Mir Hassan (also Mir Hasan) was an Atjeh nobleman (edelman) who served as the third-ranking envoy of the Atjeh embassy to Prince Maurits in 1602–1603, alongside the senior ambassador Abdoel Hamid and the Admiral of Atjeh Sri Mohammed. He is one of only three Atjehnese named in Godee Molsbergen’s account of the 1602 embassy to the Republic.
The embassy of 1602
The embassy was sent in response to Prince Maurits’s letter of 1601, carried by four Zeeland ships, pressing for the release of the Dutch prisoners held in Atjeh since 1599 — most notably Frederik de Houtman. The Sultan Aloeddin agreed to release the prisoners and to compensate De Houtman for his material losses. He sent three ambassadors on the returning ships: the senior envoy Abdoel Hamid, the admiral Sri Mohammed, and the nobleman Mir Hassan. A Luxemburger, Leonard Werner, served as their interpreter.
Death of Abdoel Hamid and the audience at Grave
The aged Abdoel Hamid died at Middelburg in August 1602, before the embassy could reach the Prince’s camp. Mir Hassan, together with Sri Mohammed, proceeded to the siege of Grave, where they were received with state. A staatsie-karos (state-coach) attended by a company of cavalry brought the Oriental gentlemen to a house near the Prince’s tent. After a meal, Maurits received them surrounded by a brilliant company of nobles and military commanders.
The gift-giving and the siege tour
After the ambassador — probably Sri Mohammed as the senior surviving envoy — had delivered Sultan Aloeddin’s two letters, returned the Prince’s earlier letter marked with the King’s seal, and presented the costly gifts (a kris, a golden dish and cup, about two pounds of Borneo camphor, and a lance still on a sailing ship), the Prince — hindered only by a slight indisposition — expressed his thanks and regrets that he could not personally conduct the guests around the camp.
Instead, the Atjeh envoys were escorted by the Counts Ernst and Lodewijk of Nassau to view the siegeworks before Grave, “de belegeringsserrkuige, dat dinghen waren, weert om se te sien” — the siege engines, things worth seeing — whereupon the principal ambassador discharged two cartouwen (cannon-shots) at the city in memory of the occasion.
Fifteen months in the Republic
For fifteen months the ambassadors stayed in the Republic as guests of the East India Company, before returning to Atjeh with their wonder-tales of frozen canals, free men, and a thirty-years war with the great King of Spain that had nonetheless left the Dutch rich. (See Sri Mohammed for the full description.) With such a people, the embassy reported, the mighty Sultan — “glinsterende als de zon op den middag en als de maan, wanneer zij vol is” — could with honour enter into alliance.
Significance
Mir Hassan, like Abdoel Hamid and Sri Mohammed, is significant as one of the three named Atjeh envoys to the Republic in 1602–1603. The embassy of which he was part produced the first sustained Atjeh description of the Dutch Republic, and its arrival at the siege of Grave placed Atjeh literally inside the Dutch war of independence from Spain — a striking moment in the shared diplomatic history of the two polities.
See Also
- Abdoel Hamid
- Sri Mohammed
- Leonard Werner
- Sultan Aloeddin of Atjeh
- Prince Maurits
- Atjeh embassy to Prince Maurits at Grave (1602)
- Frederik de Houtman
- Cornelis de Houtman
- 1602
- 1603
- Acheh
Source
Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, by Dr. E. C. Godee Molsbergen, Oud-Hoogleeraar, Landsarchivaris te Batavia (Amsterdam: N.V. Swets & Zeitlinger Boekhandel en Uitgevers Mij., 1932), chapter XXXIII (“Atjehers in het kamp van Maurits. De zeeslag bij Bantam”), pp. 118–121 of the numbered-letter sequence.