KUALA LUMPUR: When my mother received a WhatsApp message about a genealogical researcher trying to track her and her siblings down in her old kampung in Tambun, Perak, she was suspicious but curious.
The researcher, Fazil Shuhaimi Talib, had the names of her siblings, her mother, and others. His message stated that they were all descendants of someone she had never heard of—Puteh Manjera bt Muhammad Amin—who turned out to be her great-grandmother and the reason why he was searching for her and her siblings.
My mother can trace her ancestry up to her grandmother, but her great-grandmother had been a mystery up till now. Looking back, it was rather odd that she knew nothing.
After getting confirmation that Fazil was indeed who he said he was and that his search was legit, she agreed to meet with him.
For amateur genealogist Fazil, a 70-something former engineer, meeting my 85-year old mother and the steel-trap that is her mind, was akin to finding the smoking gun in the detective mystery he was seeking to unravel. Her memory is remarkably good – since she remembers every embarrassing thing I have ever done, it stood to reason that she'd remember the names of all her cousins and their kids, no matter how far flung.
For the rest of my family, his entry into our lives not only gave us back our great-great-grandmother and her sister, it suggests how close our connection may be to the British Resident James WW Birch's assassination, a pivotal moment in Malaysia's colonial past.
"The idea that we're descended from one of the people involved; that's so cool," said Maya, my cousin.
And while Fazil's research may have answered some questions we had about our ancestors, it created more questions. How were we completely clueless about our ties to the Laksamana Muhammad Amin?
REBEL CAMP
The story, past and present, is centred in Kampung Kepayang, a village in Fair Park, Ipoh. Despite its proximity to the city centre, it has largely been ignored until recently.
Honorary Assoc Prof Ahmad Jelani Halimi, chair of the Perak Branch of the Malaysian Historical Society (PSM) told me that the past neglect was due to the village's history.
"The British regarded Kampung Kepayang as a rebels' camp. It was blacklisted," he said.
And for good reason.
Kampung Kepayang was where Sultan Ismail Muabidin Riayat Shah, the 25th Perak sultan, and other rebels, including Dato Maharaja Lela Pandak Lam, took refuge from the British during the Perak War in 1875. It was also the stronghold of the Panglima Kinta on the Kepayang side. Dato Panglima Kinta Ngah Jabor, who was the panglima at the time, was one of the conspirators in the killing of Birch and Fazil's great-great uncle.
By then, Sultan Ismail had been deposed per the 1874 Pangkor Treaty with the British, which settled a fight for the throne by installing Sultan Abdullah Muhammad Shah II in his place.
The treaty was historically significant as it established British dominion over Malay rulers with the appointment of a British Resident who was tasked to administer and advise the sultan. Perak was the first domino to fall to make way for British rule in the Malay states.
Ahmad Jelani said that despite requesting the British help to reclaim the Perak throne, Sultan Abdullah soon regretted signing the treaty, feeling he had been fooled by the British.
Sultan Abdullah especially felt aggrieved that he had to listen to James WW Birch, who most historians agree did not have any diplomatic bone in his body. While Birch implemented good and bad policies, he did it rudely, peremptorily and abruptly, often without consulting the local rulers.
"He provoked everyone. Malays did not like paying taxes to him. He sent a notice saying all taxes should only go to the tax collector, not the local lords," said Ahmad Jelani, adding that meant the chiefs lost their income overnight.
He said another reason the Malay lords detested Birch was because he freed indentured servants, i.e. people who were sold into service as a way to repay debt. Rumours of the day also indicated that he freed many women who were serving as "gundik pembesar (mistresses to the lords)," which made the lords hate him even more.
"It's good but not the way he did it. Even though he did something good, he did it too drastically," he said.
Some slaves were also not happy to be released as they were no longer clothed, fed and sheltered.
Soon Sultan Abdullah, Laksamana Muhammad Amin – who Fazil said is my great-great-great grandfather – Lela Pandak Lam, Orang Kaya Menteri Paduka Tuan Ngah Ibrahim bin Jaafar, Syahbandar Uda Maamor, Dato Panglima Kinta Ngah Jabor and other local chiefs held a meeting to plot his death.
Subsequent to Birch's assassination in 1875 by Lela Pandak Lam and others, Sultan Ismail gave protection to them. They and other conspirators fled to Kampung Kepayang, seeking temporary protection from Lela Pandak Lam's half-brother Ngah Jabor, before heading to Siam. The British and its allies followed and soon captured them.
Lela Pandak Lam and his assistant Sepuntum were tried and convicted of murder, and hanged in 1877. Dato Panglima Kinta Ngah Jabor was stripped of the Panglima Kinta title and exiled to Johor, although he snuck back to Ipoh a decade later under an assumed name, according to research. The Kepayang side also lost its claim to the title, which they alternated with their cousins in nearby Paloh.
Historians are not sure whether the British had a hand in removing Ngah Jabor's descendants from the succession line.
As for Sultan Abdullah, Laksamana Muhammad Amin, Ngah Ibrahim and Uda Maamor were exiled to Seychelles. The Laksamana brought his first wife, Toh Puan Fatimah, with him. Their two daughters, Ngah Teresah and Puteh Manjera, had already married and were living in Kampung Kepayang by that time. His other wives and children did not accompany him either.
If there is not much info about the Laksamana's deeds so far, it is because there isn't much.
Institut Kajian Tuah Director Assoc. Prof (Retired) Mohd Samsudin told Bernama that the Laksamana was primarily known for who he knew and who he served.
"He was in the group but whether he said something or did something, there are no documents unless it was in the recorded statement by the witness. How big his role was, nobody knows," he said.
SEEKING ANSWERS
That is one of the challenges in doing research into Malay history. Prior to and in the early years of British occupation, Malays seldom wrote anything down, preferring to hand down the family and community's history through oral tradition.
Combining the turmoil of the time with a familial relationship to an exiled enemy of the British, making one's presence known would not have been a smart move.
Although there is no record of the British retaliating against family members or relatives of the people involved in the assassination, Mohd Samsudin said there was a tendency among relatives or allies of the exiles to lie low.
For example, there is a letter asking the British to pay passage for Toh Puan Fatimah and her nephew to the Malay states after 20 years in Seychelles, but nothing else after that.
"This is during the British rule of Perak. For some people, they changed their names (or use nicknames). That's one of the problems of ancestry research," said Mohd Samsudin, who is also the deputy chair of the executive council at PSM.
All this did not faze Fazil, whose search began from an off-hand remark from one of the elders in Kg Kepayang about 15 years ago.
"She said that two daughters of an Orang Besar Ipoh married men in Kepayang. She gave me the names: Teh Manjera and Ngah Teresah ," he told me during a visit to Kampung Kepayang.
"That was the thing that triggered inside me that the story was interesting and I needed to dig up."
The elder has since passed away.
Fazil, who is also the president of the Persatuan Keluarga Kulop Kinta (PK3), said he had heard those names before but did not know that Ngah Teresa was his great-grandmother, who married the son of Dato Panglima Kinta Ngah Jabor, or that her sister was Puteh Manjera. Neither did he know they were the Laksamana's daughters until he found a land grant gazetted in 1914, which reserved a piece of land for the old Kepayang Mosque.
Their full names were on the grant. Even then, he was skeptical.
"Because there were so many Muhammad Amin, it's a common name," he said.
He became convinced once he started comparing the two sisters' lineage to other genealogical records of other families, such as Toh Puan Fatimah's, the Laksamana's first wife, and the Panglima Kinta's, as well as other archived documents like property titles and letters. He also interviewed as many elders he could find, who remembered names of relatives and directed him to various villages in Ipoh. It was difficult as many elders had died and some had moved away.
While he didn't get conclusive proof of the sisters' parentage – there were no marriage certificates or birth certificates then – he kept running into the same circle of people or families associated with the Laksamana the deeper he dug. Considering that families tend to marry each other at that time, Fazil said in the end there were too many coincidences for him to ignore.
It is probably the best he could hope for, as detailed ancestral records are usually for royal families.
His efforts paid off as Mohd Samsudin also came to the same conclusion. The Perak State Government lists Ngah Teresah and Puteh Manjera as the Laksamana's daughters from his first wife in the 2022 edition of "Susur Galur Keturunan Orang Besar Empat dan Orang Besar Lapan."
The findings were gazetted in March this year.
REUNITED
When Fazil managed to track down my mother, he wanted to find proof that we were related by blood. He had found a land title, which Puteh Manjera had bequeathed to her eldest daughter Mik Hakiah bt Gapar. Many of her descendants still live on the land in Kampung Kepayang.
My mother gave the proof he needed in spades, filling in the holes in his research. She remembered Mik Hakiah, who is her great-aunt, and her second cousins.
"After my mother died, I used to go there during school holidays," she told me. On a recent trip to Ipoh, she visited her old playmates, long lost and newly recovered.
"Do you remember me?" she asked.
At 88 years old and in a wheelchair after a stroke, her cousin, fondly known as Mambi, feebly raised his head and smiled.
"I remember," he said. –BERNAMA