History of Kuala Lumpur City

In the late 1800 Kuala Lumpur was just a landing places where boats coming up the Klang River could bring supplies for and take away tin from the newly opened Ampang mines. Since 1857 Chinese had been coming into Kuala Lumpur and by that time many Malays, mostly from Sumatra had settles in a kampong at the place now known as Jalan Silang. Another kampong, kampong Rawa, was located between Jalan Tun Perak and Jalan Gereja. Their cemetery was located on the present's site of Masjid Jamek, this junction of the Klang and Gombak Rivers - this location originally known as Lumpur (mud) later becoming Kuala Lumpur (muddy estuary).

The small township that had developed from the success of tin mining was badly damages during the Selangor Civil War and was at one time nearly abandoned altogether. The dispute in 1866 between the Sumatran Malays and the Bugis resulted in this civil war between Raja Mahadi and Raja Abdullah, their respective leader. (Raja Mahadi was the rightful ruler of Klang but was dislodged by the sultan in favor of Raja Abdullah, a son of a Raja from Riau. The Chinese, under their Capitan Liu Ngim Kong, sided with the Sultan and Raja Abdullah in this dispute.