The conquest of Daya — in Kreemer’s history, the annexation by Sultan Ali Mughayat Shah (Raja Ibrahim) of the West Coast kingdom of Daya in approximately 1520 — was the first major territorial expansion of the Atjèh sultanate beyond its harbour at Koeta Radja, and the opening move of Atjèh’s westward expansion along the Westkust of Sumatra.
The place of Daya in Atjèh’s rise
Kreemer records the conquest in a single compressed clause within his account of the reign of Ali Mughayat Shah: “in ± 1520 lijfde hij het op de Westkust gelegen rijk Daja in” — “in approximately 1520 he annexed the kingdom of Daya situated on the West Coast.” The annexation is the first of three conquests Kreemer attributes to Ali Mughayat Shah — followed by the conquest of Pidië and Pasè around 1524 and the war against Aroe — and it is the only one directed westward.
Significance
The conquest of Daya established the precedent — renewed under Iskandar Muda in the early seventeenth century and contested with the VOC throughout the seventeenth — that the Atjèh sultanate claimed sovereignty over the Westkust of Sumatra. Daya, together with Indrapoera, Salida, Padang, Tikoe and Priaman, would form the chain of pepper-ports through which Atjehnese authority on the West Coast was articulated, and through which the Compagnie would progressively displace Atjèh after 1659.
See Also
- Acheh
- Sultan Ali Mughayat Shah
- Daya
- Westkust van Atjeh
- Iskander Muda
- Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
- 1520
Source
Atjèh. Algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en onderhoorigheden, door J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut. Eerste Deel. Leiden: N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill, 1922. Hoofdstuk I, A (“Oudste geschiedenis tot 1824”), blz. 4.