Here's a snippet that might be of interest to you, Charles, in regards to on how cultures mingled back in those days on that little corner of the world.
The Sulu Archipelago seems to have become the dumping ground for the Oriental world. Here you find renegade Arabs; native Indian soldiers, for whom India has become too hot; even the Sudan, bad as it is, occasionally has a man so bad, he has to drift to Sulu. Like a Western mining camp of old, Sulu is full of adventure. - John F. Bass, Harper's Weekly, November 18, 1899
That little inside joke, on finding a wootz kris blade, might not be so far fetched, after all...
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