Page 10 - Hikayat-Patani-The-Story-Of-Patani 1

CHAPTER I
A SHORT HISTORY OF PATANI

The small provincial town in the south of Thailand that today is
Patani gives little indication of the richness of its past. Travellers who
fly high above it en route to Bangkok or Singapore, or mariners who
steam past it almost over the horizon, probably are oblivious of the great
advantages its geographical position once gave it in a long millennium
of sailing ships and a complex Asian trade. Along the lengthy east coast
of the Malay Peninsula there are few good natural harbours, and Patani
long was among the best of these. It is at the Cape of Patani that the
coastline veers westward, and at that point that a long narrow spit of
land curves twelve miles out to sea, protecting on its southern and
western sides a bay some five miles across. There the early mariner could
shelter from the northeast, or southwest, monsoon before continuing on
northwards to Ayudhya in Thailand, or to the Vietnamese coast and
onward to China, or southwards for the Straits of Malacca and points
beyond. When trade in the Straits was particularly disturbed, trans­
peninsular overland routes stretched towards Patani from Kedah and
Perak through narrowing river basins and over the low mountain ranges
that form the spine of the peninsula. With a small hinterland well-
suited for wet-rice cultivation, the region could sustain a modest pop­
ulation, and its natural advantages led it from earliest times to engage
in overseas trade.
THE EARLIEST HISTORY OF PATANI
The region of Patani seems first to have attained some importance in
the sixth century A.D. when it began sending diplomatic and trading
missions to China, although a kingdom located in the region may have
been founded as early as the second century.1 Under the name of Lang-
kasuka (Chinese Lang-ya-hsiu) it was an important trading port for
Asian sailors, particularly when mariners began to sail directly across the
Gulf of Siam from the southernmost tip of Vietnam to the Malay
Peninsula, which often brought them to a landfall in the region of
1 Wheatley, 1961, pp. 253—54, quoting Ma Tuan-lin.