The year 1615 was the year of the second Atjehnese attack on Batoe Sawar — the second of the two great naval expeditions sent by Sultan Iskandar Muda against the capital of Johor in the 1607-1636 bloeitijdperk (golden age) of Atjeh. The 1615 attack — like the 1613 attack before it — destroyed the city and drove the Johor court into a long exile that would last from the autumn of 1615 to April 1641. The year 1615 is, in Hooykaas’s reading in his survey of Malay literature, the second of the two great Atjehnese-Johor catastrophes that frame the composition-history of the Sadjarah Malajoe.
The Second Atjehnese Attack on Batoe Sawar
The second Atjehnese attack on Batoe Sawar was sent by Sultan Iskandar Muda in the autumn of 1615, in response to the new Sultan of Johor’s negotiations with the VOC and his separate peace with the Portuguese. Hooykaas records the attack: “Andermaal verschijnt in 1615 een Atjehse vloot; dit keer weet het hof te vluchten, om jaren en jaren lang geen rust te vinden” (Again an Atjehnese fleet appears in 1615; this time the court manages to flee, to find no rest for years and years).
Unlike the 1613 attack — which had caught the Johor court by surprise and carried off the Sultan and the Bendahara to Atjeh — the 1615 attack found the court warned, and the Sultan fled before the Atjehnese fleet arrived. The city, however, was destroyed: “de stad verlaten, die nu ten tweeden male door de Atjehers wordt verwoest; even grondig thans, als Djohor (Lama) op 15 Augustus 1587 door de Portugezen” (the city abandoned, now destroyed for the second time by the Atjehnese; as thoroughly now, as Djohor (Lama) on 15 August 1587 by the Portuguese).
The Second Exodus of the Johor Court
The 1615 attack drove the Johor court into a long exile — the “Tweede Exodus naar Bintan en elders” (Second Exodus to Bintan and elsewhere) — that would last from the autumn of 1615 to April 1641, when the Dutch-Johor conquest of Malacca finally allowed the court to return. The Sultan — Abdoellah Masajat Sjah, the former Radja ‘Abdoellāh who had commissioned the Sadjarah Malajoe in 1612 — “gevlucht naar Bintan, blijft als een opgejaagd hert zwerven” (fled to Bintan, remains wandering like a hunted deer). In 1618 he established himself on Lingga, but in early 1623 he was again driven out by an Atjehnese fleet, and died around May 1623 on Great-Tambēlan.
Hooykaas notes the pathos of the Sultan’s end: “Zó droevig eindigde de auctor intellectualis der SM” (Thus sadly ended the auctor intellectualis of the SM) — the man who had commissioned the Sadjarah Malajoe in 1612. The Malay chronicles, Hooykaas notes, “vergeten hem geheel” (forget him entirely) — a fact the more surprising because the Sultan “dan toch de dynastie voortzette in de Sultans 11 en 12, misschien ook 14” (after all continued the dynasty in the Sultans 11 and 12, perhaps also 14).
The Sadjarah Malajoe’s Diplomatic Silence
The Sadjarah Malajoe’s account of the 1615 catastrophe is, in Hooykaas’s reading, “diplomatiek” (diplomatic) — the work stops just before the 1615 attack: “Ze houdt, diplomatiek, juist daarvóór op, bejammerd alleen in gekuiste termen, dat de Sultan zo veranderziek was om weer hogerop een nieuwe kota te gaan stichten” (It stops, diplomatically, just before [the 1615 catastrophe], lamenting only in chastened terms that the Sultan was so changeable as to go and found a new kota higher up).
The Bendahara’s diplomatic silence on the 1615 catastrophe is, in Hooykaas’s reading, the silence of a courtier writing under the eye of the new sultan — a vassal of Atjeh — and the silence of a captive who had himself been carried off to Atjeh in 1613. Only the Inleiding (Introduction) of the Sadjarah Malajoe makes a “zwakke toespeling” (weak allusion) to the 1615 catastrophe, by speaking of the “Marhoem jang mangkat di Atjeh, Soeltan Alaoedin Ritajat Sjah” (the late [sultan] who died in Atjeh, Sultan Alā’uddīn Ri’āyat Shāh) — that is, the Sultan who had been carried off to Atjeh in 1613 and died there.
Significance
The year 1615 is, in Hooykaas’s reading, the second of the two great Atjehnese-Johor catastrophes that frame the composition-history of the Sadjarah Malajoe. The 1615 attack — like the 1613 attack before it — destroyed Batoe Sawar and drove the Johor court into exile, and the Sadjarah Malajoe’s diplomatic silence on the catastrophe is itself a historical datum — the silence of a courtier writing under the eye of a vassal-of-Atjeh sultan, and the silence of a captive who had himself been carried off to Atjeh.
See Also
- Sultan Iskandar Muda
- Batoe Sawar
- Djohor
- Sadjarah Malajoe
- Bendahara Sri Lanang
- Over Maleise Literatuur (1947)
- 1613
- 1612
- 1623
Source
Over Maleise Literatuur, by Dr. C. Hooykaas, Hoogleraarte Batavia; Tweede Druk (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1947), chapter 11 (“Geschiedschrijving in het Maleis”), pp. 96-98; appendix III (“De Vorsten van Malakka en Djohor”), pp. 275-276.