The books

2026Out of print

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

A collection of personal stories from inside the Bangsamoro revolution, launched in Cotabato City on 17 June 2026. Its premise is to tell stories that had to stay hidden while the movement was clandestine.

2024Free to read

Abhoud Syed M. Lingga

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

Writings by the founder of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies on the Bangsamoro’s road to self-determination: its history, the law and politics of the peace process, and what it means for peacebuilding elsewhere. Published for the 10th anniversary of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.

2024Free to read

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A survey report on the voters of the BARMM ahead of its first regional parliamentary elections. It profiles likely voters, how ready they are for the polls, where they get news of political parties, and the issues that drive their choices.

2024Free to read

World Bank

World Bank

An edition of the World Bank's Philippines Economic Update whose special focus is poverty in the BARMM. It looks at how poverty in the region fell and what is needed to keep it falling.

2024Out of print

forumZFD

forumZFD

A follow-up to a 2023 conference in which transitional justice experts and practitioners reflect on what has been done on justice and reconciliation in the Bangsamoro. It sets out what is still needed in the BARMM.

2023Free to read

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A study of how vulnerable or resilient the madrasah system is to violent extremism, and where it is heading in the Philippines. It weighs how public policy and the BARMM's regional autonomy can support madrasah development.

2023Free to read

Benedicto R. Bacani, Norma Tillo-Gomez, Ofelia Durante and others

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

An assessment of how the national plan against violent extremism is being carried out in the 5 provinces of the BARMM. It draws on interviews with 50 officials, 10 focus groups with 78 community leaders and a survey of 150 programme beneficiaries.

2023Free to read

Initiatives for International Dialogue

Initiatives for International Dialogue

A research report on land loss and displacement in Marawi City and Maguindanao, based on household-level mapping. It argues that land dispossession is a root cause of conflict in the Bangsamoro that transitional justice must address.

2022In print

Thomas M. McKenna

Armin Lear Press

The Moro guerrillas of Cotabato and Lanao in the Second World War, led by Edward Kuder’s foster son Mohammad Adil and the American schoolteacher himself, pieced together from their papers and the memories of those who fought.

2022Free to read

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A follow-up to IAG's 2017 study that tracks how urban Bangsamoro youth's views and attitudes toward violent extremism have changed. It adds the views of young people living in conflict-affected rural areas of the BARMM.

2021Free to read

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A study, done with the UP Institute of Islamic Studies, of Filipinos who convert or 'revert' to Islam, building a profile of converts and their reasons for conversion. It also gathers Muslim and non-Muslim opinions on Islam and looks at converts' links to violent extremist groups.

2020In print

Ronald K. Edgerton

University Press of Kentucky

Pershing’s years among the Maranao and in Sulu, as a captain at Lake Lanao and as governor of the Moro Province, and the mix of diplomacy and force he learned there.

2020In print

Oliver Charbonneau

Cornell University Press

The American project in the Moro South set against the other colonial empires of its day, and the Moros’ own uses of it, from the archives of three continents.

2020In print

Miriam Coronel-Ferrer

ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute

How the Moro and Cordillera movements each made a homeland out of a region, and adapted their claims to the state they fought, compared.

2020In print

Carmela Fonbuena

Journalism for Nation Building Foundation

The five-month battle for Marawi in 2017, from the soldiers, hostages, residents, officials and former fighters who lived it, by a defence journalist who covered it day by day.

2020In print

Criselda Yabes

Pawikan Press

The siege of Marawi as the people who fought it and lived through it remember it, by a journalist who has followed the military in Mindanao for thirty years.

2020In print

Rommel C. Banlaoi

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

The Islamic State-aligned groups that took Marawi, what became of them afterwards, and the threat they still pose, by a Philippine security analyst.

2020Self-published

Abdulaziz H. Hamsain

Blurb

Tausug dishes from a home cook, printed on demand: tiyula itum, pastil, satti and the rest.

2020Free to read

Starjoan Villanueva

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A study of how civil society organisations take part in politics and governance in the new BARMM during the transition period. It takes stock of what civil society has gained, the obstacles it faces in dealing with leaders and institutions, and where it can do more.

2020Free to read

International Alert

International Alert

The 2020 Conflict Alert report, analysing conflict data and trends in the Bangsamoro from 2011 to 2019. It tracks how long-running clan, political, criminal and extremist violence continued into the first year of the BARMM.

2020Free to read

World Bank

World Bank

A long study of how health services are delivered and paid for in the BARMM as the region takes up the national Universal Health Care law. It maps gaps in facilities, staff and financing and sets out options for the new regional Ministry of Health.

2019Out of print

Macapado A. Muslim

Saniata Publications

A reading of the Bangsamoro Organic Law and the government it creates, by a former president of Mindanao State University.

2019In print

Simeon Dumdum Jr.

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Poems by a Cebuano poet and retired judge, the title poem among them written on the siege of Marawi.

2019Free to read

Tengku Shahpur

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

What the survivors of the 2017 siege of Marawi told listeners about their losses, life in the evacuation centres and the city they want rebuilt.

2019Free to read

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A baseline study of the traditional madrasah system in the ARMM and nearby regions, funded by the Australian Government. It gathers data meant to guide public policy on traditional madaris and on the education system of the new BARMM.

2019Free to read

eds. Liezl PG. Bugtay, Nikki Philline C. de la Rosa and Judy T. Gulane

International Alert

The 2019 Conflict Alert report on the fall in violent incidents in Muslim Mindanao after the Marawi war, even as extremist violence continued. Its title borrows Charles Tilly's line that war makes states, as the BARMM was being set up.

2019Free to read

World Bank

World Bank

A World Bank report on the Alternative Learning System, the second-chance education programme for out-of-school youth and adults, in the Bangsamoro region. It looks at who needs it and how the new BARMM can expand and improve it.

2019Free to read

Jeremy Simons and Radzini Oledan

Initiatives for International Dialogue

A research study and resource guide from IID's Bangsamoro Transformative Justice Initiatives project, 2017 to 2019. It explains transitional justice, dealing with the past and reconciliation, and records community stories of survival and truth-telling.

2019Out of print

National Ulama Conference of the Philippines

National Ulama Conference of the Philippines

25 Friday sermons written by 25 ulama from across Mindanao who trained at universities in Muslim countries. The sermons, in Arabic with an English translation, are meant as supplementary material for those who deliver the khutbah.

2018Free to read

Congress of the Philippines

Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines

The law, signed on 26 July 2018 and ratified in January 2019, that created the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and its parliamentary government. Free to read at the Lawphil Project.

2018In print

Rey Luis Adeva Montesclaros

New Day Publishers

The Spanish campaigns against the Maranao in the 1890s, set against the revolution that broke out in Luzon at the same time.

2018Out of print

eds. Jaime An Lim, Christine Godinez-Ortega and Ricardo M. de Ungria

Far Eastern University Publications

An anthology of writing from Mindanao this century, edited at MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology, with Moro writers among its contributors, Calbi A. Asain’s story “Hegira” among them.

2018Free to read

Salah Jubair (Mohagher Iqbal)

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

The speeches of the MILF’s chief negotiator from 2005 to 2018, which follow the peace process with the government through the eyes of the Front.

2018Free to read

International Alert

International Alert

The 2018 Conflict Alert report, written after the 2017 Marawi siege, on the threat of violent extremism in the Bangsamoro. It looks at what that threat means for the peace process and the region's future development.

2017Free to read

Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict

Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict

A report, written while the siege was on, on who the Marawi fighters were, how Indonesians and Malaysians joined them, and what it meant for the region. Free to read.

2017Self-published

Nosca Khalid

Independently published

An episode of the Maranao epic retold in English by a Maranao author and published independently.

2017Free to read

Tengku Abdul Ghafar

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Malaysia’s facilitator of the government–MILF talks on how they reached the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro in 2014, and how he got the two sides past their deadlocks.

2017Free to read

Alfredo Ferrariz Lubang

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

A community survey on what trust means to people living with the government–MILF peace accords, what builds it and what wears it down, with advice for the parties and those carrying the accords out.

2017Free to read

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A survey-based study, done with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, of how vulnerable young people in the ARMM are to violent extremism. It aims to give government agencies and communities an early picture to shape their response.

2017Free to read

International Alert

International Alert

The 2017 Conflict Alert report on the causes, costs and trends of violent conflict in Muslim Mindanao from 2011 to 2016. It shows illegal guns, the drug trade and pro-ISIS extremist groups such as the Maute Group becoming major drivers of violence.

2016In print

ed. Paul D. Hutchcroft

Anvil Publishing

Scholars on the peace process as it stood after the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro: the deal, the economy, the clans, the law, and what would be needed to make the Bangsamoro work.

2016Free to read

Abhoud Syed M. Lingga

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

The stories of almost 300 Bangsamoro men and women, from Maguindanao, the Lanao provinces, the Zamboanga peninsula, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, of decades of conflict and their hopes after the 2014 peace agreement.

2016Free to read

Conciliation Resources

Conciliation Resources

First-person stories of Moro and Teduray women: fighters, wives of combatants, women caught between armies, and peace advocates. It was made jointly by 3 Bangsamoro women's organisations and Conciliation Resources.

2015Self-published

Bruce Jenkins

Independently published

A collector’s illustrated catalogue of Moro blades and arms, printed on demand.

2015Self-published

Bruce Jenkins

Independently published

A companion catalogue devoted to the kris, printed on demand.

2015Free to read

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Interviews with 10 of the 145 MILF fighters who handed in their weapons at the first decommissioning, in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, in June 2015, on the lives they hoped to build.

2015Free to read

World Bank

World Bank

A review of how public money for basic education is spent and managed in the ARMM, where learning outcomes are the lowest in the country. It recommends ways to make that spending reach schools and children.

2015Free to read

Bangsamoro Development Agency

Bangsamoro Development Agency

The 6-year development plan for the Bangsamoro drawn up by the MILF through the BDA, with government and donor support, under the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro. It covers the history of the conflict, community consultations and plans for each sector, in 15 chapters.

2015Out of print

Moro Islamic Liberation Front

Moro Islamic Liberation Front

A 3-volume history of the GPH–MILF peace negotiations from the MILF side, with copies of every signed agreement between the 2 parties. Volume 1 covers the domestic phase of the talks from 1997 to 2000.

2014In print

Francisco J. Lara Jr.

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Why the conflict keeps returning: the clans, the rebel fronts and the state as rival sources of authority in Muslim Mindanao, and the shadow economy that sustains all three.

2014Free to read

Government of the Philippines and Moro Islamic Liberation Front

Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity

The peace agreement signed in Malacañang on 27 March 2014 between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, with its annexes on transition, revenue, power sharing and normalisation. Free to read.

2014Free to read

Ebrahim F. Ampuan and Juwairiya U. Lingga

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

What the Subanen, an indigenous people of the Zamboanga peninsula who are not Muslim, thought of the Bangsamoro entity then being negotiated, and what they asked of it.

2014Free to read

Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Philippines

Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Philippines

A short profile of the non-Moro indigenous peoples living in mainland ARMM: the Teduray, Lambangian, Dulangan Manobo and Higaonon. It covers their society, culture, economy and population, and was made with EU support.

2014Free to read

International Alert

International Alert

The first report from the Bangsamoro Conflict Monitoring System, built with police data and university partners. It maps violent incidents in the ARMM from 2011 to 2013 and links them to rebellion, clan feuds, politics and illicit economies.

2014Out of print

ed. Venus Betita

forumZFD

The first collection on transitional justice in the Bangsamoro, launched in Davao City in July 2014. It explains the concept, draws lessons from other countries, and looks at truth, justice, reparation and reconciliation in Central Mindanao.

2013In print

Michael C. Hawkins

Northern Illinois University Press

How the American officers who ruled the Moro Province wrote its people into a story of savagery and progress, and used that story to govern.

2013In print

Miriam Coronel-Ferrer

University of the Philippines Press

Essays written across two decades of the Philippine peace processes, with the Moro fronts and with the communists, by the scholar who would chair the panel that signed the Comprehensive Agreement.

2013Free to read

eds. Francisco J. Lara Jr. and Steven Schoofs

International Alert

The shadow economies of Mindanao, from guns and drugs to the informal credit and trade that ordinary people live by, and how they feed and are fed by the conflict. Free to read.

2013Free to read

Edna E. A. Co

UP National College of Public Administration and Governance

An assessment of how democracy works, and does not, in the ARMM’s provinces and towns, by the University of the Philippines’ public administration college with International IDEA and the Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy.

2013Out of print

Sandor B. Abad

Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino

Maranao legends and tales, in Maranao and Filipino, for the Commission on the Filipino Language.

2013Free to read

Abubakar Datumanong, Parido Rahman Pigkaulan, Maguid Makalingkang and others

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

Four ways Moro communities settle disputes and feuds by custom, set out by researchers from those communities, with the case for building them into the formal justice system.

2013Out of print

ed. Benedicto R. Bacani

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A 326-page collection published a year after the 2012 Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro, on the move from the ARMM to a new Bangsamoro political entity. Edited by IAG founder Benedicto Bacani, with contributions including Peter Koeppinger, Crisanto Cayon and Kathleen Geslani.

2013Free to read

Fermin Adriano and Thomas Parks

The Asia Foundation

The Mindanao case study of a multi-country Asia Foundation research project on aid in long-running subnational conflicts. Using field research and a perception survey by Social Weather Stations, it asks whether development aid in conflict areas of Mindanao has helped or hurt peace.

2013Out of print

Galing Pook Foundation

Galing Pook Foundation

8 case stories of good local governance from towns and provinces of the ARMM. It aims to counter the region's image as a place of failed government.

2012Out of print

eds. Midori Kawashima and Tirmizy E. Abdullah

Institute of Asian Cultures, Sophia University

A study of handwritten Qur’ans, prayer books and kitabs kept by families in Lanao, with what they show of how Islam was learned and copied in the region.

2012Out of print

Michael O. Mastura

Research and Education for Peace, Universiti Sains Malaysia

The government–MILF talks from February 1997 to June 2010, told by a Maguindanaon historian and lawyer who sat on the Front’s peace panel.

2012In print

Tom Stern

Anvil Publishing

The life of the founder of the Moro National Liberation Front, from Jolo and the University of the Philippines to Tripoli, Jeddah and the ARMM governorship, written with his cooperation.

2012Out of print

Amparita S. Sta. Maria, Nina Patricia Sison-Arroyo and Rhealeth Krizelle Ramos

Ateneo Human Rights Center

A study of trafficking across the Zamboanga–Sulu corridor to Sabah and beyond, its routes and its victims, by the Ateneo Human Rights Center.

2012Out of print

Aida Rivera-Ford

C & E Publishing

Aida Rivera-Ford’s stories, essays and other writing gathered in one volume late in her long life in Davao.

2011In print

James R. Arnold

Bloomsbury Publishing

The American campaigns against the Moros under Wood, Bliss and Pershing, from Bud Dajo to Bud Bagsak, as a military history for the general reader.

2011Out of print

Lualhati M. Abreu

Center for People Empowerment in Governance

The Bangsamoro struggle explained in Filipino for a national readership, from the sultanates to the MILF talks.

2011In print

Lino Miani

ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute

The trade in guns across the Sulu and Celebes seas, who sells, who buys and what the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia have done about it.

2011In print

Criselda Yabes

Anvil Publishing

Years on the road with the army in Mindanao and Sulu, and the soldiers who found themselves building schools as often as fighting.

2011In print

Wilma A. Amil

Dunwoody Press

Graded Tausug texts with glossaries, for learners who have the grammar.

2011Free to read

Elizabeth M. Padilla

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

A way to carry what the victims of violence in Mindanao say up to the negotiators at the government–MILF peace talks.

2011Out of print

Soliman M. Santos Jr.

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

Essays by a peace advocate and lawyer defending the 2008 Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain, which the Supreme Court struck down. They also propose ways forward for the GRP–MILF talks after its collapse.

2011Out of print

Patricio P. Diaz

MindaNews

A long account of the talks between the government and the MILF, by a veteran Cotabato journalist who followed them from the start.

2011Out of print

Roberto C. Layson

MindaNews

Stories from Pikit, Cotabato, where the author served as parish priest, of Muslims and Christians rebuilding trust after war. It draws on years of interfaith and peacebuilding work in a town hit hard by war.

2011Out of print

Mary Fe B. Arquiza

Mindanao Migrants Center for Empowering Actions

A study of how displacement by armed conflict leaves people in Mindanao's evacuation camps open to human trafficking. It documents a problem long suspected but little studied.

2010In print

Patricio N. Abinales

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Essays questioning the received story of the Moro struggle, the unbroken resistance from Spain to the present, and asking what the record shows instead.

2010In print

Samuel K. Tan

University of the Philippines Press

Tan’s later essays on the history and historiography of the Muslim South, collected at the end of his career.

2010Free to read

Soliman M. Santos Jr. and Paz Verdades M. Santos

Small Arms Survey

Profiles of 14 armed groups in the Philippines, the communist and Moro fronts, the Abu Sayyaf and the clan militias among them, with what is known of their arms and their effect on the people around them. Free to read.

2010In print

Criselda Yabes

University of the Philippines Press

A novel of Sulu in the 1970s, of a Tausug family and the war that came to Jolo. It was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and won the UP Centennial Literary Prize.

2010In print

ed. Gerard Rixhon

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Tausug epics, tales, songs and sayings recorded over forty years in Sulu, with translations, from the founder of the journal Sulu Studies.

2010Out of print

Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy

Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy

Proceedings of a 4-day regional conference in Davao City of Muslim women working for peace. It records the talks and discussions on women's roles in peacebuilding in Mindanao.

2009Out of print

eds. Arndt Graf, Peter Kreuzer and Rainer Werning

Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia

Essays from a Penang conference on the Mindanao conflict after the collapse of the 2008 ancestral domain agreement.

2009Out of print

eds. Kamarulzaman Askandar and Ayesah Abubakar

Research and Education for Peace, Universiti Sains Malaysia

A second collection from the Penang peace programme, on the talks, the ceasefire and civil society’s part in them.

2009Out of print

Shamsuddin L. Taya

Penerbit Universiti Utara Malaysia

How the MILF fought and negotiated, read as strategy, by a Malaysian political scientist.

2009In print

Jason William Lobel

Dunwoody Press

Maranao texts, from news to folktales, with glossaries and notes for learners.

2009In print

Almahdi G. Alonto

Dunwoody Press

Conversational Maranao in dialogues and drills.

2009In print

Ruth Stickney

Dunwoody Press

A grammar sketch of Maguindanaon for learners.

2009Out of print

Magbassa Kita Foundation

Magbassa Kita Foundation

A collection responding to the 2008 Supreme Court decision that struck down the GRP–MILF Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain. It gathers dissenting views on the ruling and what it meant for the peace process.

2009Out of print

Madonna T. Virola and Marides V. Virola

GoP-UN ACT for Peace Programme

Stories of communities in Mindanao working together to build peace after decades of conflict. It shows the peace and development work of the ACT for Peace programme on the ground.

2008In print

Ronald K. Edgerton

Ateneo de Manila University Press

A hundred years in the Bukidnon–Lanao borderlands, where Maranao, Lumad, settlers and the state met and sometimes made terms.

2008Out of print

Asreemoro

Saba Islamic Media

The Tausug and their sultanate seen from Sabah, where many Tausug now live, by a Malaysian writer of Tausug descent; first published in Malay in 2007.

2008Out of print

ed. Bobby M. Tuazon

Center for People Empowerment in Governance

Essays by Moro and Filipino scholars on the Bangsamoro’s history, the right to self-determination and the peace talks, from the Center for People Empowerment in Governance.

2008Out of print

The Asia Foundation

The Asia Foundation

A peace-education resource that grounds lessons on peace in Islamic teaching, for use in Muslim communities and madaris. It has articles in English and some in Arabic.

2008Out of print

Pressia Arifin-Cabo, Joel Dizon and Khomenie Mantawel

Kadtuntaya Foundation

A photo-documentary, with photographs by Bobby Timonera, in which key actors in the Mindanao conflict each describe their vision of peace. It also shows everyday rural life in North Cotabato and Maguindanao during an uneasy ceasefire, in English and Maguindanaon.

2008Out of print

Somsri Hananuntasuk and Ichal Supriadi

Asian Network for Free Elections

The report of an international team that observed the August 2008 ARMM regional election. It records how the vote was run and the problems observers found.

2007In print

Shinzo Hayase

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Maguindanao, Sangir and Bagobo as peoples of one sea rather than of two countries, in a history that crosses the border with Indonesia the way they did.

2007In print

Robert A. Fulton

Tumalo Creek Press

The first years of the American occupation of the Moro country, from Bates’s treaty with the Sultan of Sulu to Bud Dajo, told campaign by campaign from the army’s records.

2007Out of print

Salah Jubair (Mohagher Iqbal)

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

The talks between the government and the MILF from 1997 to the eve of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain, from inside the Front’s panel.

2007Out of print

ed. Amina Rasul-Bernardo

Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy

Ten years after the agreement with the MNLF, what was delivered and what was not, in studies commissioned by the Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy.

2007Free to read

ed. Wilfredo Magno Torres III

The Asia Foundation

The first systematic study of rido, the clan feuds that take more lives in Muslim Mindanao than the rebellion, with case studies from Lanao, Maguindanao, Sulu and Basilan and the ways communities settle them. Expanded edition from Ateneo de Manila University Press in 2014; the original is free to read.

2007Out of print

eds. Peter Kreuzer and Rainer Werning

Strategic Information and Research Development Centre

Essays by people inside the conflict and those who study it, Moro scholars, MILF writers and foreign observers among them, gathered by two German researchers.

2007Out of print

ed. Gutierrez Mangansakan II

Anvil Publishing

Essays by young Moro writers from across the region, the first anthology of its kind, edited by a Maguindanaon filmmaker.

2006Self-published

Mashur Bin-Ghalib Jundam

Published by the author

How Tausug custom and Islamic law live together in one society, by a Tausug scholar of the University of the Philippines.

2006Out of print

Abraham Iribani

Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy

An account of the peace talks between the Philippine government and the MNLF, based on the author's master's thesis at the National Defense College of the Philippines. It follows the negotiations that led to the 1996 Final Peace Agreement and public opinion around them.

2006Free to read

Malcolm Cook and Kit Collier

Lowy Institute

A Lowy Institute Paper on the prospects for peace in Mindanao and the threats to the GRP–MILF peace process. Written as foreign terrorists were using Mindanao as a haven, it argues that backing the peace process is a gamble worth taking.

2005Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

National Historical Commission of the Philippines

The Sulu Sultanate’s own correspondence in Jawi, transcribed and translated in two volumes: letters to Spain, Britain and its own datus from the last century of its independence.

2005Free to read

Steven Rood

East-West Center

What civil society groups did and could do for peace in Mindanao, by the Asia Foundation’s long-serving Philippines representative. Free to read.

2005Out of print

Soliman M. Santos Jr.

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

The government–MILF talks as they stood in 2005: the agreements so far, the sticking points and the roads open.

2005Free to read

Peter Kreuzer

Peace Research Institute Frankfurt

How the clans of Muslim Mindanao hold power through violence, and why the state lets them, in a report from the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. Free to read.

2005Out of print

eds. Kamarulzaman Askandar and Ayesah Abubakar

Southeast Asian Conflict Studies Network

Papers from the Southeast Asian Conflict Studies Network on the roots of the conflict and the peace process to 2005.

2005In print

Ligaya Fernando-Amilbangsa

Ateneo de Manila University Press

The carved, woven and worked ornament of Sulu, ukkil, in a large illustrated study by the dancer and scholar who spent her life recording the archipelago’s arts.

2005In print

Carl R. Galvez Rubino

Dunwoody Press

A full course in Tausug grammar for the serious learner.

2005In print

Jeffrey Ayala Milligan

Palgrave Macmillan

Schools as a front in the Moro conflict: what public schooling meant to Muslim Filipinos, and what the madrasah offered instead. Second edition 2020.

2005Free to read

World Bank

World Bank

The main report of a large needs assessment of conflict-affected areas of Mindanao, made jointly with the government, international agencies and local stakeholders. It sets out what reconstruction and development would need after a peace agreement with the MILF, and led to the Mindanao Trust Fund.

2005Free to read

Human Development Network

Human Development Network

The 2005 national human development report, devoted to the costs of armed conflict in the Philippines, including the Moro conflict and the communist insurgency. It treats human security as a precondition of human development and examines prejudice against Muslims as a driver of conflict.

2004In print

Miguel A. Bernad

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Essays on the exploration of Mindanao and the Christian missions there from the sixteenth century on, by a Jesuit historian who spent his later life in Cagayan de Oro.

2004Free to read

Eric U. Gutierrez and Saturnino M. Borras Jr.

East-West Center

The argument that land, not religion, is at the root of the Moro conflict: how colonial and Philippine land policy dispossessed the Moros and why the peace deals have not touched it. Free to read.

2004Out of print

Benedicto R. Bacani

Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Philippines

A study of why Muslim autonomy in the southern Philippines has stayed largely 'on paper', and what real self-rule for the ARMM would require. It includes the text of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement.

2004Out of print

Eddie Ll. Quitoriano and Theofeliz Marie P. Francisco

Save the Children UK, Philippines Programme

Accounts from displaced children of Pikit and Carmen in Cotabato and Pagalungan in Maguindanao who lived through the 2000 and 2003 wars between the army and the MILF. It looks at how they coped and what in their families and communities helped them.

2004Out of print

Erlinda M. Burton, Cecilia Macabuac and Lourdes A. Wong

Research Institute for Mindanao Culture

A comparison of 3 communities in the ARMM and how their history, autonomy and social conditions differ. It was published with Action Against Hunger and the European Commission.

2004Out of print

Ateneo Human Rights Center

Ateneo Human Rights Center

A study of the rights and legal status of Muslim women in Mindanao, set against Islam and Philippine democracy. It looks at women's rights in Islamic law and in Philippine practice.

2003Out of print

B. R. (Rudy) Rodil

Mindanao Coalition of Development NGO Networks

Mindanao’s history for the general reader, in questions and short answers: who was here first, how the settlers came, where the conflict began.

2003Self-published

Clemencio M. Bascar

Published by the author

A Zamboanga writer’s history of the Sulu Sultanate as a state that was never conquered, printed by the author.

2003Out of print

Amina Rasul-Bernardo

Asian Institute of Management

Moro voices on the conflict and what peace would take, gathered for the Asian Institute of Management by a Tausug former cabinet member.

2003Free to read

International Alert

International Alert

A discussion paper on the economic roots of the Mindanao conflict and what business and donors could do about them. Free to read.

2003Out of print

Patricio P. Diaz

MindaNews

A veteran Cotabato journalist’s columns on the conflict and the peace talks, collected: forty years of watching from close up.

2003In print

Gracia Burnham

Tyndale House Publishers

A year as a hostage of the Abu Sayyaf in the jungles of Basilan, by the American missionary whose husband was killed in the rescue that freed her.

2003Out of print

Jennifer Saipudin Nandu

De La Salle University Publishing House

Interviews with divorced Tausug women on marriage, separation and what the law and the community allowed them.

2003Out of print

Abraham P. Sakili

UP Asian Center

Moro art, architecture and ornament read for the ideas of space and self behind them, by a Tausug art historian.

2003Out of print

Frank G. Rivera

UST Publishing House

Plays drawn from Maranao tales, written in Filipino by Frank Rivera for the Sining Kambayoka theatre of Mindanao State University.

2003Out of print

Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino

Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino

A three-way wordlist from the Commission on the Filipino Language.

2003Out of print

Antonio R. Enriquez

Giraffe Books

A novella named for the town of Sumisip in Basilan, with four short stories.

2003Out of print

Teresa J. Ho

World Bank

A World Bank study of health, education and social services in the ARMM, the country's poorest region. It argues that better human development is needed for peace and growth in Muslim Mindanao.

2003Out of print

Roberto C. Layson

Initiatives for International Dialogue

Reflections by the Oblate parish priest of Pikit, Cotabato, a town repeatedly caught in fighting between the army and the MILF. Drawing on what war did to Muslim and Christian villagers there, it argues that war itself is the enemy.

2002In print

James Francis Warren

NUS Press

The Iranun and Balangingi raiders of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the world economy that called their raiding into being, and how a way of life became an ethnic name.

2002Self-published

Ben J. Kadil

Published by the author

A Moro teacher’s history of the peoples of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan, written as a textbook and printed by the author.

2002In print

Moshe Yegar

Lexington Books

The Moros set beside the Malays of Patani and the Rohingya of Arakan: three Muslim minorities on the edges of Buddhist and Christian states, and the roads each took.

2002Out of print

Rolando C. Esteban

UST Publishing House

The Kalibugan, the Muslim Subanen of the Zamboanga peninsula, and how they stand between the Moro and Lumad worlds.

2002Out of print

Federico V. Magdalena

Mindanao State University

Essays on the history of the Moro South, the title essay on the 1902 battle in which American troops stormed the Maranao forts at Bayang, Lanao.

2002Out of print

Karl M. Gaspar, Elpidio A. Lapad and Ailynne J. Maravillas

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

A reader for peace workers on Mindanao's history, ethnic relations and Muslim–Christian relations. It was written for Mindanao peace advocates and co-published with Catholic Relief Services.

2001In print

Soliman M. Santos Jr.

University of the Philippines Press

Whether the Philippine Constitution can accommodate the Moro demand for self-rule, and what would have to change, by a human rights lawyer who worked the peace process for years.

2001In print

H. Arlo Nimmo

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Nimmo’s return to the Sama Dilaut three decades on: the full ethnography of a people who had by then mostly come ashore.

2001Out of print

Nagasura T. Madale

National Commission for Culture and the Arts

Stories of the lake and essays on Maranao life by a Maranao anthropologist.

2001Out of print

Calbi A. Asain

De La Salle University Publishing House

Stories of Tausug life in Sulu by a Tausug writer of fiction, from De La Salle University Press.

2001Out of print

Salamat Hashim

Moro Islamic Liberation Front

Writings by the founding chairman of the MILF on the Bangsamoro struggle against oppression and colonial rule. It sets out the MILF's case for Bangsamoro self-determination.

2000In print

Patricio N. Abinales

Ateneo de Manila University Press

How Cotabato and Davao were drawn into the Philippine state in the first half of the twentieth century, through the datus and settler elites who learned to work it, and what that made of Mindanao politics.

2000Out of print

B. R. (Rudy) Rodil

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

The twenty-one years of talks between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front, from Jeddah to the 1996 Final Peace Agreement, by a historian who sat on the government panel.

2000Out of print

Marites Dañguilan Vitug and Glenda M. Gloria

Ateneo Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs

Two journalists’ investigation of the MILF, the MNLF, the Abu Sayyaf and the Mindanao war at the turn of the century, from the camps and the back channels. The book most reporters on the region started with.

2000Out of print

eds. Eric U. Gutierrez, Kristina Gaerlan and Mara Stankovitch

Institute for Popular Democracy

A reader on the war in the South at the end of the 1990s: the rebel fronts, the clan armies and the religious leaders, with primary documents and the authors’ reporting.

2000Out of print

Eric S. Casiño

Notre Dame University

Mindanao’s three peoples and their politics as shaped by the land they hold, lowland, upland and coast, by a Filipino anthropologist.

2000Out of print

Hilario M. Gomez Jr.

Silsilah Dialogue Movement

The conflict read as a problem of relations between Christians and Muslims, from the Silsilah Dialogue Movement in Zamboanga.

1999Out of print

Jamail A. Kamlian

MSU–Iligan Institute of Technology

Readings on the Moro peoples’ history, society and culture assembled for the peace studies programme at MSU-Iligan.

1999Free to read

ed. Mara Stankovitch

Conciliation Resources

An issue of the Accord series on the negotiations between the Philippine government and the MNLF that led to the 1996 'Final Peace Agreement'. Published with MSU General Santos and Notre Dame University, it carries essays, interviews, profiles and the key texts of the agreements.

1998Free to read

Thomas M. McKenna

University of California Press

An anthropologist’s account, from years in Cotabato City, of how ordinary Maguindanaons lived the rebellion, the datus and the state, and why the separatist story and the everyday one do not match. Free to read in the University of California Press e-books collection.

1998Out of print

Bishops-Ulama Forum

Bishops-Ulama Forum

A report on the first 2 years of the Bishops-Ulama Forum, which brought Catholic bishops and Muslim religious leaders together after the 1996 peace agreement. It records their dialogues and joint work for Muslim–Christian peace.

1997Out of print

Abdullah T. Madale

Rex Book Store

A general account of the Maranao for students and the curious: history, social ranks, arts, beliefs and daily life around Lake Lanao.

1997In print

Aida Rivera-Ford

University of the Philippines Press

Short stories by the Jolo-born writer best known for “The Chieftest Mourner”, still one of the most taught stories in Philippine classrooms, from the University of the Philippines Press.

1997Self-published

Ernesto M. Espaldon

Published by the author

The Tausug guerrillas who fought the Japanese in Sulu, told by a physician who was the youngest commander in the Sulu Area Command in 1945.

1996Out of print

Arnold Molina Azurin

UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies

A Filipino anthropologist’s essays against the romance of rebellion, on the South and on war zones elsewhere.

1996Out of print

Abdullah T. Madale

Rex Book Store

The torogan, the carved house of the Maranao datu, its building, its okir and the rank it proclaimed.

1996Out of print

Robert Cato

Graham Brash

The kris, barong, kampilan and the rest, their forms, their making and their meaning, in the standard illustrated guide for collectors.

1996Out of print

Antonio R. Enriquez

Giraffe Books

Stories of Mindanao’s wars and the people who live through them, by the Zamboanga novelist.

1995Self-published

Nasser A. Marohomsalic

Published by the author

A history of the Moro peoples written from within, from the sultanates to the MNLF, by a Maranao lawyer; printed by the author and much cited in the region. Revised 2001.

1995Out of print

ed. Howard P. McKaughan

De La Salle University Publishing House

Episodes of the Maranao epic retold in English prose, for readers who will not face the eight volumes.

1995Out of print

Howard P. McKaughan

De La Salle University Publishing House

Maranao folktales translated into English, from the linguist who compiled the Maranao dictionary.

1994Out of print

B. R. (Rudy) Rodil

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

How the Moro and Lumad peoples became minorities in their own homeland: the land laws, the resettlement programmes and the migration from Luzon and the Visayas, with the figures.

1994Out of print

Macapado A. Muslim

Mindanao State University

A Maranao political scientist’s case, made in the early 1990s, that autonomy won by politics could answer what the armed struggle had not.

1994Out of print

H. Arlo Nimmo

University of Washington Press

Stories of the Sama Dilaut of Tawi-Tawi, written by the anthropologist who lived among them, from what he saw and was told.

1993Out of print

B. R. (Rudy) Rodil

Minority Rights Group

A short report for an international readership on the two peoples displaced by the settlement of Mindanao and the state of their claims in the early 1990s.

1993Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies

How the Moro cause reached the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Muslim world, and what the attention did to the movement at home. Revised 1995.

1993Out of print

Batua A. Macaraya

Mindanao State University

The old literary Maranao of the darangen and the bayok, glossed by the Maranao scholar who co-wrote the dictionary.

1993Out of print

Leonardo N. Mercado, SVD

Divine Word Publications

A Filipino philosopher-priest on what dialogue between the two faiths in the Philippines has been and could be.

1992Out of print

Lolita Junio Damonsong Rodriguez

Mindanao State University

A proposal, from an MSU educator, for a madrasah curriculum that could be recognised by the state, decades before the ALIVE programme.

1991Out of print

Ghislaine Loyré

Historical Conservation Society

The sultanate, the datus, the law and the ranks of Maguindanao society, set out from Spanish sources and the author’s ethnographic fieldwork.

1991Out of print

Kenneth E. Bauzon

Ateneo de Manila University Press

How the liberal state and the Moro search for an Islamic political identity have failed to meet, by a Filipino political scientist.

1991Out of print

Nagasura T. Madale

Silsilah Dialogue Movement

A Maranao scholar’s reading of the conflict in the South and of what peace between its peoples would take, from the Silsilah Dialogue Movement.

1990Out of print

W. K. Che Man

Oxford University Press

The Moro and Patani Malay movements side by side: their histories, their organisations and what each state did about them, in the first full comparison of the two.

1990Out of print

Esmail R. Disoma

Mindanao State University

A Maranao sociologist’s survey of his people’s customs and beliefs, from birth to burial.

1989Out of print

Ruurdje Laarhoven

New Day Publishers

Sultan Kudarat’s Maguindanao as the Dutch and Spanish records show it: a sultanate that held its own between two empires by diplomacy as much as by war.

1989Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

University of the Philippines Press

What decolonisation meant for a people who did not see the republic as their own, and how a Filipino Muslim identity was argued over in the decades after independence.

1989Out of print

Norma Abubakar Abdulla

Centro Escolar University

Tausug cooking and what it says of Tausug life: the dishes, the occasions and the manners of the table, with recipes.

1988Out of print

ed. Peter G. Gowing

New Day Publishers

Essays on Islam as it is lived in the Philippines, collected and edited by Peter Gowing.

1988Out of print

Juan R. Francisco

Mindanao State University

Essays on the Indian and Islamic strands in Mindanao’s arts and epics, by a scholar of Sanskrit in the Philippines.

1986Out of print

Mamitua Saber

Mindanao State University

The Spanish assault on the Maranao kotas at Marawi in 1895, from Spanish accounts and Maranao memory, by the Maranao sociologist who founded the university’s research centre.

1986Out of print

Mindanao State University, Folklore Division

Mindanao State University

The Maranao epic of Bantugan and the kingdom of Bembaran, sung for centuries around Lake Lanao, transcribed and translated in eight volumes by Mindanao State University; inscribed by UNESCO in 2005 as a masterpiece of oral heritage.

1986Out of print

Robert E. Sullivan, OMI

Notre Dame University

The fullest Maguindanaon dictionary, by an Oblate missionary at Notre Dame University in Cotabato City.

1985Out of print

Cesar Adib Majul

Mizan Press

Majul’s short account of the Moro struggle of the 1970s and the rise of the Moro National Liberation Front, written for readers abroad.

1985Out of print

Mig Alvarez Enriquez

New Day Publishers

Stories by the Zamboanga writer. In the title story a Moro man, Alih, and his brother Omar plan to attack a crowd celebrating an American holiday, and Alih turns on his brother to stop him.

1984Out of print

Salah Jubair (Mohagher Iqbal)

IQ Marin

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s own history of the Bangsamoro, from the sultanates through colonial rule to the MNLF and the MILF, written by its chief negotiator under a pen name. The third edition of 1999 is the one usually cited.

1984Out of print

Michael O. Mastura

Ministry of Muslim Affairs

Early essays by Mastura on Moro history, law and politics, from the years before he entered Congress.

1983Out of print

Ligaya Fernando-Amilbangsa

Filipinas Foundation

The pangalay dance of Sulu and the dances, music and dress around it, documented in the field by the woman who brought it to the national stage.

1983Out of print

Mig Alvarez Enriquez

New Day Publishers

Three epic heroes put on stage, among them Bantugan, the hero of the Maranao Darangen.

1981In print

James Francis Warren

NUS Press

The Sulu Sultanate at its height as a trading state: the China trade in sea produce, the slave raiding that fed it, and the peoples it drew in, from Spanish, British and Dutch archives. The book that made the Sulu Zone a field of study. Second edition 2007.

1981Out of print

Antonio R. Enriquez

University of Queensland Press

Enriquez’s first novel, set among land surveyors in the Liguasan Marsh of Maguindanao, country he knew as a young man. First published in Australia, it was reissued in the Philippines in 2003 as Green Sanctuary.

1981Out of print

ed. Nagasura T. Madale

Alemar-Phoenix Publishing House

A reader of essays on the history, faiths and cultures of the Muslim peoples of the Philippines, edited by the Maranao anthropologist.

1980Out of print

T. J. S. George

Oxford University Press

A journalist’s account of the Moro revolt of the 1970s, the MNLF and the Marcos government’s war, written as it happened.

1980Out of print

Mindanao State University, University Research Center

Mindanao State University

Tausug tales collected and translated by the university’s research centre.

1979Out of print

Peter G. Gowing

New Day Publishers

A general introduction to the Muslim peoples of the Philippines, their history, faith and institutions and their place in the republic, written for Filipino readers from the Dansalan Research Center in Marawi.

1977Out of print

Peter G. Gowing

Philippine Center for Advanced Studies, University of the Philippines

How the United States ruled the Moro Province and the Department of Mindanao and Sulu, from the Bates Treaty to the start of Filipinization, from the records of the men who governed. Reprinted by New Day in 1983.

1977Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

Filipinas Foundation

The Moro revolts from the American conquest to the eve of martial law, by the historian who would lead the National Historical Institute.

1976Out of print

Andrew Dib Sherfan

Fotomatic

One of the few book-length accounts of the Yakan of Basilan: their farming, weaving, rites and faith as they were in the 1970s.

1975Out of print

eds. Mamitua Saber and Abdullah T. Madale

Solidaridad Publishing House

Essays by Maranao scholars on their own people: the sultanates, the torogan, the darangen, marriage, law and the lake.

1975Out of print

Irene U. Hassan, Seymour A. Ashley and Mary L. Ashley

Summer Institute of Linguistics, Philippines

The standard Tausug–English dictionary, from the Summer Institute of Linguistics; second edition 1994.

1973In print

Cesar Adib Majul

University of the Philippines Press

The standard history of the Muslim peoples of the Philippines: the coming of Islam, the sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao, and three centuries of Spanish wars against them, told from the Moro side of the record. Reissued by the University of the Philippines Press in 1999.

1973Out of print

Alexander Spoehr

University of Pittsburgh, Department of Anthropology

Excavations and surveys in Zamboanga and Sulu read for what they say of how the region’s peoples came to differ.

1972In print

Thomas M. Kiefer

Holt, Rinehart and Winston

The classic ethnography of the Tausug of Jolo: feud, friendship, law and honour as they were lived in the 1960s. Kept in print by Waveland Press.

1972Out of print

H. Arlo Nimmo

Chandler Publishing

The boat-dwelling Sama Dilaut of Tawi-Tawi in the 1960s and the changes already reaching them, from the anthropologist who lived among them.

1971Out of print

Reynaldo C. Ileto

Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications

Datu Uto, who ruled the upper Pulangi against the Spaniards in the last decades of their rule, and what his rise and fall show of Maguindanao politics. Ileto’s first book, reissued by Anvil in 2007.

1967In print

Howard P. McKaughan and Batua A. Macaraya

University of Hawaiʻi Press

The standard Maranao–English dictionary, compiled by an American linguist and a Maranao lexicographer.

1936In print

Vic Hurley

E. P. Dutton

A popular history of the Moros and their wars with Spain and the United States, by an American who had lived in Zamboanga; vivid, partisan and long the only book of its kind in English.

1923Free to read

Sydney A. Cloman

Doubleday, Page & Company

The memoir of a US Army officer posted to Sulu at the start of American rule, and what he made of the datus and the people he was sent to govern. Out of copyright and free to read.

1908Free to read

Najeeb M. Saleeby

Bureau of Public Printing, Manila

Sulu from its earliest written genealogies to the American arrival, drawn from the sultanate’s own documents, Spanish records and the author’s years in Jolo. Out of copyright and free to read.

1906Free to read

Jacinto Juanmartí, SJ

United States Government Printing Office

Juanmartí’s 1892 grammar translated into English for the American army by Captain C. C. Smith of the 14th Cavalry. Out of copyright and free to read.

1905Free to read

Najeeb M. Saleeby

Bureau of Public Printing, Manila

The first English account of Maguindanao’s genealogies and of the law codes and Islam of Maguindanao and Sulu, translated by an American colonial official who read the originals. Out of copyright and free to read.

1892Free to read

Jacinto Juanmartí, SJ

Tipografía Amigos del País

The Jesuit mission’s Maguindanaon–Spanish dictionary, the first for the language, compiled at Tamontaka. Out of copyright and free to read.