Halmahera, formerly known as Jilolo, Gilolo, or Jailolo, is the largest

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An isla ...

in the

Maluku Islands The Maluku Islands (; Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Maluku'') or the Moluccas () are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located ...

. It is part of the

North Maluku North Maluku ( id, Maluku Utara) is a province of Indonesia. It covers the northern part of the Maluku Islands, bordering the Pacific Ocean to the north, the Halmahera Sea to the east, the Molucca Sea to the west, and the Seram Sea to the sout ...

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions out ...

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 ...

, and Sofifi, the capital of the province, is located on the west coast of the island. Halmahera has a land area of ; it is the largest island of Indonesia outside the five main islands. It had a population of 162,728 in 1995; by 2010, it had increased to 449,938 for the island itself (excluding the tip which is considered part of the Joronga Islands, but including

Gebe Gebe is an island in Maluku Islands, Indonesia. Administratively it is part of Central Halmahera, North Maluku. The island is part of a small island group which also include Fau island, Yoi, Uta, and Sain. Gebe is part of the Halmahera rain f ...

and Ju islands) and 667,161 for the island group (including all of South Halmahera and

Tidore Tidore ( id, Kota Tidore Kepulauan, lit. "City of Tidore Islands") is a city, island, and archipelago in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia, west of the larger island of Halmahera. Part of North Maluku Province, the city includes the island ...

, but not

Ternate Ternate is a city in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and an island in the Maluku Islands. It was the ''de facto'' provincial capital of North Maluku before Sofifi on the nearby coast of Halmahera became the capital in 2010. It is off the ...

). Approximately half of the island's inhabitants are

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

and half are

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι� ...

History

Sparsely-populated Halmahera's fortunes have long been closely tied to those of the smaller islands of

and

, both off its west coast. These islands were both the sites of major kingdoms in the era before

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

colonized the entire archipelago. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, Halmahera was the site of a Japanese naval base at Kao Bay. In 1999 and 2000, Halmahera was the site of violence that began as a purely ethnic dispute between residents of (mainly Christian) Kao and (entirely Muslim) Malifut sub-districts and then took on a religious nature as it spread through much of the North Moluccas, called the Maluku sectarian conflict. Thousands of people on Halmahera were killed in the fighting between religious militias. In June 2000, about five hundred people were killed when a

ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water ta ...

carrying

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

s from the fighting on Halmahera sank off the northeast tip of

Sulawesi Sulawesi (), also known as Celebes (), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu ...

island. Conspiracy theories about this event abound. A memorial to this tragedy can be found in Duma village in North Halmahera district. Today, much transportation to the rest of Indonesia is through connections on the provincial capital,

island although Tobelo, the largest town on Halmahera, also has direct ferry and cargo sea links to

Surabaya Surabaya ( jv, ꦱꦸꦫꦧꦪ or jv, ꦯꦹꦫꦨꦪ; ; ) is the capital city of the Indonesian province of East Java and the second-largest city in Indonesia, after Jakarta. Located on the northeastern border of Java island, on the M ...

and

Manado Manado () is the capital city of the Indonesian province of North Sulawesi. It is the second largest city in Sulawesi after Makassar, with the 2020 Census giving a population of 451,916 distributed over a land area of 162.53 km2.Badan Pusa ...

. Particularly, since the inauguration of the first ever directly elected Bupati (Regent or District Head), Tobelo is undergoing rapid development and is aiming at rivaling Ternate's historical dominance. As it is surrounded by flat land, Tobelo has the potential for expansion. Ternate is limited by its size, being a small island which can be driven around in forty-five minutes. Also, in 2010, the provincial government has moved the provincial capital from Ternate City to Sofifi, a small village on the Halmahera coast opposite

island. North Maluku Province consists of eight regencies and two municipalities (cities); five of the regencies and one municipality include a part of Halmahera island. The regencies are

North Halmahera North Halmahera Regency ( id, Kabupaten Halmahera Utara) is a regency (on Halmahera Island) of North Maluku Province, Indonesia. It was declared a Regency on 31 May 2003. The capital town of the regency lies at the port of Tobelo. The Regency, whi ...

, West Halmahera, East Halmahera, Central Halmahera, South Halmahera,

Morotai Morotai Island ( id, Pulau Morotai) is an island in the Halmahera group of eastern Indonesia's Maluku Islands (Moluccas). It is one of Indonesia's northernmost islands. Morotai is a rugged, forested island lying to the north of Halmahera. It ha ...

, Sula Islands and

Taliabu Taliabu Island Regency ( id, Kabupaten Pulau Taliabu) is a regency in the North Maluku province of Indonesia. It was formerly part of the Sula Islands Regency, but in 2013 it was administratively separated to form a separate regency. It is locat ...

, while the municipalities are

and Tidore Islands. Only Ternate Municipality, and Morotai, the Sula Islands and Taliabu regencies do not include any part of Halmahera.

Geology

The volcanic island lies on an

island arc Island arcs are long chains of active volcanoes with intense seismic activity found along convergent tectonic plate boundaries. Most island arcs originate on oceanic crust and have resulted from the descent of the lithosphere into the mantle alon ...

that includes the Raja Ampat Islands, all uplifted by the northward migration of the continent of Australia and subduction of the

Pacific Plate The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At , it is the largest tectonic plate. The plate first came into existence 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and I ...

. Dukono is an active volcano at the north end of the island.

Mount Ibu Mount Ibu ( id, Gunung Ibu) is a stratovolcano at the north-west coast of Halmahera island, Indonesia. The summit is truncated and contains nested craters. The inner crater is wide and deep, while the outer is wide. A large parasitic cone is ...

is an active volcano on the island's northwest coast.

Ecology

The flightless invisible rail is

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 ...

to the island. The recently discovered palm tree '' Jailoloa halmaherensis'' is also endemic to Halmahera. The naturalist

Alfred Russel Wallace Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British natural history, naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution thro ...

visited Halmahera, as described in his 1869 book ''

The Malay Archipelago ''The Malay Archipelago'' is a book by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace which chronicles his scientific exploration, during the eight-year period 1854 to 1862, of the southern portion of the Malay Archipelago including Malaysia, S ...

''. He considered the

standardwing The standardwing bird-of-paradise (''Semioptera wallacii'') also known as Wallace's standardwing or as the standardwing is a species of bird-of-paradise. It is the only member in monotypic genus ''Semioptera''. Etymology George Robert Gray of t ...

bird of paradise, ''Semioptera wallacei'', to be his greatest prize. It was in February 1858, on the island of

, between bouts of fever, that a suffering Wallace came to the idea of natural selection via the survival of the fittest. Wallace wrote his ideas during the next couple of days, and sent the historical letter to Darwin.

Mining

Halmahera is the site of several

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the econom ...

projects. PT Weda Bay Nickel operates a nickel and cobalt mining project in North and Central Halmahera Regencies, the Weda Bay Industrial Park.

Image gallery

File:Weda Bay Nickel site.jpg, A Weda Bay nickel camp site at Tanjung Ulie cape on Halmahera island File:Rig Crew on Halmahera Island.jpg, A rig crew looking for minerals

References

External links

*
Folk Orientation in Halmahera
{{Authority control Islands of the Maluku Islands Landforms of North Maluku Ecoregions of Indonesia