Pasei (modern Pasai; also Pasé; also Samudra Pasai) was the historical Muslim kingdom on the north coast of Atjeh, founded (on the chronology of the Pasai chronicle) in the late thirteenth century and absorbed by the Atjeh sultanate under Iskandar Muda in the early seventeenth century. Pasei was, before the rise of Koetaradja, the principal Muslim polity of northern Sumatra and one of the earliest Muslim kingdoms in the Indonesian archipelago; its chronicle, the *Hikajat Radja-radja Pasei*, is one of the foundational Malay historical texts and was made accessible to European scholarship by E. Dulaurier in 1849 and by A. Marre in 1874. In Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (p. 220) Pasei appears as the place of origin of Gedong, the eponymous ancestor of the marga Ramin of Boven-Singkel, whose encounter with an eel and a buffalo during a shipwreck on the way to Belawan gave rise to the lineage’s double food-prohibition.
In the Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas (1926), Pasei (spelled Pasé) is cited alongside Perlak as one of the two earliest-known Muslim principalities (Moslimsche rijkjes) on the north-east coast of Sumatra, established by approximately 1500 — evidence for the early penetration of Islam into the Indonesian Archipelago. The atlas also notes that Soenan Goenoeng Djati, one of the nine saints (Wali Songo) credited with the Islamisation of Java, was “vermoedelijk uit Pasei (Noord-Sumatra) afkomstig” (presumably from Pasai [North Sumatra] by origin).
Account from Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas (1926) — Pasé
The atlas mentions Pasé in two distinct contexts:
As an Early Muslim Sultanate
In its chapter on religion: “Uit gegevens uit reisverhalen en Mohammedaansche grafsteenen met opschriften uit de 15e eeuw valt af te leiden dat de Islam destijds reeds vasten voet had gevat, zoowel op de N.O. kust van Sumatra (de Moslimsche rijkjes Perlak en Pasé in omstreeks 1500) als kort daarna op de N.O. kust van Java.” (From data in travel accounts and Mohammedan tombstones with inscriptions from the 15th century, it can be deduced that Islam had by then already gained a firm footing, both on the N.E. coast of Sumatra [the Muslim principalities Perlak and Pasé around 1500] and shortly thereafter on the N.E. coast of Java.)
As the Origin of Soenan Goenoeng Djati
In its description of the graves at Gresik: “Soenan Goenoeng Djati was een Mohammedaan, vermoedelijk uit Pasei (Noord-Sumatra) afkomstig, die met zijn godsdienst-onderwijs op Java veel opgang maakte. Hij stierf 1570 te Cheribon.” (Soenan Goenoeng Djati was a Mohammedan, presumably from Pasai [North Sumatra] by origin, who with his religious teaching achieved much success on Java. He died in 1570 at Cheribon.)
The Hikayat Raja-raja Pasai and European editions
The Hikayat Raja-raja Pasai (Chronicle of the Kings of Pasai) is the foundational Malay literary source for the history of Pasai. The chronicle was edited by E. Dulaurier (Paris, 1849) and later published in the B.K.I. and in an edition by J. P. Mead appearing in the J.S.B.R.As.S. These successive European editions made the Pasai chronicle accessible to Western Malay scholarship and introduced it into the comparative discussion of early Muslim polities in the archipelago.
The Portuguese visit (1509)
Pasei was one of the two pepper ports — with Pedir — that the Sequeira mission of 1509 called at on the way to Malaka, “waar de Portugeezen toestemming verwierven om handel te drijven”. The visit was the first European commercial contact with the Atjeh coast and the foundation of the European pepper trade with the region. Pasei, like Pedir, would within a generation become one of the chief attractions of the Atjeh coast to European traders.
The Djohor fleet off Pasei (1601)
In June 1601, when Furtado de Mendoza’s Portuguese fleet of a galleon and a fust appeared off Atjeh, the sultan of Atjeh and his court suspected a connection between the Portuguese fleet’s arrival and the simultaneous presence of “een vloot van een zestigtal oorlogsschepen van den sultan van Djohor voor Pasei”. The Atjehers “versterkten zich, bevreesd voor een aanval van beiden”. The sultan, unwilling to make the Portuguese his enemies but angered when they seized an Arab ship in defiance of his hospitality, had his shore batteries fire on the Portuguese ship; one of Furtado’s ships was lost, and the crew was disarmed and imprisoned. Van der Woude notes that “de volgende Hollandsche vloot zou van deze gebeurtenissen profiteeren”: the Zeeland Company’s Atjeh mission ([[1601)|Zeeland mission of August 1601]] found the sultan already alienated from the Portuguese, and obtained the release of Frederik de Houtman without ransom.
The historical background
Pasei — properly the kingdom of Samudra Pasai — was one of the oldest Muslim port-kingdoms on Sumatra, founded (according to the Malay chronicles) in the late thirteenth century. It was the chief pepper port of the north Sumatran coast before the rise of Atjeh in the sixteenth century, and its Islamisation made it the principal conduit of Muslim commercial and religious influence into the Indonesian archipelago. By the early seventeenth century, when Van der Woude’s narrative begins, Pasei had been absorbed into the Atjeh sultanate, but its port retained its commercial significance as one of the two chief pepper ports of the Atjeh coast. The Portuguese missions of 1509 and 1511 called at Pasei on the way to Malaka; the Houtman brothers’ visit to Atjeh ([[1599)|Houtman brothers’ visit of 1599]] called at Pedir rather than Pasei, but the Portuguese trade with Pasei continued throughout the sixteenth century.
Significance
Pasei is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the principal north-coast pepper port of Atjeh (alongside Pedir) and the place off which the Djohor fleet was sighted in 1601 — the sight that turned the sultan of Atjeh against the Portuguese and prepared the ground for the Zeeland Company’s Atjeh mission ([[1601)|Zealand mission of August 1601]]. Pasei’s pepper trade was the proximate commercial attraction of the Atjeh coast to European traders from the Sequeira mission of 1509 onward, and its role in the sultan’s strategic calculations — as a port to be defended against both the Portuguese and the Djohor — made it the principal strategic location on the north Sumatran coast in the early-modern period. Pasei’s earlier history as the kingdom of Samudra Pasai — the oldest Muslim port-kingdom on Sumatra — also frames its long-term significance as the conduit of Muslim commercial and religious influence into the Indonesian archipelago.
Pasei’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history is foundational. As the principal Muslim predecessor-state of the Atjeh sultanate on the northern Sumatran coast, as the locus of one of the earliest Muslim kingdoms in the Indonesian archipelago, as the home of the foundational Malay chronicle of the kings of Pasai, and as the place of origin of Gedong — the legendary Atjeher whose double oath gave rise to the marga Ramin buffalo- and eel-prohibition — Pasei anchors a long arc of Atjehnese history that runs from the late-thirteenth-century conversion to Islam, through the early-modern cosmopolitan entrepôt, to the early-seventeenth-century absorption into the Atjeh bloeitijdperk ([[1607-1636)|Atjeh bloeitijdperk]] under Iskandar Muda.
The atlas’s dual significance for Pasei — as both an early Islamic state and the birthplace of one of the nine wali (saints) credited with the Islamisation of Java — underscores the central role that North Sumatran Islam played in the religious transformation of the entire Archipelago. The connection between Pasé and the Javanese mission of Soenan Goenoeng Djati illustrates the transmission of Islam from its Sumatran footholds to the more populous and culturally developed island of Java.
In De Karbouw
Pasei appears in De Karbouw as the home of Gedong, the Atjeher whose legend is recorded by Ypes (Bijdrage tot de kennis van stamverwantschap op Sumatra, p. 57 nt. 1) and reproduced by Kreemer at p. 220:
“Van de marga Ramin in Boven-Singkel bestaat de volgende legende. Een Atjeher van Pasei, Gedong geheten, die de stamvader heet te zijn van genoemde marga, leed op weg naar Belawan schipbreuk en werd door een paling gevangen, welke hem echter naar land bracht, toen hij de eed had gezworen, nooit paling te zullen eten. Op het strand wachtte hem evenwel een buffel op (of dit een albino-dier was, wordt niet vermeld), welke hem dreigde, weder in zee te zullen stoten, doch hem ongedeerd liet landen, toen hij gezworen had, ook geen buffelvlees te zullen nuttigen. Men zegt, dat de leden van de marga Ramin nu nog geen paling of karbouwenvlees mogen eten.”
The Pasei provenance of Gedong is significant because it ties the Boven-Singkel (Singkil-area) origin-legend of the marga Ramin to the North-Acehnese Pasai cultural sphere, suggesting (as Kreemer notes elsewhere in the same chapter) the wide diffusion of buffalo-pantang legends across the northern Sumatran coastal and highland belt.
The *Hikajat Radja-radja Pasei* itself — the chronicle of the kings of Pasai — is cited at De Karbouw, p. 209 (footnote), among the textual witnesses to the Minangkabau buffalo-fight founding legend, alongside A. Marre’s 1874 Histoire des rois de Pasey (pp. 100 vg., 125 vg.), Brandes’s Pararaton (2nd ed., p. 149 vg.), and Westenenk’s Minangkabau writings. The Pasai chronicle thus circulated in Malay textual tradition in close proximity to the Javanese-Minangkabau historical-literary complex, and the 1849 edition by E. Dulaurier and the 1874 translation by A. Marre were the principal European entry-points into that textual web.
Historical context
The kingdom of Samudra-Pasai was founded, according to the Pasai chronicle, in the late thirteenth century (traditionally 1267) by Merah Silau, who is said to have converted to Islam and assumed the title Malik as-Saleh. The kingdom rapidly became the principal Muslim polity of northern Sumatra and a major entrepôt for the India-Indonesia trade, attracting merchants from Gujarat, Bengal, the Coromandel Coast (the “Klingalese” of the Atjeh ethnographic record) and the Arab world. The kingdom was visited by Ibn Battuta in 1345-46, by Marco Polo (in nearby Perlak) on his return journey in 1292, and by Zheng He’s fleets in the early fifteenth century; it was absorbed by the rising Atjeh sultanate in the early sixteenth century and finally incorporated into the Atjehnese state under Iskandar Muda (r. 1607–1636). The atlas’s dating of the Muslim principalities of Perlak and Pasé to approximately 1500, based on travel accounts and Mohammedan tombstones with inscriptions from the fifteenth century, provides a terminus ante quem for the Islamisation of the broader region, and is consistent with this longer chronology.
See Also
Sources
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De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), pp. 209, 220.
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