The Mandailings in Peninsular Malaysia

The History of Papan
By Abdur-Razzaq Lubis

ORIGINS

Papan has always been associated with tin, and tin is associated with clearing land and forests, malaria, brothels, opium dens, the Inspector of Mines, taxes and timber. (Not necessarily in that order). Timber especially hard wood was used for the production of good charcoal, the wooden chain pump called chia-chia, the water wheels, the kongsi houses and as fuel to work the steam pump.

From Papan's name we can deduce that its beginning probably has more to do with timber, literally plank. Oral tradition has it that Pekan Papan (Papan Town) or Plank Town was the place where chengal was sawn in the 1840's. The chengal was extracted from the jungles in Ulu Johan (Upper Johan), upstream from Papan Town. The sawn timbers were transported to Pengkalan Pegoh, a river port, which drains into the Kinta river.

This story about the origin of Papan came down to us from the late Haji Abdullah H.M. Salleh. He was the first local headmaster to the Government English School in Gopeng.

The chengal woodcutters were said to be Malays while the people who sawed the timber into planks in Papan Town were Chinese. This is further corroborated by the presence of the ruins of the Kwan Yin Temple, dedicated to the Goddess of Mercy, which was reportedly, originally built of timber in 1847 and rebuilt of bricks in 1898.

Even in the Chinese oral tradition, Papan's name originated from wood. In Cantonese Papan is "Ka Pan", which means "first wood" after the wooden water-wheel. The Chinese characters and the Cantonese and Hokkien pronunciation of the place name are derived from the Malay. It is therefore quite conclusive that the former lumber town, turned mining town, of Papan acquired its name from the Malay word meaning "sawn timber" or "plank" as a result of logging activities.

THE PERAK WAR 1875

The cowardly murder of J.W.W. Birch, the first British Resident to Perak, on Hari Raya day, November 2nd, 1875, at Pasir Salak in Lower Perak, gave rise to the Perak War of 1875.

Papan saw some action during the war, and was the foothold of the invading forces whose mission was to capture Ex-Sultan Ismail and secure Kinta, the Sultan's capital. Ismail had a residence at Blanja. It was an important village as it was from here that he shipped his tin to Bruas from his mines at Papan. Further east, beyond Papan was his usual village residence, Pengkalan Pegu. Papan was half-way between Kinta and Blanja.
In "this small war" as Lieut. H.B. Rich, called the Perak War, "a little force marched to a place called Pappan." This little force left Blanja for Kinta on December 13th, 1875. The area around Papan was then dense jungle. On having driven the enemy from the mines at Papan, the town was taken on December 14th, by Raja Mahmud and Raja Uteh, who were accompanied by Swettenham.

Raja Uteh (variously spelt as Raja Utoh or Outih) was a Mandailing from Kota Pinang, Sumatra. He was one of several adventurers who Swettenham recruited to help capture Perak Malays, thought to have been linked with Birch's murder. Raja Uteh, together with Raja Asal, Raja Mahmud of Selangor, Syed Mashor and Raja Indut, was later recommended by Swettenham for an award for their "gallant and faithful services." According to Swettenham, Raja Asal, Raja Mahmud and Syed Mashor "fought entirely for friendship's sake, and have received no pecuniary reward, only their provisions, whilst acting with us."

Raja Uteh is portrayed as a fearless character by Sir Hugh Charles Clifford in, 'In The Days That Are Dead' and in 'In Court And Kampong'. Clifford apparently knew Raja Asal as well, for when he gave an autographed copy of his, 'The Further Side of Silence' to Haji Abdullah, he signed with a note: "to the great-grandson of my friend Raja Asal." Haji Abdullah was actually the great-grandnephew of Raja Asal.

Kinta was taken on the December 17th, 1875, and from "a military point of view", the British "got possession of the whole of Perak" as Kinta "commanded the rivers Perak and Kinta, and (they) were in possession of all the chief towns."

PAPAN MINES

Ex-Sultan Ismail, who was ousted by the British through the disastrous Pangkor Treaty 1874, was known to have owned at least four mines, the most valuable being at Papan.

Ex-Sultan Ismail's mines were given to Raja Asal by Swettenham, as a reward for his military services in the Perak War. The Papan mines were described as "the most productive in the State" as well as "probably the richest tin mines in the Malay Peninsula."

Raja Asal had migrated from Mandailing in West Sumatra to Malaya in the 1840s in the wake of the Padri War (1816-1833). He was implicated in the Pahang War (1857-1863) and played a leading role in the Selangor War (1867-1873); better know to the Mandailing as Porang Kolang. He was the head of the Mandailings in Ulu Klang, Selangor before he was driven out of the Selangor with Syed Mashor in 1873. When Birch met Raja Asal, the later was already an old man.

He has been described as "the redoubtable Raja Asal" and as "the renegade Mandailing chief" by historians." Sir Hugh Low, the British Resident who took over from Birch in his letter to the Colonial Secretary, dated July 26, 1877, stated that: "Raja Asal would seem to have been already sufficiently rewarded, as he says Mr. Swettenham gave him the sole right of mining from the Papan Mines to the mouth of the Kinta River, an immense concession and, as far as I have seen, containing the most productive tin mines in the State."

J. Douglas in a letter dated September 14th, 1877, to the Colonial Secretary, wrote that: "Raja Asal has been most handsomely rewarded by the gift of the Papan mines by Mr. Swettenham to him - they are probably the richest mines in the Malay Peninsula."

There is some confusion about who actually gave the mines to Raja Asal. In Tarikh Raja Asal dan Keluarganya, the family chronicle, a letter from Swettenham dated March 16th, 1876, to Raja Asal is reproduced stating that: "Raja Asal and Che Ismail are allowed to work tin mines (Except at Pappan) between Kinta and Blanja."

In Governor Sir F. Weld's despatch dated August 13th, 1881 to Lord Kimberly, over the original recommendation of Sir W. Jervois for the Queen to present swords to Raja Asal and his comrades as recognition of their services in the Perak War, Weld revealed that it was Jervois instead of Swettenham, who gave the mines to Raja Asal.

"Raja Asal, was permitted by Sir W. Jervois to work some mines abandoned by those who had opposed the British troops in Perak. Raja Asal was ruined by the venture and is stated to have committed suicide in consequence." Of course, the family denied this as an outrageous allegation and said that Raja Asal died of old age.

Raja Asal passed away on November 14th, 1877, and was buried at Changkat Piatu (Solitary Hillock) previously known as Pangkalan Kaca, near Pangkalan Peguh, on the banks of the Kinta River. He is revered and has become a legendary figure amongst modern day Mandailings.
In 1879, H.W.C. Leech, the first British Magistrate to Kinta described Papan as being "the most important mining settlement" in Kinta. Papan remained one of the most historic as well as one of the leading tin producing areas in Kinta and indeed the whole of Perak well into the early 20th century.

MANDAILINGS MINERS

The early Mandailing mining areas were clustered around the two Kinta tributaries, Sungai Johan and Sungai Raya. The Mandailing miners were involved in mining, smelting and trading in tin in the Kinta Valley.

The leading Mandailing miner in Papan was Raja Bilah, who took over the Papan mines from Raja Asal. Raja Bilah, the son of Raja Tedong Berani, migrated to Malaya around 1860's following the footsteps of his uncle, Raja Asal. He was made the Penghulu of Papan from 1882 to 1909.
Studies on Malay mining in Kinta in the 1880s have substantially relied on several European accounts on the subject, namely by Leech, de la Croix, de Morgan and Hale. Judging from the areas documented, the miners encountered by these Europeans were largely, if not exclusively, Mandailing miners and their co-workers.

Leech was perhaps the first to comment on the fairly intensive "Malay mining" methods used in the Kinta Valley after the Perak War, during a period when Chinese miners and "Malay" miners could be observed working side by side, and the methods could be compared. By that time, tin-mining in Larut was virtually the exclusive domain of the Chinese.

The tin boom also brought the French engineer J. Errington de la Croix to Kinta, as part of his "scientific mission to the Peninsula". He reported in early 1881 that at Papan, "Thirteen mines are at present in full swing, and occupy five hundred men, Chinese and Malays". De la Croix noted a Chinese population of 234, which implied that the rest of the miners were "Malays".

"Klian Johan, worked by Chinamen, is the most important of all and is probably the deepest mine in the whole State, attaining a depth of fifty feet. On each side of that mine, Malays are also carrying on works to the same depth, but unable themselves to put up a proper draining apparatus, they have made with their more industrious neighbours a contract by which they are allowed to let their water flow into the Chinese mine on condition of paying one-tenth of their whole produce."

Among various accounts of mining in Kinta in the 1880s, such a symbiotic working relationship between "Malay" miners and Chinese miners was observed only in Papan. In fact, the Chinese miners working with Raja Bilah's mine were the same Chinese who fled Selangor together with Raja Asal. Their leaders were Hew Ah Ang, Wong Koon and Jin See, Chin Ah Yong, Lee Ah Yoke, and others. Hew Ah Ang was a Hakka Chinese from Kar Yin Chew. He opened a mining operation in Papan which employed a wooden chain pump to drain the water.

De la Croix's scientific report on the potential of the Kinta valley soon attracted European mining interests. Raja Bilah as Penghulu of Papan was the one who guided de la Croix on the tour of Papan valley, and it was he who first showed de la Croix the mining deposits at Lahat, near Papan. The French eventually opened the Lahat French Tin Mines in 1882, which became the first European company to break the Chinese monopoly on tin production. Raja Bilah also showed a mining site in Papan to J.H. Hampton of the Shanghai Tin Mines, which was set up by a few enterprising merchants from Shanghai.

THE "MALAY MINERS" OF KINTA

Following in the footsteps of de la Croix, another Frenchman Jacques de Morgan also explored the Kinta in 1884 and studied "Malay" mining methods. De Morgan was a civil mining engineer and member of the geographical, geological and zoological societies of France commissioned by the Perak government to undertake a geological and topographical survey.

Among the mines de Morgan studied were Klian Tronong (Tronoh), Klian Monile (near Lahat), Klian Tasik (Pusing) and Klian Lalang (near Gopeng), which were mainly Sumatran areas. Tronoh, at that time a new mining area, was to sustain a high level of tin production well into the 20th century. In the early years, Tronoh was chiefly a Minangkabau settlement, whereas the "Malay mines" around Gopeng were mainly Mandailings and Rawa.
The Tarikh Raja Asal gives us an insight into the mining methods practised by the Mandailings and their co-workers, naming four methods of "Malay mining" in use at the time. They are meludang, melereh, mencabik, menabok.

At the height of Raja Bilah's mining career, he was possibly the largest "Malay" miner in the Kinta. "There was a place in Papan which they called One Hundred Pits (Tabuk Seratus) and Raja Bilah's mine was called the Great Mine (Lombong Besar) as it was the biggest Malay mine at the time with hundreds of coolies all "Malays."

It is interesting to note that Raja Yacob talked about the Mandailings and Malays as two mutually exclusive groups in, say the Lambor episode, but includes the Mandailings among the Malays in matters of mining, apparently to distinguish the Muslim miners from the Chinese and European miners. However, he qualified this statement elsewhere by saying that the miners who worked for Raja Bilah were his followers (anak buah), who were Mandailings, Minangkabau and Rawa while his coolies were Javanese. This mixture seems to reflect the composition of "Malay miners" in most other parts of Kinta as well.

Among Raja Bilah's followers "there were some who also worked small sluice mines (lereh, lampan) and the womenfolk panned for tin, each one earning his or her own income and some made enough to go to on Hajj to Makkah and some returned to their country."

While de la Croix and de Morgan tended to generalise about "Malay miners" in their reports, Hale as Inspector of Mines had direct dealings with the Mandailings, and therefore could easily distinguish between them and the Perak Malays. He commented for example that washing stream in the river beds was "a very favourite employment with Mandailing women; Kinta natives do not affect it much, although there is more than one stream where a good worker can earn a dollar per day..." Panning for tin with a wooden tray (dulang) was called melanda.

In Papan, a dam was built by the Mandailings, possibly with the help of the Chinese, to supply hydraulic power to the mines in case of draught. The Mandailings themselves are skilled in dam construction, and to this day, we can see their water engineering skills in Mandailing, their ancestral homeland as well as in Papan and Gopeng.

In 1886, Raja Bilah signed an agreement written in both Jawi and Chinese with one Hew Ng Hap (presumably the same as "Hew Ah Ang") and two others. It is possible that the contract was made during a time when there was a fresh influx of Chinese miners to Papan, and the old miners wished to secure their claim to the water reservoir from contending Chinese miners.

The leading Chinese miner of Papan Hew Ah Ang, who was previously doing well with a wooden chain pump, saw the advantages of a steam pump. "Hew Ah Ang came to confer with Raja Bilah, he asked for help to apply to the government to buy an engine, so Raja Bilah presented the matter to the Government. So the government helped to buy the first engine which was used in the Chinese mines in Papan".

Raja Bilah bought his first machine, a horse-powered engine imported from England but found out that it could not be used. One can picture the poor Mandailings, not understanding that the figurative meaning of horse-power, spending days and weeks trying to figure out how to harness the machine to their Deli ponies! He lost good money on the first engine.

He then bought his second machine, which according to family tradition was imported from Uganda. The second machine worked well enough, but still Raja Bilah's mining operations did not turn a profit. He had to take loans and mortgages to keep his mines going. The family history do not say when these machines were purchased, but of the 16 steam pumping engines in Kinta in 1886, 10 belonged to Chinese, and 5 to the French Company mines, and one belong to "Raja BIELA a foreign Malay."

THE RELAU SEMUT

The Relau Semut (furnace) used by the Mandailing smelters in particular required charcoal made from hardwoods, and large tracts of forests were cleared merely to extract these timbers. In 1888, the Perak Government banned the use of all Chinese furnaces except the Relau Tongka which employed only ordinary firewood.

The ban was accepted in Larut, where most of the Chinese smelters had already switched to the Relau Tongka due to the scarcity of hard timber for charcoal. However, in Kinta, a high proportion of smelters, both Chinese and Mandailings, were still using the Relau Semut. These smelters were not compensated for the lost investment in existing furnaces, nor for the capital outlay that would be required for the Relau Tongka, which cost about two and a half times as much as the Relau Semut. The Chinese miners in the Kinta disregarded the regulation and attempts to impose the ban led to riots and attacks on the police.

Previously the Western company had difficulty cutting into the smelting business, but after the ban, it began to establish its agency in Kinta, beginning with a branch at Gopeng in 1889, followed by a new branch each year, successively at Batu Gajah, Lahat and Ipoh. The manager who was stationed at Ipoh came to control the purchasing and freighting agencies in Gopeng, Pusing, Lahat, Teluk Anson, Tekka and Kampar.

The losses to the Chinese smelters were partly cushioned by the booming tin prices of 1888 and 1889 which threw the rest of the Chinese mining community in euphoria. In the mean time, the European monopoly had dealt the death blow to the Mandailing tin traders and smelters.

PAPAN RIOTS

The secret society alliances of Larut followed the migration of miners. The Kinta authorities were not sufficiently alerted to the presence of secret societies until 1887, when a number of disturbances took place between the Ghee Hins and the Hai Sans, who had brought their feud over from Larut.

Groups of Ghee Hin and Hai San members could be found side by side in most of the mining settlements in Kinta. Raja Bilah's allies, the Kar Yin Hakkas, belonged to the Ghee Hin faction. The Ghee Hin headman was based in Papan while the Hai San headman was based in Gopeng, although the leaders of both settlements were Mandailings.

In November 1887, a brothel skirmish in Papan escalated into a secret society riot. In the official report of the Protector of the Chinese, the disturbances in Kinta were said to have started "from quarrels between a brothel bully (belonging to the Hai San Society) and between some Ghee Hin men."

According to family tradition, the culling took place in Papan on November 29th, 1887. Some of the Chinese women and children in Papan took refuge with Raja Bilah's wife, Ungku Na'imas, whom people called "the warrior woman". Ungku Na'imas, was an expert shooter brandishing a sporting rifle with an eight-sided cartridge.

The Papan Riots became an inspiration for a whole chapter in A Ruler Of Ind by F. Thorold Dickson and Mary L. Pechell. Although Raja Bilah prospered as a revenue-collector, he was not as successful as a miner. Raja Bilah decided to sell off his mining operations in 1890, which were incurring more losses than profit.

In 1891, Sir George Maxwell visited Papan. "At Papan, which had become a village long before Ipoh, and was then a much bigger place, I met the Penghulu, Raja Bila, a grand old man, who had raised a levy of foreign Malays to help the British in the Perak war, and had served with them under my father." His father was William Maxwell, who had recruited Mandailings and Rawas to pursue Dato' Maharaja Lela up to Kota Tampan and the Patani frontier.

The scenery from Papan to Batu Gajah, as described by George Maxwell in 1891, was inspiring. "From Papan onwards, the bridle path was a pure joy. It was still untouched by the contractor's men, and the great forest trees closed in so closely that they overpowered and shaded it. As we approached the hill, on which Batu Gajah stands, the path kept close under it, a great sweeping curve, and from ground level far away up the hill side, the enormous trees were covered with the crimson and yellow flames of the bauhinia creeper."

By 1892, Kinta was the largest tin producer in Malaya turning out two thirds of Perak's tin and far outstripping Larut. Even so, it meant that Papan would no longer be the principal mining centre in Kinta, as the many new hamlets springing up all over Kinta attracted both Chinese and Mandailing population away from Papan and Gopeng. Caught between the capitalist Chinese towkays and the small Chinese entrepreneurs hungry for new land, the Mandailing miners were squeezed out of their niche.

A PERMANENT HOME

When Raja Bilah first moved to Papan with his family at the beginning of 1879, he built a "rest-house" (rumah rehat) to stay in. He finally chose a hillock as the site of his permanent home when after three years of sinking holes to prospect for tin in that place "not even a coconut shell of tin ore was found." It is believed that he built his bagas godang (raja's dwelling) in 1882.

The house was probably constructed by Raja Bilah's Mandailing followers and it still stands in Papan today. It is erected on simple rectangular plan, and faces east. Built of chengal and other timbers, unplaned logs were used as beams. Simple cross lattices served as vents above the windows and doors. The hipped roof, now of corrugated metal, could originally have been made from attap or some other natural material.
The design hardly reflected the architecture of Raja Bilah's homeland in Tapanuli where the chief's house and other notable buildings would have sweeping roofs with pointed ends, made of ijok. Whether or not the house has any construction details betraying the contribution of Mandailing builders is a matter for future study.

One feature, however, is conspicuously Mandailing in origin, though it may have been adapted in form. The house is raised high on brick piers, part of it over a reservoir called a tobat, now no longer in use. Fresh running water used to be conveyed from a nearby stream by means of bamboo ducts and fed to the pond. The pond water itself was used for ablution.

On the north side, a bath house was built over a platform (pelantar) with open slats over the pond. A separate area next to the pond was used for washing and this was drained by an open ditch (parit). The pond itself was filled with water lilies and fish, in particular a kind of gold fish (ikan emas), which the Mandailings serve on feast days such as the Eid-ul-fitri, Eid-ul-Adha, weddings and installations. The community would get together to clean out the tobat once a year.

In 1882, the Governor of the Straits Settlements Sir Fredrick Weld visited Papan, where he "slept in the balek", that is, in the court house which is now the town's police station. He thought it worth noting that "a little boy, son of Raja Bilah, insisted on giving me a tame black monkey." The little boy was Raja Yacob, Raja Bilah's elder son. Weld again visited Papan on his tour of Kinta in August the next year, a visit which Raja Yacob remembered fondly.

"As a boy Raja Haji Mohamed Yacob was known to Sir Hugh Low, who tried unavailingly to persuade his parents to allow him to receive an English education in Singapore."

In 1884, Papan was linked to the towns of Ipoh, Lahat, Batu Gajah and Kota Baharu in the Kinta Valley by means of a postal system consisting of "dak" service - relays of runners and horsemen who carried the mail - linking these towns to the outside world.

THE PAPAN MOSQUE

In 1888, the Papan mosque was completed and the first Friday prayers were held. Raja Bilah had done his duty as the leader of the Muslim community by providing the land and building the mosque. Mandailing carpenters had erected the mosque in the character of the mosques in Tapanuli. It was a large timber hall raised on piles, with a full bay for a mihrab, and a double-tier hipped roof capped by a finial. Prayers were announced by beating the drum (tabuk) followed by the Bilal calling out the azan (call to prayer).

For many years, the Masjid Papan was the only mosque in the vicinity of Papan and Muslims came from miles around to do the daily and Friday prayers. The Papan Mosque still stands today. At the author's request, the Architecture Department, University Technology Malaysia (UTM), did a measure drawing of the mosque in 1996. In 1999, the National Museum turned the mosque into a training restoration exercise for its staff.

THE RUMAH BESAR

After Raja Bilah had attained some measure of prosperity, his concern now was to ensure the long-term future of his people in Malaya. As the founder of the Sumatran community in Papan, he had not only built a mosque for his people but also allocated a piece of land on an adjacent hillock, called Changkat, for Muslim burial ground.

Now the next thing that had to be accomplished was to build the customary seat for the Raja, a sopo godang, a "council house", where his family would play out its role as the patron of the community. The Rumah Besar would be used for the conference of elders, for charity feasts given to Muslims, for weddings and other receptions. It also impressed the "orang putih" and raised the standing of the Mandailing community in the eyes of the other peoples.

Going by Raja Bilah's will, the Rumah Besar and its contents was a family endowment or private waqf. It is a tradition among the Mandailing chiefs, and men and women of standing to leave an ancestral home for the clan. It would serve to bring the children and descendants together during ceremonial occasions such as marriages and Muslim feasts.

The council house was to be located on the hillock right next to Raja Bilah's timber house. As Penghulu, Raja Bilah enjoyed some privileges. Apart from salaries and commissions, he would also have been given a site for his house and garden free of land rent. He may have applied for an outright grant for his house-site before building the Rumah Besar.

Before work commenced, supplications (du'a) were made. An auspicious day was chosen to start building, and a fistful of soil from the Mandailing homeland was scattered at the foundation of the mansion. Constructed mainly by Chinese craftsmen, the Mandailings chipped in, in gotong-royong fashion, helping their chief put up the house. Elephants may have been used to raise the large timber beams.

The Rumah Besar Raja Bilah was a double-storey house with a tiled roof, the lower floor of brick and the upper floor of chengal timber. It had a large hall downstairs and another one upstairs which could accommodate large gatherings of people.

Its interior shows that it is different from the mansions of the rich Malay aristocracy and Chinese miners of Kinta. It has a large hall with eight-sided columns and was used as a meeting hall for all the Mandailings in Perak, and from this evidence we know that it was functionally a sopo godang. The use of eight-sided columns symbolises a community hall.

A Penghulu's office was built into the buttress wall along the side of the hillock, and this was thereafter called "Balai Penghulu". Stuccoed over the gateway leading up the side of the hillock to the mansion was the date of completion - 1896. The year 1896 was also significant to the district because the Kinta Valley Railway connecting Ipoh to the port of Telok Anson had begun operation.

The descendants of Raja Bilah have always called the council hall, Rumah Besar, but in more recent times it has come to be popularly known as "Istana Raja Bilah" (Raja Bilah's Palace) probably out of the mistaken notion that Raja Bilah was a Malay Raja and therefore his house would be an Istana.

The author's report in a local English daily, about the condition of the Rumah Besar, prompted the Architecture Department of University Technology Malaysia (UTM) to do a measured drawing of the Rumah Besar in 1993. The Rumah Besar has been used as a location set for local as well as international movie, the most recent being in 1999, when it was used for a set in the movie Anna And The King.

The Rumah Besar is the repository of family documents going back to the 1870's, photographs, furniture, memorabilia, weapons from the wars of the 19th century, etc. The family documents are now a subject of a research grant (1997-1999) from The Toyota Foundation. The Toyota Foundation has also given a publication grant for year 2000 to publish the Tarikh Raja Asal (1933) and Peringatan Tarikh Perjalanan Raja Shahabuddin dan Rahman Pergi ke Makkah (1940).

In the words of Annabel Teh Gallop, Curator, Oriental and India Collections, The British Library: "It is rare to find such a cohesive collection of Malay manuscripts documents, covering the activities of three generations of a family of Penghulus, still intact in private hands. I have been able to personally inspect copies of the approximately 150 documents which have been translated into Romanized Malay, and can confirm the importance of the contents. To the best of my knowledge, no comparable collection of Malays manuscripts of this nature is held outside Malaysia, although there may be smaller numbers of similar documents in the National Archives of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur."

RAJA YACOB & RAJA SHAHABUDDIN

Raja Yacob a first-generation 'Malayan' born Mandailing, succeeded his father, as Penghulu but was given a bigger district to administer. He served as the penghulu of mukim Blanja which combined Papan and Tronoh, from 1909 to 1931. By then, Tronoh had become the hub of mining activity in Kinta. He continued to maintain his office at the Rumah Besar.

The administrative remapping reflected the expansion of the Kinta Valley Railway with a feeder line from Ipoh to Tronoh, connecting the intermediate towns of Menglembu, Lahat, Papan, Pusing and Siputeh. The 16 mile Ipoh-Tronoh line took about three years to complete and was opened on October 15th, 1908. In 1911, when the primitive fire-fighting force station at Ipoh failed to save Papan from a big blaze, the Kinta Fire Brigade was overhauled and transferred from the police to the Sanitary Board.

In 1912, Raja Bilah passed away and was buried at the Muslim burial ground which he endowed near the Rumah Besar. What is unique about the Muslim burial ground in Papan is that it shares the same Changkat (Hillock) as the Chinese cemetery. The Muslim burial ground faces the West, while the Chinese burial ground faces the East. The decline of Papan began with Raja Bilah's demise.

Raja Yacob was a renaissance man in that his interest was diverse. He was a gardener, a stamp collector, a photographer, he spoke and read in several languages, and subscribed to the leading magazines of the day. He had an extensive library and had pen-pals all over the world. His dark room was under the main staircase of the Rumah Besar.

Raja Yacob was responsible for founding mosques and madrasa in Pusing, Tronoh and Siputeh. He founded the mosques in Merbau, Kampong Baharu and Masjid Ulang-Aling in Tronoh and Masjid Siputeh. He set up the Pusing Madrasa al-Khariyah and Serkai Jadi Malay School in Tronoh in 1927. He opened new kampong such as Kampong Ulang Aling, Tanjong Tualang (before 1911); Piandang, Parit Road from Siputeh in 1917, and the Teronoh Malay Reservation (Serkai Jadi) in 1924.

Raja Yacob authored the Tarikh Raja Asal & Keluarganya in 1933, which charts the family history as well as the movements of the followers of Raja Asal throughout Malaya. This work is indispensable in writing the history of the Mandailings in Malaya as he has identified most of the main players, in particular in the 19th century, as well as dates some of the watermark historical events.

Raja Yacob was said to be one of the editor of Seri Perak, a "pocket-sized" Jawi weekly, was the first paper to be published in any language in the Protected Malay States. The paper first appeared in June 1893 and lasted until March 1895. Raja Yacob later became assistant manager of Khizanah al-Ilmu, a hand-lithographed Jawi monthly published in Kuala Kangsar from August 1904. Khizanah al-Ilmu "may have been the first self-improvement magazine (as distinct from newspaper) in Malay."

As it happens, two of the pioneers of the Malay press in Perak were Raja Yacob, and his brother-in-law, Haji Abdul Kadir bin Setia Raja, the first two Mandailing sons born in Kinta in 1876.

After Raja Yacob retired as Penghulu in 1931, his brother, Raja Shahabuddin succeeded him and was posted to Tronoh. Papan has already become a sleepy-hollow old town. Previously, Raja Shahabuddin had served with D.O. Burgley, who was called the "Raja of Hulu Perak".
The first open cast mine in British Malaya was in operation in Papan in the 1900's, and in the 1930's, Papan had a mine with the "highest record tin output" owned by an Asian. Both mines were located in the outskirt of Papan. The High Commissioner of the Federated Malays States (F.M.S.), Sir John Anderson, visited the open cast mine, while the record output Tong Yow mine was visited by Sir Shenton Thomas, the High Commissioner of the F.M.S..

In 1939, Raja Shahabuddin, and his wife, Rahmah went to Mecca from Penang on a steamship, and wrote an account of their travels to the holy lands in Peringatan Tarikh Perjalanan Raja Shahabuddin dan Rahmah Ke Makkah in 1940. The account fills the gap of Hajj travel from the 1920s to 1940s, and it is the first of its kind of a couple's perspective on the journey to the holy lands by steamship.

THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION

Before the Japanese Occupation, the father of Haji Abdullah, Haji Muhammad Salleh took a Japanese woman as a second wife. She was a relation of a Japanese photographer who had a studio in Pusing. Haji Muhammad Salleh broke tradition in two ways that is, first, by taking a second wife, which was not in keeping with Mandailing tradition of monogamy, and secondly, by taking a Japanese wife. My grandmother said she was only his mistress.

During the Japanese Occupation, the military headquarters was located in Batu Gajah. The family believes that if not for this Japanese woman, the Rumah Besar would have been taken over by the Japanese military. Apparently, a Japanese officer stationed in Kinta who was a relation of hers prevented the house from being occupied. He apparently even visited the Rumah Besar.

Thousand of war refugees fled to Papan after Ipoh was bombed by the Japanese in December 1941, increasing the little town's population by two or threefold. In turn, refugees from Papan including some Mandailings sought refuge elsewhere such as in Chemor, another Mandailing settlement. Haji Abdullah himself moved back to Papan from Tronoh, to the house which he had rebuilt in 1939, and stayed there throughout the Japanese Occupation.

Papan acquired the reputation of being "a bad place" during the Occupation, from where the Malaysian Peoples Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) and Force 136 operated. The "Papan Patrols" were organised in June 1942 by the now defunct Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and subsequently amalgamated with other patrols to form the Fifth Regiment of the Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA).

From No. 74, Main Street, Papan, Sybil Kartigasu and her Ceylonese doctor husband, Dr. A.C. Kathigasu, gave medical aid to the MPAJA and Force 136 operatives, who were hiding in the hills of Papan. The Japanese arrested and tortured her and the wounds she suffered as a prisoner of war eventually led to her death. Sybil, an Eurasian, was the only Malayan woman ever awarded the George Medal for bravery. She was a qualified dresser and mid-wife. The shophouse from which she ran her clinic still stands today in Papan.

One of the main characters in Sybil's No Dram of Mercy, a classic account of the Japanese Occupation, was Ho Thean Fook, nicknamed Moru because he loved a yoghurt drink of that name (prepared in the Southern Indian-style). Ho Thean Fook has written a complementary book to No Dram of Mercy, on his involvement with the Papan Patrols and MPAJA activities. The book tentatively titled Tainted Glory will be published by University of Malaya Press, sometime this year.

During his schooling days, Ho Thean Fook was taught by Haji Abdullah in the Government English School in Tronoh He was also a childhood friend of Kamaruddin Sutan Abidin, the son-in-law of Raja Shahabuddin, who invented the Malay shorthand, Terengkas, based on the Pittman, and was taught at the Kinta School of Commerce, Ipoh, the first commercial education school in Perak. Ho Thean Fook helped Kamuruddin in his invention. Kamaruddin later became an assistant to Dato' Onn Jafar, the first President of United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).

During the Occupation period, the Ipoh-Tronoh railway tracks were removed by the Japanese for the construction of the notorious Death Railway of Thailand-Burma. A Papan resident and a relation of the family was taken as a prisoner-of-war for the construction of the railway.

Haji Abdullah in his brief autobiography wrote that in December 1945, Hicks, the British Education Officer of Perak, came to Papan in a military jeep and told Haji Abdullah that that during the Occupation period, he had met Kotera, the Japanese Occupation Education Officer of Perak. (Both Hicks and Haji Abdullah first met Kotera at a Scout Jamboree in the late 1930's.)

Kotera told me Hicks that he Kotera made Haji Abdullah "look after the Record Books, and send supplies to teachers teaching in Upper Perak." The ration was a gantang of rice for each teacher.)

Haji Abdullah explained that "The Communist higher-ups under Chin Peng, were mostly my former pupils in Tronoh, who continued their secondary education in the Anderson School, Ipoh, when the headmaster was Mr. Hicks. So we became 'untouchable' personalities to the Communists.
"...Mr. Hicks would come to get me to accompany him on his tour, visiting schools or attending Scout Rallies. I would be sitting next to the driver like 'pass-port' for free passage."

When Raja Yacob died during the Japanese Occupation, the Mandailings lost their spiritual as well as temporal leader. After that, the Mandailings no longer gathered frequently in Papan, and the Papan Mosque was no longer used as a congregational mosque. Subsequently, it was used as a Surau for family members and visitors.

The history of Papan encapsulates the history of Perak. By now, Papan is almost a ghost town with its heritage and haunting tin-mining landscapes still largely intact, surrounded by an amphitheatre of forested hills. It is as if that history has been frozen for us in space and time, waiting to be brought back to life for the edification of future generations of Malaysians. As the Mandailing elders always tell their children, every generation has a legacy to protect.

"The past is for our ancestors, the present is ours, the future is for our children."

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