Quadarat tames the fierce lion from Castille

        Among the leaders produced by the Muslims in the Philippines in their more than three centuries of struggle against Spanish attempts to colonize and Christianize them, it was Quadarat (known to the Spaniards as Corralat) who fought the longest and hardest while achieving a good measure of success. From the Islamic point of view, he had many of the qualifications entitling him to leadership. Besides being a thoroughly brave man, he was extremely pious and sophisticated in Islamic learning. Patient in defeat, magnanimous in victory, steadfast in the Faith, and utterly selfless as a ruler, he gained the grudging admiration of many foes. However, a friar historian once likened him to Gustavus Adolphus, the Protestant Swedish monarch who had several times defeated Catholic armies, that is, as ”the thunderbolt of Lucifer, the scourge of Catholicism, and the Attila of the evangelical ministers, who never practiced courtesy towards them except when force or some reason compelled him to do so”. His followers, on the other hand, considered him a paradigm of the warrior-saint and often attributed magical powers to him. Undoubtedly, he possessed a charismatic leadership. Moreover, his claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad made him feel that he was “blessed”.