Banten Sultanate
sultanate located in north west Java, which functioned as one of the main hubs of the early modern spice trade
The Banten Sultanate (Sundanese: ᮊᮞᮥᮜ᮪ᮒᮔᮔ᮪ ᮘᮔ᮪ᮒᮨᮔ᮪, كسلطانن بنتن, Kasultanan Banten ) was a Bantenese Islamic trading kingdom founded in the 16th century and centred in Banten, a port city on the northwest coast of Java; the contemporary English name of both was Bantam. It is said to have been founded by Sunan Gunungjati, who had previously founded Cirebon.
Once a great trading centre in Southeast Asia, especially of pepper, the kingdom reached its apogee in the late 16th and mid-17th centuries. By the late 17th century, it was overshadowed by Batavia and was finally annexed to the Dutch East Indies in 1813.
Its core territory now forms the Indonesian province of Banten. Today, in Old Banten, the Great Mosque of Banten is an important destination for tourists and for pilgrims from across Indonesia and from overseas.
Formation
Prior to 1526, a settlement called Banten was situated about ten kilometres inland from the coast on the Cibanten River, in what is today a suburb of Serang town. It was known as Banten Girang, meaning "Upper Banten" owing to its location. This town previously was a native Hindu Sundanese principality that was held under the Kingdom of Sunda.
A grandson of the King of Sunda, Sri Baduga Maharaja (also known as Prabu Siliwangi) was an ulama named Sunan Gunungjati (Sharif Hidayatullah).
The public source identifies “Banten Sultanate” as sultanate located in north west Java, which functioned as one of the main hubs of the early modern spice trade. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Banten, Sultanate and sultanate.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q734867. VIAF identifies the subject as 4516155226756684490002. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1813 and 1526.
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This entry incorporates text from “Banten Sultanate” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.