The Jambi region, around the basin of the Batanghari River in
central Sumatra, was the site of the pre-Islamic kingdom of Melayu. It also sometimes served as
the capital of the empire of Sriwijaya (Srivijaya). Jambi was an important pepper port in the
seventeenth century and later supplied dragon’s blood resin to China and Europe. Jambi
resisted Dutch control until the early twentieth century.
The earliest references to the region are found in Chinese texts,
which recorded an embassy from Melayu to the Chinese court around 644 C.E. A stone inscription suggests that Sriwijaya
and Melayu were linked during this period, and the writings of I-Tsing (IChing) (635–713 C.E.) have been
taken to indicate that
Jambi was the capital of Sriwijaya at that time. In the ninth century and again in the eleventh century, Jambi
sent further missions to the Chinese court.
The large Buddhist complex of Muara Jambi, 26 kilometers
downstream from the modern capital, probably dates from the ninth century, but there is
evidence that it was still of importance in the thirteenth, when Melayu seems again to have been
the capital of Sriwijaya. Trade
in forest products and control of the Straits of Melaka through which foreign shipping passed were key to
Jambi’s importance.
