Get involved
Spotted an error, or have a document worth adding? Every correction and every source makes the record stronger — and the official source is always right where we are wrong.
History · book
No longer sold new: look for it in a library, or for a used copy.
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.
Peter G. Gowing's book gives an overview of the religion, history, culture and situation of the Muslim peoples of the Philippines in the late 1970s. It runs to nearly 300 pages and was published by New Day in 1979.
Gowing explains the terms "Muslim Filipinos" and "Moros" as names for all Filipinos who are Muslims, as distinct from Christian Filipinos. A Mindanao annotated bibliography describes the book as a way to correct the lack of information, misunderstandings and wrong ideas about the Moros that were common among other Filipinos.

1977Out of print
Mandate in MorolandPeter G. Gowing
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.
1988Out of print
Understanding Islam and Muslims in the Philippinesed. Peter G. Gowing
Essays on Islam as it is lived in the Philippines, collected and edited by Peter Gowing.

1973In print
Muslims in the PhilippinesCesar Adib Majul
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.
1985Out of print
The Contemporary Muslim Movement in the PhilippinesCesar Adib Majul
Majul’s short account of the Moro struggle of the 1970s and the rise of the Moro National Liberation Front, written for readers abroad.

1905Free to read
Studies in Moro History, Law, and ReligionNajeeb M. Saleeby
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.

1908Free to read
The History of SuluNajeeb M. Saleeby
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.

1981In print
The Sulu Zone, 1768–1898James Francis Warren
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.

2002In print
Iranun and BalangingiJames Francis Warren
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.

1983Out of print
Three Philippine Epic PlaysMig Alvarez Enriquez
Three epic heroes put on stage, among them Bantugan, the hero of the Maranao Darangen.

1985Out of print
The White Horse of Alih and Other StoriesMig Alvarez Enriquez
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.
1988Out of print
Understanding Islam and Muslims in the Philippinesed. Peter G. Gowing
Essays on Islam as it is lived in the Philippines, collected and edited by Peter Gowing.

1989Out of print
Triumph of Moro DiplomacyRuurdje Laarhoven
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.
2018In print
How the Spaniards Won in Marawi but Lost in CaviteRey Luis Adeva Montesclaros
The Spanish campaigns against the Maranao in the 1890s, set against the revolution that broke out in Luzon at the same time.