ofthe SAME TREE

eginning of the seventeenth century noted the presence of a community of
Turks who bought pepper from the Acehnese and then resold it from their
own stalls to other foreign traders. 53 With the Ottomans in control of the
Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina, there was a flow of ideas between the
Ottoman Empire and Aceh, the Southeast Asian gateway for the Muslim
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This influence is readily discernible in certain
names and practices adopted by the Aceh kingdom that are traceable to the
Ottoman Empire.
The Safavid Empire with its core in the Persian heartland had an equally
important influence on Aceh, but much of it came indirectly through their subjects
serving in the Indian Muslim lands of Golconda, Bijapur, and the Mughal
Empire. The major expansion of Persian trade under Abbas I (1587–1628)
and Abbas II (1642–66) occurred after what has been called the “second wave”
of Islamic expansion in India from the Indo-Gangetic plains to the Deccan in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 54 Through sharing a common Islamic
way of life, there was an ease of movement of traders, scholars, and travelers
in the Islamic world. Even in the Mughal court of Sultan Akbar (1556–1605),
most of the significant cultural figures were from abroad, especially from the
Safavid Empire. 55
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, “Persian” merchants living in
the fringe areas of the Safavid Empire were influential in the affairs of Southeast
Asian kingdoms. 56 This is especially notable in Aceh and Ayutthaya, where
the Persian connection may have been at work during the annual exchange of
envoys. 57 Ample evidence exists to show that Southeast Asian rulers, including
those of Aceh, were eager to hear about the prestigious Muslim courts from
Muslim traders, envoys, and religious teachers. Islamic and secular literature
written in Persian, the literary language of the Muslim courts, was eagerly
translated by the Muslim kingdoms of Southeast Asia into Malayu, the literary
language of the Muslim courts in the archipelago. Perso-Arabic-Turkic
and Islamic themes and ideas, along with a large number of Perso-Arabic
words and a modified Arabic script, were therefore transmitted in the Malayu
language primarily through Aceh to the rest of Southeast Asia. 58
The sixteenth century and much of the seventeenth witnessed a period
of Islamic expansion in all fields led by the brilliance of the three major Muslim
courts. They provided models of behavior and statecraft, the occasional
armed expedition, religious scholars, administrators, and traders to the other
Islamic lands. But most important of all, they offered an entrée to an established
and highly lucrative worldwide Islamic trading network. In the early
sixteenth century, Aceh profited more than any other kingdom in Southeast
Asia from its Islamic connection. A Frenchman visiting the kingdom in the
years 1601–3 noted:
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