Ottoman-Aceh Relations As Documented in Turkish Sources

CHAPTER IV Ottoman-Aceh relations as documented in Turkish sources

İsmail Hakkı Göksoy

Despite the distance between them, Turkey and Aceh managed to establish commercial, diplomatic and military relations, most extensively in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The main aim of this chapter is to examine these relations using Ottoman sources. Most of these sources for sixteenth-century relations can be found in the Mühimme records issued by the Divan-ı Humayun (Ottoman Imperial Council), some of which are now available in published form. These offi cial records document the arrival of Aceh envoys in Istanbul and their request for military aid from Turkey, as well as the preparation of a navy campaign to Sumatra in support of Aceh in 1567. As for nineteenth- century relations, Ottoman sources focus on the arrival of Aceh delegations in Istanbul in 1851 and 1873. These sources come from various government offi ces, and mention the renewal of Acehnese promises of loyalty from the sixteenth century and Acehnese requests for protection from the Ottoman Empire. Connections with Southeast Asia go back as far as the twelfth century. Turkic traders, following the Arabs, Persians and Indian Muslims, began to participate in the international trade between West Asia and China after the establishment of the Seljuk rule in western Asia in the second half of the eleventh century. As demonstrated by Affan Seljuk, Turkic participation in this trade with the Indonesian Archipelago took place during the last period of the Abbasids in Baghdad (Seljuk 1980:302-3). The presence of the Turks in the region was recorded by the famous North African Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta (d. 1369), who visited the Samudra-Pasai sultanate in northern Sumatra on his way to China in 1345 and 1346. He noted that the state traditions of this sultanate were similar to those of the (Turkic) Delhi sultanate in India. He also told the story of a queen who spoke Turkish with him on an island called Tawalisi. Her name was given in a Turkic form as Urduja (at-Tanci n.y.:454-5, 459-60). There is other evidence of early Turkic cultural infl uence in North Sumatra as well. For instance, the adoption of Mamluk sultans’ names and titles by 66 İsmail Hakkı Göksoy

Samudra-Pasai sultans at the end of the thirteenth century, like Malik al-Salih and Malik al-Zahir, is further evidence of Sumatra’s close connection with western Asia, in particular, with the shores of the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt (Di Meglio 1970:117). The presence of Turks trading in the region was also noted by Portuguese sources. For instance, the Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires visited the harbour city of Pasai in 1511, describing it as strong, prosperous and cosmopolitan. He mentioned the presence in Pasai of many foreign traders from India and West Asia, some of whom were labelled ‘Rumi’ or ‘Turki’. These traders coming from Cairo, Aden and Hormuz fi rst called at the ports of Gujerat in India, and then sailed as far as Sumatra and Malacca (Di Meglio 1970:120-2). As the Pasai and Pidie regions of northern Sumatra continued to be impor- tant centres of pepper production and export (Abdullah Nabir 1987:137), Aceh emerged as a powerful sultanate by profi ting from the international trade in pepper in the fi rst half of the sixteenth century. C.R. Boxer gives the date for the beginning of direct trade between Aceh and the Red Sea shores as 1534 (Boxer 1969:416). From the 1530s until the 1560s, there was regular and grow- ing trade between Aceh and Arabian ports, particularly with Aden. In the early 1550s, there was such abundance of eastern products in the Yemen that prices for commodities coming from the east declined, despite attempts by the Portuguese to capture the ships from Aceh and Gujerat in the Straits of Bab al-Mandab (Özbaran 1963:136-7). Apart from these commercial activities, Muslim powers became active militarily in the Indian Ocean at the begining of sixteenth century. When the Portuguese began to dominate the Indian Ocean and took control of much of its maritime trade, the affected Muslim sultanates in the region sought to obtain the assistance of the Mamluk sultans in Egypt. The Mamluks built a navy in Suez to drive these Portuguese away from the Red Sea and Indian shores. A Mamluk navy went as far as the harbour of Diu in 1512 to drive the Portuguese out of the city (Bey 1911:1528-30; Özbaran 1963:78).1 Besides these organized expeditions, some freelance Turkish seamen were also sailing from the Red Sea shores to the Indian Ocean. These were similar to the adventurers in the western Mediterranean region – ‘Levantine’ seamen originating from the cities of western Anatolia. As stated by the famous Turkish historian Halil İnalcık: ‘[t]hose Rumi who sailed from the Red Sea to India between the years 1500 and 1517 are the same Anatolian gazi (fi ghters), some of whom were working in the western Mediterranean and Algiers. Among them was an artilleryman called Rumi Topchu Mustafa who entered the service of the Moghul Empire in India.’2

1 On the Mamluk expeditions to South Asia, see Mughul 1987:27-86. 2 Halil İnalcık’s ‘Preface’ in Mughul 1987:3.