The Malay Annals (Sejarah Melayu), also titled Sulalatus Salatin or 'the genealogy of kings,' is a court chronicle of the Malacca Sultanate and the central classical work of Malay literature. Compiled from older records and tales and repeatedly redacted, its best-known form is a 1612 Johor recension traditionally associated with the minister Tun Sri Lanang. Its genealogies, tracing the sultans back to Alexander the Great, and its founding tale of Singapura are court ideology as much as history, though it also preserves real memory of Malacca's rise and its 1511 fall to the Portuguese. It survives in around thirty differing manuscripts, today shared heritage across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Brunei.
The Annals begins its account of the Malay kings not in the Malay world at all, but with Alexander the Great. It threads the sultans' bloodline back to Iskandar Zulkarnain, the Alexander of Islamic legend, and it does this on purpose. The definitive version of the book was assembled after Malacca had already fallen to Portuguese guns and its dynasty had fled south. A defeated court could no longer point to the richest port in Southeast Asia as proof of its greatness. So it fixed the proof in a lineage instead: a royal descent so exalted that it could outlast the kingdom that had lost it.