(Caption from Nikkei: Ruins of Astana Darul Jambangan, the sultanate’s ancestral seat, in Jolo.(Photo by Nickee Butlangan)

Through arbitration proceedings launched in 2019, their commercial claim on Sabah has ballooned to an astonishing $15 billion. The sum, awarded by a Spanish arbitrator in France in 2022, reflected the value of oil, gas and palm oil that Malaysia extracts from Sabah, its second largest state.

Facing one of the largest arbitral awards in history, Malaysia has begun a lengthy appeals process in European courts. Meanwhile, lawyers for the family have launched enforcement claims in jurisdictions where Malaysia holds assets, including Luxembourg and France.

The claim holds that Malaysia violated the contract for the lease of Sabah when it stopped paying the rent, and secondly, that the contract should have been renegotiated after oil and gas were discovered.

As colonial lines were redrawn, North Borneo became a British protectorate, then joined an independent Malaysia in 1963 as the state of Sabah. Over the past five decades, Sabah has produced 1.92 billion barrels of oil, a fifth of all oil production for Malaysia and its oil and gas company Petronas.

The ripples of Agbimuddin’s failed invasion highlight the unresolved legacy of colonialism in this corner of the South China Sea, where the borders of modern states were carved across preexisting nations, cultures and identities.

The financial stakes are high, with the award of $15 billion equal to nearly a fifth of Malaysia’s budget this year. It is also an unimaginable sum for the Kirams of Sulu, one of the Philippines’ poorest and least developed provinces, scarred by decades of separatist insurgency. Members of the family see the award – or a settlement with Malaysia – as a potential resource for the newly autonomous Muslim region in Mindanao.

“We fear dying and leaving this situation for our children,” Muedzul Lail Tan Kiram, the reigning sultan in Sulu, told Nikkei Asia of his family’s claim to Sabah. “Let’s think of a solution now.”

If the award is ever paid, the windfall could transform the fortunes of the now-impoverished dynasty. At its height in 1836, Sulu stretched from Palawan to Zamboanga, Jolo and Tawi-Tawi in the southern Philippines.

Sultan Jamalul II, the last Sulu monarch to be recognized by the Philippines and who died in 1936, stood at the head of a population estimated to be 500,000.

Even at its twilight, the sultanate hosted dignitaries such as William Howard Taft, who served as governor-general when the Philippines was a U.S. territory.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who landed on Jolo island in1905 with Taft and a delegation from her father, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, wrote in her diary of the Muslim tribes she met:

“There were thousands of Moros from the neighboring islands as well as from Jolo. The palms and the ocean were like a drop scene. One felt as though a highly colored stage setting had suddenly become real.”

Alice received a pearl ring and a marriage proposal from Jamalul II, great-uncle to Muedzul and Jamalul III. His datus, or chieftains, wore silk turbans and shirts fastened with bejeweled gold pins and presented her with jewels and textiles, she wrote. Today, the glory has faded. The sultanate’s ancestral house, Astana Darul Jambangan, sits on a hill in the center of Jolo, the main island of Sulu province.

The island’s pink sand beaches and clear waters are unspoiled by development and tourism, perhaps because of its unfortunate history with violent extremists.

Now mostly defeated, the Abu Sayyaf group besieged the southern Philippines beginning in 1989, using Jolo as a base to conduct kidnappings and execute Filipino and foreign hostages.

What remains of the palace walls are two stone pillars, so gnarled and weather-beaten that they blend into the surrounding trees. The three-story wooden structure was said to be the largest royal house in the Philippines but was destroyed by a typhoon in 1932.

Four years later when Jamalul II died, an obituary in Time Magazine mentioned an annual rent of $5,000 paid by the British North Borneo Company, then a princely sum. Childless, he left his estate to eight nieces and nephews as well as his sister-in-law but did not appoint a successor –starting a succession feud that continues three generations later.

One of the claimants to the throne is Sultan Muedzul, who lives in a yellow bungalow on Jolo island with his wife and seven children.

Their community is gated but not grand, far removed from his charmed childhood as Sultan Esmail’s grandson, then as Sultan Mahakuttah’s heir.

There were mansions and royal audiences and private planes to Manila, where Esmail and Mahakuttah would meet with Presidents Diosdado Macapagal and Ferdinand Marcos to discuss the Sabah claim.

Now 57, clad in a black thobe and clean-shaven except for a graying goatee, Muedzul traces the evaporation of his power and properties from Mahakuttah’s early death, when Muedzul was only 8 years old.

“My older cousins took advantage of my youth,” he told Nikkei Asia. "The only property that was left to me were the ruins of the royal palace."

Muedzul’s cut of the annual rental payment for Sabah –which he received annually until the 2013 standoff – was a meager 200 pesos ($3.63) that grew to 1,200 pesos as older relatives died. His uncle Fuad Kiram is named in the arbitration as their clan’s administrator.

The dividends were so negligible that some branches of the family, such as the wealthy Rasuls of Tawi-Tawi, declined their annual payments before 2013. Their illustrious clan includes Santanina Rasul, a Philippine senator from 1987 to1995, and her husband, Abraham Rasul, a former ambassador.

“It was 70,000 pesos a year,” Salma Pir Rasul, daughter of the late Santanina and Abraham, said about the lease payment. “It followed literally the terms of the lease, which was centuries old. They didn’t even raise it to the present value. That’s even less than the rent for an apartment in Manila.”

Court documents describe the claimants “in a position of hardship” compared to the billions of dollars in hydrocarbon and palm oil revenue that Malaysia reaps from Sabah each year.

Most of the family live as ordinary middle-class citizens, including the eight named claimants who descend from Jamalul II’s nine original heirs. The 74-year-old Taj Mahal Kiram-Tarsum Nuqui, who administers two large portions of the will, was the first female Muslim officer in the Philippine armed forces, retiring from the Air Force in1998.

The other administrators are retirees, microbusiness owners or civil servants in their 50s to 70s. The youngest is Sheramar Kiram, daughter of Jamalul III and half-sister of Jacel. Ahmad Sampang died in May 2023, leaving his brother Widz Raunda Sampang with a combined 8.32% share.