Ancient Philippines: Pre-Islamic, Pre-Christian

excerpt taken from Peter Gordon Gowing, Muslim-Filipinos: Heritage and Horizon (Quezon City, Phils.: New Day Publishers, 1979)

NOTE: images in this article are not included in the book
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[page 11] It is popular in some circles today to say that before the coming of Islam and Christianity, the Philippines were inhabited by one people. That statement is reasonably accurate insofar as it refers to the fact that the majority of the inhabitants of the Archipelago were racially the same (that is, Malays except for the Negritos), spoke related if differentiated languages and practiced similar but differentiated customs. The statement of course, is not accurate in any meaningful socio-political sense -- which is the way most of those

[page 12]who say it want it to be taken, for they usually follow up the statement with the broadside charge that Islam and Christianity served to divide the one Filipino people into two hostile camps (e.g., Casiño, 1975 :26 and Ver, 1976 :2-3) . Nothing in the evidence from Philippine prehistory supports a conclusion that before the coming of Islam and Christianity, the scattered groups of inhabitants were undivided, living in anything like pristine peace and harmony. On the contrary, early Spanish chroniclers and Filipino folk traditions originating from pre-Islamic, pre-Christian times suggest `that inter-barangay and inter-island rivalry and warfare were common; and that hostility often existed between highland and lowland, inland and coastal groups (cf. Ph, clan, 1959 :15-18) . If anything in the history of the Filipinos served to bring about a sense of "solidarity" among large numbers of them, and prepared the way for the emergence of national consciousness, it was the adoption of Islam by some Filipinos and of Christianity by others. What happened` was the rise of two nationalities -- where before there had been no nationality -- one Filipino Muslim, and the other Filipino Christian. Historical circumstances have thrust these two nationalities into one Philippine State and the problems of their religious, social, economic and political accommodation to each other have impeded the achievement of a unified consciousness. Dean Cesar Majul (1966b:304) makes the -same point in other terms:
Certainly,  almost  up  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  there  was  no  such thing as a Filipino people in  the  sense we now understand it.   It is  well known that  the   Christian   natives  of  the  Archipelago   generally  came  to   be  called "Indios," and the  Moslems of the  South "Moros."   But there are many historical factors which have  contributed to the progressive transformation  of the "Indio" and  "Moro" into  Filipinos  belonging  to  a  national  community,    This  process, not unaccompanied by  conflict, has  been  gradual  but inevitable.


The  ancestors  of  the  Malay inhabitants  of  the  southern  Philippines  who  adopted  Islam  were  much  like  the  Malay  inhabitants  of the  other  Philippine  islands.    In  the  course  of  many `centuries, beginning  three  or  four  millenia  B.C.,  they  had  migrated  across  the
shallow  seas  in  frail  boats   (barangays)   from  the  Southeast  Asia mainland  and  the  Indonesian  Archipelago.    They  established  small, scattered  communities along the island coasts.   In time, some groups

[Page 13] followed the rivers inland and became farmers,  while  those remaining on the coast took their living from both land and sea as agriculturalists, fishermen, traders  or adventurers.

Very  little  is  actually  known  about  the  pre-Islamic  peoples  of Mindanao and  Sulu  but. it is  evident that they were far from  being "one  people" before the  coming  of  Islam.  Centuries  of  ethnic  differentiation  had  occurred  among  southern   Philippine  inhabitants prior  to  Islam's  arrival.    For  example,  it is commonly  believed,  on the  basis  of  legends  common  to  the  two  groups,  that  the  Tiruray and Maguindanao were once one people but were separated at the time Islam  was introduced  into  Mindanao.   Stuart  Schlegel  (1972 :25-30) has persuasively argued from lexico-statistical analysis and other cultural  data  that  the  Tiruray  are  related  much  more  closely  to  the upland,  swidden-farming,  rain-forest-dwelling  groups  of  the  Cotabato  cordillera  (e.g.,  the Tagabili  and  Bilaan)  than  to  the  lowlandMaguindanao.    Moreover,  lexicostatistical  dating  suggests  that  the common  ethnic ancestry  of  the Tiruray and  Maguindanao  may have separated as  long ago as 1800  B.C.   Certainly the  two  groups  were related  by trade and  barter, and  were  possibly  allies  in  local  or regional  squabbles.   It  is likely that  there  were  formal  pacts,  cast in the idiom of  brotherhood,  which cemented their relations from time to  time.   But  they  were  not "one  people."


It  is  also  clear  that  the  pro-Islamic  peoples  of  Mindanao  and Sulu  were  not  isolated  from  the  cultures  of  their  neighbors  to  the north or south.  For instance, some scholars  (e.g., Spoehr, 1973 :21-22) have  suggested, ' on  linguistic  and  other  evidence,  that  the  present-day  taugimba   (farmers  of   inland  Jolo)   might  be  descendants  of earlier Samalan-speaking inhabitants who had migrated t~o Jolo from the  south,  from  Borneo  or  the  islands  of   northeastern  Indonesia. Eventually,  according  to  this  theory,  they  were  pushed  inland  and later assimilated  by an aggressive,  maritime  people--_-tauhigad  (people  of  the  coast)--who  had  intruded   (900  years  ago?)   from  the north, from the Visayas or northern  Mindanao.   Today they are one people,  the Tausug,  but  there  is  a  residual  distinction  between  the taugimba  and  the  tauhigad  which  lingers  still  in  that  society.


Archaeological,  linguistic,   folkloric  and  other  studies  indicate that Mindanao and  Sulu  enjoyed fluent trade  with  Indonesia,  China and  Indo-China  from  at  least  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century.   Buansa  (modern  Jolo)  was  a  major  trading  post in  the  Sulu Archipelago  before  the  coming  of  Islam.    Scholars  are  not  agreed on  the  extent  to  which  the  Malay  peoples  of  Mindanao  and  Sulu had  been  subject,  if  ever,  to  the  successive  Indonesian  empires  of Srivijaya and  Majapahit,  or to the lesser  powers  based  on  Sulawesi and  Borneo.    But  that  there  were  interrelationships  of  some  sort

[Page 14]
cannot be doubted. The languages, dress, pottery and other manufacturing arts, features of adat (customary law), traces of pre-Islamic religious beliefs and mythology, and other aspects of present-day Moro culture, testify abundantly to the influence wrought by many centuries of contacts with both the mainland island societies of Southeast Asia, and also with China.

Bad Boys of the Ancient World: The Kipchaks || John Pesebre

Introduction

The name Kipchak does not carry with it a sound of notoriety. Kipchak sounds like a brand, like Flapjack pancakes. But what it has for its name’s cuteness & softness cannot be seen in its notorious history.

How’s this for little trivia? In 14th century Europe, they attacked a walled city by catapulting rotting corpses. This ancient biological warfare contaminated the city with yersinia pestis – the bacteria that started the Black Death. 

The walled city was not your typical clean environment. Scurrying about were rats and the squalor just made things worse.

The Kipchaks were nomads. They usually did not have permanent houses because they lived in yurts (movable tents). 

In the 11th century, they were all over the Europe and Asia but mostly near the areas of present-day China and Turkey. They loved to travel. This is the reason why they were sprawled all over Eurasia during their time.

The Kipchak community had an important role in the flourishing of the Islamic dynasty in Egypt and Syria. The Mamluk dynasty ruled Egypt from 1250-1517 and became very rich. How they came from poor Mamluk slaves to rich Mamluk dynasty is a also a story of notoriety.

Human beings have the capacity to survive. We can change our attitude, our trade and our resolve to face the adversities of life. The story of the Kipchaks although one of notoriety can make us reflect on the importance of overcoming obstacles and the challenges of life.

Claim to Notoriety of Kipchak

The city was called Crimea back then. It was a commercial capital so that traders from as far as Venice travel to trade. The famous Venetian traveler Marco Polo was said to frequent Crimea to trade. Traders from Marco Polo’s hometown of Genoa, Italy also visited Crimea regularly. When the Kipchaks attacked the city, it is believed that the Genoan traders carried the bacteria with them back to inland Europe. This began a series of infestation all over Europe.

Today Crimea is called Ukraine. There is no trace of the Black Death but back then the death was countless. The years 1351-1371 were the two decades where this plague hit. An estimated 200 million people died.

The evil dictator Joseph Stalin is said to have been traced in Kipchak’s ancestry.

A Fighting People

Kipchaks loved to fight. They fought the armies of Byzantines, Kievan Rus, the Hungarians, and the Pechenegs. Sometimes they ally with them. Their toughtes battles were against Genghis Khan and his Mongols who eventually defeated them and made them part of the western front of the Mongols called the Golden Horde.

When the Mongolian dynasty was at its height, many of the Kipchaks became slaves in the Arab Ayubbid Dynasty deposed in Syria and Egypt. Kipchak slaves were called Mamluks. Later on these slaves gained in number and formed an African Mamluk state but only survived until the 19th century.

Today, there is no surviving Kipchak community.