Mendez Pinto’s mission to Sumatra’s west coast in 1539 was the first of the two Sumatran missions that Pero de Faria, the new Portuguese governor of Malacca, entrusted to the young Pinto on his arrival in 1539 — a mission to the “king of Batu”, the islands off Ophir long identified with the gold of Solomon’s temple, who had appealed to Faria for aid against Atjeh. The mission produced the European record of the Atjehnese sultanate’s pressure on the Sumatran west coast, and was the immediate prelude to Pinto’s second Sumatran mission to Aroe of October 1539.
The appeal of the king of Batu
On Faria’s arrival at Malacca in 1539, Pinto records, an embassy came from the “king of Batu” — the islands off Ophir — offering to recognise the King of Portugal as suzerain in exchange for protection against Atjeh and free trade for his people. The gift was accompanied by kamfer and kajoe garoe (eaglewood). “For the sultan of Atjeh”, Pinto notes, “his transition to Islam was a welcome motive to throw himself on his neighbours right and left, in order to bring them by fire and sword to submission and the new faith”. Faria accepted the request, but had insufficient armed force to send; he supplied munitions and the young Pinto, and added a cargasoen for trade. The ship was put under a Malay Muslim of Malacca.
The voyage to the west coast
Pinto sailed across the Strait of Malacca to a roadstead he calls Surotilau (which De Roo de la Faille decodes as Soera-sakti-lawoe-kir, a bedekte taal form for the roadstead of Malajoer in Aroe). Northward up the Sumatran coast, past Pedir, he came to a place he calls Minhatoley — decoded as mina-ng-k-a da-toe Olèh-leh, the territory of the dotoe (clan-chief) of Olèh-leh, an Atjeh-chief marking the start of the Suratte-passage around the corner of Sumatra. The coast was heavily forested, with apes, pythons, and crocodiles that “dragged men from the prauwen and devoured them”, and the pilot’s joke eaquesseitan — kaki sètan, “devilish ancestors” — was a riddle on the kalang (flying-foxes) of the coast.
The bandahara and the march against Atjeh
Brought before the bandahara — the “governor of the realm” — Pinto delivered the governor of Malacca’s letter and gifts, on the pretext of scouting how the city of Atjeh might best be damaged. The bandahara assembled 15,000 men with 40 elephants and twelve pieces of light artillery — three of them, Pinto says, bearing the arms of France taken from a French ship captured in 1526 — at Turban (decoded as Batoe-poer-wa-boewana), for a march against the Atjehers. The expedition had some early success, but on the arrival of Atjehnese reinforcements the Panaju forces withdrew. De Roo de la Faille notes, in this connection, that three French ships had left Dieppe in 1527 for the Sumatran pepper trade and reached Tikoe, where they were wrecked and plundered — the ketawan karang — which may explain how captured French arms came to be in Sumatran hands by the time of Pinto’s mission.
The king’s understanding
“The king”, Pinto records, “had in the meantime understood that from military aid against Atjeh nothing was to be expected; and yet the danger of Atjeh for Malaka was as much to be feared as he had experienced: three of his sons were already dead, his land destroyed”. With a wide detour on the return — at Perlis on Malacca the nakoda who had accompanied Pinto was cruelly put to death for his free speech about the radja’s cruelties — the mission to the gold-land ended.
Significance
For AcehWiki, Pinto’s first Sumatran mission is the immediate prelude to the Atjeh-Aroe War (1539) — the mission that fixed the Atjehnese sultanate’s pressure on the Sumatran west coast in European record, and that brought Pinto into the theatre from which he would sail, in October 1539, to Aru. Its record of the bandahara and of the abortive march against the Atjehers is the only European account of the Sumatran west-coast response to Atjehnese expansion in this period.
See Also
- Mendez Pinto
- Pero de Faria
- Atjeh-Aroe War (1539)
- Batu
- Pasaman
- Olèh-leh
- Pedir
- Straits of Malacca
- Atjehsche vloot
- Sultan of Atjeh (16th century)
- Aceh Sultanate
- Bedekte taal
- 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. 7-8.