Mahmud Shah of Pahang

Sultan Mahmud Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Muhammad Shah (died 1530) was the fifth Sultan of Pahang from 1519 to 1530. He succeeded his grand nephew, Abdul Jamal Shah I upon his death in 1519. His eleven years reign was marked with close relations with his namesake Mahmud Shah, the last Sultan of Malacca, in supporting the latter's struggle against the Portuguese in Malacca, bringing Pahang into a number of armed conflicts with Portugal.

Personal life Sultan Mahmud was known as Raja Ahmad before his accession. He was the youngest of the three sons of the first Sultan of Pahang, Muhammad Shah by his wife Mengindra Putri, a princess from Kelantan. His first royal wife was his first cousin Raja Fatimah binti al-Marhum Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah, daughter of the seventh Sultan of Malacca.

From his marriage to an unnamed first wife, Sultan Mahmud had issued two sons, the eldest being Raja Muzaffar, who later succeeded him in 1530 as the next sultan, and the younger Raja Zainal.

Reign At the beginning of his reign in 1519, it was claimed in Os Portugueses em Africa, America e Oceania that a Portuguese ambassador Duarte Coelho had secured an agreement with the Sultan for an annual tribute of a cup of gold, to establish Pahang as a vassal of Portuguese Malacca. However, the agreement was thought to have been nullified shortly afterwards, following the marriage alliance established in the same year between Sultan Mahmud and the deposed Sultan of Malacca, Mahmud Shah of Bintan.

Ignorant of this development, Albuquerque sent three ships to the port of Pahang for provisions, where two of their captains and thirty men were killed. The third captain escaped, but was killed with all his men at Java. not knowing that the Sultan there was a son-in-law of Sultan Mahmud of Bintan, were ambushed and killed. The captured survivors were sent to Bintan and forced to embrace Islam, while those who refused were executed by blowing from a gun.

Death Sultan Mahmud died in 1530 of unknown cause, and was succeeded by his first son, Raja Muzaffar. He was posthumously styled as Marhum di Hilir ('the late ruler who was buried downstream').