Timor is one of the largest islands on the eastern side of the Indo-Malaysian archipelago, and also one of the driest. Alfred Russel Wallace, who first visited western Timor in 1857, describes the landscape thus: ‘The vegetation is everywhere scant and scrubby. Plants of the families Apocynaceæ and Euphorbiaceæ abound…

Java is the world’s most populous island. More people live there than in Russia or Japan and, if you count in terms of contiguous bits of land rather than arbitrary continents, Java is also the world’s third most populous landmass, after Afro-Eurasia and the Americas. Jakarta, the largest city in…

Hello again! This is the last time I’ll be posting any uninteresting life/work updates on here for a while, but I thought it would be a good idea to let you all know that I now have a Patreon. You can sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/indomedieval I also have a Ko-Fi…

UPDATE: I now have a Patreon. You can find it here: https://www.patreon.com/indomedieval. I will continue to post on this blog, but certain features — transcriptions and transliterations of texts, for example, as opposed to merely the translations — will become Patreon-only exclusives. Happy New Year, everyone. I’ve just emerged from…

This post contains writing in the Perso-Arabic script, which Medium formatting doesn’t handle well (at least in combination with other scripts), so do bear that in mind if you see any text appearing oddly. …

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Before1500 Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/medievalindonesia We’ve looked at quite a few references to cloves (dried flowers of Syzygium aromaticum) and nutmeg (seed of Myristica fragrans) in medieval texts on this blog. Both of these spices came from islands in eastern Indonesia, far in the southeastern corner of the medieval world. Some…

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/indomedieval Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/medievalindonesia It is sometimes claimed that the Italian priest John of Marignolli (aka Giovanni de’ Marignolli, Johannes Marignola) visited the island of Java in the middle of the fourteenth century and, while there, met the Javanese queen Tribhuwana (Tribhuwanā Wijayottunggadewī, aka Dyah Gitarja — before 1309?-1350? CE)…

This post is the sixth in a series on the Old Sundanese language. For earlier posts in the series, see: · PART I · PART II · PART III · PART IV · PART V · Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/indomedieval Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/medievalindonesia This post is about the skeleton of the Old Sundanese…

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Before1500 Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/medievalindonesia In previous posts on this blog I have outlined my thoughts on the ‘Middle Ages’ and on what the words ‘medieval’ and ‘Middle Ages’ can usefully be made to mean. …