via The Star, 24 August 2019: What we often know about ancient Malacca comes from local or Chinese sources, but Andrew Peacock of the University of St. Andrews fills out the story from sources in the Near East.
Melaka could have become part of the Ottoman Turkish empire. The Arabs may have thought that the town was “not Islamic” enough.
And a (possibly) Jewish official who once worked for the Portuguese in Melaka revealed – while writing in Persian – how badly they governed the place.
When Melaka fell to the Portuguese in 1511, it reverberated around the Muslim world, finding echoes in a geography written in the Deccan plateau of central India, an Ottoman intelligence report composed in Jeddah, and a verse chronicle in distant Istanbul.
These are some of the interesting things that writings in Turkish, Arabic and Persian reveal about the Melaka sultanate of the 15th century. They offer a fresh perspective from the more well known historical sources on Melaka, namely the Sejarah Melayu (the Malay Annals) plus Chinese and Portuguese records.
The person digging up all this information is Andrew Peacock, Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic History at the University of St Andrews, Britain.
Source: What Turkish, Arabic And Persian Historical Records Say About Melaka | Star2.com
