The History of Gathering Oud in Sulawesi: The Island of the Sailors and the Intermediaries

In the heart of the Indonesian archipelago extends an oddly-shaped island with four arms resembling the letter K, which is Sulawesi; but its true fame was not made on the land but on the water. For from its coasts set out the Bugis and the Makassar, among the greatest sailors and traders of the archipelago, and upon the planks of the pinisi ships they roamed distant seas carrying the goods of the eastern islands. And for this reason Sulawesi is not measured in the history of oud by what is gathered from its land alone, but by what is transported through its ports. Here the rivers do not tell the story of oud as in Kalimantan, nor does an old aromatic strait dominate as in Sumatra, nor does the genus Gyrinops lead the scene as a subject as in Papua, nor do the spices lead as in Maluku; rather the sailors and the intermediaries lead. This article is a reference guide to Sulawesi: the island of the fleet that carried the fragrance of half the archipelago.

The geography of Sulawesi and the Wallace Line

Before speaking of oud and its sailors, one must understand the land itself, for the geography of Sulawesi explains much of its story. For it is an island unique in shape among all the islands of the archipelago: four long, slender arms branching from a central mass, so that its map is more like a written letter or an irregular star. And this shape is not an aesthetic detail; for the extended arms mean very long coasts relative to the area of the land, and deep bays that penetrate into the interior, which is what made the sea present in the life of its people more than almost any other island.

And within these arms rise rugged mountains and isolated highlands. For Sulawesi is a mountainous island in its essence, its rugged ranges separating one coast from another, and making land movement between its edges arduous. And this dual terrain — coasts open to the sea and a rugged, impregnable interior — drew a clear human distribution: maritime peoples on the coastal edges, and mountain peoples in the interior highlands, each of them with its world and its culture. And we will see the effect of this division when we come to the talk of the gatherers of oud.

As for the most beautiful angle scientifically, it is that Sulawesi lies on one of the most famous natural boundaries on earth: the Wallace Line. And it is an imaginary line that the naturalists drew to separate between two biological worlds: the creatures of Asian origin in the west, and the creatures of Australian-Oceanian origin in the east. And Sulawesi lies in the transitional zone on this boundary, and for this reason it became famous for a unique wildlife in which the features of the two worlds mingle, until it became a destination for the naturalists researching the distribution of living creatures.

And this biological location has a significance particular to oud specifically. For the falling of Sulawesi on the edge of the two botanical worlds means that it is a region of diversity in which what is western in character meets what is eastern in it; and this is reflected upon the oud trees that grow in it, as we will show later. For the island that stands on the Wallace Line stands also — botanically — at a crossroads between the two schools of oud in the archipelago: the school of the west and the school of the east.

The Bugis and the Makassar: the masters of the sea

Here is the essence of what distinguishes Sulawesi from all its sisters in this series. For the island is the home of two peoples whose name was coupled with the sea more than any other people in the archipelago: the Bugis and the Makassar, who inhabit the south of the island. These two peoples were not merely inhabitants of a coast who fish near their ports; rather they were among the greatest sailors and traders of the archipelago throughout history, their ships going out to distant horizons carrying the goods and returning with them, until the sea became a natural extension of their homeland, not a barrier bounding it.

And the symbol of this maritime heritage is a ship that became an icon: the pinisi, which are wooden sailing ships built with an inherited craft, famed for their ability to cut long distances and carry heavy loads between the islands. And aboard ships of this kind the Bugis and the Makassar roamed the seas of the archipelago and beyond, transporting the goods of the islands from the far east to the great ports then to the world. So when we imagine how the aromatics of the eastern islands — and oud among them — used to move, we imagine the planks of the pinisi and their sails before anything else.

And the essential point that distinguishes Sulawesi is that its role in the trade of the aromatics was not the role of the producer alone, but the role of the carrier and intermediary par excellence. For the Bugis or Makassar sailor did not content himself with selling what his land grows; rather he plied the sea to the distant islands, gathering their goods and carrying them and redistributing them. And by this Sulawesi became a link in a trade network that extended across the archipelago, connecting the sources of fragrance in the east with the markets of demand in the west and the north.

And this maritime trade network is the correct framework for understanding the oud of Sulawesi. For the oud attributed to the island may have grown in its forests, and may have come through its ports from more distant islands; and the two truths together reflect the nature of this maritime people who made trade and transport a craft and an identity. And whoever understands the Bugis and the Makassar as masters of the sea understands why Sulawesi is not measured by what its land grows only, but by what crosses its waters.

Makassar: the gateway of the east

If the Bugis and the Makassar are the fleet, then Makassar is the port from which that fleet set out and to which it returned. For the city of Makassar in the south of Sulawesi was — and still is — a great commercial port and a gateway for eastern Indonesia. And its standing was not made by chance; but by its middle location between the west of the archipelago and its east, which made it a natural meeting point for the goods coming from the eastern islands on their way to the global markets.

And this location granted Makassar an extremely important role in the story of oud: the role of the point of gathering and re-export. For the aromatics of the eastern islands — from Papua and Maluku and around them — did not all travel directly to their distant markets; rather much of it was gathered at intermediary ports like Makassar, then re-shipped toward the global markets. And by this Sulawesi — through Makassar — came to play a role in the trade of an oud that did not necessarily grow in its land, but passed through it. And we presented the aromatics of the eastern islands and the place of oud in them in the gaharu of Maluku, and much of that eastern current used to find its way westward through the gateway of Makassar.

And tied to this port was a striking political entity: the sultanate of Gowa-Tallo, which is an Islamic power that arose in the south of Sulawesi and drew its standing from the maritime trade and the location of Makassar. And we mention it with an honest generality without specifying particular dates: it suffices to establish that Makassar was not merely a shipping quay, but a center of power that arose upon the sea and the trade, like the centers that rare wealth made in the other islands of the archipelago.

And the image that ought to be established here is that Makassar was a node in a network much wider than Sulawesi itself. For from it branched the threads of trade toward the west and the north, and from it the aromatics of the east connected with the great current that carried the goods of the archipelago to India, the Arabian Peninsula, and China — the current whose discussion we laid out in the history of the oud trade between Indonesia and the Arab world. For when we place Makassar in its position, we realize that Sulawesi was not a margin in the trade of oud, but one of its great gateways.

The oud trees in Sulawesi

We move now from the sea to the tree. For oud in Sulawesi — as in the rest of the archipelago — comes from trees of the two genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops, which are the two genera from which the material of oud comes out when the tree is infected so it secretes its dark aromatic resin over the course of years. And we do not repeat here the explanation of the difference between the two genera in detail, for we devoted to it the Papua article; and whoever wants more about the nature of Gyrinops and its characteristics, let him review the oud of Papua and eastern Indonesia where we laid out the discussion of it.

But what concerns Sulawesi specifically is its location on the Wallace Line that we pointed to. For the island, by its falling in the transitional zone between the two botanical worlds, lies also at a crossroads between the two schools of oud in the archipelago: the genus Aquilaria that dominates in the west (Kalimantan and Sumatra), and the genus Gyrinops that dominates in the east (Papua and Maluku). And for this reason Sulawesi can be looked at as a region of botanical meeting, carrying something of the character of the west and something of the character of the east, with an honest generality in which we do not claim a precise enumeration of the species.

And the honest formulation that we adhere to is to say: the oud trees grow in the forests of Sulawesi as they grow in its neighbors of the islands of the archipelago, and they belong to the same genera subject today to the international regulation. But what grants the oud of the island its distinctive context is not the type of its tree so much as it is the maritime network in which it moved; for we have seen that Sulawesi is a land of sailors and intermediaries before it is a prominent origin land. And this distinction — between the tree and the network — is the key to understanding the place of the island on the map of oud.

And it is useful for the reader to connect this with what preceded: for the falling of Sulawesi on the Wallace Line is not a mere scientific curiosity, but explains why it is difficult to confine its oud to a single school. The island in which the creatures of the two worlds mingle mingles also in it the features of oud; and this diversity, if it is well understood, is a part of the richness of the region, not a deficiency in its definition.

The peoples and the gathering of oud

We have seen that the geography of Sulawesi drew a dual human distribution: the peoples of the sea on the coasts, and the peoples of the mountain in the interior. And this same distribution is reflected upon the story of the gathering of oud and its transport. For on the southern coasts dwell the Bugis and the Makassar, the people of the sea and the trade of whom we spoke; and in the interior highlands dwells the people of the Toraja, a mountain people known for a distinctive culture and firmly-rooted traditions tied to their isolated mountainous world, with an honest generality into whose details we do not enter.

And in islands like these, the oud extractors are mostly of the people of the countryside and the forests who know the habitats of the trees, entering the forest searching for the infected trees in which the resin forms, and extracting the oud with an inherited expertise that distinguishes the resin-bearing wood from the healthy. And we use here the description "oud extractors" and no other, because the work is an extraction from the tree and a reading of its signs, not a random hunt. And this field expertise is the first link in the chain that ends with the piece of oud in the hand of the acquirer.

Then begins the role in which Sulawesi is singular: the transport. For what is extracted in the interior or gathered in the neighboring islands moves toward the coast, and from the coast the ships of the Bugis and the Makassar carry it to the great ports, at their head Makassar, and from it it is redistributed in the wider network. For the gathering is a stage, and the transport is another stage no less important; and Sulawesi — with its fleet and its ports — was the mistress of the second stage. And here it becomes clear why its oud is not measured by what comes out of its forests alone, but by what crosses the hands of its sailors.

And this integration between the mountain, the coast, and the sea draws a living picture of the economy of fragrance on the island: an extractor who reads the tree in the highlands or on a distant island, an intermediary who gathers and classifies at the coast, a sailor who carries and crosses the sea, and a port that re-exports to the world. Four links connected one to another, the most central and the most far-reaching in effect of which is the link of the maritime transport that made Sulawesi what it is in the history of the aromatics.

Sulawesi in the modern oud trade

Sulawesi remains today a region with a dual role in the map of Indonesian oud: a source for its own oud, and an intermediary for the oud of its neighbors. For the location of Makassar as a gateway for eastern Indonesia has not changed in its essence; since the aromatics of the eastern islands still find in the ports of Sulawesi an outlet toward the wider markets. And this intermediary role, which the island inherited from its old sailors, is what distinguishes it in the contemporary market from the pure origin regions.

And the matter of sustainability acquires here a special importance, like the rest of the regions of oud. For the wider transformation from wild gathering to managed cultivation — which we presented in wild and cultivated oud — is a context that concerns Sulawesi as much as it concerns others, especially since the genera of oud have become subject to the international regulation. And the role of the island as a point of transit and re-export makes the transparency about the source more important, not less; for when the goods pass through an intermediary, the value of knowing the true origin and the honest documentation increases.

And at Oud Treasure we look at the oud of Sulawesi as an authentic part of the map of the origins we offer. We are keen on knowing the source, and we clarify the origin and the grade with transparency as we show on the about us page, and we place the oud of the island within our wider family of natural oud and Indonesian oud with its multiple origins. And whoever wants to get acquainted with the oud of this island specifically finds it in the Sulawesi oud collection.

For whoever acquires an oud attributed to Sulawesi acquires a fragrance from the island of the sailors: a land that did not content itself with what it grows, but carried aboard its ships the fragrance of half the archipelago. And oud here carries in its context something of the spirit of those fleets that made the sea a road and trade an identity. And for whoever wants to place this origin in the wider context of the history of oud, he will find the complete picture in our comprehensive guide on the history of oud.

Read also

This article is an episode of our regional series, each of which we devote to one of the origins of oud. Issued from it so far:

• The history of Kalimantan oud and its trade: from the forests of Borneo (where the rivers transport oud, not the ships of the sailors)
• The history of Sumatran oud: the land of the aromatics on the Strait of Malacca (against the sailors and intermediaries of Sulawesi)
• The history of oud in Papua and eastern Indonesia: where the genus Gyrinops rules (the detail of the genera)
• The history of gaharu in Maluku: oud in the Spice Islands (its eastern oud passed through Makassar)

And among the episodes we are working on within the series:

• The history of Merauke oud and its relation to the Merauke region (the far southeastern outlet, sea and air transport)

And these guides may also be of use to you:

• The history of oud: how did it travel from the forests of Southeast Asia to the Arabian Peninsula?
• The history of the oud trade between Indonesia and the Arab world
• From wild oud to the farms: how has the oud industry changed through history?
• A guide to Indonesian oud: the origins and the grades