- Iskandar Thani
Iskandar Thani Alauddin Mughayat Syah (d. 1641) was the thirteenth
sultan of Aceh , following the powerfulIskandar Muda . Iskandar Thani was the son of the sultan ofPahang ,Ahmad Syah , who was brought to Aceh in the conquest of Pahang in 1617 by Iskandar Muda. He married the sultan's daughter, the later queenTaj ul-Alam , and succeeded Iskandar Muda as sultan when he died in 1636.Reigning in the wake of the rout of the Acehnese fleet in 1629, Iskandar Thani was not able to continue his predecessor's military successes. He was a strong ruler, able to suppress the "
orang kaya " (Acehnese nobility) and working to centralize royal power as Iskandar Muda had done. [Barwise and White, 117] His rule was too short to make major accomplishments, however, and after his death the elite re-asserted their influence, and placed his widow,Taj ul-Alam , on the throne, the first of several weak sultans. [Ricklefs, 35]Like Iskandar Muda's, the court of Iskandar Thani was known as a center of Islamic learning. He was the patron of
Nuruddin ar-Raniri , an Islamic scholar fromGujarat who arrived in Aceh in 1637. Ar-Raniri denounced the work of earlier scholars from Iskandar Muda's court, and ordered their books to be burned while establishing literary and religious standards. [Ricklefs, 51]Notes
References
* J.M. Barwise and N.J. White. "A Traveller’s History of Southeast Asia". New York: Interlink Books, 2002.
* M.C. Ricklefs. "A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1300", 2nd ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.
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