J. P. Moquette was, in Kreemer’s history of Atjèh, the scholar whose publication of the gravestones of the first Muslim rulers of Samudra-Pasè established, on epigraphic grounds, the early chronology of the Pasè sultanate. His work is cited by Kreemer as the authority that settled a long-standing historical uncertainty about the founding of the Muslim kingdom of Pasè.
The gravestones of the first Muslim rulers
Kreemer introduces Moquette in a footnote to his account of the precursor kingdoms of Atjèh. “Lag tot voor eenige jaren het begin van de geschiedenis van het rijkje Soematra-Pasè nog grootendeels in het duister; sinds J. P. Moquette de grafsteenen der eerste Mohammedaansche vorsten met toelichting heeft gepubliceerd, mag als vaststaand worden aangenomen dat Malik al-Qalil? — die in de traditie algemeen als stichter van het Mohammedaansche rijkje te boek staat — in 1297 gestorven is en dat dit rijkje waarschijnlijk eerst kort voor den dood van Malik al-Qalih gesticht is” — “Until some years ago the beginning of the history of the little kingdom of Samudra-Pasè lay largely in darkness; since J. P. Moquette published the gravestones of the first Mohammedan rulers with explanatory notes, it may be taken as established that Malik al-Qalil — who in tradition is universally recorded as the founder of the Mohammedan kingdom — died in 1297, and that this kingdom was probably founded only shortly before the death of Malik al-Qalih.”
Significance
Moquette’s epigraphic work on the Pasè gravestones is, in Kreemer’s narrative, the foundation of the modern chronology of the Pasè sultanate — and thus of the pre-history of the Atjèh sultanate itself. By fixing the death of Malik al-Qalil at 1297, Moquette established that the Pasè kingdom — the first Muslim polity on the north coast of Sumatra, and the predecessor of Atjèh — was a late-thirteenth-century foundation, not (as the chronicles had vaguely suggested) an earlier one. This chronology is the basis on which Kreemer constructs his account of the rise of Atjèh as the successor-state to Pasè in the early sixteenth century.
See Also
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. 3–4, n. 4. Citing also B. J. O. Schrieke, Het boek van Bonang, p. 2 vg.