Panembahan Ratu I

Panembahan Ratu I, born Zainul Arifin, was the third sultan of Cirebon, on the north coast of Java, and reigned for 79 years, from 1570 to 1649 — one of the longest reigns in Javanese history. ^{1 2}

He took the throne in 1570, aged 23, in the line of Sunan Gunung Jati, after Fatahillah had held the government as regent for two years (1568–1570). ¹ Under him Cirebon's ports were kept safe from foreign attack and the sultanate became an important trading centre of the seventeenth century; after Banten conquered the Sunda kingdom in 1579, Cirebon and Banten divided its former territory along the Citarum river, and Cirebon fought one conflict with Sumedang, around 1585–1588, over the Harisbaya affair. ¹

From 1586 the centre of power in the east shifted from Pajang to Mataram. Mataram's first ruler, Sutawijaya, dealt with Panembahan Ratu as a friend, but Sultan Agung pressed Cirebon into vassalage in 1619 and used it as his main naval base against Batavia. ¹ Even so, Panembahan Ratu kept Cirebon neutral between hostile Banten and Mataram — both tied to him by descent and friendship — and Sultan Agung remembered him as a teacher. ¹ In the arts, he ordered the Singa Barong carriage in 1649, designed by Pangeran Angkawijaya. ¹

After some 79 years in power he died in 1649, of an illness caught on a visit to Sultan Agung at Mataram, and was buried in the Astana Gunung Sembung complex. ^{1 2} His son Adiningkusuma had died before him, so the throne passed to his grandson Pangeran Karim, who reigned as Panembahan Ratu II. ¹

The Indonesian article's infobox gives his religion as Islam and Sunni, and Wikidata records Islam and Sufism; no source read names a legal school for him, and his record keeps the attestation at that level. ^{1 2}