Mahmud, Sultan of Riau and Lingga (1823-1864)

The life of Sultan Mahmud is described in the Tuhfat al-Nafis (The Precious Gift), a Malay text which, according to its author, Raja Hajji All, is intended to relate the stories of the Malay and Bugis kings and their descendants. The work opens with a synopsis of the Sejarah Melayu and continues in more detail with the history of the kingdom of Johor. The dynamic figures in the Tuhfat are the Bugis princes, whose military skill and hard-line diplomacy won them high positions of state in Riau, Selangor, and the Borneo states of Sambas and Matan-Sukadana. A recurring theme in the first half of the Tuhfat, which covers the first half of the eighteenth century, is the conflict between the Minangkabau of Siak and the allied Bugis and Malay forces. These clashes occurred both in the Riau area and in Kedah, Selangor, Siak, and Borneo. The second half, which covers the mid-eighteenth century to 1864, portrays the developing hostility between Bugis and Malays on Riau and two major, Bugis-led confrontations with the Dutch at Malacca in 1756 and 1784. This last venture