Ali Mughayat Syah

Ali Mughayat Syah (died 7 August 1530) was the founder and first sultan of the Aceh Sultanate in northern Sumatra, reigning from about 1514 until his death. His reign saw not only the foundation of the sultanate but also the conquest of Daya (1520), Pidie (1521) and Pasai (1524), which created the larger Acehnese state. ¹

The origins of Aceh are disputed — the Hikayat Aceh derives the dynasty from two heavenly nymphs who married princely brothers from Lamuri, while the Sejarah Melayu tells of a Champa prince who founded the royal line — but the sultanate itself likely emerged from the unification of Aceh in Dar al-Kamal and Lamuri in Mahkota Alam. Ali's father Syamsu Syah abdicated in his favour; Ali bound the two ruling lines together by marriage to Sitt Hur, a daughter of Alauddin of Daya, and was strongly supported by his brother Raja Ibrahim, a prominent military commander. According to the authoritative chronicle Bustanus Salatin, he was the first sultan of Aceh. The exact time of his accession is uncertain: the later chronicles give him 15, 16 or 18 years, placing it about 1512–1515, and the war with Pidie that ended Aceh's dependence was already raging in Portuguese accounts of those years. ^{1 2}

The Portuguese, who had conquered Melaka in 1511, rapidly made enemies of the Muslim traders of the Straits, and strongly Muslim Aceh — commanding the Indian Ocean and Red Sea routes from the northern tip of Sumatra — was a clear beneficiary. In 1520 Sultan Ali and Raja Ibrahim began the campaigns that subdued the north coast: Daya, where a Portuguese fort was lost; then, in 1521, the defeat of Jorge de Brito's landing, in which de Brito was killed and much European artillery captured; then Pidie, whose ruler was abandoned by his people; and finally, in 1524, Pasai, whose Portuguese garrison was expelled and whose sultan fled to Melaka. Raja Ibrahim died during the conquest of Pasai on 30 November 1523. The struggle continued — Acehnese and Portuguese ships fought in 1527 and 1528, and a planned surprise attack on Melaka in 1529 was abandoned when the plans leaked. ¹

The death of Ali Mughayat Syah is given variously by the later chronicles — 1511, 1522 and 1530 — but the testimony of his gravestone, as reported by the English article and matched by the Indonesian article's infobox, dates it to 7 August 1530, exactly one month before his abdicated father Syamsu; he was buried in the palace compound of Kutaraja (Banda Aceh). The Indonesian article's epigraphic discussion shows the evidence is contested, weighing an attributed gravestone dated 21 Muharram 930 AH (about 30 November 1523) against the tradition that he died on 12 Dhu al-Hijja 936 AH. A Portuguese chronicler, João de Barros, claimed he was poisoned by his wife, a sister of the ruler of Daya, in revenge for Daya's conquest. He left two sons, Salahuddin, who succeeded him, and Alauddin, the later Sultan Alauddin al-Qahhar. ^{1 2 3}

No source read for this record names a school for him. The English and Indonesian infoboxes give his religion as Islam, and his reign was that of a Muslim sovereign building a Muslim state: his wars were waged in a Straits world polarised by the Portuguese seizure of Melaka, and Tomé Pires already describes his Aceh as a power courted and feared by its neighbours. ^{1 2 4}