Mataram

A small city called Selaparang in East Lombok was the centre of Sasak power in Lombok from the 16th to the 17th century AD. At this time West Lombok was under the control of Balinese rajas, based on their states of Mataram and Cakranegara, until the island was invaded and occupied by the Dutch in 1894.

The modern city is characterized by urban sprawl in the middle of West Lombok, composed of three contiguous towns which were formerly separate but now share a single administration. From west to east, the old port town of Ampenan in the west merges into the administrative centre of Mataram and this in turn merges into the commercial town of Cakranegara. Further east still lies the district of Sweta, the location of Lombok's biggest market as well as Lombok's bus terminal. The towns are linked by a wide, 8km-long one-way street which begins as Jalan Langko in Apenan, becomes Jalan Pejanggik in Mataram and finishes as Jalan Selaparang in Cakranegara; it then continues east as the principal cross-island highway to Labuhan Lombok and then Kayangan, site of the Lombok-Sumbawa ferry.

The Sasak people are the indigenous people of Lombok and form the majority of Mataram's residents. Mataram is also home to Balinese, Javanese, Buginese, Bimanese, Tionghoa-Peranakan people of mixed Indonesian and Chinese descent and a small number of Arab Indonesian people, mainly of Yemeni descent who arrived when the town was known as "Ampenan". Despite being urban dwellers, the Sasak people of Mataram still identify strongly with their origins and the Sasak culture. There is also an ethnic Malay settlement in the Ampenan district, known as Kampung Melayu, where the residents are ethnic Malays (Ampenan Malays) and speak Malay language (Ampenan Malay). The people of Mataram had known the Malay language since the mid-19th century, or also before that. As mentioned by Wallace in his book The Malay Archipelago (1869), the people of Lombok dialogued with Fernandes about divinity. …