The Malacca Sultanate (c. 1400–1511) was a Malay Muslim port-kingdom on the strait that bears its name, the chokepoint between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. It grew into one of the greatest trading emporia of maritime Southeast Asia, became a springboard for the spread of Islam across the archipelago, and fell to Portuguese guns in 1511. The entry's purpose is to explain how a small harbor became the meeting-point of the monsoon trade systems, and what it left behind for the Malay world.
Around 1400 a fugitive prince landed on a quiet stretch of the Malay coast and founded a port. Within a century it had become one of the richest marketplaces in maritime Asia. Much of the sea trade between China, India, and the island world passed through or near the strait it guarded, and at its docks Chinese silk, Indian cloth, and the spices of distant islands all changed hands. Eighty-four languages were said to be spoken in its streets. Its harbourmasters sorted the world's merchants by the seas they came from. And as its rulers embraced Islam, the faith spread along its trade routes to ports across the archipelago. This is the story of how a small harbor on a narrow strait became the central market of maritime Asia, and the engine that carried a religion across an ocean of islands.