Karonese river town that became Sumatra’s hub
Medan, capital and largest city of North Sumatra, thrives on the Strait of Malacca via Belawan port and Kualanamu airport as a multicultural hub. Mid-2024 estimates give about 2,486,283 residents (1,237,602 male, 1,248,681 female), after 2,435,252 in the 2020 census.
Guru Patimpus, a Karonese founder, planted Kampung Medan Putri at the Deli and Babura confluence; it entered the Deli Sultanate created in 1632. Late nineteenth-century Dutch planters seeking estate land turbocharged growth into a colonial plantation capital.
Counting the surrounding urban area, more than 3.4 million people live there. The name may come from Karo madan, meaning healed or blessed, linked to the founder, a traditional healer; another theory takes it from Malay medan, field, itself perhaps from Tamil or Persian words for ground. The area once lay in the Karo kingdom of Aru, which flourished from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century and left sites such as Kota Cina, an old trading post in Medan Marelan.
Guru Patimpus converted to Islam in the sixteenth century, married the Princess of Pulo Brayan, and founded the village with their sons Kolok and Kecik. In 1632 the Aceh Sultanate under Gocah Pahlawan absorbed Medan, and in 1669 his son Perunggit declared Deli independent of Aceh. From the 1860s the Dutch opened land for tobacco, and the merchant Jacob Nienhuys was persuaded to move his business from Java to Deli. Sultan Ma'mun Al Rashid, who reigned from 1873 to 1924, moved his capital to Medan, finished the Maimun Palace in 1888 and built the Great Mosque in 1907.
Japanese troops rode into the city on bicycles in 1942 and held it until 1945. The Allies regained control in April 1946 after the Battle of Medan, and in December 1947 the Dutch made it capital of the State of East Sumatra. Palm oil and rubber in the 1970s made it the busiest city outside Java. Riots in May 1998 burned many shops, mostly owned by Chinese residents, and on 5 September 2005 Mandala Airlines Flight 091 crashed into a neighbourhood after takeoff, leaving only 17 of 117 aboard alive. The city lies between 2.5 and 37.5 metres above sea level and gets about 2,200 millimetres of rain a year.
Source: Medan
