Antonio Pigafetta of the Magellan Expedition, records the name of Basilan as "Taghima", and was variously spelled in other early European maps as "Tanguima", "Taglima", "Tagimar", "Tagema", and "Tagyto".

Imperial Chinese texts mention a "Kingdom of Kumalarang" (from the Yakan "kumalang" or "to sing", owing to the location being a place for celebrations and gatherings) during the Ming Dynasty, believed to be the island which now has a barangay of the same name on its northwestern shores.

This was followed by Abraham Ortelius's work Indiae Orientalis Insularumque Adiacientium Typus, published in 1573 in a German text edition of the atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Christophe Plantin in Antwerp.

As late as 1719,[7] a map titled "Die philippinische Inseln - Isle Brneo" by Allain Manesson Mallet of Frankfurt, Germany featured an island labeled "Tagyma I."

This profitable trade, helped in large measure by the establishment of Maluso as a major military-naval base of the Sulu Sultanate, eventually gave the island the distinction of being the source of basih-balan, the Tausug word for magnetic iron.

Finally, to represent a clear break from the Habsburg Dynasty (which had ruled Spain for 184 years from 1516 to 1700), the first officially sanctioned Spanish maps of its colonies, including "Las Islas de Mindanao", were commissioned by the Bourbons (1700–present).

The withdrawal of the Yakans inland was hastened by Spanish establishment of advance bases on the island's northwestern coast, bringing in Christianized 'indios' and Latin Americans from Zamboanga,[8] as well as Visayans and Tagalogs, from the Visayas and Luzon.

Beginning around 1970, heavy fighting broke out between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front, which was determined to secede and form a new country.

As a result, four of the six new municipalities have not been included in the government's annual budget as approved by Congress and have not received any nationally funded Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA) since their creation.

The rest, a mixture of Ilocanos, Waray, Bicolanos, Maranaos, Iranuns and Maguindanaos, are more recent migrants permanently residing in the region, itinerant merchants or government workers.

This mix of ethnicities, forged first by the Spanish practice of establishing re-settlements or reducciones, as well as the multinational plantations' importation of skilled Christian farm workers and laborers from the Visayas and Luzon, gives Basilan a distinct culture in the Philippines.

The Tausugs and Samals, for the most part having been denied ownership of land, and owing to their primary livelihood of fishing, live along the coastlines, constructing their houses on stilts at the water's edge near population centers.

Conversely, the Yakan have reason to be suspicious of the intents and motives of their lowland neighbors, having been at the receiving end of slave raids, invasions and punitive attacks from both groups for over 500 years.

With the island's strategic location right at the crossroads of the warring camps of Tausugs and the Spanish, Basilan was divided into three primary spheres of cultural dominance by one of the three groups.

By the eve of the Commonwealth era in the Philippines, local census estimates showed that a majority of the people of Basilan were Christian migrants, mostly plantation workers recruited from over Mindanao and the Visayas, and Tausug traders, as well as Samal and Bajau fisherfolk.

In Isabela City, the population growth was 20.47% (+2.60% per annum; 73,032 in 2000, to 87,985 in 2007), slower when compared to the newly created Akbar Municipality, scene of many of the latest gun-battles between government troops and Moro separatist groups.

Non-Catholic Christians include Evangelicals, Jesus Miracle Crusade, Episcopalian, and Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other Protestant denominations.

Chavacano is the primary native tongue of the Christian inhabitants of the island and serves as the lingua franca of Basilan, with 80% of residents being able to speak and understand it.

A substantial number of expatriate plantation managers, mostly Americans but also Swiss, Germans, Dutch, Russian and even Japanese, Irish, and Swedes lived among and intermarried into the native populace.

This was compounded by the declaration of martial law by President Ferdinand Marcos in 1972, and the decree that created Basilan Province, with its initial complement of ten municipalities (eventually reduced to seven).

By the early 1990s, disgruntled youth, influenced by returning mujahideen warriors from the thwarted Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and schooled in more radical schools of thought in Syria, Egypt and Pakistan, banded together to form the Al-Harakatul Al-Islamiyah, better known worldwide as Abu Sayyaf, an extremist group advocating strict Islamic governance similar to Afghanistan's Taliban regime.

The group's founding leader, the radical firebrand Abdurajak Janjalani of Isabela City, is a typical product of Basilan's closely mixed ethnicities and inter-marriages: he is part-Tausug, part-Yakan and part-Ilonggo.

By 2003, Basilan embarked on large-scale replanting programs covering some 50,000 hectares (120,000 acres) of privately owned and/or cooperative-controlled lands, mainly for rubber and cassava.

However, province-wide coconut production, which still accounts for 50%-60% of the province's total economic activity, has dropped precipitously to only 174,939 metric tons in 2002 due to the lingering effects of CARP, combined with a severe onset of the El Niño weather pattern, the worsening threat to peace and order resulting from the resurgent Abu Sayyaf terrorist group and their MILF allies, and the policy of the Akbar administration to replace coconut with rubber trees.

Jum Jainuddin-Akbar, the incumbent three-term Governor of Basilan assumed the leadership of the block after Wahab Akbar himself, who was elected congressman in 2007, was assassinated in November 13 of that year.

Jum Jainuddin-Akbar won the gubernatorial race, defeating Mujiv Hataman, with Ungkaya Pukan Mayor and former Akbar ally Joel T. Maturan trailing far behind.

Isabela City's vice mayoral race proved to be hotly contested, with Tabuk Barangay Chairman Abdulbaki Ajibon winning over the incumbent in a close fight.

This was followed by the massacre of twelve residents of Theresa Heights Subdivision, Barangay Eastside, as the bombers, purportedly members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf, escaped from a porous Philippine military cordon.

Similarly, Basilan's vice presidential choices, namely Fernando Lopez (1969), Salvador Laurel (1986), Joseph Ejercito Estrada (1992), Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (1998) and Noli De Castro (2004), also won, making it one of the most accurate bellwether provinces in Philippine politics today.

The ensuing imbroglio, dubbed the "Hello Garci" Scandal, included several mentions of Basilan and its late governor, Wahab Akbar, in taped conversations purportedly between President Arroyo and COMELEC Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano.