Sultan Ala’u’d-din Ri’ayat Shah

Sultan Ala’u’d-din Ri’ayat Shah (r. c. 1597–c. 1616–22) was the sixth sultan of Johore, eldest son of sultan Ali Jalla ‘Abdu’l-Jalil Ri’ayat Shah. His reign is best known for the Achenese capture of his capital at Batu Sawar in 1613, after which he lived as a fugitive for several years before his death, the date and place of which remain uncertain. The long-standing tradition that he died at Acheh in June 1613 has been shown to be a conflation with his predecessor of the same name.[1]

Accession and Character

Sultan Ali Jalla ‘Abdu’l-Jalil is said to have died at Batu Sawar in 1597, ten years after the Portuguese had destroyed his earlier capital near Johore Lama, and was succeeded by his eldest son, raja Mansor, who took the title sultan Ala’u’d-din Ri’ayat Shah.[1, p. 125] The Dutch admiral Cornelis Matelief, whose report was later transmitted through Valentijn, described the new sultan as ‘a lazy and indolent prince, sleeping almost the whole day, getting drunk, and amusing himself with his women’, while he left the business of government to his half-brother raja Bongsu and the bendahara (chief minister), Tun Seri Lanang.[1, p. 125] At least two of Ala’u’d-din’s other half-brothers, Raja Laut and the sultan of Kampar, are said to have passed the greater part of their time in similar indulgences.[1, p. 125]

The capital of Johore at this period remained at, or in the vicinity of, Batu Sawar. From early in Ala’u’d-din’s reign, raja Bongsu maintained his own court at Kota Seberang, on the opposite side of the Johore river, and became known also as raja Seberang.[1, p. 126] About 1608 Ala’u’d-din opened a new settlement further upstream, which he named Pasar Raja; its exact position is not clear, as the Shellabear recension of the Malay Annals refers to it only as di-hulu kuala sungai Riun, and the sungai Riun can no longer be identified.[1, p. 126] The Dutch admiral Pieter Verhoeff visited the settlement in January 1609, and the journey from Batu Sawar did not take long.[1, p. 126]

The one point that appears certain about Ala’u’d-din’s foreign policy is that he favoured the Portuguese, while raja Bongsu had little liking for them and supported the Dutch consistently from their first appearance in Johore waters.[1, p. 126]

The Achenese Attack of 1613 and Its Aftermath

In June 1613, Batu Sawar and the adjacent settlements were captured and destroyed by forces sent by sultan Iskandar Muda of Acheh.[1, p. 126] The Achenese occupied Batu Sawar on 6 June and returned to Acheh on 28 June.[1, p. 127] The prisoner brought back was not Ala’u’d-din but his half-brother raja Bongsu, as confirmed by the diary of Ralph Croft, purser of the English ship Dragon, and the journal of Pieter Floris aboard the Globe.[1, pp. 127–128] Croft records under 5 July that the Achenese general was forced by Iskandar Muda to eat a platter of excrement for failing to capture the ‘old King of Joar’, described as ‘an old decreped man and had assigned his kingdome to his sone’.[1, p. 127] Floris, writing from Patani on 8 November 1613, reported that raja Bongsu had been sent back to Johore with thirty prawes (junks) and 2,000 Achenese to rebuild the fort, married to Iskandar Muda’s sister, with the explicit instruction that the old king should be deposed.[1, p. 128]

Ala’u’d-din was still alive and free in November 1615, when he spoke aboard the English ship Solomon in the Singapore Strait, described by the factors as ‘flying from the King of Achin’ and living ‘on the water like a fugitive’.[1, pp. 133] Three months earlier he had signed a treaty with the Portuguese at Malacca, one condition of which was that the Portuguese should escort his eldest son, raja Bujang, to take possession of Pahang.[1, p. 133]

Legacy and Documentation

Gibson-Hill’s 1956 article in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society dismantles the long-standing claim that Ala’u’d-din died at Acheh in June 1613, demonstrating that the ‘death at Acheh’ tradition almost certainly conflates this sultan with his predecessor of the same name (r. 1529–c. 1564), who was indeed taken prisoner and died in Acheh.[1, p. 125] The Perak silah-silah (genealogical records) cited by W. E. Maxwell designates the earlier Ala’u’d-din as ‘Marhum Sayyid Mangkat di-Acheh’ but the later Ala’u’d-din as ‘Marhum Kampar’, providing a textual basis for the conflation.[1, p. 138] Gibson-Hill concludes that Ala’u’d-din must certainly have died before March 1623, when his son was proclaimed sultan, but that the date and place of his death cannot be determined from the available evidence; it was not in 1613, nor during the succeeding two years.[1, p. 137] The article also corrects a specific error in Sir Richard Winstedt’s History of Johore (1932) and History of Malaya (1935), which had conflated the 1613 attack on Batu Sawar with the 1615 attack on Malacca and accepted the ‘death at Acheh’ tradition without critical examination.[1, p. 126]

MBRAS Sources

C.A. Gibson-Hill (1956). On the alleged death of Sultan Al’a’ud-din of Johore at Acheh, in 1613. JMBRAS 29: 125–145

References