The Sultanate of Kedah may be the earliest sultanate on the Malay Peninsula and is supposedly one of the oldest Sultanates in the world, allegedly founded in 1136. The information regarding the formation of this sultanate and the history before and after its creation comes from the "Kedah Annals". The Kedah Annals were written in the eighteenth century, over a millennium after the formation of the Kedah Kingdom. It describes the first king of Kedah as arriving on the shores of Kedah as a result of an attack by a mythical gigantic beast. It states that the nation was founded by the offspring of Alexander the Great; who maintained ties with Rome throughout his reign (oddly two centuries after the decline of the Roman Empire due to sacks by the Visigoths and Vandals in 410 and 455).