Page 192 - Transformasi Masyarakat Indonesia dan Historiografi Indonesia Modern

Transformasi Masyarakat Indonesia...

closely at the Sultanate of Aceh during the latter part of the 16 th
and all of the 17 century, and the Sultanate of Demak at the
th
sixteenth century as well as the Mataram. Muslim kingdom at
the seventeenth century up to the nineteenth century. The early
of the 17 century in Aceh were described by profound social
th
and religious change. Sultan Iskandar Muda (r. 16071637), one
of the greatest of Aceh’s rulers came to the throne. He estab-
lished for Aceh for a short time as the major power of western
archipelago. He had successfully not only built upon impressive
military power, but also he had placed great importance upon
the strengthening of the Islamic faith both within and without
the territory of Aceh proper. Not a few mosques were built,
including the famous Bayt al Rahman mosque in Aceh, later to
be destroyed by fire. Iskandar Muda had an aggressive cam-
paingns to expand his territory to Pennisula and surrounding
areas and attacked Portuguese at Malaka, but in the later he
frustrated when the Johorese, which formerly had been de-
feated, managed to reassert their independence and expel the
Acehnese, and it were also brought to a halt by the Portuguese
in 1629. Under his rule, the Aceh state achieved its “golden
age”, but actually rested on the fragile foundations. It faced
precisely the same fundamental problem as the Malaka Sultan-
ate and other states which aspired to be a major coastal trading
power, but they unable to manage their population which was
essential to its success in war and commerce. After his reign
Aceh entered a long period of internal disunity and ceased to
be a significant force outside the northern tip of Sumatra.
The emergence of the Muslim intellectuals in the Aceh state
were prominently deserving the building of the Malay world
in the early Islamic period in Indonesia, especially in the Malay
Muslim literature. If Malaca in many ways set the cultural stan-
dards for a classically Malay culture with strong Islamic influ-
ences, from northern Sumatra came particularly important works
of Malay literature, especially religious literature. Hamzah

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