Maulana Yusuf

Maulana Yusuf was the second sultan of Banten in west Java, reigning from about 1570 to 1580. A son of the founder Maulana Hasanuddin, he spent his decade in power developing Banten into one of Southeast Asia's great trading ports, and in about 1579 he conquered Pajajaran, the last significant Hindu-Buddhist kingdom on Java. ¹

Yusuf succeeded his father Maulana Hasanuddin on the latter's death in 1570; his mother was Ratu Ayu Kirana. He concentrated on the economy: Banten Lama was developed as a capital and international port, with designated quarters for the merchants who came from China, Arabia, Persia, Gujarat, Europe and across the archipelago — Pekojan for Gujarati, Arab, Egyptian and Turkish traders, a Pecinan for the Chinese, and specialist quarters for potters, smiths, engravers, gong-makers, weapon-founders, officials, soldiers and scholars of Islamic law. He opened new rice lands around Serang with irrigation canals and dams, and enlarged the porch of the Great Mosque his father had built, adding its minaret with the help of a Mongol Muslim architect, Cek Ban Cut. ²

Following his father's expansion, Yusuf turned inland, and in 1579 Banten's forces conquered Pulasari and Pakuan Pajajaran, the capital of the Sunda kingdom. The conquest ended Sunda rule in west Java; the captured regalia — including the Palangka Sriman Sriwacana coronation stone, carried off to Banten so that no new king could be crowned at Pakuan — marked the end of the kingdom, and Islam spread widely through west Java in its wake, though the Baduy communities of the interior kept their ancestral way of life. Yusuf died in 1580 — the Arabic and Urdu articles give the year as 988 AH / 1580 CE, against an uncited statement in the Indonesian article that dates his death to 1585 — and was buried at Pakalangan near Kasunyatan, hence his posthumous title Panembahan Pakalangan Gede. He was succeeded by his son Maulana Muhammad. ^{1 2 3 4}

The Arabic article's infobox gives his madhhab as Shafi'i and his creed as Sunni, and the Urdu article — substantially a translation of the Arabic — repeats the same values; the Indonesian infobox gives his denomination as Sunni with the jurisprudence field blank. No second independent source read for this record names his school. His documented reign is one of active Muslim kingship: the completion of his father's Islamising conquest of the Sunda interior, the enlargement of Banten's Great Mosque, and a capital organised with a quarter for scholars of Islamic law. ^{3 5 2}