Mir of Tidore

The Malukan sultanates generated some wealth through the trade in cloves which attracted merchants from other parts of Asia, and eventually European seafarers.

[1] The Portuguese, coming from Melaka, established a base in nearby Ternate and, allying with the local elite, made war on Tidore.

Spain believed that Maluku fell within its sphere of interest as laid down in the treaty of Tordesillas, and dispatched a new expedition for the Spice Islands under García Jofre de Loaísa in 1524.

With their support, Tidore and Jailolo expanded their territory at the cost of Ternate, but could not prevent that the Portuguese again attacked and burned the royal settlement in 1529.

[5] Two of his sisters, including the well-known Nyaicili Boki Raja, were mothers of a succession of Ternatan Sultans, a circumstance that did not prevent the perennial rivalries between the two island kingdoms.

When some Spaniards were captured and brought to one of the Papuan Islands, the pirates' nest Gebe, Mir dispatched an expedition to chastise the raiders with mixed success.

Major armed confrontations with the Portuguese were avoided, but intimidations by their Iberian rivals forced the Spanish to again leave Maluku in 1546, Villalobos succumbing to sickness in Ambon.

[9] The Portuguese were initially too weak to force Mir to bring down the Spanish fortifications on Tidore, but events five years later changed the picture.

King Katarabumi of Jailolo, who was honoured in North Maluku as a "second Muhammad" and was the first to write the local language with Arabic letters, raided Christianized villages in Halmahera and was therefore soon in turn attacked by Portuguese and Ternatan forces in 1551.

When he returned, Captain Bernaldim de Sousa, feeling strong enough to put on pressure, arranged a meeting with the Sultans of Ternate and Tidore.

[18] Portuguese texts mention a few children of Mir: a daughter who married Hairun of Ternate around 1540,[19] and a son called Sama.