In the Hikayat Malem Dagang, the great Sultan Sultan Iskandar Muda assigned Ladong and
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Ladong
Ladong is a present-day place in the XXVI Mukims mentioned in The Achehnese Vol. I as the locality near which stood the great mosque of Indrapatra, one of the three meuseugit raya built by the Sultan Meukuta Alam (1607–1636) for the three sagis of Great Acheh.
Indrapatra near Ladong
Snouck Hurgronje introduces Ladong in his survey of the great mosques of the sultanate. He explains that “besides this there was one for each of the three sagis of Great Acheh viz. that of Indrapuri, which still exists, for the XXII Mukims, that of Indrapeurua (in the VI Mukims of the XXV) for the XXV, and that of Indrapatra, almost in the very place where Ladong now stands, for the XXVI Mukims. Of the last two scarcely any trace remains.”
The three great mosques were the architectural expression of Meukuta Alam’s organised religious policy. The founder’s mosque of Indrapuri for the highland XXII Mukims was still extant in Snouck’s day; but the mosques of Indrapeurua for the XXV Mukims and Indrapatra for the XXVI Mukims had so completely disappeared that he could only identify their sites by the present-day villages near which they had stood. Ladong’s mention is thus incidental to the lost site of Indrapatra.
Significance
Although Ladong itself appears in Vol. I only as a present-day landmark for the vanished Indrapatra mosque, the reference is significant for the early seventeenth-century history of the sultanate. The choice of the Ladong area for one of the three head mosques shows that in Meukuta Alam’s time the coast of the XXVI Mukims was still a ritually central part of Great Acheh — a position it would lose in later centuries to the capital itself, with its own Meuseugit Raya near the Dalam.
See Also
- Hikayat Malem Dagang
- Malem Dagang
- Sultan Iskandar Muda
- Indrapatra
- Indrapeurua
- Indrapuri
- Meuseugit Raya
- Sultan Meukuta Alam
- XXVI Mukims
- Acheh
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.