Johor and Britain's FriendshipStories of Malay royalties may not attain international fame as their British counterparts. But they are content-rich minus the tabloid stuff that is, if you know sufficient Bahasa Dalam to read about them from the Malaysian archives. Great Grandfather and Grandfather Temenggung Abdul Rahman sowed the seed of his own Johor dynasty when he collaborated with Stamford Raffles to remove Tengku Abdul Rahman as Sultan to make way for Abdul Rahman's eldest brother, Tengku Hussein. The son of Temenggung Abdul Rahman, Temenggung Daeng Ibrahim cooperated with the British to eliminate piracy from the Singaporean waters, he earned a gold-plated sword from Queen Victoria as a gift. Bahasa Malaysia note--Older brother/sister=kekanda, son=anakanda. These are more polite versions of addressing family members commonly used in letter writing and among royalties.
A treaty signed with UK acknowledged Abu Bakar as the Sultan of independent Johor. That was to say, during a time when other Malay rulers had to listen to their respective British advisers, Abu Bakar could ignore the British representative in his kingdom. In fact, the flag of Johor was also flown higher than the Union Jack to indicate its precedence! To celebrate his coronation as the Sultan, Abu Bakar engaged the service of a famous goldsmith J.W.Benson from London to make a priceless crown of diamond, emerald and other precious stones. Since we are talking about the friendship of Johor with Britain...Abu Bakar married an English woman also from London by the name of Cecelia Lange. Her name changed to Zabedah binti Abdullah upon conversion to Moslem and she was given the title "Cik Besar Zabedah". Another wife of Abu Bakar, Che Engku Fatimah, who bore him the crown prince Ibrahim became the Queen. She was of Acheh-Dutch descent and she was given the title " Sultanah Fatimah". Bahasa Malaysia note--Father=ayahanda, born as a prince=diputerakan, born as a princess=diputerikan
It is said that Prince Ibrahim was the handsomest among the Malay blue blood during his younger days. A statement that Wan agrees with after viewing a photo of a young Ibrahim. After Ibrahim succeeded his father as the Sultan of Johor, and fathered sons to himself, he became very fond of a son of his Chief Minister Dato Jaafar Haji Muhammad. He adopted that lucky boy and granted him free access to the palace. That boy was Onn Jaafar. Ibrahim was well-known or rather, unpopular for his pro-English stance. Even towards the end of his reign as the jubilee of his rule approaching, he was quoted by Times magazine in a statement to his government: "Where are your warships, your planes and your armies to withstand and repel aggression from without? If the British were to go today, the Communists would be in tomorrow ... It would be 99 times worse than the Japanese occupation." On the other hand, his adopted son Onn Jaafar grew up to be the Chief Minister and also...founded UMNO to oppose English rule! It is of little wonder they clashed opinions. The final straw came when Onn publicly disagreed with Ibrahim's intention to make his Rumanian wife queen through a newspaper, Sunday Mirror. Ibrahim banished Onn to Singapore. They reconciled ten years later. Each audience Onn had with his highness, the Sultan referred to himself as "aku" and to Onn, as "engkau". This was very unusual as Sultans use "beta" for first personal pronouns. It somehow displayed Ibrahim's affection for Onn. Bahasa Malaysia note--Second personal pronoun for a royalty=tuanku, third person=baginda, when speaking to a royalty you refer to yourself as patik
Apart from being the only Malay ruler who lived to celebrate the jubilee of his rule, Sultan Ibrahim was also the first to crown a white lady as his queen-- naturally she's English. She was Helen Bartholomew, the widow of his physician residing in Britain after her husband's death. When Sultan Ibrahim sent his sons for education in England, he asked her "to keep an eye" on them and visited them from time to time. Eventually she married the Sultan and became his third official wife. On 18 November 1931, Helen Bartholomew was crowned as Sultanah Helen of Johor. Her "orang kampung" in Scotland proudly remembered her as a Scot who got her face commemorated in a stamp as a wedding anniversary gift simply because her husband the Sultan could afford it. Incidentally the aforementioned stamp was issued in 1935 during the royal couple's fifth wedding anniversary. The marriage ended in an amicable divorce after ten years, without children. Helen returned to England, rarely seen in public limelight. She died in 1977 in a nursing home . A Glasgow newspaper's attempt to find out more about her final years did not produce much information except for a few faded photographs of her working days. I wonder what happened to the reputedly spectacular jewel collection that she continued to receive from her ex-husband even after divorce? Bahasa Malaysia note-- offspring or issue=zuriat, pass away=mangkat
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