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…Parameswara had reportedly visited Sening Ujong (present Sungai Ujong) before reaching a fishing village at the mouth of the Bertam River (the present Malacca River).

This settlement will evolve over time to become the location of modern day Malacca Town, the capital of the Sultanate of Malacca established by Parameswara in about 1402.

…Malacca, and other places and converted the natives to Islam.

Malacca has become the Southeast Asian center of Islamic learning and also a large international Islamic trade center of the southern seas.

Muslim traders from India, cooperating with Arab and Persian sailors, begin encroaching on the Indonesian’s spice trade centers, gaining control of the Malay port of Melaka (also Malacca) around 1450.

The rulers of the crumbling Majapahit empire have found themselves unable to control the rising power of the Sultanate of Malacca in the western part, which in the mid-fifteenth century had begun to gain effective control of the Malacca Strait and to expand its influence to Sumatra.

Ferdinand Magellan was born in northern Portugal in around 1480, either at Vila Nova de Gaia, near Porto, in Douro Litoral Province, or at Sabrosa, near Vila Real, in Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro Province.

He is the son of the late Rodrigo de Magalhães, Alcaide-Mor of Aveiro, son of Pedro Afonso de Magalhães and wife Quinta de Sousa) and wife Alda de Mesquita and brother of Leonor or Genebra de Magalhães, wife with issue of João Fernandes Barbosa.

After the death of his parents during his tenth year, he became a page to Queen Leonor at the Portuguese royal court.

In March 1505 at the age of twenty-five, Magellan had enlisted in the fleet of twenty-two ships sent to host Don Francisco de Almeida as the first viceroy of Portuguese India.

Although his name does not appear in the chronicles, it is known that he remained there eight years, in Goa, Cochin and Quilon.

He has participated in several battles, including the battle of Cannanore in 1506, where he was wounded.

In 1509, he fought in the battle of Diu.

He now sails under Diogo Lopes de Sequeira in the first Portuguese embassy to Malacca, a spice-trading center on the Malay Peninsula, with Francisco Serrão, his friend and cousin.

Sequeira tries to establish contact with the Sultan of Malacca in September 1509 but the expedition falls victim to a conspiracy ending in retreat.

Magellan has a crucial role, warning Sequeira and saving Serrão, who had landed.

They leave behind nineteen Portuguese prisoners.

Sultan Mahmud Shah, the younger brother of Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah, rules the Sultanate of Malacca from 1488.

Upon his father's premature death, he had been installed at a very young age.

The regent at that time was the prime minister (Bendahara in Malay) Tun Perak.

During his initial years as a young adult, the sultan was known to be a ruthless monarch.

The administration of the sultanate was in the hands of an able and wise Tun Perak.

After the death of Tun Perak in 1498, he was succeeded by a new Prime Minister Tun Mutahir.

The death of Tun Perak is associated with the transformation of Sultan Mahmud into a more responsible ruler.

During Portuguese admiral Diogo Lopes de Sequeira's visit to Malacca from 1509–1510, the sultan had plannned to assassinate him.

However, Sequeira had learned of this plot and fled Malacca.

When the famous Portuguese naval officer Afonso de Albuquerque receives word of this, he decides to utilize this to embark upon his expeditions of conquest in Asia.

A Portuguese fleet commanded by viceroy Afonso de Albuquerque, carrying more than a thousand men in eighteen ships, including Ferdinand Magellan and Francisco Serrão, captures the powerful Muslim Malay state of Malacca two years after the rebuffal by its sultan, thereby gaining control of the Strait of Malacca.

Albuquerque builds a naval base here.

Elcano's stature had grown during this six-month listless journey after Magellan died, and before reaching the Moluccas, as the men became disillusioned with the weak leadership of Carvalho.

The two ships, Victoria and Trinidad finally reach their destination, the Moluccas, on November 6.

They rest and resupply in this haven, and fill their holds with the precious cargo of cloves and spice.

The ships are ready to leave on December 18, but Trinidad springs a leak, and is unable to be repaired.

Carvalho stays with the ship along with fifty-two others hoping to return later. (The Trinidad will eventually seek to recross the Pacific, reportedly reaching as far as 43° North, but unfavorable winds will force the ship to turn back to the Moluccas, where the Portuguese capture and jail its surviving crew members.)

Salahuddin's father sultan Ali had been engaged in a mortal combat against the Portuguese in Melaka, but hostilities had paused temporarily after his death.

However, in September 1537, an Acehnese fleet appears before Melaka, carrying a standing regiment of circa three thousand men.

The Acehnese land successfully but cannot invest the fortress.

After some ferocious fighting, they have to withdraw with great losses after two days.

Since the expedition is not mentioned in the local chronicles we cannot be sure that Salahuddin was still the ruler at this time.

From the account of Fernão Mendes Pinto it appears that his brother "Alaradim" (Alauddin) was already on the throne by 1539.

The much later chronicle Bustanus Salatin will alleges in about 1640 that Salahuddin lived for nine years after his deposition until his death in 1548.

It is thus somewhat unclear whether he was deposed before or after the launch of an unsuccessful attack on Melaka.

Hoesein Djajadiningrat believed that the coup came first and the attack was led by Alauddin al-Kahar, while Denys Lombard places the coup two years after the attack, which he believes was led by Salahuddin himself.