The earliest record of Surabaya is in a 1225 book Zhu fan zhi written by Zhao Rugua, in which it is called Jung-ya-lu, the ancient name of Surabaya.

Ma Huan documents the early fifteenth-century visit of Zheng He's treasure ships in his 1433 book Yingyai Shenglan: "after traveling south for more than twenty li, the ship reached Sulumayi, whose foreign name is Surabaya.

At the estuary, the outflowing water is fresh".

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Surabaya is a sultanate and a major political and military power in eastern Java.

It enters a conflict with, and is later captured by, the more powerful Sultanate of Mataram in 1625 under Sultan Agung.