Islam seems first to have begun to make progress here in the fifteenth century. A heathen king of Tidor yielded to the persuasions of an Arab, named Shaykh Manṣūr, and embraced Islam together with many of his subjects. The heathen name of the king, Tjireli Lijatu, was changed to that of Jamāl al-Dīn, while his eldest son was called Manṣūr after their Arab teacher. [1256] It was the latter prince who entertained the Spanish expedition that reached Tidor in 1521, shortly after the ill-fated death of Magellan. Pigafetta, the historian of this expedition, calls him Raia Sultan Mauzor, and says that he was more than fifty-five years old, and that not fifty years had passed since the Muhammadans came to live in these islands. [1257] Islam seems to have gained a footing on the neighbouring island of Ternate a little earlier. The Portuguese, who came to this island the same year as the Spaniards reached Tidor, were informed by the inhabitants that it had been introduced a little more than eighty years. [1258] According to the Portuguese account [1259] also the Sultan of Ternate was the first of the Muluccan chieftains who became a Muslim. The legend of the introduction of Islam into this island tells how a merchant, named Datu Mullā Ḥusayn, excited the curiosity of the people by reading the Qurʼān aloud in their presence; they tried to imitate the characters written in the book, but could not read them, so they asked the merchant how it was that he could read them, while they could not; he replied that they must first believe in God and His Apostle; whereupon they expressed their willingness to accept his teaching, and became converted to the faith. [1260] The Sultan of Ternate, who occupied the foremost place among the independent rulers in these islands, is said to have made a journey to Gresik, in Java, in order to embrace the Muhammadan faith there, in 1495. [1261] He was assisted in his propagandist efforts by a certain Pati Putah, who had made the journey from Hitu in Amboina to Java in order to learn the doctrines of the new faith, and on his return spread the knowledge of Islam among the people of Amboina. [1262] Islam, however, seems at first to have made but slow progress, and to have met with considerable opposition from those islanders who clung zealously to their old superstitions and mythology, so that the old idolatry continued for some time crudely mixed up with the teachings of the Qurʼān, and keeping the minds of the people in a perpetual state of incertitude. [1263] The Portuguese conquest also made the progress of Islam slower than it would otherwise have been. They drove out the Qāḍī, whom they found instructing the people in the doctrines of Muḥammad, and spread Christianity among the heathen population with some considerable, though short-lived success. [1264] For when the Muluccans took advantage of the attention of the Portuguese being occupied with their own domestic troubles, in the