Sayyid Abdullah — in Kreemer’s history, “een rijk Arabisch koopman te Poelau Pinang” — “a rich Arab merchant at Penang” — was the father of Sharif Saif al-Alam (Sayyid Abdullah) whom the Atjèhnese opposition party set up as rival sultan against Sultan Djauhar al-Alam Shah in 1805. The elder Sayyid Abdullah’s wealth and Penang base made his son a plausible candidate for the Atjèhnese throne in the eyes of the anti-Jauhar faction, and gave the succession dispute an immediate entanglement with British commercial interests in the Strait.
Significance
Kreemer mentions Sayyid Abdullah only to identify his son — Sharif Saif al-Alam — as the candidate of the Atjèhnese opposition. The choice of a Penang-based Arab merchant’s son as rival sultan is, however, itself significant: it reflects the degree to which the Atjèhnese succession had become a matter of Strait-wide politics, in which the Arab trading networks of Penang, the British authorities at Pinang, and the factions of the three sagi’s of Groot-Atjèh were all intertwined. The elder Sayyid Abdullah’s money and connections made his son’s candidacy possible; the candidacy, in turn, produced the dual sultanate that the British would exploit in 1818–1819 and that the London treaty of 1824 would nominally resolve.
See Also
- Acheh
- Sharif Saif al-Alam
- Sultan Jauhar Alum
- Penang
- Acheh treaty of 1819
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824
- 1805
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. 9.