Pagaruyung was the seat of Minangkabau kings, though little is known about it. Modern Pagaruyung is a village in Tanjung Emas subdistrict, Tanah Datar

Tanah Datar

Tanah Datar is a regency in West Sumatra province, Indonesia. The regency has a population of 334,000. The capital of the regency is Batusangkar...

 regency, located near the town of Batusangkar

Batusangkar

Batusangkar is the capital of the Tanah Datar regency of West Sumatra, Indonesia.The town is near the former seat of the Minangkabau royalty established by Adityawarman in Pagaruyung, represented by the reconstructed Pagaruyung Palace...

, Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

.

History

Adityawarman

Adityawarman

Adityawarman , a nobleman born in east Java, from Pararaton poem, his mother's name was Dara Jingga from Dharmasraya princess; his father’s name was Adwayawarman from Kuburajo Inscription around Limo Kaum in West Sumatra...

 is believed to have founded the kingdom and presided over the central Sumatra

Sumatra

Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...

 region between 1347 and 1375, most likely to control the local gold trade. The few artifacts recovered from Adityawarman’s reign include a number of stones containing inscriptions, and statues. Some of these items were found at Bukit Gombak, a hill near modern Pagarruyung, and it is believed a royal palace was located here.

There is a major gap in the historical picture in the Minangkabau highlands between the last date of Adityawarman’s inscription in 1375 and Tomé Pires

Tomé Pires

Tomé Pires was an apothecary from Lisbon who spent 1512 to 1515 in Malacca immediately after the Portuguese conquest, at a time when Europeans were only first arriving in South East Asia...

 Suma Oriental, written sometime between 1513 and 1515.

By the 16th century, the time of the next report after the reign of Adityawarman, royal power had been split into three recognized reigning kings. They were the King of the World (Raja Alam), the King of Adat (Raja Adat), and the King of Religion (Raja Ibadat). Collectively they were called the Kings of the Three Seats (Rajo Tigo Selo).

The first European to enter the region was Thomas Dias, a Portuguese employed by the Dutch governor of Malacca

Malacca

Malacca , dubbed The Historic State or Negeri Bersejarah among locals) is the third smallest Malaysian state, after Perlis and Penang. It is located in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula, on the Straits of Malacca. It borders Negeri Sembilan to the north and the state of Johor to the south...

. He traveled from the east coast to reach the region in 1684 and reported, probably from hearsay, that there was a palace at Pagaruyung and that visitors had to go through three gates to enter it. The primary local occupations at the time were gold panning and agriculture, he reported.
A civil war started in 1803 with the Padri fundamentalist Islamic group in conflict with the traditional syncretic groups, elite families and Pagarruyung royals. During the conflict most of the Minangkabau royal family were killed in 1815, on the orders of Tuanku Lintau.

The British controlled the west coast of Sumatra between 1795 and 1819. Stamford Raffles

Stamford Raffles

Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, FRS was a British statesman, best known for his founding of the city of Singapore . He is often described as the "Father of Singapore"...

 visited Pagarruyung in 1818, reaching it from the west coast, and by then it had been burned to the ground three times. It was rebuilt after the first two fires, but abandoned after the third and Raffles found little more than waringin trees.

The Dutch returned to Padang in May 1819. As a result of a treaty with a number of penghulu and representatives of the murdered Minangkabau royal family, Dutch forces made their first attack on a Padri village in April 1821.

The prestige of Pagaruyung remained high among the Minangkabau communities in the rantau, and when the members of the court were scattered following a failed rebellion against the Dutch in 1833, one of the princes was invited to become ruler in Kuantan.

Palace replica

A building was built in 1976 to represent the original Pagaruyung palace, and open to the public as a museum and tourist attraction. It was built in the traditional Minangkabau Rumah Gadang

Rumah Gadang

Rumah gadang - or more correctly called by Minangkabau people rumah bagonjong - are the traditional homes of the Minangkabau. The architecture, construction, internal and external decoration, and the functions of the house reflect the culture and values of the Minangkabau...

architectural style, but had a number of atypical elements including three stories. The palace was destroyed by fire on the evening of February 27, 2007 after the roof was struck by lightning.