Balambangan lies at the extreme southeastern tip of Java, in the area of the present-day kabupaten (administrative district) of Banyuwangi. From the sixteenth century onwards, it was sandwiched between Muslim Javanese states to the west and Hindu Balinese states to the east. Legends about early Islam in Balambangan are unique among Javanese conversion tales in that they describe failure. According to the eighteenth-century chronicle Sejarah Banten (History of Banten), a foreign holy man named Molana Usalam landed in Balambangan, whose ruler had a very ill daughter. Molana Usalam