THE COMMUNITIES OF KAMPUNG MELAYU

The community of Kampung Melayu applied the principal of reciprocally, especially in the field of trading and religious activities. However, the using of Malay language and principal of Islam in the daily life has contributed to the harmonization between people with the various cultural backgrounds.

The community of Kampung Melayu also practiced a mutual cooperation (gotong royong) between ethnics. This spirit also supported by the norm of Islamic teaching, as a majority religion in this community.
The social structure system in Kampung Melayu has been reflected by the relation between land lord group and the people who rent land from them. Physically the gap could be shown by the wall which was build around the landlord’s house, meanwhile the people who rent their land stayed in the ordinary house for the common people.

There were some local leaders, in which each of them had their own responsibility:
 Islamic leader: there were two well known traditional Islamic leader which had a great influenced to the community, one was the Arabic ancestry (from Habib Arab Hadramaut) and the other from Javanese ancestry (Kiai Saleh darat)
• Arabic Captain, who got the trust from the Dutch Government to control and manage the commercial and social life of the Hadramaut group (the Arab group) in Kampung Melayu
• The Chinese Local chief (Lurah) to control and manage the land tax in this settlement
• The Local chiefs of cosmopolitan’s trader are group in Kampung Melayu. There were three local chief leaders which had responsibility to manage and make coordination all the problem of land tax and buildings, to manage and control the community for living harmoniously, and keep the good relationship between ethnics in Kampung Melayu.