The Kru Se Mosque, 7 km (4 miles) east of Pattani in southern Thailand was built in the 1570s by Lim To Khieng, a visiting Chinese merchant who had married a local woman and converted to Islam. To show his devotion to his new faith, he started building a mosque. His sister, Lim Ko Niaw, sailed from China to protest about his conversion, and he swore that he would return to China as soon as the new mosque was finished. However, he made sure that it never was, and his sister, on her deathbed, cursed the building and anyone who attempted to complete it. Her shrine, Chao Mae Lim Ko Niao, located in downtown Pattani, and the Kru Se Mosque, still attract huge numbers of devotees, the former mainly ethnic Chinese, and the latter Muslim. Pattani, founded in the 15th century, was once the capital of an independent Malay-speaking sultanate. Today it is the spiritual heart and most important town in the Malay Muslim region of Thailands Deep South. About 75 per cent of the population are Malay-speaking Muslims (figures are disputed), and the city and region are at the centre of the current political instability that has disturbed the Deep South border provinces for at least four decades.