COTABATO CITY, Philippines – It was more than 50 years since the creation of this city, but it was only last year when a shrine was built in memory of 16th century Moro warrior Sultan Kudarat.
Sultan Kudarat’s statue stands at what was once the doorstep of his lair, now called Pedro Colina Hill, a military reservation that once hosted the seat of the former Empire Province of Cotabato, which now comprises the Socsargen (South Cotabato, Sarangani and General Santos City) area, and the provinces of North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat.
The city government built the newly inaugurated monument of Sultan Kudarat (1581–1671) with the help of a number of benefactors, including a local association of architects and engineers.
A statue of Sultan Kudarat was first erected about five years ago at a less noticeable spot in the city plaza, at the opposite direction of Corcuera Street, named after Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, Spain’s governor in the Philippines from June 25, 1635 to Aug. 11, 1644.
Corcuera, according to Maguindanaon historians, dispatched a dozen expeditions to defeat Sultan Kudarat and his army of Maranaw, Iranon and Maranaw fighters backed by ethnic non-Muslim tribesmen, but failed.
A devout Muslim, Sultan Kudarat, after fighting the Spaniards in one bloody battle after another in Central Mindanao and on the coasts of what are now Lanao del Sur, Lanao del Norte and Zamboanga del Sur, Pagadian City, the Zamboanga Peninsula, and the island province of Basilan, later agreed to a mutual non-aggression treaty with the Spaniards.
The treaty enjoined both sides to respect each other’s political and religious beliefs, and not fight over territories and control of Mindanao’s Moro inhabitants.
The pact was said to have ushered in socio-economic and political prosperity in Sultan Kudarat’s royal principality, something that Maguindanaon historians and peace activists assert as one of the most concrete proof that Moro nationhood had existed in southern Mindanao even before Ferdinand Magellan arrived in Limasawa and subsequently in Mactan in 1521, which saw the advent of Christianity in Luzon and the Visayas.
From his stone fort here, known in the vernacular as Tantawan, Sultan Kudarat launched his guerrilla wars against the Spaniards whose galleons were moored at the banks of Rio Grande de Mindanao.
The once navigable Rio Grande was the route the Spaniards took to go to their garrisons upstream, where Central Mindanao’s raya area (upper delta) was situated.
Sultan Kudarat was a third-generation descendant of an Arab-Malay prince, Shariff Kabunsuan, who arrived in Cotabato City’s Bucana district in the 14th century to spread Islam, and from whose bloodline, through inter-marriages with locals, sprang the Sultan and his descendants, now spread in many Muslim communities in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and administrative Regions 9, 11 and 12.
Among the descendants of Sultan Kudarat now active in politics are Esmael Mangudadatu and Dustin Mastura, the incumbent governor and vice governor of Maguindanao, respectively.
The provincial chairman of the Liberal Party in Maguindanao, Mayor Tucao Mastura of Sultan Kudarat town, said they are elated that the Sultan’s monument now stands conspicuously at the foot of Kuta Wato hill (from where Cotabato was derived), the known springboard of Moro resistance against the Spaniards which he led.
“He was a great ruler and a hero whose exploits are worth being taught in Mindanao schools to inculcate among the youth that our ancestors ruled according to Islamic principles of consensus-building, equality of all men, and for their zeal to defend their people from harm emanating from either domestic or foreign aggressions,” Mastura said.
Apart from Sultan Kudarat town in the first district of Maguindanao, there is Sultan Kudarat province, whose governor, Suharto Mangudadatu, is himself a scion of the Sultan’s continuously expanding lineage.