Mahmud Shah of Malacca

Mahmud Shah (d. 1528) was the eighth and last sultan of Malacca, reigning 1488–1511 and afterwards as a pretender until his death. He was the son of Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah and so the grandson of Mansur Shah; no birth year is given in any source consulted — the English article's infobox leaves the birth fields blank — and the queue figure of 1480 is attested nowhere. ^{1 2} As a monarch he was known to be a ruthless ruler, surrounded by able men such as Hang Tuah, Khoja Hassan and Hang Nadim. ¹

On his father's premature death Mahmud was installed at a very young age, with the bendahara Tun Perak as the effective regent; the administration of the sultanate was in Tun Perak's able and wise hands, and after the old minister's death in 1498, succeeded by Tun Mutahir, Mahmud became a more responsible ruler. ¹ His later rule was turbulent: the administration weakened, Tun Mutahir was accused of taking bribes and of refusing the sultan his daughter Tun Fatimah, and on the deception of a rival faction Mahmud executed the bendahara and his entire family — an act that broke the unity of the court and, with an army largely of disloyal mercenaries, left the sultanate's defences deteriorated by the early sixteenth century. ¹

The Portuguese admiral Diogo Lopes de Sequeira visited Malacca in 1509–1510, and the sultan planned to assassinate him; Sequeira learned of the plot and fled, and Afonso de Albuquerque used the affair as his occasion to attack. In the Capture of Malacca in 1511 Mahmud fled across the Malay Peninsula to Pahang on the east coast, where he made a futile effort to enlist Chinese aid. ¹

Mahmud then moved south and made his capital on the island of Bintan, southeast of Singapore, where he continued to receive the tribute and allegiance of the surrounding states as ruler of Malacca. He became the leader of a Malay Muslim confederacy and launched several unsuccessful attacks against Portuguese-occupied Malacca between 1515 and 1519. ¹ His son Ahmad Shah, whom he had installed after the Tun Mutahir affair, was deemed incompetent and was killed by Mahmud himself in 1513 after a failed attempt to retake Malacca, whereupon Mahmud reclaimed the throne as pretender. ¹

In 1526 the Portuguese responded to the threat of his forces by destroying his capital at Bintan. Mahmud fled to Kampar in Riau and died there two years later, in 1528. ^{1 2} His other sons carried the house onward: Raja Ali, the future Alauddin Riayat Shah II, founded the Johor Sultanate, and Muzaffar was invited by the ministers Tun Saban and Nakhoda Kassim to found the Perak Sultanate. ¹ His most notable consort was Tun Teja, and he is associated in Malay legend with the tale of Puteri Gunung Ledang, the celestial princess whose courtship he failed to win. ¹