Figures, places, and events in Acehnese history associated with the year 1546 — the year of Demak’s attack on Pasoeroewan in East Java, the death of the king of Demak in the war-council, and the close of the Hindu-Javanese age in Java — the Javanese counterpart of the Atjehnese war on Aroe of 1539.
People
- Mendez Pinto — eyewitness, in Pinto’s Peregrinacam
- Pati Oenoes / Soenan Kalidjaga — king of Demak (in De Roo de la Faille’s identification)
- Faletahan / Sunan Gunung Jati — summoned to the campaign
- Djaka Tingkir — later Sultan of Padjang, hanged the rioters
- Njahi Pombaja — envoy of the king of Demak at Banten
- P. de Roo de la Faille — modern source
Places
Events
Concepts
Account from Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis (1955)
The following account is drawn from the parliamentary history of the Dutch Second Chamber as narrated by Vermeulen in the colonial section of the 1955 fourth revised edition of Rengers’s *Schets*.
1546 is the year in which, according to Nederlanders over de Zeeën, the Muslim coastal kingdom of Demak on Java — which had spread “van Malakka tot Bali” (from Malacca to Bali) in the first half of the sixteenth century — finally failed to “verdelgen” (exterminate) the last trace of Hinduism in Java’s Eastern Hook. The sultan of Demak “sneuvelt” (fell in battle) in this year during his attempt. The dating is recorded in the introductory survey of pre-Company Asia in Chapter II of Nederlanders over de Zeeën.
The wider Moslim-state context
1546 is given in the source as the chronological pendant to the rise of the great Muslim sultanate of Atjeh in North Sumatra during the sixteenth century. Where the kingdom of Madjapahit had once dominated the Indonesian Archipelago from the fourteenth century, by the sixteenth century small but vigorous Muslim states had taken its place. In North Sumatra, “begint in de 16e eeuw het grote rijk van Atjeh zijn vleugels uit te slaan” (in the sixteenth century the great kingdom of Atjeh begins to spread its wings). Atjeh was to dominate both shores of the Strait of Malacca and repeatedly to bring the Portuguese fortress there into dire straits. In Java, by contrast, the 1546 failure of Demak left the field to a successor inland state, Mataram, which would prove harmful to indigenous maritime enterprise.
Significance
1546 is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it dates the Java-side failure of the Demak sultanate against which the simultaneous rise of Atjeh is measured in Nederlanders over de Zeeën. The contrast — Atjeh’s wings spreading, Demak’s sultan falling — frames the sixteenth-century divergence of Muslim Sumatra from Muslim Java that would shape the entire Dutch-Atjehnese relationship three centuries later.
See Also
Sources
Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Over Soenan Kalidjaga”, pp. 53-58. Citing Pinto’s Peregrinacam.
Figures, places, and events in Acehnese history associated with the year 1546 — the year of Demak’s attack on Pasoeroewan in East Java, the death of the king of Demak in the war-council, and the close of the Hindu-Javanese age in Java — the Javanese counterpart of the Atjehnese war on Aroe of 1539.
Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Over Soenan Kalidjaga”, pp. 53-58. Citing Pinto’s Peregrinacam.
Nederlanders over de Zeeën: 350 Jaar geschiedenis van Nederland buitengaats, onder redactie van Dr. H. J. de Graaf, met medewerking van Prof. G. Gonggrijp, W. R. Menkman en Prof. Jhr Dr P. J. van Winter, 2e geheel herziene druk (Utrecht: W. de Haan N.V., MCMLV), pp. 99-100.