Islam crept into Sumatra like a shadow at sunset, earlier
than anywhere else in the Nusantara. That’s what the fancy academics would tell
you, anyway. But if you’d stood on the shores of Barus a thousand years ago,
watching those foreign ships emerge from the morning fog, you’d have felt it in
your gut—something was changing, something old was dying, and something new was
clawing its way into existence.
The evidence is there, plain as the nose on your face, if
you know where to look. Pottery shards. Glass trinkets. Little breadcrumbs from
the Middle East scattered across the sand like the trail of some massive beast
that had passed through. Claude Guillot and his egghead buddies wrote all about
it in their book. That connection to the Islamic world? It went back to the 9th
century. Jesus H. Christ, that’s old. That’s older than the nightmares that
haunt the storm drains beneath Mill Hollow.
But don’t get ahead of yourself. Those trinkets and pottery
shards didn’t mean the locals were bowing to Allah. Not yet. The real
Islamization—the moment when everything changed forever—that didn’t happen
until the early 13th century, when the Islamic Kingdom of Samudra Pasai rose
from the coastal plains like some ancient leviathan stretching its limbs.
In 1297 AD, a local bigwig named Merah Silu had what you
might call a religious awakening. The kind that turns your world inside out and
leaves you seeing everything differently. The kind that makes you change your
name—in his case, to Sultan Malikussaleh. He took his little slice of northern
Sumatra and transformed it into a trading hub that made the merchants of the
Malacca Strait sit up and take notice.
I shit you not, this guy had the brass ones to establish
diplomatic relations with the Yuan Dynasty—the leftovers of Genghis Khan’s
world-eating horde. He was playing with fire, surrounded as he was by
Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms that looked at him like he was the new kid in school
wearing the wrong clothes. And hovering on the horizon, just waiting for their
moment, was the kingdom of Majapahit.
Like any good horror story, this one’s got its share of
betrayals and bloodshed. When Merah Silu’s grandson, Sultan Malikul Mahmud,
took the throne (1326–1349), the shit really hit the fan. The Ayutthaya Kingdom
of Siam was flexing its muscles across the Malay Peninsula, and they had Pasai
in their sights.
One morning—and I can picture it as clear as day: the mist
hanging low over the water, fishermen looking up from their nets, children
stopping their games—a fleet of Siamese ships appeared like a nightmare
materialized. About a hundred junks, their wooden hulls creaking with menace,
their sails dark against the sky. A commander called Talak Sejang led them, his
face probably weathered like old leather, his eyes cold as a winter pond in
Nebraska.
The message was simple: pay tribute to the Maharaja of
Ayutthaya, or be destroyed. Sultan Malikul Mahmud, in that way that powerful
men sometimes confuse courage with stupidity, told them to take a long walk off
a short pier. And somehow—call it luck, call it divine intervention—Pasai
fought them off.
You know what they say about poking bears, though. The
Siamese hadn’t forgotten, and they sure as hell hadn’t forgiven. When Pasai was
later ruled by Sultan Ahmad and Zainal Abidin, Siam struck again. This time,
they sent a fella named Awi Dawichu who knew that sometimes the knife that
kills you isn’t the one you see coming, but the one hidden in a smile.
This crafty son of a bitch sent a “gift”—a treasure chest—to
young Sultan Zainal Abidin. Now, I’ve seen enough movies to know what happens
next, and so should you. When that chest popped open, out poured Siamese
soldiers like the toxic surprise in a jack-in-the-box, and before anyone could
say “holy shit,” they’d snatched the sultan like a fox grabbing a chicken.
The prime minister—Sayyid Ali Ghiyatuddin, a man who
probably had the weight of the world etched into the lines on his
face—negotiated the sultan’s return. The price? Pasai would bend the knee to
Siam. Pay tribute. The word “vassal” has a way of sticking in a proud man’s
throat like a fishbone, but what choice did they have?
Meanwhile, over in Java, Majapahit was watching. Just
watching. Like a predator in the tall grass, muscles tensed, yellow eyes
unblinking. They’d already swallowed Palembang whole, chased the remnants of
Srivijaya’s nobility to Tumasik Island where they’d founded Singapore, and then
drove them out again. Parameswara, or Iskandar Shah as he later called himself
after converting to Islam, had fled north and established the Sultanate of
Malacca. He’d married into the Pasai royal family—a desperate alliance of the
hunted.
And now Majapahit’s hungry gaze turned toward Pasai.
The Hikayat Raja-raja Pasai tells what happened next,
and brother, it’s the kind of story that would make Shakespeare weep. Sultan
Ahmad had a son, Tun Abdul Jalil, who was supposedly handsome as the devil
himself. So handsome that a Majapahit princess named Raden Galuh Gemerencang
fell head over heels for him just hearing stories. She sent a marriage proposal
that sailed across the seas to Pasai.
Sultan Ahmad—who had the political instincts of a cornered
rat—saw this for what it was: submission to Majapahit. In a decision that would’ve
made Macbeth look reasonable, he ordered his own son killed. And goddammit, it
happened. His own flesh and blood, sacrificed on the altar of political
paranoia.
Poor Gemerencang, her heart full of love and her head full
of dreams, sailed to Pasai for her wedding day. Can you imagine? The salty air
on her face, the excitement building with every wave that carried her closer to
her beloved. Instead, she heard the whispers from local fishermen—“badak makan
anak”—the rhino had eaten its child. The sultan had murdered his own son.
Rage is a terrible thing. It’s like a cancer that eats away
at reason, at mercy, at humanity. Gemerencang’s rage burned hot enough to melt
stone as she sailed back to her father.
The King of Majapahit’s wrath made his daughter’s look like
a toddler’s tantrum. He unleashed his forces like the horsemen of the
apocalypse, and God help anyone standing in their way.
First, they hit Perlak—a probing attack, testing defenses
like a shark bumping its prey before the killing bite. When that didn’t work,
they swung east, landing at Meutan. The hills there probably still remember the
thunder of their footsteps, the clank of their weapons, the harsh commands of
their officers.
They came through Paya Gajah, their naval forces storming
through Lhokseumawe, while another contingent seized Tamiang upriver. It was a
chokehold, slowly tightening around Pasai’s throat.
In desperation, Sultan Ahmad and Zainal Abidin sent
messengers to Malacca, begging for help from their in-laws. But the Sultan of
Malacca—perhaps knowing better than to throw his lot in with the doomed—turned
a blind eye. Family, when the chips are down, can be as unreliable as a
politician’s promise.
Pasai fell to Majapahit like a star dropping from the night
sky. They became another vassal, another footnote in the bloody ledger of
conquest. Even a century later, when the Aceh Sultanate rose to prominence,
Pasai never regained its former glory.
Some nights, if you stand on those shores where it all
happened, you might feel the weight of that history pressing down like a hand
on your shoulder. The wind might carry whispers of prayers in Arabic, the clash
of Javanese swords, the weeping of a princess betrayed. The past isn’t dead in
places like these.
It isn’t even past.
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