Legendary accounts shroud Singapore's earliest history, but chroniclers as far back as the second century alluded to towns or cities that may have been situated at that favored location.

Some of the earliest records of this region are the reports of Chinese officials who served as envoys to the seaports and empires of the Nanyang (southern ocean), the Chinese term for Southeast Asia.

The earliest first-hand account of Singapore appears in a geographical handbook written by the Chinese traveler Wang Dayuan in 1349.

Wang noted that Singapore Island, which he called Tan-ma-hsi (Danmaxi), was a haven for several hundred boatloads of pirates who preyed on passing ships.

He also described a settlement of Malay and Chinese living on a terraced hill known in Malay legend as Bukit Larangan (Forbidden Hill), the reported burial place of ancient kings.

The fourteenth-century Javanese chronicle, the Nagarakertagama, also noted a settlement on Singapore Island, calling it Temasek.

A Malay seventeenth-century chronicle, the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), recounts the founding of a great trading city on the island in 1299 by a ruler from Palembang, Sri Tri Buana, who named the city Singapura ("lion city") after sighting a strange beast that he took to be a lion.

The prosperous Singapura, according to the Sejarah Melayu, in the mid-fourteenth century suffered raids by the expanding Javanese Majapahit Empire to the south and the emerging Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya to the north, both at various times claiming the island as a vassal state.

The Sejarah Melayu, as well as contemporaneous Portuguese accounts, note the arrival around 1388 of King Paramesvara from Palembang, who was fleeing Majapahit control.

Although granted asylum by the ruler of Singapura, the king had murdered his host and seized power.

Within a few years, however, Majapahit or Thai forces again drove out Paramesvara, who had fled northward to found eventually the great seaport and kingdom of Malacca.

In 1414 Paramesvara converts to Islam and establishes the Malacca Sultanate, which in time controls most of the Malay Peninsula, eastern Sumatra, and the islands between, including Singapura.

Fighting ships for the sultanate are supplied by a senior Malaccan official based at Singapura.

The city of Malacca servesnot only as the major seaport of the region in the fifteenth century, but also as the focal point for the dissemination of Islam throughout insular Southeast Asia.

The Theravada Buddhist Kingdom of Ayutthaya, or Siam, is regarded as the strongest power in Indochina by the end of the fourteenth century, but it lacks the manpower to dominate the region.

Majapahit, an Indianized kingdom based in eastern Java, has entered a period of decline with conflict over succession.

In the 1390s, Majapahit had sent thousands of ships to attack Palembang, the former capital of the ancient, partly Hindu, partly Buddhist kingdom of Srivijaya that had controlled a large part of what is now Malaysia and Indonesia.

Parameswara, who had lived in Palembang as a prince within the Srivijayan empire but the conquest had forced him and many others to flee Palembang.

Parameswara in particular had sailed to the island of Temasek (an early city on the site of modern Singapore) to escape persecution and had come under the protection of Temagi, a Malay chief from Patani who had been appointed by the King of Siam as Regent of Temasek.

However, Temasek has been a vassal of Majapahit since 1365.

After several days, Parameswara had been betrayed by Temagi and had been compelled to kill him.

For the past four years, Parameswara has ruled Temasik, where he is finally attacked by the Majapahit armies when one of the ministers opens the gates for Majapahit marines to attack the palace, forcing Parameswara to evacuate.

Parameswara had headed north to establish a new settlement at Muar, where he had contemplates establishing his kingdom at either Biawak Busuk or at Kota Buruk.

Finding that the Muar location is not suitable, he had continued his journey northwards.

Along the way, …

…Parameswara had reportedly visited Sening Ujong (present Sungai Ujong) before reaching a fishing village at the mouth of the Bertam River (the present Malacca River).

This settlement will evolve over time to become the location of modern day Malacca Town, the capital of the Sultanate of Malacca established by Parameswara in about 1402.