The Acehnese past and its present state of study R. Michael ... - kitlv

CHAPTER II
Aceh as a fi eld for ancient history studies
Introduction 1
Daniel Perret
Aceh has played a very important role in the history of the Indian Ocean
due to its geographical situation. A relatively rich corpus of written sources
enables us to reconstruct part of the history of two major sultanates in this area:
fi rst, that of Samudra-Pasai between the end of the thirteenth century and the
beginning of the sixteenth century; thereafter, that of the Sultanate of Aceh
itself. This corpus contains information on the links between this area and
other regions along the Indian Ocean littoral. The Hikayat Raja Pasai – a Malay
text dated to the end of the fourteenth century or the beginning of the fi fteenth
century (Braginsky 2004:11) – makes mention of, for example, the arrival in
Pasai of trading ships from Kling, that is, southeastern India, during the reign
of Sultan Malikul Saleh (Jones 1999:21), whose epitaph indicates that he died
in 1297 CE. A tradition reported by the Portuguese, Tomé Pires, also suggests
the presence of an infl uential community of people from Bengal, who settled
in the area by the mid-fourteenth century (Cortesão 1990:142). Furthermore it
is known that the port of Pasai was visited by Kerala traders at the beginning
of the fi fteenth century (Bouchon 1979:129). In addition to this we know of a
link between Pasai and Gujarat because of 12 funerary monuments made of
richly-carved white marble found in Pasai. These monuments were exported
from Cambay, where they were carved, although additional inscriptions
in some instances may have been added in Pasai. Most, if not all, of these
monuments date to the fi fteenth century (Cowan 1940:17; Lambourn 2003a,
2003b, 2004:217, 219; Moquette 1912). Documentary evidence regarding the
presence of Indian Ocean peoples in the Aceh region increased from the
sixteenth century. In addition to providing us with information about traders,
foreign sources from this period sometimes contain other valuable details,
1 I am very grateful to Wayne Bougas for his help in editing the initial English language draft
of this chapter.