The Kingdom of Luwu (also Luwuq or Wareq) was a polity located in the northern part of the modern-day

South Sulawesi South Sulawesi () is a Provinces of Indonesia, province in the South Peninsula, Sulawesi, southern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Selayar Islands archipelago to the south of Sulawesi is also part of the province. The capital and largest ci ...

province of Indonesia, on the island of

Sulawesi Sulawesi ( ), also known as Celebes ( ), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the List of islands by area, world's 11th-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Min ...

. It is considered one of the earliest known Buginese kingdoms in Sulawesi, founded between the 10th and 14th century. However, recent archaeological research has challenged this idea.

History

Origin of Luwu

In 1889, Dutch administrator of

Makassar Makassar ( ), formerly Ujung Pandang ( ), is the capital of the Indonesian Provinces of Indonesia, province of South Sulawesi. It is the largest city in the region of Eastern Indonesia and the country's fifth-largest urban center after Jakarta, ...

, Braam Morris placed Luwu's peak territorial extent between the 10th and 14th centuries, but offered no clear evidence. The La Galigo, an epic poem composed in a literary form of the

Bugis language Buginese or Bugis (Buginese: ) is a language spoken by about 4 million people mainly in the southern part of Sulawesi, Indonesia. History The word Buginese derives from the word ''Bugis'' in Malay Language, Malay. In Buginese, it is called w ...

, is the likely source of the dating. Morris' theory combined two older concepts which were already common in the region, which are (1) the so-called 'primordial age' as described within La Galigo, and (2) the widespread belief of other Bugis polities in South Sulawesi, who viewed the rulers of Luwu as the most senior lineages of all Bugis rulers. However, historians and archaeologists expressed doubts regarding these claims. They note that any historical records and chronologies of Luwu were 'disappointingly shallow' and 'absent of any evidence'. Meanwhile, the Bugis world described in La Galigo depicted a vaguely defined world of coastal and riverine kingdoms whose economies are based on trade. Two early centers of this world were Luwu and the kingdom of Cina (pronounced ''Cheena'') in what is now Wajo. The incompatibility of the La Galigo's trade-based political economy with the agricultural economies of other South Sulawesi kingdoms has led scholars to posit an intervening period of chaos to separate the two societies chronologically. Archaeological and textual research carried out since the 1980s has undermined this chronology, however. Extensive surveys and excavations in Luwu have revealed that the Bugis-speaking kingdom is a century or so younger than the oldest polities of the southwest peninsula.David Bulbeck and Ian Caldwell, ''Land of iron: The historical archeology of Luwu and the Cenrana valley. Results of the Origins of Complex Society in South Sulawesi Project (OXIS)''. Centre for South-East Asian Studies Occasional Publications Series, University of Hull. The earliest textual reference to Luwu is in the

Majapahit Majapahit (; (eastern and central dialect) or (western dialect)), also known as Wilwatikta (; ), was a Javanese people, Javanese Hinduism, Hindu-Buddhism, Buddhist thalassocracy, thalassocratic empire in Southeast Asia based on the island o ...

court poem Desawarnana (c.1365), which listed Luwu, Bantaeng in southern part of the island, and Uda (possibly Cina) as the three major powers on the peninsula. However, there are no convincing archaeological evidence of Bugis settlement in Luwu region before c.1300. The new understanding is that Bugis speaking settlers from the western Cénrana valley began to settle along the coastal margins of Luwu around the year 1300 CE. The Gulf of

Bone A bone is a rigid organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells, store minerals, provide structure and support for the body, ...

is not a merely Bugis-speaking area only: it is a thinly populated region of great ethnic diversity in which Bugis speakers are a minority among the speakers of Pamona, Padoe, Wotu and Lemolang languages who lived on the coastal lowlands and foothills, while the highland valleys are home to groups speaking other Central and South Sulawesi languages. The Bugis are found almost solely along the coast, to which they have evidently migrated in order to trade with Luwu's indigenous peoples. It is clear both from archaeological and textual sources that Luwu was a Bugis-led coalition of various ethnic groups, united by trade relationships and by the ability of the ''Datu (ruler) of Luwu to enforce peace among neighboring hill tribes. The main centres of Bugis settlement were (and still are) Bua, Ponrang, Malangke, and Cerekang near Malili. The migration of Bugis from the central lakes area to Luwu was evidently led by members of Cina's ruling family, a loose coalition of high-ranking families claiming a common ancestry that ruled settlements across the Cenrana and Walennae valleys. This can be surmised from the fact that Luwu and Cina share the same founding myth of a ''tomanurung'' or heavenly-descended being called Simpurusia, and that both versions of this myth state that Simpurusia descended at Lompo, in Sengkang. Cina was absorbed in the 16th century by its former tributaries of Soppeng and Wajo, after which its ruling family effectively vanished. However, the ancient line of Cina's rulers are believed to continue in Luwu until the abolition of the kingdoms in 1954. It is likely that the widespread belief that Luwu is older than other South Sulawesi kingdoms stems partly from this illustrious lineage and accounts for the precedence today of the ''Datu'' of Luwu over all the former polities of South Sulawesi. Luwu's political economy was based on the smelting of iron ore brought down, via the Lemolang-speaking polity of Baebunta, to Malangke on the central coastal plain. The smelted iron was worked into weapons and agricultural tools and exported to the rice-growing southern lowlands. This brought the kingdom great wealth, and by the mid-14th century Luwu had become the feared overlord of large parts of the southwest and southeast peninsula. The earliest identifiable ruler is Bataraguru (mid-15th century) whose name appears in a peace treaty with Bone. However, the first ruler for which we have any detailed information was Dewaraja (ruled ''c.'' 1495‒1520). Stories current today in South Sulawesi tell of his aggressive attacks on the neighboring kingdoms of Wajo and Sidenreng. Luwu's power was eclipsed in the 16th century by the rising power of the southern agrarian kingdoms, and its military defeats are set out in the Chronicle of Bone.

Islamic Luwu

On 4 or 5 February 1605, Luwu's ruler, La Patiwareq, Daeng Pareqbung, became the first major South Sulawesi ruler to embrace

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

, taking as his title Sultan Muhammad Wali Mu’z’hir (or Muzahir) al-din. La Patiwareq is buried at Malangke and is referred to in the chronicles as Matinroe ri Wareq, ‘He who sleeps at Wareq’, the former palace-centre of Luwuq. His religious teacher, Dato Sulaiman, is buried nearby. Around 1620, Malangke was abandoned and a new capital was established to the west at Palopo. It is not known why this sprawling settlement, the population of which may have reached 15,000 in the 16th century, was suddenly abandoned: possibilities include religious turmoil, the declining price of iron goods and the economic potential of trade with the

Toraja The Torajan are an ethnic group indigenous people, indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the List of regencies and cities of Indonesia, regency of T ...

highlands.

Colonial Luwu

By the 19th century, Luwu had become a backwater.

James Brooke James Brooke (29 April 1803 – 11 June 1868), was a British soldier and adventurer who founded the Raj of Sarawak in Borneo. He ruled as the first White Rajahs, White Rajah of Sarawak from 1841 until his death in 1868. Brooke was born and ra ...

, later Rajah of Sarawak, wrote in the 1830s that ‘Luwu is the oldest Bugis state, and the most decayed. ..Palopo is a miserable town, consisting of about 300 houses, scattered and dilapidated. ..It is difficult to believe that Luwu could ever have been a powerful state, except in a very low state of native civilisation.’

Present-day Luwu

In the 1960s Luwu was a focus of an Islamic rebellion led by Kahar Muzakkar. Today the former kingdom is home to the world's largest

nickel Nickel is a chemical element; it has symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive, but large pieces are slo ...

mine and is experiencing an economic boom fueled by inward migration, yet it still retains much of its original frontier atmosphere.

Economy

Unlike other Bugis polities in South Sulawesi which based its economy on

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

production and trade, Luwu was known to be a center of metalwork, especially

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

, whose ore were both imported and extracted locally iron ore. Luwu's prestige, which came through iron mining activities and ironware exports in the past, led to the island on which Luwu existed to be known as ''Sulawesi'', or 'iron island'. In addition, Luwu seemed to base its economy on

arboriculture Arboriculture (, from ) is the cultivation, management, and study of individual trees, shrubs, vines, and other perennial woody plants. The science of arboriculture studies how these plants grow and respond to cultural practices and to their env ...

(or forest produces) exports. Dammar gum,

rattan Rattan, also spelled ratan (from Malay language, Malay: ''rotan''), is the name for roughly 600 species of Old World climbing palms belonging to subfamily Calamoideae. The greatest diversity of rattan palm species and genera are in the clos ...

ebony Ebony is a dense black/brown hardwood, coming from several species in the genus '' Diospyros'', which also includes the persimmon tree. A few ''Diospyros'' species, such as macassar and mun ebony, are dense enough to sink in water. Ebony is fin ...

, gaharu, and

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows mainly in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. Mangroves grow in an equatorial climate, typically along coastlines and tidal rivers. They have particular adaptations to take in extra oxygen a ...

timbers were thought as resources extracted upland, then exported via Luwu's port on the Gulf of Bone.

Rulers of Luwu

Rulers of Luwu used the title ''Datu Mappanjunge' ri Luwu'' which means "

Datu ''Datu'' is a title which denotes the rulers (variously described in historical accounts as chiefs, sovereign princes, and monarchs) of numerous Indigenous peoples throughout the Philippine archipelago. The title is still used today, though no ...

who has an umbrella in Luwu" or "Datu that covered Luwu", shortened to Datu Luwu, Pajung Luwu, or Pajunge'.

List of the King and the Queen Regnant of Kingdom of Luwu

(House of Royal Buginese Luwu) * Myth: Simpurusiang, Manurung ri Lompo (Sengkang, Wajo) * Myth: Anakaji, son of Simpurusiang * Myth: Wé Matengngnaémpong, Anakaji's son * Legendary: Tampabalusu, Tomanurung of Tompotikka (Central Sulawesi) * Legendary: Tanrabalusu, son of Tampabalusu * Semi-legendary: To Appanangi * Semi-legendary: Batara Guru (not the Bataraguru of Galigo) * Late 15th century: To Sangkawana (= La Pasampoi, Maddanreng ri Talottenreng in Wajo - see Lontara Sukkuna Wajo) * Late 15th century: La Busatana (Lontara Sukkuna Wajo) * Early 16th century: Déwaraja, Datu Sangaria, Datu Kellali * 16th century: Datu ri Saolebbi * 16th century: Maningo ri Bajo * 1571‒1587: We Tenrirawe – the 1st female ruler of Luwu * 1587‒1615: Daeng Parabung or Pati Arase, titled Petta Matinroé ri Malangké (Petta Luwu) “as the first king to accept the teachings of Islamic law under Datuk Sulaiman” * 1615‒1637: , Sultan Abdullah * 1637‒1663: La Basso or La Pakéubangan or Sultan Ahmad Nazaruddin, titled Petta Matinroé ri Gowa (Lokkoé) * 1663‒1704: Settiaraja, titled Petta Matinroé ri Tompoq Tikkaq * 1704‒1704? Raja Opu La Maddusila Petta Mattinroe ri Polka'., ruled when Settiaraja went to help Gowa against the VOC. * 1704‒1715: La Onro Topalaguna, titled Petta Matinroé ri Langkanaé * 1706‒1715: Batari Tungké, titled Sultanah Fatimah Petta Matinroé ri Pattiro – the 2nd female ruler of Luwu * 1715‒1748: Batari Toja, titled Sultanah Zaenab Matinroé ri Tippulué – the 3rd female ruler of Luwu; she was also the ruler of

and Soppeng * 1748‒1760 & 1765‒1778: Wé Tenriléléang, titled Petta Matinroé ri Soréang – the 4th female ruler of Luwu; she ascended the throne twice; she was also the ruler of Tanette * 1760‒1765: Tosibengngareng, titled La Kaséng Patta Matinroé ri Kaluku Bodoé * 1778‒1810: La Tenripeppang or Daéng Paliq, titled Petta Matinroé ri Sabbangparu * 1810‒1825: We Tenri Awaru Sultanah Hawa, titled Petta Matinroé ri Tengngana Luwu – the 5th female ruler of Luwu; she was also the ruler of Soppeng * 1825‒1854: La Oddang Péro, titled Petta Matinroé Kombong Beru * 1854‒1880: Patipatau or Sultan Abdul Karim Toapanyompa, titled Petta Matinroé ri Limpomajang * 1880‒1883: Wé Addi Luwu, titled Petta Matinroé Temmalullu * 1883‒1901: Iskandar Opu Daéng Paliq, titled Petta Matinroé ri Matekko * 1901‒1935: Andi Kambo, also known as Siti Husaimah Andi Kambo Opu Daéng Risompa Sultanah Zaenab, titled Petta Matinroé ri Bintanna – the 6th female ruler of Luwu; the Dutch first came to the Kingdom of Luwu during the reign of Andi Kambo. * 1935‒1945 & 1950‒1965: Andi Djemma, titled Petta Matinroe' ri Amaradekanna is a Pajung National Hero of the Republic of Indonesia from South Sulawesi * 1945‒1950: Andi Jelling, was Pajung, ruling when Andi Jemma was detained and exiled by the Dutch. * 1965‒1987: Andi Bau Alamsyah, titled Petta MatinroE ri Tellu Boccona * 1987‒1994: Andi Bau Tenripadang, titled Opu Datu * 1994‒2012: Wé Andi Addi Luwu, titled Opu Daengna Patiware * 2012‒Present: Opu To Bau

References

{{Authority control Precolonial states of Indonesia South Sulawesi History of Sulawesi