Genealogies and narrative traditions from the early modern Malay world contain several linear histories of Malay courts and communities becoming Muslim. These histories are imbibed with other Persianate historical traditions and invariably honour certain actors as the progenitors of devotional communities spanning from Mecca to Melaka. These are genealogical narratives of masters, ‘ulama, courtiers, warriors and sailors who were either the heirs of Islamic and pre-Islamic prophets and tutelary divinities and the beneficiaries of their teachings and techniques, or industrious Muslims or to-be-Muslims who met time and space-travelling prophets across Indian Ocean port cities. These texts contain accounts of encounters with or dreams and visions of Muhammad in Arab and Malay settings and stories of spectacular conversions and circumcisions, as well as memories of the Qur’an being revealed to Malay ears. Malay genealogical texts, moreover, contained anecdotes about peripatetic believers who traversed Mecca, the Coromandel Coast and the Malay Archipelago, and led new cultural and political centres propagating ethical living and Islamic selfhood. As this paper argues, appreciating the historicity of the Malay-Islamic genealogies requires following the call of the texts, to reconsider the nature of premodern historiography and conversion, to reimagine linearity, positivism, origins, and the temporality of pre-Islamic, Islamic and Persianate heroes and heroines.