Aceh memories of monarchy

1537 and 1629. The character of these assaults as jihad (holy war) was well attested by both Portuguese and Malay sources. It carried over into numerous battles with the interior peoples of Sumatra, who in defence saw their identity involved in resisting Islam and defending their forms of spirit worship touched by Hindu-Buddhist ideas. 

This Turkish connection ensured that Aceh would see itself differendy placed from the sultanates positioned around the Java Sea. States like Palembang and Banjarmasin were always involved with coastal Javanese politics, and acknowledged the appeal of Javanese culture even when they were in conflict with specific Javanese states. For them, interactions with the Dutch successors to Javanese maritime power were inescapable. By contrast, Aceh never had significant contact with Java, but much with the Malay states of the Peninsula and Sumatra, where it loomed as the major power until the mid-seventeenth century, and with the Middle East, South India and the countries around the Bay of Bengal.1 Because of its trade connections, it had more South Indian and Arab elements in its population, and in court roles including the royal dynasty itself, than did other Indonesian peoples. 

In the sixteenth century this openness was demonstrated not only by the Turkish connection but by the number of Arab and Gujarati scholars making Aceh their home. In the first half of the seventeenth century when we have the first English and Dutch reports, Aceh emerges as a major port of the Bay of Bengal, with traders from the Red Sea and Pegu 

1 This contrasts with the older north Sumatran Sultanate of Pasai, conquered by a Majapahit fleet in the 1350s, the maximum demonstration of Java s maritime power. This is celebrated in the Pasai chronicle apparently written in Java (Hill 1961 93-101), but not noticed in the Aceh chronicles, which pay little attention to Java or indeed to Pasai. 

Aceh was not ultimately very attractive to the European powers. They were troubled by the fixed antipathy of successive seventeenth century rulers towards allowing any wealthy merchants, domestic or foreign, to build defensible stone structures, lest they fortify themselves against 

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