Article

The Melaka Fort Gateway: Setting the Record Straight

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The Melaka Fort Gateway: Setting the Record Straight

Abstract

The representation of the Melaka Fort Gateway of the Malay Sultanate in the Galeri Warisan Kota Melaka shows the fort as a stone structure. This article critically assesses the accuracy of the construction materials and architectural features in the Gate Model, arguing that they are based on faulty translations of contemporary accounts and anachronistic interpretations of visual representations. These findings undermine the credibility of the exhibit and suggest a need for more rigorous, evidence-based scholarship to curate historical exhibits. Misrepresentations risk distorting public understanding and perpetuating misconceptions about Melaka’s historical legacy.

Summary

Serge Jardin critically examines the “Melaka Fort Gateway Model” displayed in the lobby of the Galeri Warisan Kota Melaka (Fort of Melaka Heritage Gallery), a stone-built gate mock-up presented as a representation of the Sultanate-era fortification. Jardin demonstrates that the model is derived from an anonymous Dutch print published in Leiden in 1706 by Pieter van der Aa as an illustration for a translation of Joao de Barros’ Décadas da Ásia, not from any contemporary 15th- or early 16th-century source (pp. 5–6, 11). The print’s artists, working two centuries after the events depicted, drew on their imagination and the Dutch landscape familiar to them, producing anachronistic elements including Dutch gables, East-Indiamen in place of Portuguese carracks, and European pine trees in place of casuarinas (pp. 13–14).

Jardin systematically reviews the full corpus of contemporary written sources—Chinese (Ma Huan), Malay (Sejarah Melayu), and European (Ruy de Araujo, da Empoli, Eredia, Dalboquerque, Barbosa, Pires)—and finds that none confirms the existence of stone walls or a stone gate during the Sultanate period. Ma Huan’s famous passage describing four gates with watchtowers and drum towers refers specifically to the stockade erected by Zheng He’s fleet, not to the Sultanate’s own defences (pp. 7–8). European accounts consistently describe wooden palisades, stockades of nibong palm, and earthworks, with the Portuguese themselves building A Famosa in stone only after the conquest, sourcing material from demolished mosques and tombs (pp. 9–10). Archaeological excavations conducted in 2006–07 along the alignment of the Portuguese fort walls likewise yielded no evidence of a prior stone-built Malay fortification (p. 10).

The article further dissects thirteen academic articles published between 2014 and 2023 by nineteen authors (including groups from MMU and IIUM) that have argued for a stone-walled Melaka. Jardin identifies fabricated sources, misattributed images, faulty translations, and wholesale replication of errors across successive publications. A “Chinese print” cited as evidence is actually a view of Ning-po by the English artist Thomas Allom (c. 1843); an anonymous Indian Ocean map is explicitly captioned as depicting a city “still unknown and has yet to be discovered”; and a lithograph attributed to Eredia is in fact the work of a 19th-century Portuguese artist depicting 1840s Lisbon facades (pp. 12–17).

Key Findings

  • The gateway model in the Galeri Warisan Kota Melaka is based on a 1706 Dutch print by anonymous Leiden artists, not on any 15th- or 16th-century visual or textual source (pp. 11–12).
  • Ma Huan’s description of four gates with watchtowers and drum towers refers to Zheng He’s temporary stockade encampment, not to the Sultanate’s permanent fortifications; the passage explicitly states the stockade was erected “whenever the treasure-ships of the Central Country arrived” (pp. 7–8).
  • Ibn Battuta’s reference to “a wall of cut stone wide enough to take three elephants” is not demonstrably about Melaka; the last Muslim polity he clearly identified in the region was Pasai, which he described as having “wooden walls and towers” (p. 8).
  • Giovanni da Empoli explicitly states that Melakan forces “had fortified themselves strongly along the shore with very heavy wooden palisades,” and that the Portuguese built their initial fort “with wooden planks” before constructing one in stone from demolished mosques (p. 9).
  • The 2006–07 archaeological excavations by USM and NHD along the Portuguese fort wall alignment produced no evidence of a prior stone-built Sultanate fort (p. 10).
  • Thirteen academic articles by nineteen authors (2014–2023) supporting the stone-fort thesis contain fabricated sources, misidentified images (including a view of Ning-po passed off as Melaka), anachronistic details (Dutch ships, onion-domed mosques, European trees), and repeated replication of the same errors (pp. 12–17).

Conclusion

Jardin’s definitive takeaway is that no verifiable contemporary source—written, pictorial, or archaeological—supports the existence of a stone fort or stone gate in Melaka during the Sultanate era. The gateway model in the heritage gallery is an anachronistic fabrication resting on a 1706 Dutch print, and the body of academic literature that has attempted to legitimise it is riddled with errors, misattributions, and outright source fabrication. Jardin calls for more rigorous, evidence-based scholarship in the curation of historical exhibits, warning that such misrepresentations risk distorting public understanding of Melaka’s historical legacy (p. 22).

Context

  • The Galeri Warisan Kota Melaka occupies a former HSBC building (1912) on Jalan Kota, gazetted as a Heritage Building in 2017 and opened to the public in August 2022 under the National Heritage Department (p. 5).
  • The gallery’s stated raison d’être includes the presentation of four human skeletons (c. 1400–50) discovered during the 2006–07 excavations, yet those same excavations failed to produce any evidence of a prior stone fort (p. 10).

References