Article

Pahang

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Pahang

Pahang is a state on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula whose interior highlands, river systems, and coastal islands have attracted sustained scholarly attention since the 1880s. The state’s considerable size—revealed by William Cameron’s 1885 expedition to extend far beyond previously supposed boundaries, reaching the Ulu of the Kinta and the Raia in Perak and shooting a further arm northward into Kelantan [1, p. 155]—combined with its diverse landscapes of limestone, dipterocarp forest, quartz-porphyry ridgelines, and coastal islands, made it a rich field for natural history, archaeology, and administrative history. The following survey draws on the Society’s published literature to trace how Pahang was progressively mapped, excavated, and understood across more than a century of research.

Scope and Historical Definition

The earliest systematic attempt to define Pahang’s physical extent came from William Cameron’s 1885 exploration, which resolved the question of the central watershed that had been the subject of various conjectures [1, pp. 155–157]. Cameron’s route took him up the Raia, across a pass he named Gunho Pass (5,300 feet) at the confluence of the Ulu Kinta, Penoh, and Telom, and down the Telom to within a day’s sail of its junction with the Jelei [1, pp. 156–157]. He described a central highland “vortex” around the Telom river at a mean elevation of 4,500–4,750 feet, bounded by ranges he estimated at over 8,000 feet, and identified a mountain at approximately 4° 38′ N, 10° N of E, at 6,300 feet by aneroid [1, pp. 155–156]. The expedition was physically demanding, with the party suffering from colds, fevers, and rheumatism due to heavy rains, and one man left in hospital at Penang [1, pp. 156–157].

Subsequent expeditions refined this picture. Kelsall and Ridley’s 1894 journey up the Pahang, Tembeling, and Tahan rivers established that Gunong Tahan’s true height was considerably less than the popular estimate of 14,000 feet, judging it at 8,000 to 10,000 feet from direct observation [2, p. 46]. F.W. Douglas’s 1897 account, published in 1922, documented a fourteen-day journey through the uncharted interior of northern Pahang, crossing the Bukit Lada watershed (approximately 700 feet by aneroid) and descending the Pertang–Tekal–Tembiling river system [3, pp. 136–138]. The expedition established that the Tekal and Tembiling Rivers rise from the same hill, with the Tembiling running north then bending west before running south parallel to the Tekal [3, p. 139]. All time and compass survey records were destroyed during the journey, and the route was never formally charted; Douglas stated that “no one has been through that way since” as of 1922 [3, p. 139].

J.E. Nathan’s 1915 traverse of the Titiwangsa main range from Ulu Slim in Perak to the Lipis river in Pahang provided a comparative assessment of thirty years of change in this remote interfluve [4, pp. 1–5]. The pass height of 3,150 feet was 350 feet higher than the Kuala Kubu–Raub gap, yet the gradient was so gradual that Nathan initially estimated it at only 2,400 feet [4, p. 3]. He noted that the 1912 Pahang map was inaccurate in this locality, with river names transposed relative to Swettenham’s 1885 account [4, p. 3].

E.S. Willbourn’s 1925 geological survey of the Ulu Rompin district in south-east Pahang documented previously unvisited ground, including the first recorded ascent of Gunong Ulu Telang from the north side and the first European penetration of the Ulu Sekin headwaters [5, p. 198]. The Sungai Kukau waterfalls comprise a series of eight quartz-porphyry falls with a total height of considerably more than a thousand feet, and a further six falls upstream bring the total cascade height to approximately 1,500 feet [5, pp. 203–204].

Economic and Administrative History

The administrative history of Pahang is inseparable from its economic geography. Tunku Tan Sri Dato’ Shahriman’s 2003 article traces the two-stage relocation of Pahang’s administrative capital from Pekan to Kuala Lipis in 1889 and then to Kuantan in 1955 [6, pp. 87–92]. When John P. Rodger arrived as the first British Resident in October 1888, Pekan was a modest settlement of roughly 5,000 people [6, p. 87]. Two forces made a relocation unavoidable: the opening of gold and tin concessions in Ulu Pahang, which shifted the economic centre of gravity upstream, and the political rupture between Sultan Ahmad al-Mu’azzam Shah and the British, who felt the partnership could not survive proximity [6, p. 87]. The Sultan withdrew to Pulau Tawar for three and a half years, delegating authority to his son Tunku Mahmud as Regent [6, p. 87].

The choice of Kuala Lipis was shaped by Hugh Clifford’s familiarity with Ulu Pahang and his relationships with local chiefs, though the site was inaugurated under violent circumstances when the first superintendent, W. C. Mitchell, was killed by the local chief Haji Wan Daud [6, p. 88]. The land at Kuala Lipis was purchased from the sons of Haji Wan Daud for $200 [6, p. 88]. Intended as a temporary measure, Kuala Lipis nonetheless endured for 64 years. Its decline was gradual: the gold mines closed, the town failed to attract sustained Chinese commercial settlement, and the catastrophic floods of 1926 exposed its vulnerability at the confluence of the Jelai and Lipis rivers [6, p. 90]. The final decision to transfer to Kuantan was made on 2 March 1953; the official ceremony took place on 27 August 1955 [6, pp. 91–92].

The economic botany of the region was documented by Ridley in 1894, who described the production of gutta, dammar, gaharu, and rattans, and the limited cultivation practices of the Pahang Malays [2]. The Pahang Corporation’s old mill at Jeram Batang was running for the last time before being moved to Sungai Lembing in 1897, where all stamps were being concentrated [3, p. 135]. In the Ulu Rompin district, an abandoned Arghan fibre plantation, once employing five Europeans and several hundred coolies, had been reduced to a few hundred acres of belukar (secondary growth) by 1925 [5, p. 200]. A European prospector had sunk five-foot-square mine pits (lombong) on the lower slopes of Bukit Gayong approximately 25 years prior, likely searching for gold rather than tin, given the quartz-porphyry geology of the area [5, p. 207].

S. Husin Ali’s 1968 sociological study examined how rural Malay leadership in Pahang was being restructured by colonial administration and economic modernisation [7, pp. 95–145]. Drawing on fieldwork in the mukim (administrative subdivision) of Kerdau in Pahang, Ali demonstrated that rubber was introduced to Kerdau in 1915, and by the time of the study, 87.6% of household heads remained dependent on agriculture [7, p. 97]. The first penghulu (village head) elections were held in Kerdau in 1954, replacing hereditary succession; in Pahang the method subsequently shifted back toward bureaucratic selection by the Public Services Commission [7, pp. 126–127].

Archaeology and Antiquities

The archaeological record of Pahang, as documented in the Society’s literature, centres on the Tembeling river basin and the Pekan district, with W. Linehan’s fieldwork between 1925 and 1930 providing the foundational corpus. Linehan’s 1928 article on the Tembeling reported on four sites—Jeram Kwi, Kuala Nyong, Teluk Lubok Puai, and Bukit Jong—where the 1926–27 floods had torn away riverbank earth and exposed buried artefacts [8, pp. 66–77]. His overarching thesis was that the Tembeling valley was once home to a non-Malay (likely Siamese) settlement engaged in iron smelting, bronze casting, and cannon manufacture, flourishing roughly from the 14th to the mid-15th century before the Malaccan Malay conquest [8, p. 69].

At Jeram Kwi, approximately 60 miles up the Tembeling, a clay mould of the breech part of a cannon was found, measuring 19.9 cm in length with a barrel diameter of 7 cm and wall thickness of 1.3 cm, alongside multiple other gun-mould fragments, clay crucibles, and quantities of iron slag [8, pp. 67–69]. At Teluk Lubok Puai, the most significant find was a large decorated bronze “urn lid” 69 cm in diameter, decorated with a ten-pointed sun, concentric circles, and two crested long-beaked birds in flight, which Linehan interpreted as the cover of a bronze cremation urn for a chief [8, pp. 72–74]. Two open stone moulds for casting leaf-shaped bronze or iron spearheads, measuring 27 and 30 cm in length, were found at the same site; Linehan identified these as the first of their kind discovered in Malaya [8, p. 72].

Linehan’s 1928 article on ancient brick structures in the Pekan district documented the excavation of four quadrilateral brick buildings at Tambak Siam, Kuala Chini, Pekan, and Pengkalen Durien [9, pp. 78–81]. The most complete structure, at Tambak Siam, measured approximately 20 by 24 feet with walls up to one and a half feet high, built of large bricks laid without mortar in up to six courses [9, p. 78]. The interior yielded a socketed iron tool (tulang mawas, a type of socketed axe or adze), four gun-flints, a human tooth, fossil damar, and fragments of porcelain identified as an early Ming type [9, p. 78]. At Pengkalen Durien, a small undamaged jar of Sawankalok ware with a greyish-green crackle glaze, identified by Mr. Rackham of the Victoria and Albert Museum as a 14th-century product of potteries north of Bangkok, provided a firm terminus post quem [9, p. 80]. Linehan placed the structures between the 14th and mid-15th centuries, correlating with the period of Siamese dominance in Pahang before the Malaccan Malay conquest [9, p. 80].

His 1930 follow-up extended the catalogue with finds spanning from Neolithic stone tools to early Ming porcelain [10, pp. 314–317]. The shouldered adze head from Burau on the Pahang river is, apart from a specimen of unknown provenance in the Taiping Museum, the only shouldered adze head hitherto discovered in Malaya, definitively establishing the type’s existence in the Peninsula [10, p. 315]. The Bukit Jong assemblage, comprising a stone bracelet, quoit disc, bark-pounder, four stone adze heads, thirteen ancient iron implements, bronze fragments, a clay mould, rock crystal, iron slag, and a porcelain jar, represented the most substantial single-site find in the Tembeling to that date [10, p. 317]. Linehan argued that the co-occurrence of stone and iron tools at this single site pointed to a transitional phase in which stone implements continued in use alongside the earliest, still crude iron technology [10, p. 317].

Natural History and Ethnography

The natural history of Pahang was first systematically surveyed by Kelsall and Ridley in 1894, whose two-month expedition up the Pahang, Tembeling, and Tahan rivers yielded over 2,000 herbarium specimens despite two of three plant collectors being incapacitated by fever and injury for most of the Tahan valley phase [2, p. 49]. Ridley described the distinctive sandy heath country near Pekan, the rich limestone flora of Kota Glanggi, and the dense dipterocarp forests of the Tahan valley, noting numerous novelties to science including a new Dipterocarpus pulcherrimus, several new Didymocarpus species, and the first recorded Brugmansia from the Malay Peninsula [2].

W. Davison’s 1889 journal of a ten-day voyage with the Governor along the east coast from Pulau Tioman to the Rumpin River provided a snapshot of the littoral’s fauna and local economies [11, pp. 83–90]. The Rumpin River yielded the trip’s richest haul: six Liolepis burrowing lizards, four tree swifts, and a male-female pair of Phaenicophaes erythronotus showing aberrant iris colouration [11, p. 90]. A notable absence ran through the account: no land snakes were encountered at any of the seven stops visited, a fact Davison singles out as remarkable [11, p. 90]. The beaches between Cheranting and Rumpin were covered with pumice-stone, in many places about six inches across, indicating a volcanic source [11, p. 90].

H.G. Dalton’s 1928 travelogue of an eleven-day voyage in May 1918 to a chain of islands off the east coasts of Johore and Pahang documented coral reefs, shell beaches, and the physical character of islands that remained largely unknown to mainland residents due to the violence of the north-east monsoon [12, pp. 78–96]. The most significant cultural encounter occurred at Pulau Aur, where the party arrived during a festival to propitiate evil spirits—a ceremony Dalton notes takes place only once every eight or nine years [12, p. 89]. The islanders had constructed a small sago-palm boat decorated with flowers and coconut leaves, which was to be set adrift laden with gifts to carry the ghosts of the island away [12, p. 89].

Ethnographic observations on the indigenous peoples of Pahang appear throughout the literature. Douglas’s 1897 account provides observations on the Kuantan Sakai, whose blowpipe construction method he compared to that of the Patagonians of South America [3, p. 136]. Nathan’s 1915 traverse recorded Sakai communities settled along the Lipis at Kuala Kenor, Kuala Buntu, and Ginting Selebah, describing them as “very civilised,” settled for at least fifteen years, with coconut plantations and even mosquito nets [4, p. 4]. Willbourn’s 1925 expedition employed ten Jakun aborigines as guides, boatmen, and fish-spearing specialists, and recorded their fishing techniques, particularly the use of the serampang (a three-pronged spear), their settlement patterns along Sungai Sekin, and their relationship to the Malay and Chinese populations who used the lower river [5, pp. 200–201].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Pahang reveals a clear evolution in research priorities across more than a century. The earliest contributions (1885–1897) were dominated by exploration and natural history: Cameron’s watershed survey, Davison’s collecting log, Kelsall and Ridley’s botanical expedition, and Douglas’s travel narrative all served the dual purpose of mapping unknown territory and building museum collections [2], [11], [1], [3]. The colonial administrative framing was explicit—expeditions were funded and sanctioned by the Government, and the Governor’s tour served as the occasion for both governance and knowledge-production [2], [11].

The interwar period (1922–1930) marked a shift toward archaeology and geology. Linehan’s Tembeling and Pekan excavations, conducted in collaboration with local Malay informants and chiefs, established the first typological framework for Malayan prehistory in the Pahang interior, with I. H. N. Evans of the F.M.S. Museums providing authoritative classificatory commentary [10], [8], [9]. Willbourn’s geological survey of Ulu Rompin represented a parallel professionalisation, framed as a field report rather than a literary travelogue [5]. Nathan’s 1915 comparative traverse, revisiting Swettenham’s 1885 route, introduced a new methodological dimension: the systematic assessment of change over time [4].

The post-war period brought social science into the picture. Husin Ali’s 1968 study of rural leadership in Kerdau, Pahang, constituted the first systematic study of Malay rural leadership as a distinct subject, moving beyond the indirect references in earlier administrative literature [7, p. 95]. His controlled comparison of two rural mukim and one urban settlement illuminated how traditional leadership rooted in kinship authority and hereditary political office was being progressively absorbed into a bureaucratic framework [7, pp. 95–145].

The most recent contribution, Tunku Tan Sri Dato’ Shahriman’s 2003 article on the Pahang capital, represents a maturation of administrative historiography, drawing on Pahang Annual Reports, Linehan’s 1936 “A History of Pahang,” and personal family photographs to provide a coherent narrative of capital-city selection that had previously been treated only in passing in broader state histories [6, pp. 87–92]. The cumulative effect of these publications is a layered record in which Pahang’s physical geography, economic history, archaeological heritage, and social structures have been progressively documented, each generation of researchers building upon and correcting the observations of their predecessors.

MBRAS Sources

History

Antiquities

Description and travel

References

  1. W. Cameron and C.C. Smith (1885). Exploration of Pahang: extract from a letter from Mr. W. Cameron to H.E. the Acting Governor (the Hon’ble Cecil C. Smith, C.M.G.) dated 4th September, 1885 JSBRAS 15: 155–157.
  2. H.J. Kelsall and H.N. Ridley (1894). Account of a trip up the Pahang, Tembeling, and Tahan rivers, and an attempt to reach Gunong Tahan JSBRAS 25: 33–65.
  3. Sir Hugh Charles Clifford and F.W. Douglas (1922). Through an unknown corner of Pahang with H. Clifford in 1897. F.W. Douglas JSBRAS 85: 135–139. Read on JSTOR
  4. J.E. Nathan (1915). A journey over the main range from Perak to Pahang JSBRAS 68: 1–5.
  5. E.S. Willbourn (1926). A journey in the Ulu Rompin district, south-east Pahang JMBRAS 4(2): 201–212.
  6. Shahriman bin Tunku Sulaiman Tunku Tan Sri Dato’ (2003). The Pahang capital JMBRAS 76(2): 87–92.
  7. Husin Ali (1968). Patterns of rural leadership in Malaya JMBRAS 41(1): 95–145.
  8. W. Linehan (1928). Some discoveries on the Tembeling JMBRAS 6(4): 66–77.
  9. W. Linehan (1928). Notes on the remains of some ancient brick structures in Pekan district JMBRAS 6(4): 78–81.
  10. W. Linehan (1930). Notes on some further archaeological discoveries in Pahang JMBRAS 8(2): 314–317.
  11. W. Davison (1889). Journal of a trip to Pahang etc. with H.E. the Governor, August 17th to 27th, 1889 JSBRAS 20: 83–90.
  12. H.G. Dalton (1928). A visit to some islands off the east coast of Johore and Pahang JMBRAS 6(3): 78–96.