Sultan Kudarat, officially the Province of Sultan Kudarat, is a province in the Philippines located in the Soccsksargen region in Mindanao. Its capital is Isulan and the commercial center is Tacurong.
On February 23, 1995, Sultan Kudarat transferred from Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (now Bangsamoro Autonomous Region) to Soccsksargen.
The name Sultan Kudarat given to the province was derived from the Maguindanaon Muslim ruler, Sultan Muhammad Dipatuan Kudarat who begun to assert his leadership in the year 1619 and reigned in the Sultanate of Maguindanao from 1625 to 1671. Through his leadership, Spanish forces were successfully repelled from encroaching the Cotabato region of south-central Mindanao. He is considered a national hero, and in his honor the province was named after him.
Sultan Kudarat was once part of the Sultanate of Maguindanao. It became one of the stronghold of the Maguindanao society as some royal families have established their own Sultanate in the region.
Sultan Kudarat was part of the former province of Cotabato, until its creation as an independent province (along with Maguindanao and North Cotabato) on November 22, 1973, through Presidential Decree No. 341.
One notable event that took place in Sultan Kudarat was the Palimbang Massacre (also called the Malisbong Masjid Massacre), which saw the mass murder of Moro residents of Barrio Malisbong in Palimbang by units of the Philippine Military on September 24, 1974,–1,500 two years after Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. Accounts compiled by the Moro Women's Center in General Santos state that 1,500 male Moros aged 11–70 were killed inside a mosque, 3,000 women and children aged 9–60 were detained – with the women being raped – and that 300 houses were razed by the government forces.