The Atjeh-Aroe War of 1539 was the Atjehnese sultanate’s naval and military campaign against the kingdom of Aroe on the east coast of Sumatra — the principal event of Mendez Pinto’s first Sumatran mission and the only European-eyewitnessed war of the early Atjehnese expansion. Fought in October–November 1539 between an Atjehnese fleet of about 130 vessels under Alleredin Mahomet and a defending Aroe army of about 6,000 men under the radja of Aroe, the war ended with the fall of Aroe, the death of the radja, the flight of the Queen of Aroe to Malacca and then to Johor, and a brief Johorese reconquest — and finally the permanent absorption of Aroe into the Atjehnese sphere. The war is the central episode of Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java and the principal source for the early-sixteenth-century Atjehnese sultanate’s strategic design on the Straits of Malacca.
Background
The sultan of Atjeh had recently embraced Islam, and — as Pinto reports — was using the conversion as a welcome motive for raiding his neighbours, “to bring them by fire and sword to submission and the new faith”. The west-coast kingdom of Batu (the islands off Ophir) appealed in 1539 to the new Portuguese governor of Malacca, Pero de Faria, for help, and Faria dispatched Mendez Pinto with munitions. Pinto’s first mission, to the west coast, brought him into the country of a bandahara near Pasaman where an abortive march against the Atjehers was organised. On his return, Pinto learned that the king of Aroe had in turn asked Faria for help against an Atjehnese fleet then bearing down upon him.
Pinto’s embassy to Aroe (October 1539)
On 5 October 1539 Pinto embarked for Aroe. The run, by way of the Nine Islands off Perak and across the Strait of Malacca, was uneventful; the pilot of the bay answered Pinto’s question “what is this place called?” with the strange name Paneticano — which De Roo de la Faille decodes, through the bedekte taal lens, as Roe-pang moes-tika-noe-sa, a veiled reference to the white-magic islet of Kampi.
The radja of Aroe, at work on a trench against the expected attack, embraced Pinto as the envoy of Pero de Faria, brought him to his “palace”, and presented him to his wife — a rare gesture, Pinto notes, that marked how much he counted on Portuguese help. He had but 6,000 men under arms; the Atjehsche vloot numbered 130 vessels. Pinto, the story goes, saw that the end was foreseeable. As he further records, “to the possession of Aroe Atjeh was much attached; it was the station by which Atjeh was able to command the Strait of Malacca and to deny Portuguese ships and other traders the passage to Sunda, the Moluccas and China, and to enjoy for itself all the advantages of that trade”. The day after Pinto’s arrival, word came that the Atjehnese fleet would arrive in eight days; the radja at once had his wife and the other non-combatants evacuated to the forest — “a sight to move one to pity, that queen seated on an elephant and accompanied by some forty or fifty old men, seeking a safe hiding-place”.
The Atjehsche vloot arrives
Three days later the fleet arrived under the command of Alleredin Mahomet, the sultan’s brother-in-law, “Gouverneur du Royaume de Baarros” — i.e. governor of Barus on the Sumatran west coast. The fleet anchored in the river of Panetican, where the radja had drawn up his 6,000 men. Pinto, asked when he wished to depart, begged to leave at once — also with an eye, he says, to a planned trading voyage to China. The radja parted from him with golden arm-bracelets and thanks for the munitions and weapons received.
Fall of Aroe
After Pinto’s departure the end came quickly. The radja held out bravely at first, with some success; but treason by an Atjeh-bribed Cacis opened the gates, and the fortification fell into the enemy’s hands. The radja was killed, and his death caused a panic. The case was decided.
The Queen’s counter-stroke and flight
The queen, on hearing of her husband’s death, “made an attempt to avenge the death of her husband, fell upon the plunderers, but was forced to give up the fight”. She then fled to a place Pinto calls minha cumbaa — decoded by De Roo de la Faille as minjak sembawa, the white earth-oil of Aroe (the famous medicinal petroleum of Pangkalan Soesoe) — and from there sailed to Malacca for help. Pero de Faria received her with honour but had no armed force to send. She then withdrew to Bentan and sought help from Johor.
Johorese reconquest and final loss
“The sultan [of Johor] married her, fell upon the Atjehers at Aroe, and retook it”, De Roo de la Faille recounts. Aroe was, however, finally lost for good — and “with the realm of the Djao, as the Portuguese wrote Jaoa, it was done forever”. A kingdom once ranked in the Sadjarah Malajoe on a line with Pasej and Malacca, a realm that stretched from Tamijang to Siak, had sunk into poverty and piracy, so much so that in the colonial period only a “soekoe Aroe” — an Aroe clan — was remembered.
Decoding and the bedekte taal problem
Pinto’s account is studded with names that De Roo de la Faille decodes through the bedekte taal lens: Surotilau as the roadstead of Malajoer in Aroe; Ilikandure as the ikan-on-hin-doe ka-ri riddle marking where Hindu population remained; Minhatoley as mina-ng-k-a da-toe Olèh-leh, an Atjeh-chief marking the start of the Suratte-passage; Batorrendan as batoe rendang, a joke on the Batu islands; Turban as Batoe-poer-wa-boewana; Paneticano as Kampi; and minha cumbaa as the minjak sembawa of Pangkalan Soesoe. Whether or not each identification is accepted, the density of Pinto’s veiled names — recorded faithfully, on De Roo de la Faille’s reading, from Malay interlocutors who were themselves speaking in riddle — is the single feature that marks the account as ethnographically authentic rather than freely invented.
Significance
For AcehWiki, the Atjeh-Aroe War is the foundational military event of the Atjehnese sultanate’s sixteenth-century expansion. It establishes the sultan as a sea-power capable of throwing a 130-vessel fleet across the Strait of Malacca; it fixes Alleredin Mahomet as the named commander of that fleet and governor of Barus; it records the only named east-coast Sumatran counter-stroke of the early Atjehnese wars (the queen’s sortie and her Johorese marriage); and it closes, in the person of the dead radja and the fleeing queen, the independent history of Aroe — a kingdom that had once stood on a level with Pasej and Malacca.
See Also
- Mendez Pinto
- Pero de Faria
- Alleredin Mahomet
- Atjehsche vloot
- Radja of Aroe
- Queen of Aroe
- Sultan of Atjeh (16th century)
- Aroe
- Aroe-baai
- Poelo Kampi
- Tandjoengpoera
- Pangkalan Soesoe
- Minjak tanah
- Bedekte taal
- Wangsallan
- Djohor
- Bentan
- Straits of Malacca
- Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java
Source
Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Mendez Pinto op Sumatra”, pp. 7-17.