It Goes On To Relate The History
Of The Two Sons Al-Dhahir And Al-Mansur.
Another version is given in the
history of Pasei already alluded to, with such differences as might be
expected when the oral traditions of several centuries came to be written
down.
Ibn Batuta, about 1346, on his way to China, spent fifteen days at the
court of Samudra, which he calls Samathrah or Samuthrah. The king whom
he found there reigning was the Sultan Al-Malik Al-Dhahir, a most zealous
Mussulman, surrounded by doctors of theology, and greatly addicted to
religious discussions, as well as a great warrior and a powerful prince.
The city was 4 miles from its port, which the traveller calls Sarha; he
describes the capital as a large and fine town, surrounded with an
enceinte and bastions of timber. The court displayed all the state of
Mahomedan royalty, and the Sultan's dominions extended for many days along
the coast. In accordance with Ibn Batuta's picture, the Malay Chronicle
represents the court of Pasei (which we have seen to be intimately
connected with Samudra) as a great focus of theological studies about this
time.
There can be little doubt that Ibn Batuta's Malik Al-Dhahir is the prince
of the Malay Chronicle the son of the first Mahomedan king. We find in
1292 that Marco says nothing of Mahomedanism; the people are still wild
idolaters; but the king is already a rich and powerful prince. This may
have been Malik Al-Salih before his conversion; but it may be doubted if
the Malay story be correct in representing him as the founder of the
city. Nor is this apparently so represented in the Book of the Kings of
Pasei.
Before Ibn Batuta's time, Sumatra or Samudra appears in the travels of Fr.
Odoric. After speaking of Lamori (to which we shall come presently), he
says: "In the same island, towards the south, is another kingdom, by name
SUMOLTRA, in which is a singular generation of people, for they brand
themselves on the face with a hot iron in some twelve places," etc. This
looks as if the conversion to Islam was still (circa 1323) very
incomplete. Rashiduddin also speaks of Sumutra as lying beyond Lamuri.
(Elliot, I. p. 70.)
The power attained by the dynasty of Malik Al-Salih, and the number of
Mahomedans attracted to his court, probably led in the course of the 14th
century to the extension of the name of Sumatra to the whole island. For
when visited early in the next century by Nicolo Conti, we are told that
he "went to a fine city of the island of Taprobana, which island is called
by the natives Shamuthera." Strange to say, he speaks of the natives as
all idolaters. Fra Mauro, who got much from Conti, gives us Isola
Siamotra over Taprobana; and it shows at once his own judgment and
want of confidence in it, when he notes elsewhere that "Ptolemy,
professing to describe Taprobana, has really only described Saylan."
We have no means of settling the exact position of the city of Sumatra,
though possibly an enquiry among the natives of that coast might still
determine the point. Marsden and Logan indicate Samarlanga, but I should
look for it nearer Pasei. As pointed out by Mr. Braddell in the J. Ind.
Arch., Malay tradition represents the site of Pasei as selected on a
hunting expedition from Samudra, which seems to imply tolerable proximity.
And at the marriage of the Princess of Parlak to Malik Al-Salih, we are
told that the latter went to receive her on landing at Jambu Ayer (near
Diamond Point), and thence conducted her to the city of Samudra. I should
seek Samudra near the head of the estuary-like Gulf of Pasei, called in the
charts Telo (or Talak) Samawe; a place very likely to have been sought
as a shelter to the Great Kaan's fleet during the south-west monsoon. Fine
timber, of great size, grows close to the shore of this bay,[1] and would
furnish material for Marco's stockades.
When the Portuguese first reached those regions Pedir was the leading
state upon the coast, and certainly no state called Sumatra continued to
exist. Whether the city continued to exist even in decay is not easy to
discern. The Ain-i-Akbari says that the best civet is that which is
brought from the seaport town of Sumatra, in the territory of Achin, and
is called Sumatra Zabad; but this may have been based on old
information. Valentyn seems to recognise the existence of a place of note
called Samadra or Samotdara, though it is not entered on his map. A
famous mystic theologian who flourished under the great King of Achin,
Iskandar Muda, and died in 1630, bore the name of Shamsuddin Shamatrani,
which seems to point to the city of Sumatra as his birth place.[2] The
most distinct mention that I know of the city so called, in the Portuguese
period, occurs in the soi-disant "Voyage which Juan Serano made when he
fled from Malacca," in 1512, published by Lord Stanley of Alderley, at the
end of his translation of Barbosa. This man speaks of the "island of
Samatra" as named from "a city of this northern part." And on leaving
Pedir, having gone down the northern coast, he says, "I drew towards the
south and south-east direction, and reached to another country and city
which is called Samatra," and so on. Now this describes the position in
which the city of Sumatra should have been if it existed. But all the rest
of the tract is mere plunder from Varthema.[3]
There is, however, a like intimation in a curious letter respecting the
Portuguese discoveries, written from Lisbon in 1515, by a German,
Valentine Moravia, who was probably the same Valentyn Fernandez, the
German, who published the Portuguese edition of Marco Polo at Lisbon in
1502, and who shows an extremely accurate conception of Indian geography.
He says:
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