Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei

Bandar Seri Begawan is the capital of Brunei , an independent Islamic state located on the northern coast of Borneo (an island whose land area is divided between the countries of Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia) in Southeast Asia. It is also known as "Kalimantan." Bandar Seri Begawan is the biggest city in Borneo and the center of Brunei's administrative and commercial life, as well as the location of its most important port. It is an affluent city, known for being the home of Brunei's sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah, who was at one time the richest man in the world.

Landscape

The municipal area of Bandar Seri Begawan, or Bandar, as it is called by local residents, occupies an area of about one hundred square kilometers (about thirty-nine square miles). Until recently, however, the city was only 12.87 square kilometers (about five square miles) in size. In August 2007, in order to accommodate and encourage the city's continuing growth and development, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah signed an order to expand the city limits. The city's land area increased nearly ten times over.

Bandar is located on Brunei Bay, not far from where the mouth of the Brunei River opens into the South China Sea . The downtown area of the city is surrounded by water, with rivers running by its eastern, western, and southern borders. One of its most noteworthy features is the fact that some areas of the city are not located on dry land, but consist of buildings (houses, schools, mosques, and health centers) built on stilts over the water.

Until the early twentieth century, the entirety of the original settlement—including the residence of the sultan—was located over the water. Today, the region of Bandar built over the water is referred to as Kampong Ayer, which means "water town." Up to half of the population of Bandar lives in villages within Kampong Ayer.

Yet Bandar is, in many ways, a thoroughly modern urban environment. As a result, the city is full of unusual contrasts, with office buildings and busy shopping malls standing side by side with traditional wooden stilt houses. None of these structures are more than sixty or seventy years old, however, since the entire Bandar region was destroyed by Allied bombs during World War II , and had to be rebuilt after the end of the war.

People

As reported by the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2023, the population in the city proper was 266,682 in 2021. Brunei was estimated to have a population of 484,991 in 2023. Approximately two thirds of Bandar's residents are Malay, with a small but significant minority of Chinese heritage. Most of the Chinese people living in Bandar are permanent residents rather than citizens, as attaining citizenship for non-Malays requires passing tests on Malay culture, language, and customs. Apart from these two major ethnic groups, the city is also home to a number of Indians and foreign expatriates, and various groups of indigenous peoples.

The majority of Bandar's Malay community identifies as Sunni Muslim , while its Chinese residents typically follow Buddhist , Taoist, or Confucian teachings. Although Malay is Brunei's official language, English is taught in schools and spoken widely in Bandar, along with several Chinese and indigenous dialects. Education is valued highly in Bandar, with laws making it mandatory for every child to attend school for at least nine full years. The city's affluence shows in its excellent health care system, its many hospitals and clinics, and its high life expectancy rates.

A strict class structure, including hereditary and honorary titles (conferred by the sultan upon his subjects or achieved by Muslims upon the completion of the pilgrimage to Mecca), is an important part of Bandar's Malay society, and people tend to address each other with their full names and titles. Membership in a particular class is passed down from father to child.

Economy

Bandar, like the rest of Brunei, is almost entirely driven by the fuel industry: the tiny country has large stores of natural gas and petroleum (mostly derived from oil fields located offshore). Export profits from these abundant natural resources have been the chief source of the nation's wealth and remarkably high per capita income—more than half of the country's residents are employed as civil servants. Despite suffering quite badly from the collapse of the Asian financial markets in the late 1990s, rising oil prices have ensured that Brunei and Bandar will maintain their economic standing.

Because of its intense focus on one highly profitable industry, however, Bandar is forced to import a large percentage of its food and virtually all its manufactured goods. Bandar does produce a small amount of furniture, traditional textiles, and handicrafts. Despite its bright shopping plazas and opulent hotels, Bandar does not see a lot of tourist traffic. The lack of tourism to Bandar has been blamed on the city's notoriously high prices.

The government has taken steps to encourage the diversification of industry in the early twenty-first century, and has focused much of its efforts on agriculture and fishery in order to make Brunei less dependent on imported food, as well as on information and communications technology and halal manufacturing. Since the city's petroleum and natural gas earnings, which account for about 65 percent of GDP and 95 percent of exports, still far exceed its spending on imports, most of the trade surplus is directed into investments abroad.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook, Brunei's regional economic integration in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community in 1984 and its ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2023 benefited the sultanate's economy.

Landmarks

Unquestionably the best known feature of the Bandar landscape is the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque, a large, beautiful temple that sits in the city center and is topped by towering minarets and a tall dome covered with a highly reflective top composed of millions of pieces of Venetian glass. The mosque was a project of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III (father of Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah), who commissioned the mosque to be built according to the principles of classical Islamic architecture. It was completed in 1958.

Kampung Ayer, the stretch of Bandar that is located over the River Brunei, is another of the city's most noticeable landmarks. The thousands of stilt houses that are scattered throughout Kampung Ayer are linked by a complex system of wooden walkways, making Kampung Ayer accessible to visitors either on foot or by boat.

Bandar is also the location of the Brunei History Center, which houses information about the royal family and many original documents pertaining to the country's history, and the Royal Ceremonial Hall, where the sultan is crowned and other royal affairs take place. In addition, the city houses several museums, such as the Brunei Museum (on the Kota Batu hilltop), which displays natural history, archaeological, and cultural artifacts, and the Malay Technology Museum, a showcase for the traditional technologies used in water villages.

Other interesting places to see in Bandar include the Mausoleum of Brunei's fifth sultan, Sultan Bolkiah, who ruled from 1485 until 1521. He is remembered for expanding Brunei's rule to the entirety of Borneo Island, as well as some of the Philippine Islands. His body is housed off Jalan Kota Batu. A few miles outside of the city center is the Istana Nurul Iman, the magnificent residence of the current sultan. The Istana Nurul Iman is, unfortunately, off-limits to visitors most days of the year, except for on the holiday of Hari Raya.

History

Early records show that Brunei had a trade partnership with China during the sixth century, and that there was a water village in the Bandar region as early as the seventh century. The area subsequently came under the rule of the Hindi empires of Srivijaya in Sumatra and Majapahit in Java. After this, however, the kingdom of Brunei regained its independence and—led by Sultan Bolkiah—went on to seize large parts of the surrounding region. By the sixteenth century, an Italian explorer estimated that Bandar's residents numbered as many as 100,000 people.

After the death of Brunei's ninth sultan, Sultan Hassan, the kingdom experienced internal power conflicts and struggled to resist the colonial forces that were beginning to show an interest in the territory. In 1939, James Brooke, a British citizen who helped the sultan quash a rebellion, was given a governorship by the sultan and eventually gained control of the entire Sarawak area. In 1888, Brunei fell further under British influence and became a British protectorate. In 1906, even more power was ceded to the British, who essentially took over all executive powers and left only decisions about religion and culture to the sultan.

During World War II, Brunei was occupied by Japanese forces. At the end of the war, the sultanate began working towards a return to self-rule. This transition eventually took place in 1959, with the writing of a new constitution and the agreement that Brunei would administer all areas of its own government except for defense and foreign policy, which would remain the provenance of the British. In 1984, after many years of cooperation with the British, Brunei gained full independence.

In 2014, Brunei became the first country in East Asia to adopt Islamic sharia law. An absolute monarchy, the sultanate celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah's accession to the throne in 2017. Hassanal serves as sultan and prime minister and, as such, is both chief of state and head of the government.

Bibliography

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