In the early part of the nineteenth century a religious revival was set on foot in Sumatra, which was not without its influence in promoting the further propagation of Islam. In 1803 three Sumatran ḥājīs returned from Mecca to their native country: during their stay in the holy city they had been profoundly influenced by the Wahhābī movement for the reformation of Islam, and were now eager to introduce the same reforms among their fellow-countrymen and to stir up in them a purer and more zealous religious life. Accordingly they began to preach the strict monotheism of the Wahhābī sect, forbade prayers to saints, drinking and gambling and all other practices contrary to the law of the Qurʼān. They made a number of proselytes both from among their co-religionists and the heathen population. They later declared a Jihād against the Bataks, and in the hands of unscrupulous and ambitious men the movement lost its original character and degenerated into a savage and bloody war of conquest. In 1821 these so-called Padris came into conflict with the Dutch Government and it was not until 1838 that their last stronghold was taken and their power broken. [1214] All the civilised Malays of the Malay Peninsula trace their origin to migrations from Sumatra, especially from Menangkabau, the famous kingdom mentioned above, which is said at one time to have been the most powerful on the island; some of the chiefs of the interior states of the southern part of the Malay Peninsula still receive their investiture from this place. At what period these colonies from the heart of Sumatra settled in the interior of the Peninsula, is matter of conjecture, but Singapore and the southern extremity of the Peninsula seem to have received a colony in the middle of the twelfth century, by the descendants of which Malacca was founded about a century later. [1215] From its advantageous situation, in the highway of eastern commerce it soon became a large and flourishing city, and there is little doubt but that Islam was introduced by the Muhammadan merchants who settled here. [1216] The Malay chronicle of Malacca assigns the conversion of this kingdom to the reign of a certain Sulṭān Muḥammad Shāh who came to the throne in 1276. He is said to have been reigning some years before a ship commanded by Sīdī ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz came to Malacca from Jiddah, and the king was persuaded by the new-comers to change his faith and to give up his Malay name for one containing the name of the Prophet. [1217] But the general character of this document makes its trustworthiness exceedingly doubtful, [1218] in spite of the likelihood that the date of so important an event would have been exactly noted (as was done in many parts of the Archipelago) by a people who, proud of the event, would look upon it as opening a new epoch in their history. A Portuguese historian gives a much later date, namely 1384, in which year, he says, a Qāḍī came from Arabia and having