Chapter I A Brief History The past belongs to those who control the present. —Joel L. Swerdlow The region known as Arakan—or more recently, Rakhine State—was a predominantly Muslim entity prior to the arrival of the Rakhine ethnic group around 1000 AD. The Rakhine shared the same ancestral lineage as the larger Bamar ethnic group which dominated Burma and Siam. The history of unified Burma begins with the rise of the Pagan empire under King Anawrahta in 1044 AD. Within 15 years of his ascension to the throne, Anawrahta expanded the Burmese empire as far east as Siam and began to turn his eye to modern Burma’s eastern-most region (Ibrahim, 2016). By the turn of the century, the Pagan empire had conquered the Mons and emerged as the first largely ethnic Bamar state, unifying previously divided areas, and with Theravada Buddhism as the state religion. A side effect of merging the many ethnicities in the region was cultural pluralism. To address this matter, the throne sponsored the construction of many Buddhist buildings, so much so that it came to be known as the defender of Buddhism, while also incorporating animist deities into the religion. Integration during the Pagan era inaugurated movement away from cultural and societal norms shared with India to a specifically Burmese national identity (Ibrahim, 2016).