Singasari

Singosari (modern orthography) is a city in the province of Java Is, to approximately 40 km in the south of Surabaya.

It is the chief town of the Kabupaten (department) of the same name.

History

The kingdom of Singasari (C-W communication preferred by the historians, but the pronunciation is closer to " singosari ") its capital to 2 km in the north of the modern city of Singosari had. Its history could be reconstituted grace in particular to inscriptions as old men Javanese, with two poems epic, the Nagarakertagama (written in old man-Javanese in 1365 by the Prapanca poet under the reign of the king Hayam Wuruk of Majapahit) and the Pararaton or " Deliver of Rois" (written in means-Javanese, therefore undoubtedly at the 16th century), and Chinese annals, the Yuan Shi .

The Pararaton describes the genealogy of kings de Singasari and Majapahit. According to him, Singasari is founded in 1222 by some Ken Arok, character of obscure origin which reverses king Kertajaya of Kediri. It then takes the name of reign of Rajasa.

The most important king of Singasari is 5th and last one, Kertanegara, which reigned of 1254 with 1292. The Nagarakertagama enumerates the " regions tributaires" of Majapahit which was conquered by this king. In addition to Bali, Madura and Sunda, the list goes from Pahang on the Malayan Péninsule to " Gurun" in the Moluques, while passing by Malayu (Jambi) with Sumatra and " Bakulapura" with Borneo.

Actually, the territory of Singasari consisted of the valley upstream of the Brantas river, around the current city of Malang and the foot of the Arjuno volcano. The list above was written more than 70 years after the end of Singasari. Moreover, it indicates areas which were not " tributaires" of Majapahit but belonged to a sales network whose Majapahit was the center.

Kings de Singasari develop agriculture but do not lose sight of the fact the foreign trade. The Zhufan zhi , a report/ratio written in the middle of the 13th century by an inspector of the customs of the south of China, insists on the richness of Java, the many products of its agriculture, the quality of its silk trade, the abundance of its spices. The Chinese merchants made such benefit there that they left in smuggling the Chinese copper currency to get Poivre. This report/ratio mentions also place names of which some seem to be in the Moluques, because the Javaneses proposed to the merchants foreigner Muscade.

The Nagarakertagama quotes a forwarding against the kingdom of Malayu in 1275. One actually found in the center of Sumatra a statue carrying an inscription gone back to 1286 which specifies that this statue is one present of Kertanegara to the " populate of Malayu and its roi". It is necessary however to take with precaution the list of the conquests, written one century after the time when they are judicious to be carried out.

This forwarding against Sumatra disorganizes the balance which had been established during the previous centuries with the hegemony of the city-State of Sriwijaya, which had good relationships with China. The rising power of Java, nearer to Moluques, was likely to make of it the turntable commercial of spices. Moreover, China saw of an evil eye the illegal exit of copper currency essential to the operation of its own economy, more especially as Java had a reputation of thesaurisator. China of Kubilai Khan had all the reasons to want to carry out a forwarding against Java.

The Javanese tradition tells the things differently. According to it, Kubilai sends emissary to Singasari to claim a tribute to him. Kertanagara refuses, makes cut the nose of the Chinese emissary and returns it to its Master. What is certain, it is that Kubilai sends in 1292 a punitive forwarding against Singasari. The fleet, made up of 1.000 ships and 20.000 men, plays of bad luck. She essuie a typhoon as of her departure, sees herself refusing the supply envisaged with the Champa (center of current the Vietnam) and reached the northern coast of demoralized Java, of many soldiers suffering from hunger and dysentery.

This same Jayakatwang year, prince of Kediri and vassal of Singasari, revolts. The rebellion results in the death of Kertanegara. Prince de Singasari, Raden Wijaya, seizes the occasion of this unloading to be combined to the Sino-Mongols and to repress the rebellion. Then Wijaya the force to be re-embarked. In the passing, the Sino-Mongols could plunder Kediri and bring back important spoils, including one great quantity of Chinese copper currency. Wijaya founds a new kingdom, Majapahit, and takes the name of reign of Kertarajasa Jayawardhana.

See the continuation: Majapahit

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