The original inhabitants of Medan were from the Indonesia Batak community. Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of ethnic groups found in the highlands of North Sumatra Indonesia. Their heartland lies to the west of Medan centred on Lake Toba. In fact the "Batak" include several groups with distinct, albeit related, languages and customs. While the term is used to include the Toba, Karo, Pak Pak, Simalungun, Angkola and Mandailing groups, some of these peoples prefer not to be known as Batak.

It was not until the King of Aceh, Sultan Iskandar Muda, sent his warlord, Gocah Pahlawan Laksamana Khoja Bintan, to be the Kingdom of Aceh's representative in Tanah Deli, that the Kingdom of Deli started to grow. This growth stimulated growth in both the population and culture of Medan.

Medan did not enjoy significant development until the 1860s, when the Dutch colonialists began clearing the land for tobacco plantations. Medan quickly became a center of government and commercial activity, dominating development of Indonesia's western region.

The Dutch governed Tanah Deli from 1658, after Sultan Ismail, ruler of the Kingdom of Siak Sri Indrapura, yielded some of his once-ruled land, Deli, Langkat, and Serdang. In 1915 Medan officially became the capital of North Sumatera Province, and officially a city in 1918.

Kota Medan (Medan City)

The city is Indonesia's third most populous after Jakarta and Surabaya, with approximately 2.5 million people.

Medan means 'field' in Indonesian and Malay languages but the name actually originated from the Karonese word Medan which means to 'get better' or 'healthy'.

The city has a mix of communities, reflecting its pre- and post-independence history. It is famous throughout Indonesia as the home of the Batak, Karo people, although the ancestral sites of these people are scattered throughout northern Sumatra. In addition, there is a large ethnic Javanese community, largely made up of the descendants of people shipped from Java in the last century as part of the government's transmigration policy, an attempt to relieve the chronic overcrowding on Java.

A highly visible component of Medan's population is the large number of ethnic Chinese, who control much of the business sector. Finally, the city has a sizeable community of Tamil descent, the people known as keling. A well-known Tamil market, is the Kampung Keling. In addition to Indonesian, Javanese, Karo, Hokkien, Tamil and English are spoken.