Sumenep

Sumenep at the eastern end of Madura has a palace whose buildings still stand, raised in the late eighteenth century under Panembahan Sumolo, with the Taman Sare — a tiered bathing place in its grounds — and the Labhang Mesem as its gate. Its design carries Javanese, Chinese and European elements together, and local account names a Chinese architect.

On a hill outside the town stands Asta Tinggi, the burial complex of Sumenep's rulers, with domed structures and carving showing the same mixture. Sumenep is therefore among the few places in Madura where a court order can be observed in its buildings and not only in accounts, and this is why the Madurese spoken here is held to be the most refined: a refined register grows where there is a court that requires it.

Sumenep is a salt centre: its coastal pans produce much of East Java's smallholder salt by seawater evaporation little changed in method, and their yield depends entirely on the length of the dry season. Madurese tobacco is grown on dry inland land and sold to kretek factories, at prices set by the buyers and sharply volatile.

What is seldom said is that most of Sumenep Regency is sea. It takes in more than a hundred and twenty islands, some inhabited and some not, running far east toward the waters of Sulawesi. The people of those islands — Kangean, Sapudi and Masalembu among them — have speech and customs differing from mainland Madura, and some do not speak Madurese at all. Accounts equating “Madura” with its main island miss this.