Sultanate of Sulu

The Sultanate of Sulu was a Sunni Muslim state of the Tausug people, founded around 1457 by Sharif ul-Hashim and centered on the Sulu Archipelago, with territory also reaching the coast around Zamboanga City, part of Palawan, and northeastern Borneo in what is now Sabah and North Kalimantan. Governed as a unitary Islamic absolute monarchy under a sultan, with a legislature called the Ruma Bechara, it began as a vassal of the Sultanate of Brunei before becoming fully independent from 1578 to 1851, and it later became first a Spanish protectorate and then a United States protectorate; its territory shifted considerably over time, and in the nineteenth century it was also known for maritime piracy and the slave trade before those activities declined. The sultanate ceased to exist as a sovereign state on March 22, 1915, under its last sovereign ruler, Jamalul Kiram II, who had reigned from 1894, though it continued afterward as a ceremonial institution.