Queen of Aroe

Properties2
tagsperson, queen, sumatran, east-coast, 16th-century
aliasesQueen of Aru, Queen-consort of Aroe, Ratu of Aroe, Widow of the Radja of Aroe

6 min read

The Queen of Aroe was the consort of the radja of Aru who, after her husband’s death in the fall of Aroe to Atjeh in 1539, took to the field in person against the Atjehnese plunderers, was driven back, and then fled — first to Malacca, then to Bentan, and finally to Johor — where she married the Sultan of Johor and so brought Johorese arms back against the Atjehers in a counter-attack that briefly retook Aroe. Her flight and remarriage are the closing movement of the Atjeh-Aroe War (1539) as told by Mendez Pinto, and they record the only documented female counter-stroke of the early Atjehnese wars.

During Pinto’s embassy (October 1539)

When Pinto arrived in the bay of Aroe on 5 October 1539, the radja — at work on the trench he had thrown up against the expected Atjehnese fleet — broke protocol to present him to his wife, “a thing that very rarely took place”. Pinto, the story goes, took this openness as a sign of how much the radja counted on Portuguese aid. As the Atjehnese fleet approached, 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”.

Counter-attack after the fall of Aroe

When the radja fell in the breach — betrayed, Pinto reports, by an Atjeh-bribed Cacis — the queen “made an attempt to avenge the death of her husband, fell upon the plunderers, but was forced to give up the fight”. She then made her way to a place Pinto calls minha cumbaa — which De Roo de la Faille decodes, through the bedekte taal lens, as minjak sembawa, the white earth-oil of Aroe, “minjak tanah” being the famous medicinal petroleum of Pangkalan Soesoe. From there she sailed to Malacca for help.

Flight to Malacca, Bentan and Johor

The Portuguese governor Pero de Faria received her with honour but had no armed force to send. She then withdrew to Bentan and sought help from Johor. “The sultan married her, fell upon the Atjehers at Aroe, and retook it”, De Roo de la Faille recounts; though Aroe was finally lost for good, and “with the realm of the Djao, as the Portuguese wrote Jaoa, it was done forever”. The queen’s remarriage thus produced the only successful military counter-stroke against Atjeh in the war of 1539 — and even that was temporary.

Significance

For AcehWiki, the Queen of Aroe matters as the only named female political-military actor of the Atjeh-Aroe War (1539), and as the agent whose dynastic diplomacy — flight to Malacca, appeal to Bentan, marriage to Johor — drew the wider Malay world into the Aroe-Atjeh conflict. Her personal sortie against the Atjehnese plunderers, though unsuccessful, is the only recorded instance of female command in the early Atjehnese wars.

See Also

Source

Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Mendez Pinto op Sumatra”, pp. 9-10.

The Queen of Aroe was the consort of the radja of Aru who, after her husband’s death in the fall of Aroe to Atjeh in 1539, took to the field in person against the Atjehnese plunderers, was driven back, and then fled — first to Malacca, then to Bentan, and finally to Johor — where she married the Sultan of Johor and so brought Johorese arms back against the Atjehers in a counter-attack that briefly retook Aroe. Her flight and remarriage are the closing movement of the Atjeh-Aroe War (1539) as told by Mendez Pinto, and they record the only documented female counter-stroke of the early Atjehnese wars.

During Pinto’s embassy (October 1539)

When Pinto arrived in the bay of Aroe on 5 October 1539, the radja — at work on the trench he had thrown up against the expected Atjehnese fleet — broke protocol to present him to his wife, “a thing that very rarely took place”. Pinto, the story goes, took this openness as a sign of how much the radja counted on Portuguese aid. As the Atjehnese fleet approached, 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”.

Counter-attack after the fall of Aroe

When the radja fell in the breach — betrayed, Pinto reports, by an Atjeh-bribed Cacis — the queen “made an attempt to avenge the death of her husband, fell upon the plunderers, but was forced to give up the fight”. She then made her way to a place Pinto calls minha cumbaa — which De Roo de la Faille decodes, through the bedekte taal lens, as minjak sembawa, the white earth-oil of Aroe, “minjak tanah” being the famous medicinal petroleum of Pangkalan Soesoe. From there she sailed to Malacca for help.

Flight to Malacca, Bentan and Johor

The Portuguese governor Pero de Faria received her with honour but had no armed force to send. She then withdrew to Bentan and sought help from Johor. “The sultan married her, fell upon the Atjehers at Aroe, and retook it”, De Roo de la Faille recounts; though Aroe was finally lost for good, and “with the realm of the Djao, as the Portuguese wrote Jaoa, it was done forever”. The queen’s remarriage thus produced the only successful military counter-stroke against Atjeh in the war of 1539 — and even that was temporary.

Significance

For AcehWiki, the Queen of Aroe matters as the only named female political-military actor of the Atjeh-Aroe War (1539), and as the agent whose dynastic diplomacy — flight to Malacca, appeal to Bentan, marriage to Johor — drew the wider Malay world into the Aroe-Atjeh conflict. Her personal sortie against the Atjehnese plunderers, though unsuccessful, is the only recorded instance of female command in the early Atjehnese wars.

See Also

Source

Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Mendez Pinto op Sumatra”, pp. 9-10.

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