The year 1297 is the date of the death and burial of the first Muslim ruler of Samudra on the Pase-rivier in northern Sumatra, the polity whose Islamisation marks the earliest documentary evidence of a Muslim court in the Indonesian archipelago after the 1292 visit of Marco Polo to the neighbouring polity of Perlak. The date is recorded in Dr. Van Naerssen’s chapter De oudste cultuurstroomen in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946).
The 1297 grave at Samudra
Van Naerssen’s account runs: “the Muslim founder of the little realm lies buried there in 1297. His gravestone is preserved and proves to have been imported ready-made from Cambay, the chief city of Goedjarat, which itself had only been Islamised since around 1250 and was developing more and more into a Muslim emporium. The Islam will have, as everywhere, stimulated the trade expansion.” The 1297 tombstone, imported ready-made from Cambay, is the principal material evidence for the early Islamisation of the Sumatran coast; the same Cambay-type tombstone is found in the oldest preserved Muslim grave on Java — that of Malik Ibrahim (d. 1419) at Gresik — bracketing the early Islamisation of the archipelago between the two graves.
Atjeh connection
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the 1297 grave is foundational: the Samudra polity that produced it was the immediate predecessor of the Atjeh sultanate on the same north Sumatran coast, and its Islamisation — via the Goedjarat–Cambay mercantile network — established the religious-cultural base on which the later Atjeh sultanate was built. The three centuries that separate the 1297 grave from the conversion of Minangkabau via Atjeh of c. 1550 are, on Van Naerssen’s account, the period of Atjeh’s gradual rise to dominance over the north Sumatran coast.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- oudste cultuurstroomen — oldest cultural streams
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Java — Java
- Sumatra — Sumatra
- Goedjarat — Gujarat
- Cambay — Khambhat
- Perlak — Peureulak
- Samudra — Samudra
- Pasei — Pasai
- Pase — Pasai
- Minangkabau — Minangkabau
- Dr. — Doctor
See Also
- Samudra
- Pasei
- Perlak
- Cambay
- Goedjarat
- Acheh
- Marco Polo
- 1292
- 1419
- 1550
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- F. H. van Naerssen
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), pp. 80–81 (chapter De oudste cultuurstroomen door Dr. F. H. van Naerssen).