This article surveys and analyses the available materials on Dato Mogul, the putative first ruler of Singora (present-day Songkhla) in the early seventeenth century. It argues that the narrative in Thailand surrounding Dato Mogul and his emergence is sketchy at best. In reviewing the literature and drawing on new and extant primary sources, we argue that Dato Mogul was likely a Malay governor authorised by Ligor. This reappraisal presents a more accurate biographical narrative and provides greater insight on polity formation in Lower Siam in the period under review.

The primary purpose of this article is to reconstruct the date, location, and significance of Ayutthaya's Shi‘ite enclave within the former Siamese capital during the seventeenth century. This reassessment is based on a mixture of Persian, Thai, and European sources that clarify the confused picture generated by European cartographers that has for too long cast a shadow over Muslim studies in Thailand. Following a summary of extant explanations and a description of my primary sources and methodological approach, I summarise two aspects of Muslim presence in Ayutthaya. First, I introduce readers to connections between the incremental growth of the Muslim presence in Ayutthaya during the sixteenth century with geopolitical developments on the eastern littoral of the Bay of Bengal. Second, I present the range of accounts provided in primary sources specifically mentioning Ayutthaya's Muslim enclave. Having orientated readers to the origins of the Muslim presence within Ayutthaya's citadel, I incrementally introduce annotated portions of Thai and European maps. These clarify confusion about where and when this Shi‘ite mosque was constructed. I conclude with comments about how this reassessment brings into focus the presence of Shi‘ite ‘alid piety, Shi‘ite polemics about local Sunnis, Siamese conversion to Shi‘ism, and distinctions between these “Moors” and “Malays.”

The kingdoms of Kandy (now Sri Lanka) and Ayutthaya (now Thailand) were briefly connected across Indian Ocean waters in the mid-eighteenth century by Dutch East India Company (hereafter VOC) traders, leading to the importation of valuable Siamese Buddhist monks and their ordination lineage to the island. Two series of events related to the VOC's search for and delivery of these monks demonstrate that the patronage of connected religious dynamics—not just the contingencies of trade, land, labour, and statecraft—was an essential aspect of Company business. At the same time, mediating Buddhist connection was a dangerous, sometimes perilous undertaking. Analysing VOC records alongside Laṅkān and Siamese historical chronicles and travelogues reveals that what were initially friendly connections at first necessitated, and later intensified certain forms of danger. We begin with perilous shipwrecks and diplomatic impasses across monsoon waters that eventually led to the restoration of an important but defunct Kandyan Buddhist ordination lineage, and conclude with the aftermath of a failed assassination attempt in 1760 against the royal patron of that lineage transmission. I advance the notion of “dangerous friendships” to characterise how Buddhist courts and European traders worked together to first generate, and then exploit, friendly religious connections.

This article reconstructs the history of Kling Muslims’ contribution to the religious and ethnic cosmopolitanism of sixteenth-century Ayutthaya. This study's argument is constructed based on an aggregate of written fragments about the Kling in both Portuguese primary sources and the wider academic literature. We reveal that, amongst the many ways in which Siam benefited from the Iberian invasion of Melaka in 1511, the dramatic geopolitical rupture of the invasion re-routed trade across the Bay of Bengal. As a result, Kling merchants began arriving in Ayutthaya in greater numbers via the new network of Siamese-controlled ports and portages. Moreover, this study demonstrates the utility of greater synergy among South Asian, Southeast Asian, Thai, and Malay Studies through focusing on the exonyms employed in primary and secondary sources. Finally, this article contends that Ayutthaya's ethnic and religious cosmopolitanism was impacted by the arrival of South Asian Muslims, referred to as Kling in the Malay World and Khaek in Siam, approximately one century before Persians arrived in greater numbers. This, among others, was an unintended result of Portugal's sixteenth-century interventions into, and alliances with, the Siamese.

This article analyzes the instrumentalization of “China” in contacts between the Ming and Qing dynasties and Siam-Ayutthaya. It focuses both on the state-to-state relations and those between various members of the Siamese and the imperial societies. “China” and “Chinese-ness” stood for forms of ascribed identity within the Sinocentric world, for a form of social distinction, and for one of many identities assumed in the games of political loyalty. For the Ming and Qing empires, inclusion of a foreign land within “China” was conducted through the ritual and administrative fictions that situated Ayutthaya within a hierarchy vis-à-vis the imperial capital. Beyond the state's discourses, participation in a vaguely defined Chinese culture were means of building social networks within the merchant and official communities in Ayutthaya. For the junkmen that connected Ayutthaya and South China, multiple Chinese identities were instrumentalized and inflected according to the needs and necessities of the moment.

Although the Portuguese established contact with Thailand soon after their conquest of Melaka in 1511, it was thought that Spaniards did not go there until the disastrous expedition of Diego Belloso in 1596. However, in a little-known manuscript from about 1600 there is an account of an inadvertent visit by a small group of Spaniards in 1585, after they had been blown off course trying to return to Manila from Macao. This includes a description of Ayutthaya, presented here, together with an account of the trials and tribulations they endured in getting back to Manila. The Spaniards had gone to Macao with the Jesuit Alonso Sánchez, ostensibly to sort out a mutiny on a galleon bound for Acapulco, but Sánchez also wanted to pursue his agenda of converting China to Christianity and his reports do not mention this extraordinary adventure of some of his companions.