East Java’s cool highland city once named Tumapel
Malang—historically Tumapel—is a landlocked East Java city with roots in the Singhasari Kingdom and the province’s second-largest population. Mild climate made it a Dutch colonial retreat; mid-2024 counts put about 889,359 residents, mostly Javanese, then Madurese and Chinese Peranakan.
It counted 820,043 people at the 2010 census. Its mild climate drew European residents under Dutch rule and still draws foreign tourists, and the city keeps relics from the Kanjuruhan kingdom onward. It escaped much of the Asian financial crisis and has grown steadily since.
Where the name comes from is uncertain, though it has been used since at least the twelfth century. One theory links it to Malangkuçeçwara, a sacred building named in two inscriptions of King Balitung of Ancient Mataram from 907 and 908 AD, whose name combines words for falsehood, destroy and God, meaning God has destroyed vanity. Another traces it to folklore about the 1614 attack by Mataram Sultanate forces under Tumenggung Alap-Alap.
In the Pleistocene the area was a deep basin ringed by volcanoes, including Kawi, Butak and Kelud to the west, Arjuno-Welirang to the north and the Tengger range to the east, and it held a lake. Early hunter-gatherers lived in caves on the surrounding slopes. As the lake dried in the Holocene the basin became a plateau, and farmers moved down to settle it. The Dinoyo inscription of 760 marks the Kanjuruhan kingdom of the eighth century, which later fell under Ancient Mataram during the reign of Dyah Balitung, from 899 to 911 AD.
When Mataram's capital moved east under Mpu Sindok, from 929 to 948 AD, a run of inscriptions set tax rules for villages around Malang. The area later lay within Airlangga's kingdom of Kahuripan, and it regained importance when King Jayabhaya of Panjalu conquered Janggala; the Hantang inscription of 1135 AD proclaims Panjalu's victory and grants privileges to local people. A further inscription found in 1986 has yet to be deciphered.
Source: Malang
