Sultan Hairun Jamilu (Jawi: سلطان حيور جميلو‎; c. 1522 – 28 February 1570) was the 6th Muslim ruler of Ternate in Maluku, reigning from 1535 to 1570.

The trade in spices and forest products made it vital for the early colonizers to secure bases in the Maluku Islands (Moluccas) and control the enormously lucrative commerce.

An incident in 1535, where Ternatans attacked a Christianized village in Halmahera in defiance of the Portuguese, led to the deposing of the young Sultan Tabariji.

[4] However, another half-brother of Hairun, Dayal, had been deposed some years previously and fled to the rival Sultanate Tidore, based on an island in the vicinity.

There he had the opportunity to see the well-known Jesuit Francis Xavier who undertook extensive missionary work in Maluku and other parts of Asia.

One of the four Malukan kingdoms, Jailolo on Halmahera, was led by the strongly Muslim Katarabumi who attacked newly converted Christian villages with great furor.

Jailolo's power was broken, Katarabumi was deprived of his rank as Sultan, and his son Kaicili Gujarati became a Sangaji (sub-ruler) under Ternate.

The two kingdoms coexisted in an ambivalent way, as Ternate rulers regularly married Sultans' daughters from Tidore in spite of numerous petty wars between the two.

A rift appeared between Hairun and the Portuguese in 1557 since the latter confiscated the clove harvest from Makian and imprisoned the Sultan for security reasons.

[13] According to a later account, Hairun "was indeed a wise ruler, a brave warrior, extraordinarily correct in the exercise of law and justice, but most of all greatly devoted to his religion, and a strong defender of the Islamic faith.

Since the Sultan dominated the waterways he could stop the vital deliveries of foodstuff from Moro in Halmahera to the Portuguese settlement in Ternate, to the great embarrassment of the garrison.

A reconciliation between Hairun and the Portuguese captain Diogo Lopes de Mesquita was arranged in 1570, but it ended on a bad note.

When he was about to depart from the meeting, Mesquita's nephew Martim Afonso Pimentel approached him near the gate and stabbed him with his poignard, exclaiming "Though the galleons have withdrawn to India, there are still Portuguese around here!".