The Majapahit Period

The Majapahit Period, 1293 to 1527, was the era of the Majapahit Empire, a Hindu-Buddhist thalassocracy based on the island of Java that is generally regarded as the last and greatest of the pre-Islamic Indonesian empires. Under its most powerful ruler, Hayam Wuruk, and his chief minister Gajah Mada, Majapahit's influence extended across much of the Indonesian archipelago and into parts of the Malay Peninsula, controlling maritime trade routes and leaving behind the Nagarakretagama, a major work of Javanese court literature. The empire fragmented after Hayam Wuruk's death amid succession disputes and the rising power of Islamic sultanates on Java's coast, and its final decline in the early sixteenth century marked the effective end of large-scale Hindu-Buddhist political power in the archipelago.