Tanjung Tanah Code of Law

The Tanjung Tanah manuscript is a code of law issued by the King of Dharmasraya to his vassals in Kerinci.

When the Dutch scholar Petrus Voorhoeve visited the Sumatran regency of Kerinci in April, and again in July 1941, he encountered a manuscript in the village of Tanjung Tanah that was exceptional in that it was not, as most of the manuscripts found in Kerinci, written on buffalo horn or paper, but on a kind of paper manufactured from the bark of the paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera Vent.), which under the name dluwang was a common writing media in Java.

Being the oldest Malay manuscript currently known ( ca.fourteenth or early fifteenth century),this codex is to be regarded as a tremendously important document of pre-Islamic Malay literary culture. It was issued by the royal court of Dharmasraya, also known as the Malayu kingdom, to provide the land of Kerinci with a legal code.

It begins with a number of opening sentences in Sanskrit, in which the manuscript is dated to the Waisyak months of an unfortunately illegible Saka year. The manuscript also concludes with a few sentences in Sanskrit where the ruler, Paduka Ari Maharaja Dharmasaraya, is mentioned alongside with the fact that the code of law is intended for the entire land of Kerinci.

With the discovery of Tanjung Tanah manuscript, for the frost it is the definite evidence that the Malay already possessed a manuscript tradition that goes back to at least the 14th century. It is an important, milestone in the reconstruction of literacy in the Malay World.
Tanjung Tanah Code of Law

Minangkabau

West Sumatra is the homeland of the Minangkabau. The center of the Minangkabau culture is the highland of West Sumatra. This highland is ‘traditionally’ divided into three regions: Limapuluh Koto, Tanah Datar and Agam. All the areas outside (even the coastal areas of West Sumatra) are called rantau.

The fame and glory of the Minangkabau cultural society has existed since 500 AD. Legend has it that the Minangkabau descended from the wandering Macedonian tyrant, Alexander the Great. 

According to the legend, the ancestors of the Minangkabau arrived in Sumatra under the leadership of King Maharo Dirajo, the youngest son of Alexander, more commonly known in Indonesia as Iskandar Zulkarnain.

The Minangkabau are strongly Islamic, but also follow their ethnic tradition or adat. The relationship between Islam and cultural tradition is describes by the saying adat basandi syarak, syarak basandi Kitabullah. It means that the tradition is founded upon Islamic law, and the Islamic law is founded upon the Holy Qur’an.
Minangkabau

Kesultanan Siak Sri Inderapura

The formal establishment of the sultanate of Siak is normally dated 1725, when the first of the 12 Sultans, Abdul Jalil Rahmad Syah, ascended the throne.

The Sultanate was located on and around the great Siak River which flows east to the Malacca straits. It political center the town of Siak Indrapura, was situated close to the mouth of the river.

Occupying a strategic position on the great international shipping conduit of the Malacca Strait, and with commercially important resources pepper and tin, the sultanate perhaps inevitably could not escape the complex regional power struggles involving local forces such as those of Aceh and Johor.

In 1791 Sayid Ali came to the power as ruler. Well known to Dutch as a former ‘pirate’ and occasional ally, he incorporated much of his raiding style experience into his style of government. Allying with the dreaded Ilanun, he mounted periodic attacks on neighboring ports and rival shipping.

At its greatest extend, early in the 19th century Siak’s authority stretched as far north as Langkat, Deli and Serdang, in today’s North Sumatra.

The trade is considerable and is carried on in vessels from the coast of Coromandel, which supply cargoes of piece goods, and also raw silk, opium and other articles, which they provide at Penang or Malacca: in return for which they receive gold, wax, sago, salted fish and fish-roes, elephants teeth, gambir, camphor, rattan and other canes.

Although political declined the line of Sultans continued until the establishment of the Indonesian republic.
Kesultanan Siak Sri Inderapura

Aceh and Ottoman alliance

The Acehnese Sultanate had been founded in the early sixteenth century in the extreme north of Sumatra in the area known in the sixteenth century as Lamri. Despite the distance between them, Turkey and Aceh managed to establish commercial, diplomatic and military relations, most extensively in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Around 1540s and 1550s, the Ottomans had maintained an intermittent naval presence in the western Indian Ocean.

The Ottoman army was once among the most advanced fighting forces in the world. The conquest of Imrah Island in the Sea of Marmara in 1308 marked the first Ottoman naval victory. Being aware of Ottoman interest in keeping alive trade to the Red Sea from the South and South East Asia, and also desirous of the legitimacy provided by a link with the Caliphate, Sultan ‘Alauddin Ri’ayat Shah al-Qahhar of Aceh sent a mission to Istanbul.

And as early as June 1562 an Acehnese ambassador was already in Istanbul, asking for military support to fight the Portuguese attack a year earlier.

The Ottomans did provide Aceh with a few expert gunpowders and artillerymen, but the major consequence of this embassy was to cement economic ties between the ports of the Red Sea which were under Ottoman control and the Acehnese.

According to Acehnese sources and some Portuguese ones imply that some military assistance, probably including two ships, some big cannons and some war artisans were sent to Aceh by Sultan Salim II.
Aceh and Ottoman alliance

Pagaruyung Kingdom

Pagaruyung was the central government administration of the Minangkabau rulers. From the stone inscriptions, the first verifiable king, or ‘raja’ of the then largely animistic Minangkabau was the mid-14th century Adityawarman.

Adityawarman, who was a descendent of the Majapahit royal kingdom in east Java of mixed Javanese and Sumatran parentage, established the Pagaruyung in 1343.

He was sent to govern Dhamasraya, presumably because of his links to Melayu tribe and because of the economic importance of this gold-bearing region.

The export of gold, spices, woven cloth and resins were the basis of the power and prestige of the Minangkabau raja who reigned at Pagaruyung, near Bukit Tinggi.

Throughout the late 1600s, Pagaruyung extended their influence northward into the Angkola and Mandailing Batak regions and southward into Rejang.

The Minangkabau Kingdom as a political and cultural force ended with the destruction of the Pagaruyung court in the early 19th century.
Pagaruyung Kingdom

History of Negeri Sembilan

Negeri Sembilan is almost landlocked bounded by Selangor to the North, Pahang to the east and Malacca to the south, and a western coastal strip of less than 50 kilometers.

Established historical studies pertaining to Negeri Sembilan’s pre-Islamic origins are unanimous on the point that the earliest inhabitants of Rembau are aboriginal Malay horticulturist largely of Jakun stock.

It is well known that Negeri Sembilan became a permanent settlement of Minangkabau from Sumatra Island.

Around 1500s and perhaps even earlier, Indonesian immigrants – mostly Minangkabau navigated the Straits of Malacca, sailed up the Linggi and Rembau rivers and founded settlements both in Negeri Sembilan and just across its southern border in Naning.

They initially lived under the protection of the rulers of Malacca, but with fall of Malacca to the Portuguese, the Minangkabau sought protection from the sultans of neighboring Malay rulers of the Johor-Riau Empire.

Minangkabau rulers made no effort to summon their people back, but a sense of a group identity remained strong and still in the late eighteenth century Minangkabau communities in the peninsula received their leaders from their original homeland.

The royal families of Negeri Sembilan still regard themselves as descendants of royal families from Pagaruyung.

In 1773, Raja Melewar, a Minangkabau prince from Sumatera, was appointed the first head of state (yang di pertuan besar) of Negeri Sembilan.

Out of this initial union emerged a loose confederation of nine luak (fiefdoms).

As late as 1824 the kings of Negeri Sembilan were taken directly from the royal house in Pagaruyung.

After Raja Melewar’s death, the titles of yang di pertuan besar was taken by a succession of Sumatera chiefs, until a series of protracted tin-related wars in 1824-32 led to severance of political ties with Sumatera.
History of Negeri Sembilan