Aceh's young Alexander kept 900 elephants and a guard of 3,000 women
In the early 1600s the Sultan of Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, measured prestige in elephants, and Iskandar Muda owned about 900. He sent twelve as a gift to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. His palace was protected by an elite corps of 3,000 women, and his name meant young Alexander.
Born around 1583, he united two branches of Aceh's royal family through his parents. As a young prince called Perkasa Alam he quarrelled with his uncle, Sultan Ali, joined a failed revolt and ended up in prison. A Portuguese invasion in 1606 set him free; he fought well, the attackers withdrew, and when Ali died suddenly on 4 April 1607 he claimed the throne that same day. A court chronicle, the Hikayat Aceh, apparently modelled on a Persian history written for the Mughal emperor Akbar, lavishly praised his youth and traced his line back to Alexander the Great.
His power rested on force: heavy galleys each carrying 600 to 800 men, cavalry on Persian horses, war elephants and more than 2,000 guns. He took Deli, Aru, Johor, Pahang and Kedah, beat a Portuguese fleet at Bintan in 1614 and threatened Portuguese Melaka. In 1629 he threw several hundred ships at the city and lost the fleet; Portuguese accounts put his dead at 19,000. His rule was also notoriously cruel, with harsh punishments for small offences, and he even had his own son, the crown prince, put to death.
Wealth came from pepper, plus cloves, nutmeg and betel. The Ottomans encouraged trade through Aceh as an alternative to the Portuguese route around Africa. He kept interest rates low, spread the use of small gold coins, monopolised dealings with foreigners and forced the wealthy elite, the orang kaya, to live at court under watch, banning them from building fortifiable houses. Courts applying Islamic law became a model for other Indonesian states.
Aceh grew into a centre of Islamic learning, and he favoured the Sufi writers Hamzah Pansuri and Syamsuddin of Pasai, whose books were later burned as heretical. He died on 27 December 1636, the last direct male descendant of the sultanate's founder. Acehnese still honour him as a hero, and Banda Aceh's airport bears his name.
Source: Iskandar Muda
