The name Mataram refers not to an official title but to the fertile plains south of Mount Merapi, near present-day Yogyakarta. The Javanese had a habit of naming kingdoms after their capitals, and because two kingdoms ruled from this region centuries apart, historians distinguish this later realm as Mataram Islam or the Mataram Sultanate, separating it from its Hindu-Buddhist predecessor of the 9th century. In the 1570s, Kyai Gedhe Pamanahan was granted rule of the Mataram lands by the King of Pajang as a reward for military service. His son, Panembahan Senapati, founded the dynasty's capital at Kota Gede in 1582 and began expanding aggressively, forcing Cirebon and Galuh in West Java to acknowledge Mataram's overlordship by 1595. What started as a vassal state was becoming the dominant power on the island.

Under Sultan Agung Anyokrokusumo, who reigned from 1613 to 1645, Mataram became the most powerful kingdom in Java. He captured the northern port cities one by one, extending Mataram's control across most of the island. He launched campaigns against the still-Hindu kingdom of Blambangan in the far east and even mounted two assaults on the Dutch fortress at Batavia in 1628 and 1629. Both sieges failed, but they demonstrated an ambition that few Javanese rulers had matched since Majapahit. In 1632, Sultan Agung began constructing Imogiri, a royal burial complex on a hilltop about fifteen kilometers south of Yogyakarta. He died in 1645, leaving behind an empire that covered most of Java. Imogiri remains the resting place of the royalty of both Yogyakarta and Surakarta to this day, a shared inheritance from the kingdom's peak.

Agung's son, Susuhunan Amangkurat I, inherited the empire and immediately set about destroying it. His approach to stability was extermination: murdering local leaders, executing his own father-in-law, and closing ports and destroying ships along the coast to prevent regional rivals from accumulating wealth. This last decision devastated the Javanese maritime economy and transformed Mataram from a trading power into an agricultural inland kingdom. When ulema were suspected of plotting a coup, Amangkurat I ordered the massacre of between 5,000 and 6,000 religious scholars and their families. Despite this ruthlessness, he lacked his father's military ability. By 1646 he had signed a peace agreement with the Dutch, beginning the slow entanglement that would consume the kingdom.

The final act played out in the 1740s. After the capital at Kartasura fell, Pakubuwana II moved the court to Surakarta in 1746. But his brother Mangkubumi, cheated out of a promised reward and humiliated by a Dutch governor who called him "too ambitious" before the entire court, raised a rebellion. The Third Javanese War of Succession raged until 1755, when the Treaty of Giyanti formally divided Mataram into the Sultanate of Yogyakarta under Mangkubumi and the Sunanate of Surakarta under Pakubuwana III. Later, two smaller princely houses were carved out: the Mangkunegaran in Solo and the Pakualaman in Yogyakarta. The kingdom that had once unified most of Java was now four courts, each claiming legitimacy, none commanding the whole.

The political fracture was permanent, but the cultural legacy proved more durable than any treaty. Much of what the world recognizes as Javanese culture took its present form during the Mataram period. Gamelan music, batik textile art, the forging of the kris dagger, wayang kulit shadow puppetry, and the refined court dances of the Javanese tradition were all codified and formalized under Mataram's patronage. Sultan Agung's military campaigns spread these traditions eastward into Surabaya and Pasuruan and westward into the Sundanese highlands of Priangan. The four successor courts in Yogyakarta and Surakarta still preserve these arts with fierce devotion, each insisting their version is the authentic one. For visitors to Central Java, the rivalry is not abstract; it is visible in every performance, every batik pattern, every gesture of a court dancer.