Kampong Glam takes its name from the gelam tree and the Malay word for village. It became Singapore's Malay-Muslim quarter after 1824, when land here was set aside for Sultan Hussein Shah and around 600 members of his household following the treaty that ceded Singapore to the East India Company. It was gazetted as a conservation area on 7 July 1989.
Start before Raffles, because the district did
Almost every account of this place opens in 1819 with a British ship. That is not where the story starts.
Before the colonial period, there was a village by the sea here belonging to the orang laut, the sea peoples, from the Glam tribe. The National Library's account records that the area was known as Seduyong before it took the name Kampong Glam, and that it was the orang laut who introduced the newer name.
They named it for a tree. The gelam, a Melaleuca species also called cajeput, and it was worth naming a place after because almost every part of it had a use. The bark was made into awnings and sails. The timber went into boats and firewood. The fruit was ground into a pepper substitute called mercha bolong. The leaves were boiled down into cajeput oil, used as a remedy for rheumatism and cramps.
So the name is not decorative. It records a working relationship with a plant, from people who were here first.
1819 and 1824: two treaties, one land grant
The two dates get conflated constantly, so it is worth separating them.
In 1819, a treaty between the British East India Company, Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor and Temenggong Abdul Rahman gave the company the right to establish a trading post. Sultan Hussein settled with his family and followers at Kampong Glam. The Temenggong and his people went to Telok Blangah.
In 1824, Sultan Hussein signed the agreement that ceded Singapore to the East India Company outright. Following that, land at Kampong Glam was set aside for the Sultan and roughly 600 members of his family. He had the Temenggong build a palace here, a large istana under an attap roof.
Not everyone approved of the arrangement. The National Library's account notes that the siting of Kampong Glam caused a rift between Raffles and William Farquhar, who thought the land would serve better as the island's commercial centre.
The district was formally laid out in 1831 by two hundred convict labourers, in eight months, at a recorded cost of five hundred dollars.
Why Singapore has ethnic quarters at all
Under the Raffles Town Plan of 1822, the settlement was carved up by community. European Town, a Chinese kampong, a Chulia area for people from the Coromandel Coast, and Arab and Bugis kampongs. Kampong Glam went to the Sultan and his household, and to the Malay and Arab communities, many of them merchants.
This is the same plan that produced Chinatown and Little India. When people ask why Little India is called Little India, the answer runs back to the same 1822 document. Singapore's ethnic districts were not organic. They were drawn on a map.
Who actually lived here
The Malay-Muslim quarter label is accurate but it flattens something more interesting.
Alongside the Sultan's household, the residents included Bugis, Arabs, Javanese and Boyanese. Malay migrants arrived from Malacca, the Riau Islands and Sumatra. The National Library's account records that by 1824, at least a third of the residents were Chinese.
Communities clustered with their own, and that produced mini-kampongs inside the district: Kampong Bugis, Kampong Java, Kampong Malacca. Through the second half of the nineteenth century the numbers grew steadily, first from Sumatra and later from across Indonesia and Malaya.
You can still hear this in the old street names. Sultan Gate was ong hui khau in Hokkien, the mouth of the palace, and also phah ti koi, the street of the iron-smiths. In Tamil it was Raja Kottei, the Raja's palace. The stretch of beach was twa che kha, the foot of the big well, after a well that once sat in the middle of the road at Sultan Gate.
Three languages, one street, three different things worth naming it after.
The street names are a map of the Muslim world
Bussorah after Basra. Muscat. Kandahar. Baghdad. These were approved by the municipal commissioners at a meeting on 15 April 1910, and they were named for places across the Muslim world.
They reflect what the district was connected to. Kampong Glam sat inside a trading and pilgrimage network that ran from the Malay Archipelago through the Arabian peninsula. The Malay Heritage Centre's rebuilt galleries now give space to figures like Hajah Maimunah, who helped shape early pilgrimage networks out of this area, which is the sort of story that used to sit outside the standard account.
Sultan Mosque, and the date almost everyone gets wrong
The first mosque here went up in the 1820s beside the Sultan's residence, a single-storey structure with a tiered roof, built with a contribution of three thousand dollars. Some accounts credit the East India Company, others credit Raffles personally.
By 1924 the century-old building needed replacing, and the trustees approved a larger mosque. The Irish architect Denis Santry, of the Singapore firm Swan and Maclaren, took the commission. He also designed the Cenotaph and the former Tanjong Pagar Railway Station.
Here is the part that is wrong nearly everywhere you look. A lot of sources will tell you the current mosque was built in 1924, or 1928. Both are dates from the middle of the process. According to the National Heritage Board's record, fundraising opened in 1924, no money at all came in during 1926 and 1927 as the global downturn set in, fundraising restarted in 1928 and building began that same year, and the rebuild was completed on 26 February 1932. The work was done in phases so that worshippers could keep using the mosque throughout.
It was gazetted as a national monument on 8 March 1975.
If you go, look at the base of the two golden domes. That dark band is glass bottle ends, donated by poorer members of the community during the fundraising, so that people who could not give money could still have a part of the building. It is the best detail in Kampong Glam and most visitors walk straight past it.
Istana Kampong Gelam, and what reopened in April 2026
The palace you can see today at 85 Sultan Gate is not the original attap-roofed istana. The current building went up between 1836 and 1843, in a Palladian style, and the architect is believed to have been George Drumgoole Coleman. It was gazetted as a national monument on 6 August 2015.
The government announced plans for the building in 1993, and in March 1999 confirmed it would become a Malay heritage centre. It opened as the Malay Heritage Centre in 2005.
Then it closed. On 30 October 2022 the centre shut for a full redevelopment, and it stayed shut for three and a half years.
It reopened on 25 April 2026. Six rebuilt permanent galleries, 279 artefacts, and a new organising theme called Dari Rantau Ke Rumah, From the Region to Home, which traces how Malay communities here were shaped by the wider Nusantara. There is more attention to Malay women's contributions than the old galleries gave. If your last visit was before late 2022, you have not seen this building.
Admission arrangements have changed since the reopening period, so check the centre's own site before you go rather than trusting a blog post, including this one.
The decades that do not make the brochure
Heritage writing tends to run from founding straight to conservation, with nothing in between. The middle is the interesting part.
By the early 1920s, many Malay residents were moving out to resettlement areas at Geylang Serai and Kampong Eunos. The Arab merchant families, who had been central to the district's commercial life, were relocating to Joo Chiat, Tanglin and Bukit Tunggal. And the National Library's account is blunt about what the district became known for in that decade: by the 1920s it had a reputation for its red-light trade more than for its community.
Traditional trades held on for a long time and then did not. On 16 December 2006 a fire destroyed four shophouses at Sultan Gate. One of them was a blacksmith's, the last one in the area, which had been used for educational tours.
A conserved district is not a preserved one. Buildings can be saved while the trades inside them disappear.
1989, and what conservation actually did
Kampong Glam was gazetted as a conservation area on 7 July 1989. The shophouses along Arab Street, Bussorah Street, Baghdad Street and Haji Lane survived because of it.
What conservation protects is the fabric, not the tenancy. So the shophouses stand, and inside them now you will find design studios, galleries, cafes, bars and restaurants sitting alongside the textile and carpet shops and the stores selling religious goods that have been here for generations. In 2014 the One Kampong Gelam association was formed to run the district as a cultural precinct, and it is behind the road closures, the Ramadan programming and the general shape of the place today.
Whether that counts as preservation or replacement is a fair argument, and both sides of it are visible on a single walk down Bussorah Street.
Kampong Glam or Kampong Gelam
Both. The National Library records that it was originally spelled Campong Gelam when it was named around 1830. Today, URA, the National Heritage Board and the merchants' association all use Kampong Gelam, while common usage and most maps say Kampong Glam.
Neither is wrong. The Gelam spelling is closer to the Malay and to the tree.
Walking it in ninety minutes
The history is more interesting on foot than on a page. This route works and it ends somewhere you can sit down.
Come out of Bugis MRT at Exit B. Walk to Sultan Gate first and start at Istana Kampong Gelam and the Malay Heritage Centre, since the galleries give you the frame for everything else. Allow an hour if you go inside.
Cut through to Masjid Sultan next. Stand on Bussorah Street looking at the main facade, which is the angle the building was designed for, and find the glass bottle ends at the base of the domes.
Then Arab Street for the textile shops, which are the last working remnant of the district's merchant trade. Haji Lane after, for the contrast, which is the whole argument about conservation in one narrow alley.
Finish on Arab Street itself, slowly. It is the last stretch where the district's merchant trade is still visibly working rather than commemorated.
That same Exit B walk runs in reverse if you are coming off the Marina Bay circuit during Grand Prix weekend, which is worth knowing because the roads around the track stay shut long after the race does. We have set out the route and the timings in our guide to late night halal food near the F1 Singapore circuit.
We are on that street, at number 58, and the food we cook comes out of the same trading world that named Bussorah and Muscat streets. That is the only sales pitch in this article. If you want directions or opening hours they are on our Google Business Profile, and if you are curious about how we handle halal, we set it out in full on Anatoli's halal restaurant page.
Author
Chef Sinan
Head Chef, Anatolia Restaurant SG
Chef Sinan has spent more than thirty years in professional kitchens across Turkey and Southeast Asia, and has been cooking on Arab Street since Anatolia opened. He writes here on Turkish food and on Kampong Glam, the district the restaurant sits in.
Historical detail in this article is drawn from the National Library Board's Singapore Infopedia, the National Heritage Board's Roots records, and the Urban Redevelopment Authority's conservation records. Where accounts differ, we have said so.
Anatolia Restaurant SG, 58 Arab Street, Singapore 199755
+65 8227 7270 | anatoliarestaurantsg.com
Frequently asked questions
Is Kampong Glam the same as Arab Street?
No. Arab Street is one street inside Kampong Glam. The district covers roughly 56 acres in the Rochor area and takes in Bussorah Street, Baghdad Street, Muscat Street, Kandahar Street, Haji Lane, Sultan Gate and more. Arab Street is the best known of them, which is why the two names get used interchangeably, but the district is much larger than the street.
What is so special about Kampong Glam?
It is the district that was set aside for Sultan Hussein Shah and the Malay-Muslim community under the colonial town plan, and it is the only one of Singapore's ethnic quarters that still has both a royal palace and the national mosque standing in it. Istana Kampong Gelam and Masjid Sultan are both gazetted national monuments, and the whole district has been a conservation area since 7 July 1989.
Why is it called Kampong Glam?
Kampong means village in Malay. Glam, more properly gelam, is the Malay name for a Melaleuca tree also known as cajeput, which grew here and which the orang laut used for boat timber, sails, firewood, a pepper substitute and a medicinal oil. The National Library records the area's earlier name as Seduyong.
Why was Sultan Gate in Kampong Gelam so named?
It marks the way in to the Sultan's palace compound, and the old vernacular names say so plainly. Hokkien speakers called it ong hui khau, the mouth of the palace. In Tamil it was Raja Kottei, the Raja's palace. It carried a second Hokkien name too, phah ti koi, the street of the iron-smiths, after the blacksmiths who worked there.
Who is buried at Sultan Mosque?
Nobody. Sultan Mosque is a working mosque and a national monument, not a burial site. The royal graves people are usually thinking of are at the Johor Royal Mausoleum in Telok Blangah, in the grounds of Masjid Temenggong Daeng Ibrahim, which was established as a cemetery in 1825 and holds members of the Bendahara dynasty. That is on the other side of the city from Kampong Glam.
Can non-Muslims enter Sultan Mosque?
Yes. Sultan Mosque receives visitors of all faiths outside prayer times, with modest dress required and robes available at the entrance for anyone who needs one. Visiting hours are set by the mosque and change around prayer times and Friday congregational prayers, so check the mosque's own website before you go.
Why is Little India called Little India?
Same reason Kampong Glam exists. The Raffles Town Plan of 1822 divided the settlement into areas by community, including a European town, a Chinese kampong, a Chulia area for people from the Coromandel Coast, and Arab and Bugis kampongs. Singapore's ethnic districts were drawn on a map rather than forming on their own.
What should you eat in Kampong Glam?
The district's food follows its history, which means Malay, Arab, Turkish and wider Middle Eastern cooking sitting alongside newer cafes. Charcoal-grilled meats, mezze, murtabak, nasi padang and Turkish desserts are all within a few minutes' walk of Masjid Sultan. Most of the independent kitchens here are halal, though standards differ between certified, Muslim-owned and halal-ingredient venues, so ask if it matters to you.
Go and look at it
This is a district people walk through on the way to somewhere else. The buildings are the easy part to notice and the hardest part to read.
Start at Sultan Gate. Find the bottle ends on the domes. Look at what is inside the shophouses on Haji Lane and then at what is inside the ones on Arab Street, and decide for yourself what conservation preserved and what it replaced. Give it two hours rather than one.
If you want to keep going, we have written about what to eat on a night out in Kampong Glam, about Turkish coffee, which arrived in this part of the world by way of the same trade routes that gave these streets their names, and about where to eat after the F1 night race if you are here in October.
