Surabaya was the Dutch East Indies' greatest trading port
Surabaya is East Java's capital, Indonesia's second-largest city after Jakarta, and an early Southeast Asian port on the Madura Strait. The National Development Planning Agency ranks it among Indonesia's four main central cities, alongside Jakarta, Medan, and Makassar.
Settled in the tenth century under Janggala after Airlangga's 1045 split with Kediri, it later thrived as a Majapahit-era duchy and eastern Java port. From the eighteenth to mid-twentieth century it was the Dutch East Indies' largest city and archipelago trade hub, rivaling Shanghai and Hong Kong.
The name is usually read as Javanese sura ing baya, bravely facing danger, tied to a prophecy of the 12th-century Kediri king Jayabaya. One reading links it to the shark and crocodile of legend, standing for Kublai Khan's seaborne Mongols and Raden Wijaya's land forces, and the Majapahit victory of 31 May 1293 is now the city's official founding date; the two animals circle each other on the city symbol near the zoo. Its oldest written mention comes in Zhao Rukuo's Zhu Fan Zhi of 1225, and under the Dutch it was spelled Soerabaja.
In 1413, during Zheng He's fourth voyage, Ma Huan sailed past Tuban and Gresik to Surabaya on his way to the Majapahit capital. Its site on the Brantas delta, along the route between Malacca and the Spice Islands, had already made it a major port. Islam took root by the late 15th century, when the preacher Sunan Ampel founded the Ampel settlement around its mosque, and in 1513 Tomé Pires found a Muslim lord ruling there, likely still a Majapahit vassal. Today the port ships sugar, tobacco and coffee, backed by banks, insurers and export-import firms, and the Suramadu Bridge has boosted the economy.
Source: Surabaya
