Peureulak Sultanate

Peureulak Sultanate or Perlak Sultanate is the earliest sultanate in Southeast Asia, believed to have converted to Islam as early as the 9th century. The location of Peureulak is in what is now the East Aceh Regency, Indonesia. Perlak or Peureulak is well known as a perlak wood producing area, a type of wood that is very good for ship building and house building. Its natural products and strategic position made Perlak develop as a commercial port that advanced in the 8th century, visited by ships which included Arab and Persian origin. This led to the development of Islamic societies in this area, mainly as a result of mixed marriages between Muslim merchants and local women. The Hikayat Aceh text reveals that the spread of Islam in northern Sumatra was carried out by an Arab scholar named Sheikh Abdullah Arif in 1112. The book Zhufan Zhi (諸蕃 志), written by Zhao Rugua in 1225, cited the record of a geographer, Chou Ku-fei, in 1178 that there is a Muslim country with only five days of voyage from Java. Perhaps the intended land is Peureulak because Chu-fan-chi declared a voyage from Java to Brunei took 15 days. The existence of the Peureulak state was reinforced by the famous Venetian traveller Marco Polo a century later. When Marco Polo returned from China by the sea in 1291, he stopped in the state of Ferlec who had embraced Islam. The first Sultan of Perlak was Sultan Alaiddin Syed Maulana Abdul Aziz Shah, a Shiite and an Arabian descendant, who founded the Perlak Sultanate at 1 Muharram 225 H (840 AD). He changed the name of the royal capital from Bandar Perlak to Caliph City. The Sultan was buried in Paya Meuligo, Peureulak, East Aceh with his wife, Princess Meurah Mahdum Khudawi. During the reign of the third sultan, Sultan Alaiddin Syed Maulana Abbas Shah, the Sunni movement began to enter Perlak. After the death of the sultan in 363 AH (913 AD), there was a civil war between Shiite and Sunnis so that for the next two years there was no sultan. The Shiites won the war and in 302 H (915 AD) and Sultan Alaiddin Syed Maulana Ali Mughat Shah from the Shi'ite stream ascended.