Aceh Sultanate

The Aceh Sultanate, the Kingdom of Aceh Darussalam, was the Muslim power of Sumatra's northern tip from 1496 to 1903, with its capital at Kutaraja, the present Banda Aceh. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it stood as the great Malay power against the Portuguese: Iskandar Muda's galleys ruled the straits, his elephants paraded before English and Dutch envoys, and Aceh pepper filled the holds of every nation. Aceh cannon, cast with Ottoman help, guarded the straits against every comer for a century. The sultan claimed the shadow of the Caliph and kept scholars, cannon founders and Ottoman advisers at his court. After Iskandar's line failed, queens and oligarchs divided the power and the long decline set in, as the Dutch closed round from Java and the pepper trade moved on. The Aceh War of 1873 ground on for thirty years, the longest and bloodiest of the Dutch colonial wars, until the sultan's surrender in 1903 closed four centuries of the Abode of Peace.