misoöl) or Misol, is one of the four major islands in the Raja Amp ...

and Matbat language, as well as Indonesian and its dialect,

Papuan Malay Papuan Malay or Irian Malay is a Malay-based creole language spoken in the Indonesian part of New Guinea. It emerged as a contact language among tribes in Indonesian New Guinea (now Papua, Central Papua, Highland Papua, South Papua, and We ...

. Other main islands of this group off the western end of Southwest Papua are

Salawati Salawati is one of the four major islands in the Raja Ampat Islands in Southwest Papua (formerly West Papua), Indonesia. Its area is 1,623 km2. Salawati is separated from New Guinea to the southeast by the Sele Strait (a.k.a. Galowa Str ...

Batanta Batanta is one of the four major islands in the Raja Ampat Islands in Southwest Papua province, Indonesia. Its area is 453 km² and its highest point is 1184 m. The Pitt Strait separates it from Salawati, while the Dampier Strait separat ...

and

Waigeo Waigeo is an island in Southwest Papua province of eastern Indonesia. The island is also known as Amberi, or Waigiu. It is the largest of the four main islands in the Raja Ampat Islands archipelago, between Halmahera and about to the north-w ...

, and there are numerous smaller islands such as

Kofiau Kofiau is an island in the Raja Ampat Islands, in Southwest Papua, Indonesia. The island is primarily raised coral limestone with some volcanic hills, covered in low forest. The island is home to the endemic Kofiau paradise kingfisher and Kofiau ...

Etymology

The name ''Misool'' is from

which meant port or harbour relating to when the first king from

arrived on the island. Original inhabitants ( Matbat) called the island with the name ''Batan Me''.

Ecology

Terrestrial

Misool is part of the Vogelkop–Aru lowland rain forests ecoregion, which includes the other Raja Ampat Islands and the

Bird's Head Peninsula The Bird's Head Peninsula ( Indonesian: ''Kepala Burung'', nl, Vogelkop) or Doberai Peninsula (''Semenanjung Doberai''), is a large peninsula that makes up the northwest portion of the island of New Guinea, comprising the Indonesian provinces ...

on mainland New Guinea. Plant communities include alluvial, or lowland alluvial rain forest and lowland hill rain forest. Native animals include

marsupial Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in ...

s, murid rodents, bats, and many birds, including several

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

species. Some native animals include: * ''

Echymipera kalubu The common echymipera (''Echymipera kalubu''), or common spiny bandicoot, is a bandicoot. It is long-snouted even by bandicoot standards. The upper parts are a coarse reddish-brown, flecked with spiny buff and black hairs. The tail is short and a ...

'', common spiny bandicoot * ''

Echymipera rufescens The long-nosed echymipera (''Echymipera rufescens''), or long-nosed spiny bandicoot, is a species of marsupial in the family Peramelidae. It is found in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropica ...

'' * ''

Dorcopsis muelleri The brown dorcopsis (''Dorcopsis muelleri''), also known as the brown forest wallaby, is a species of marsupial in the family Macropodidae. It is endemic to the lowlands of West New Guinea and the nearby Indonesian islands in West Papua of M ...

'' * ''

Phalanger orientalis The northern common cuscus (''Phalanger orientalis''), also known as the gray cuscus, is a species of marsupial in the family Phalangeridae native to northern New Guinea and adjacent smaller islands, but is now also found in the Bismarck Archipel ...

'' * '' Spilocuscus maculatus'' * ''

Petaurus breviceps The sugar glider (''Petaurus breviceps'') is a small, omnivorous, arboreal, and nocturnal gliding possum belonging to the marsupial infraclass. The common name refers to its predilection for sugary foods such as sap and nectar and its abilit ...

'' * ''

Macroglossus minimus The long-tongued nectar bat (''Macroglossus minimus''), also known as the northern blossom bat, honey nectar bat, least blossom-bat, dagger-toothed long-nosed fruit bat, and lesser long-tongued fruit bat, is a species of megabat. ''M. minimus'' is ...

'' * '' Nyctimene aello'' * '' Pteropus conspicillatus'' * '' Aselliscus tricuspidatus'' * '' Pipistrellus papuanus'' *

Lesser bird-of-paradise The lesser bird-of-paradise (''Paradisaea minor'') is a bird-of-paradise in the genus ''Paradisaea''. Description The lesser bird-of-paradise is medium-sized, up to 32 cm-long, maroon-brown with a yellow crown and brownish-yellow upper back ...

(''Paradisaea minor'')

Marine

Misool and the Raja Ampat Islands are part of the

Coral Triangle The Coral Triangle (CT) is a roughly triangular area in the tropical waters around the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. This area contains at least 500 species of reef-building corals in e ...

, and islands' coral reefs and coastal waters are some of the most biodiverse on Earth. Native fish include the Misool rainbowfish (''Melanotaenia misoolensis'') and Misool yellowfin rainbowfish ('' Melanotaenia flavipinnis''). A section of Raja Ampat Marine Recreation Park covers the coastal waters southeast of the island. The park was designated in 2009.

History

Islam first arrived in the Raja Ampat archipelago in the 15th century due to political and economic contacts with the Bacan Sultanate.Wanggai, Toni V. M. (2008)
Rekonstruki sejarah umat Islam di tanna Papua
econstruction of the History of lslam in Papua Syariff Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta (in Indonesian). Retrieved 2022-03-13. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Sultante of Tidore had close economic ties with the island, which was ruled by king in Lilinta descended from

Gurabesi Gurabesi was a legendary Papuan leader from Biak in West New Guinea, present-day Indonesia, who had a large role in tying part of the Papuans to the Islamic Sultanate of Tidore. He is commonly believed to have flourished in the 15th or early 16th ...

of Waigeo, while Tidore appointed another king in Waigama.Slama, Martin (2015),
Papua as an Islamic Frontier: Preaching in 'the Jungle' and the Multiplicity of Spatio-Temporal Hierarchisations", ''From 'Stone-Age' to 'Real-Time': Exploring Papuan Temporalities, Mobilities and Religiosities''
ANU Press, pp. 243–270, During this period, Islam became firmly established and local chiefs had begun adopting Islam. Misool was a part of the Dutch colonial empire under the

Netherlands East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch Empire, Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised Factory (trading post), trading posts o ...

administration. The Japanese occupied the island in 1942, became the base of

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

until 1945.No. 92 of the Japanese Monographs — "Southwest Area Naval Operations, Apr. 1942 – Apr. 1944", 10 September 1947.

Pulau Misool Nature Reserve

Pulau Misool Nature Reserve was established in 1982. It covers the southern portion of the island, with an area of 840 km².

References

External links

* * Jelle Miedema, ''Perspectives on the Bird's Head of Irian Jaya, Indonesia:'' Proceedings of the Conference Leiden, 13–17 October 1997
Indonesia Field Project - Misool - Marine Conservation Agreements
Raja Ampat Islands {{SwPapua-geo-stub