Missionaries must also, however, have come to the Malay Archipelago from the south of India, judging from certain peculiarities of Muhammadan theology adopted by the islanders. Most of the Musalmans of the Archipelago belong to the Shāfiʻiyyah sect, which is at the present day predominant on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts, as was the case also about the middle of the fourteenth century when Ibn Baṭūṭah visited these parts. [1184] So when we consider that the Muhammadans of the neighbouring countries belong to the Ḥanafiyyah sect, we can only explain the prevalence of Shāfiʻiyyah teachings by assuming them to have been brought thither from the Malabar coast, the ports of which were frequented by merchants from Java, as well as from China, Yaman and Persia. [1185] From India, too, or from Persia, must have come the Shīʻism, of which traces are still found in Java and Sumatra. From Ibn Baṭūṭah we learn that the Muhammadan Sultan of Samudra had entered into friendly relations with the court of Dehli, and among the learned doctors of the law whom this devout prince especially favoured, there were two of Persian origin, the one coming from Shiraz and the other from Ispahan. [1186] But long before this time merchants from the Deccan, through whose hands passed the trade between the Musalman states of India and the Malay Archipelago, had established themselves in large numbers in the trading ports of these islands, where they sowed the seed of the new religion. [1187] It is to the proselytising efforts of these Arab and Indian merchants that the native Muhammadan population, which we find already in the earliest historical notices of Islam in these parts, owes its existence. Settling in the centres of commerce, they intermarried with the people of the land, and these heathen wives and the slaves of their households thus formed the nucleus of a Muslim community which its members made every effort in their power to increase. The following description of the methods adopted by these merchant missionaries in the Philippine Islands, gives a picture of what was no doubt the practice of many preceding generations of Muhammadan traders:—“The better to introduce their religion into the country, the Muhammadans adopted the language and many of the customs of the natives, married their women, purchased slaves in order to increase their personal importance, and succeeded finally in incorporating themselves among the chiefs who held the foremost rank in the state. Since they worked together with greater ability and harmony than the natives, they gradually increased their power more and more, as having numbers of slaves in their possession, they formed a kind of confederacy among themselves and established a sort of monarchy, which they made hereditary in one family. Though such a confederacy gave them great power, yet they felt the necessity of keeping on friendly terms with the old aristocracy, and of ensuring their freedom to those classes