Luzones
[2][8] Surviving primary documents referring to the Luzones (as Luções) include the accounts of Fernão Mendes Pinto (1614);[2] Tomé Pires (whose written documents were published in 1944);[2] and the survivors of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, including expedition members Gines de Mafra[2] and Rodrigo de Aganduru Moriz[7][2] and the Italian scholar Antonio Pigafetta[9][2] who served as the expedition's primary scribe, and published his account in 1524.
Pires' exploration led him to discover that in their own country, the Luções had "foodstuffs, wax, honey, inferior grade gold," had no king, and were governed instead by a group of elders.
[18] One famous Luzones was Regimo de Raja, who had been appointed by the Portuguese at Malacca as Temenggung (Jawi: تمڠݢوڠ [19]) or Governor and General.
Pires noted that Luzones and Malays (natives of Malacca) had settled in Mjmjam (Perak) and lived in two separate settlements and were "often at variance" or in rivalry with each other.
In 1539 Filipinos (Luções) formed part of a Batak-Menangkabau army which besieged Aceh, as well as of the Acehnese fleet which raised the siege under command of Turkish Heredim Mafamede sent out from Suez by his uncle, Suleiman, Viceroy of Cairo.
When this fleet later took Aru on the Strait of Malacca, it contained 4,000 Muslims from Turkey, Abyssinia, Malabar, Gujarat and Luzon, and following his victory, Heredim left a hand-picked garrison there under the command of a Filipino by the name of Sapetu Diraja.
[22] Luções military and trade activity reached as far as Sri Lanka in South Asia where Lungshanoid pottery made in Luzon were discovered in burials.
"[24] The Luzones were also pioneer seafarers, and it is recorded that the Portuguese were not only witnesses but also direct beneficiaries of Lusung's involvement.
When the Portuguese finally took Malacca in 1512, the resident Luzones held important government posts in the former sultanate.
They were also large-scale exporters and ship owners that regularly sent junks to China, Brunei, Sumatra, Siam and Sunda.
One Lusung official by the name of Surya Diraja annually sent 175 tons of pepper to China and had to pay the Portuguese 9000 cruzados in gold to retain his plantation.
In 1547, Jesuit missionary and Catholic saint Francis Xavier encountered his first Japanese convert from Satsuma disembarking from a Lusung ship in Malacca.
[2] The Aganduru Moriz account[7] describes how Elcano's crew was attacked somewhere off the southeastern tip of Borneo[8] by a Bruneian fleet commanded by one of the Luzones.
[32][33] The Luções easily switched allegiance from the Ottoman Caliphate to the Iberian Union after the Spanish incorporation of Luzon.
The book Wakan Sansai Zue, a Japanese translation of Ming era history, recorded that before Spain came, the emperor of China referred to the rulers of Luzon as "kings" (呂宋國王).
