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Category: Bisaya Fables

Bajau,Islam,Traditional Beliefs and the Sea Part 2

Here is part two in the collision between the Islam, traditional beliefs and the sea among the Bajau Sama people. There are very few articles, if any, that discusses the clash. Efforts to contact the authors have been fruitless.  You can find part one on my website, BorneoHistory.net An example

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May 12, 2025 No Comments

All Creatures Great and Small #72

Ceramics from a Sabah Shipwreck The ceramics from the Tanjung Simpang Mengayau Shipwreck off Sabah have been classified. The ship floundered during the northern Song dynasty(960-1127) off Kudat, Sabah. https://doi.org/10.26721/spafajournal.2l5br71rau Weather and South Kalimatan There have been significant changes in temperature over the past 40 years. The average temperature was

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May 7, 2025 No Comments

Pre Islamic Beliefs and Islam: The Samah Bajau

The Baju’s love of the sea, their pre-Islamic customs(adat) and Islam come together to form a belief system where they co-exist and, seemingly, are not in contradiction with each other. This is part one of two parts The Bajau or Bajo people are groups of nomadic people traditionally living on

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May 1, 2025 No Comments

Poetry in the Sarawak Kampong

For a change of pace, I present poetry from the kampongs along the Sarawak River. They are usually recited at gatherings of Malay people, where the men and women are seated separately. The ending of the first and third verse and the second and fourth verse must rhyme. The first

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April 24, 2025 No Comments

HeadHunting: A Rationale

Headhunting Among these spectacles, I was arrested by the ghastly appearance of a once human head. In mere derision it had been boiled, stripped of the skin and hair, and put on a post with a raw kumara [sweet potato] placed in the mouth. (John Alexander, nineteenth century New Zealand

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April 19, 2025 No Comments

Astronomy and the Ma’anyan People of Borneo

Astronomy of the Ma’anyan of central Borneo When I was about 10, a youngster, I learned about constellations. An assistant scoutmaster used a light pointer to show us the various stars and constellations. He tried to show me the constellation of Cassiopeia but I did not see a chair, I saw

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April 16, 2025 No Comments

All Creatures Great and Small # 71

Bats The microbes which live in the stomachs of bats depend on what they eat. Bats that eat fruit have microbes that are different from those that eat insects. The research was carried out in Sarawak. 10.1186/s42523-025-00389-w Punan and Genetics Recent genetic evidence has shown the Punan to be Austronesian

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April 10, 2025 No Comments

Japanese in Sarawak pre 1940

Most Japanese were repatriated back to Japan after World War II Sarawak was a key locale for Japanese settlers operating under the encouragement of the Brooke government (1841-1946). The Japanese in Sarawak arrived parallel to the Japanese migration into British Malaya shortly after the onset of the Meiji Restoration (1868).

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April 6, 2025 No Comments

Sabah and the Japanese occupation

The Japanese Occupation of Sabah The earliest colonial intrusion into Sabah was in 1665 when Captain Cowley explored the region. In 1763, British Admiral Sir William Dampier seized Manila from the Spanish and released the Sultan of Sulu in exchange for ceding his territory in Sabah to the East India

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March 30, 2025 No Comments

John Crawfurd, James Brooke and the Massacre

John Crawfurd John Crawfurd wrote a three-volume text during the 1820s about the Indian Archipelago. Most historians, including myself, are quite familiar and indebted to him and the text. I did not know he had a later life which included being a colonial administrator for the East India Company in

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March 27, 2025 No Comments
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