We begin our story with the countries that have an Islamic majority in this region, one of which is Indonesia. It is the largest Islamic country in Southeast Asia. The traveler, Al-Mas‘oodi, called the islands of the

Indonesian archipelago "The Mihraj (Maharaja) Islands". Other writers called it by the names of its islands: Sumatra, Java, and so on. It was said that its name is composed of two syllables; namely "Indo-" meaning: India, and "-nisia" meaning islands. This was reflected in the writings of the writers and geographers as they always called Indonesia “The East India Islands”. It was sometimes called the Green Land. Since the thirteenth century A.H., coinciding the nineteenth century A.D., it became known as Indonesia.

Indonesia is considered part of the Malay Archipelago in Southeast Asia. It includes the largest number of islands in the world, as they amount to about 17,508 islands. About 600 of those islands are inhabited, including Java which is one of the most populated areas in the world. The percentage of Muslims there decreased from 97% to 85%.

It is difficult to determine the exact date of the introduction of Islam into Indonesia. Sources suggest that Muslim traders set up their own trading centers on the coasts of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula since the late second and early third century A.H., the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. The early Muslim merchants came from the Arabian Peninsula mainly from Oman, Hadhramaut, and the southern coast of Yemen. They set up their first trading posts on the west coast of Sumatra, which they called Smadrah. These Muslim traders followed the Shafi‘i school of Fiqh. Muslim Indians introduced the Hanafi school of Fiqh to the Indonesian islands. Afterwards, Muslim traders from India and Gujarat peninsula [in southwest India] arrived in Indonesia.

Some history books mentioned that some Indonesian traders had arrived in Baghdad during the reign of the ‘Abbasid Caliph Haaroon Ar-Rasheed. By the time they left for their country, they had become Muslims, and as soon as they arrived in their homeland, they carried out wide-ranging Da‘wah activities, inviting their people to embrace Islam.

In the early ninth century A.H., fifteenth century A.D., Islam began to spread rapidly in the outskirts of Indonesia. The Muslim sultans and Muslim tribes started resisting and fighting the power of Buddhism in Java. One of the most important of these Muslim sultanates was the Sultanate of Aceh, north of Sumatra, and the Kingdom of Malacca in the west of the Malayan Peninsula. They founded independent trade relations with various Muslim traders: Arabs, Persians, Chinese and Indians. As a result, they embraced Islam due to their close contact with these Arab and Persian Muslim traders.

http://300035.dotdothktrade.tech/en/artical/20628