PHILIPPINES

PHILIPPINES / PILIPINAS.

Sultan Muhammad Dipatuan Kudarat Commemoration.
With an stylized map of Philippines.
Stamp issued on 13.01.1975.
Face value: 15 cents of Philippine peso.
Printing: Photogravure.

Catalogues
- Michel No. 1114.
- Scott No. 1242.
- StampWorld No. 1116.
- Stanley Gibbons No. 1352.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 963.

Muhammad Dipatuan Kudarat (1581-1671), seventh Sultan of Maguindanao, ruled the island of Mindanao (southern Philippines) from 1619 until his death, while the Spanish colonization took place. He was a direct descendant of Shariff Kabungsuwan, a Malay-Arab Johor nobleman who brought Islam to Mindanao. Like other Muslim rulers in the south of the archipelago, he successfully fought the invaders and hindered the spread of Catholicism. In 1635, however, he accepted an alliance treaty of mutual aid and protection with Imperial Spain and gave the Jesuits the privilege of building a church in the capital of the sultanate, Lamitan (now Baras), but thirteen years later hostilities returned, with clear superiority of the sultan, who was victorious in most skirmishes and maintained control of their territories. He was a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence and, upon his death, was considered a "holy man".