Introduction to West Sumatra

Introduction to West Sumatra

West Sumatra is the homeland of the Minangkabau, dynamic people renown for their business sense, their strong faith in Islam, their spicy-hot food and their matrilineal society. The centre of the homeland is the luak nan tigo, ("three valleys"), three highland valleys centering around the 2,891 metres high Mount Marapi, the highest and most active volcano in the region. The Minang highlands, with their shimmering rice fields in a spectacular setting of mountains and volcanoes, belong to the most beautiful sceneries in Indonesia.

Mount Marapi, centre of the Minang highlands

The most fertile of the three valleys is Limapuluh Kota, located at the northeast of Mount Marapi. This valley is thought to be the earliest to have been settled. Southeast of the volcano lies Tanah Datar, the place where between the 14th and 19th century the royal Minang court was located, whose power rested on royal control of the gold mines in this region. The third valley, Agam, centres around the city of Bukittinggi at the northwest of Mount Marapi. This valley developed rapidly during the last two centuries as a result of trade with the Europeans on the west coast of Sumatra.

When traveling in West Sumatra, the first thing which will be noticed is the unique architecture of the Minang Rumah Gadang ("big house"). These longhouses have peaked roofs, of which is said that they represent the horns of a buffalo. This is related to a Minang legend about the fight between two buffalos, which was proposed by the Minangkabau as an alternative for a bloody armed conflict with a huge Javanese army. The Javanese got an enormous strong buffalo from Java, while the Minang only brought in a tiny calf. However, the calf had not been fed for a days, and the Minangkabau had attached a sharp knife to its snout. When the fight began, the hungry Minang calf headed for the belly of the Javanese buffalo, piercing it with the knife. The Javanese buffalo died and the Javanese withdrew. According to the legend, the name Minangkabau is derived from minang ("victorious") and kabau ("buffalo").

Buffalo shaped roofs dominate the skyline of the cities and villages in West Sumatra

The Minangkabau combine a firm adherence to Islam with a matrilineal family system in which inheritance of property, like houses and land, and descend are traced through women rather than men. Three or four generations descended from a single great-grandmother lived together in a longhouse. The members worked in the rice fields together and shared the earnings. The house was occupied by the women and their children. Traditionally, a woman would remain with her maternal relatives after marriage. Her man would spend a great deal of time in their mother's house, responsible for his sister's children rather than his own. Married men in the prime of their lives spent the night in their wife's house, arising to return back to his mother's house before dawn. Unmarried men as well as older men spent the night in the surau, an Islamic prayer house where they received a religious education.

Old surau or men's house at Batipuh, near Padangpanjang

	The Minangkabau are well known for their tradition of merantau (young men going abroad to seek their fortune), combined with a strong commercial feeling. This is for instance reflected in the Padang restaurants, selling spicy Minang food, which can be found throughout Indonesia and even in cities abroad. Many of the Minangkabau became are successful businessmen, and in many cities in West Sumatra one can find houses and mosques financed by wealthy fellow villagers now living far away.
	Padang restaurant in Pekanbaru
The root of merantau probably lies in the fact that young men were used to sleep outside the family longhouse and had few familial obligations. Besides this, men had few material interests because of the matrilineal inheritance system. The term merantau relates back to the term rantau, which refers to the lowland areas with which the commercially gifted Minangkabau carried out trade since ancient times.