Baros (also Barus) was a coastal settlement on the West Coast of Sumatra that the Acehnese regarded as marking the southern boundary between the territory of the princes of Menangkabau and that of the Sultans of Acheh. Together with Teumieng on the East Coast, Baros defined the outermost limits of the Acehnese kingdom.
Historically, Baros was one of the most ancient port towns on the west coast of Sumatra and had a long history as a trading settlement, famous for its camphor. By the time of C. Snouck Hurgronje’s writing, it lay at the frontier zone between Acehnese and Menangkabau spheres of influence.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Baros
Baros — the modern Barus on the west coast of Sumatra — is named in Vol. I of The Achehnese as the western boundary-marker of the kingdom of Acheh. The Achehnese themselves, C. Snouck Hurgronje observes, “place the boundaries of their kingdom in Sumatra at Teumiëng (Tamiang) on the East Coast, but far more to the South on the Western Coast, viz. at Baros or whatever other point they regard as marking the boundary between the territory of the princes of Menangkabau and that of the Sultans of Acheh.”
This southern boundary on the west coast is thus a movable and ideologically charged line, drawn wherever the Achehnese happened to place the limit of Menangkabau country. Baros, an ancient port famous in medieval Arab and Persian geographies under the name Fansur, was the natural candidate for that limit. Its camphor and benzoin had drawn Muslim and other traders from at least the ninth century, and its inclusion in the Achehnese sphere of influence — formal or informal — fixed it in the Achehnese mental geography as the south-western gate of the kingdom.
The contrast between the eastern and western boundaries is itself instructive. On the east, the boundary was fixed comparatively far north at Tamiang; on the west, it was pushed far down towards the equator at Baros. The reason lies in the history of Achehnese expansion, which from the seventeenth century onwards carried the sultans’ arms, and especially their commercial and religious influence, down the west coast through Daya, Kuala Batee, Meulaboh, Singkel and Trumon towards the Menangkabau country round Padang.
Snouck is careful, however, to distinguish this wide “kingdom of Acheh” from the much narrower territory which the Achehnese themselves called “Acheh proper” or Great Acheh. Baros and its neighbourhood belong to the outer ring of the sultanate’s influence, not to the kernel of the country which forms the principal subject of Vol. I.
See Also
- Great Acheh
- Aceh Sultanate
- Menangkabau
- Sumatra
- Teumieng
- Acheh
- Tamiang
- West Coast (of Acheh)
- Daya
- Singkel
- Trumon
- Padang
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906. Chapter I, § 1, p. 1.