As much as two of three hundred ships was used to force Chinese ships returning from the Indian Ocean to their harbors and to attack those who resisted. Large quantities of Chinese ceramics have been recovered on Bintan, some date back to the early Song dynasty (960–1127). An Arabian explorer, Ibnu Battuta, wrote about Riau in the 13th century: ""Here there are little islands, from which armed black pirates with poised arrows emerged, possessing armed warships; they plunder people but do not enslave them"." Log records of Chinese ships testify these incidents in the 12th century. Even after several centuries, the Riau archipelago, especially Bintan, is still referred by many by the epithet "Pirate Island".