Sultan Saif ul-Alum

Properties2
tagsperson, sultan, achehnese, pirate
aliasesSyf, Sijf, Siyf, Saif ul Alum, Syf ul Allum, Syful Alum, Syf 00l Aulum, Syf 00l Mum, Sil-ul-illum Shak, Syful al Alum

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Sultan Saif ul-Alum (also rendered Syf, Sijf, Siyf, Syful Alum, Syf ul Allum; proclaimed at Acheh as Sil-ul-illum Shak) was a pretender to the Achehnese throne, the second son of the Penang trader Said Hussein of Arab descent. He ruled briefly at Acheh in 1815 before being driven out, and ended his life as a pensioned ex-pirate at Penang. His contested claim to the sultanate supplied the immediate occasion for Raffles’s Acheh commission of 1819 and for the resulting treaty with his rival Sultan Jauhar Alum.

Proclamation at Acheh (1815)

After ten years of Jauhar Alum’s troubled rule, an Achehnese opposition faction had looked around for a replacement and had fixed upon Said Hussein, a rich Penang merchant of said (Arab) descent and a remote relative of the sultan’s house. Hussein declined the throne for himself but accepted it on behalf of his second son Syf, who, in Van der Kemp’s blunt phrase, “had until then been boatswain, or something of that sort, on his father’s boats”. An expedition was fitted out at Penang in 1815 and Syf sailed for Acheh, where he was proclaimed sultan under the style Sil-ul-illum Shak by the assembled chiefs. Among his chief supporters was Tunku Pakih, the powerful potentate of Pedir, who had contributed much to the success of the revolution.

Quarrel with Tunku Pakih and flight from the capital

The alliance with Tunku Pakih was short-lived. The two soon quarrelled, and Tunku Pakih returned to the party of the deposed Jauhar Alum, who thereupon established his seat at Pedir. Syf, in turn, found Acheh too hot for him and followed Jauhar Alum’s example by quitting the capital, choosing instead the east-coast town of Telok Semawé as his residence. From this moment Acheh had effectively two sultans in exile while, at the capital itself, the federation of the Three Sagis — and especially Panglima Polim of the XXII Mukims — exercised the real authority. The civil war continued for several years with alternating fortunes, and the Penang government was long undecided which of the two pretenders should be recognised.

The Raffles-Coombs Commission (1819)

When in early 1819 the joint commission of Raffles and Captain Coombs arrived off Acheh, Syf’s was the cause espoused by Coombs and by Governor Bannerman of Penang, while Raffles inclined to Jauhar Alum. The Commission’s instructions required it “to ascertain whether the party of the old king Jowhar 00l Aulum or that of the new king Syf 00l Mum predominated in the state; and to negotiate with the ruling party whichever it might be”. The Bengal report of 7 October 1820 was later to conclude that Panglima Polim treated Syf “merely as a tool”, and that he had “no inclination to acknowledge in him any real sovereignty”. After seven weeks of fruitless negotiation at Acheh, the Commission sailed for Pedir and concluded the treaty of 22 April 1819 with Jauhar Alum, whereupon it proceeded to Telok Semawé to demand that Syf abandon his claims. Syf submitted, but his submission was, as the Bengal government observed, “as worthless as Jauhar’s treaty”; by July 1819 he was again writing to the Governor of Penang as sovereign of Acheh and continuing his “robber life”.

Pirate, Calcutta and pension at Penang

Syf soon broke his promise more dramatically. In early 1820 he appeared at Acheh and allied himself with Panglima Polim against Jauhar Alum; when the Penang government sent the man-of-war Dauntless to Acheh, Syf seized a junk, plundered a dozen prahus, and had the audacity to sail his pirate-ship into Calcutta itself. There the complaints of those he had robbed overtook him; but the judges “found no terms to convict him: Syf had acted as a sovereign!” The Government, far from punishing him, granted him a pension of 500 dollars a month — charged, ironically, to the account of his rival Jauhar Alum, though the Bengal report noted drily that “there is no prospect of its being realised from him”. He returned to Penang and lived quietly on his pension until his death.

The Wilhelmina affair

His retirement was disturbed only once, when the Netherlands Government at Batavia raised the matter of the colonial schooner Wilhelmina. That vessel, commanded by Lt. Marx Bouwens, had been seized by its Malay crew in mid-1819 off Acheh; Bouwens and two of his men had been murdered, his wife had leapt overboard in terror, and her children had been thrown into the sea. The mutineers brought their plunder to Pasangan, near Telok Semawé, and were in due course stripped and chained by Syf’s people. After a long and acrimonious paper war between the Dutch at Malacca (under Governor Thyssen and Colonel Lucas) and the Penang government under Governor Phillips, Syf’s conduct was held to be covered by his then sovereignty over Telok Semawé: “Syf al Allum was in the exercise of sovereign authority at Teloksamoy at the period in question, and can be responsible to no one for whatever disposition he might have made of effects coming to his territories”. The affair was dropped.

See Also

Source

Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.

Sultan Saif ul-Alum (also rendered Syf, Sijf, Siyf, Syful Alum, Syf ul Allum; proclaimed at Acheh as Sil-ul-illum Shak) was a pretender to the Achehnese throne, the second son of the Penang trader Said Hussein of Arab descent. He ruled briefly at Acheh in 1815 before being driven out, and ended his life as a pensioned ex-pirate at Penang. His contested claim to the sultanate supplied the immediate occasion for Raffles’s Acheh commission of 1819 and for the resulting treaty with his rival Sultan Jauhar Alum.

Proclamation at Acheh (1815)

After ten years of Jauhar Alum’s troubled rule, an Achehnese opposition faction had looked around for a replacement and had fixed upon Said Hussein, a rich Penang merchant of said (Arab) descent and a remote relative of the sultan’s house. Hussein declined the throne for himself but accepted it on behalf of his second son Syf, who, in Van der Kemp’s blunt phrase, “had until then been boatswain, or something of that sort, on his father’s boats”. An expedition was fitted out at Penang in 1815 and Syf sailed for Acheh, where he was proclaimed sultan under the style Sil-ul-illum Shak by the assembled chiefs. Among his chief supporters was Tunku Pakih, the powerful potentate of Pedir, who had contributed much to the success of the revolution.

Quarrel with Tunku Pakih and flight from the capital

The alliance with Tunku Pakih was short-lived. The two soon quarrelled, and Tunku Pakih returned to the party of the deposed Jauhar Alum, who thereupon established his seat at Pedir. Syf, in turn, found Acheh too hot for him and followed Jauhar Alum’s example by quitting the capital, choosing instead the east-coast town of Telok Semawé as his residence. From this moment Acheh had effectively two sultans in exile while, at the capital itself, the federation of the Three Sagis — and especially Panglima Polim of the XXII Mukims — exercised the real authority. The civil war continued for several years with alternating fortunes, and the Penang government was long undecided which of the two pretenders should be recognised.

The Raffles-Coombs Commission (1819)

When in early 1819 the joint commission of Raffles and Captain Coombs arrived off Acheh, Syf’s was the cause espoused by Coombs and by Governor Bannerman of Penang, while Raffles inclined to Jauhar Alum. The Commission’s instructions required it “to ascertain whether the party of the old king Jowhar 00l Aulum or that of the new king Syf 00l Mum predominated in the state; and to negotiate with the ruling party whichever it might be”. The Bengal report of 7 October 1820 was later to conclude that Panglima Polim treated Syf “merely as a tool”, and that he had “no inclination to acknowledge in him any real sovereignty”. After seven weeks of fruitless negotiation at Acheh, the Commission sailed for Pedir and concluded the treaty of 22 April 1819 with Jauhar Alum, whereupon it proceeded to Telok Semawé to demand that Syf abandon his claims. Syf submitted, but his submission was, as the Bengal government observed, “as worthless as Jauhar’s treaty”; by July 1819 he was again writing to the Governor of Penang as sovereign of Acheh and continuing his “robber life”.

Pirate, Calcutta and pension at Penang

Syf soon broke his promise more dramatically. In early 1820 he appeared at Acheh and allied himself with Panglima Polim against Jauhar Alum; when the Penang government sent the man-of-war Dauntless to Acheh, Syf seized a junk, plundered a dozen prahus, and had the audacity to sail his pirate-ship into Calcutta itself. There the complaints of those he had robbed overtook him; but the judges “found no terms to convict him: Syf had acted as a sovereign!” The Government, far from punishing him, granted him a pension of 500 dollars a month — charged, ironically, to the account of his rival Jauhar Alum, though the Bengal report noted drily that “there is no prospect of its being realised from him”. He returned to Penang and lived quietly on his pension until his death.

The Wilhelmina affair

His retirement was disturbed only once, when the Netherlands Government at Batavia raised the matter of the colonial schooner Wilhelmina. That vessel, commanded by Lt. Marx Bouwens, had been seized by its Malay crew in mid-1819 off Acheh; Bouwens and two of his men had been murdered, his wife had leapt overboard in terror, and her children had been thrown into the sea. The mutineers brought their plunder to Pasangan, near Telok Semawé, and were in due course stripped and chained by Syf’s people. After a long and acrimonious paper war between the Dutch at Malacca (under Governor Thyssen and Colonel Lucas) and the Penang government under Governor Phillips, Syf’s conduct was held to be covered by his then sovereignty over Telok Semawé: “Syf al Allum was in the exercise of sovereign authority at Teloksamoy at the period in question, and can be responsible to no one for whatever disposition he might have made of effects coming to his territories”. The affair was dropped.

See Also

Source

Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.

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