Raja Ijau

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Ratu Hijau (Thai: รายาฮิเยา) was a Malay sovereign queen of Patani who reigned from 1584-1616. Her name means "the Green Queen" in English. She was the eldest daughter of Sultan Mansur Shah. According to the Portuguese chronicler Mendez Pinto, she came to the throne in 1584 as a sister of the murdered Patani king after twenty years of unstable rule. She was already in power when the first Dutch and English Company agents visited this region of what is now southern Thailand. She was also known as the 'great queen of Patani'. According to Jacob van Neck's writing in 1604, he reported a relatively prosperous state under Ratu Hijau, who was "one well-disposed to merchants". The Malay monarchy under her rule absorbed diversity of foreign traders into a polyglot elite united by the royal person, a Malay lingua franca, and a pattern of rules and sacred regalia passed down from courts such as Melaka and Pasai. The majority of the merchants were said to be Chinese merchants, of which the most important of them, such as the leading commercial official Datu Sirinara, had converted to Islam and adopted Malay court etiquette. She was succeeded by her younger sister Ratu Biru.

[edit] External links

• http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/Womeninpower1570.htm
• http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Thailand.html
• Queens of Pattani

[edit] References

• A. Teeuw & D. K. Wyatt. Hikayat Patani: The Story of Patani. Bibliotheca Indonesica, 5. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970.
• Ahmad Fathy al-Fatani. Pengantar Sejarah Patani. Alor Setar: Pustaka Darussalam, 1994.
• Wayne A. Bougas. The Kingdom of Patani: Between Thai and Malay Mandalas. Occasional Paper on the Malay World, no. 12. Selangor: Institut Alam dan Tamadun Melayu, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1994.