Iskandar Thani

Iskandar Thani Alauddin Mughayat Syah was the thirteenth sultan of Aceh, reigning from 27 December 1636 until his death on 15 February 1641.¹² He was born about 1610 — the Indonesian article debates the year between about 1610 and 1612, commonly placing it at 1611 — a son of Ahmad Shah II, the eleventh sultan of Pahang.¹²

Iskandar Muda conquered Pahang in 1617 and the defeated sultan's son was brought to Aceh and raised as Iskandar Muda's foster son; in 1619, aged nine, he was married to the sultan's daughter Putri Sri Alam Permisuri, and the couple were given the Sri Wareuna palace beside the sultan's.³² In his youth he bore the names Raja Mughal, Raja Bungsu and Sultan Husein Syah, and he succeeded Iskandar Muda on his death in 1636.²

Reigning in the wake of the rout of the Acehnese fleet before Malacca in 1629, Iskandar Thani could not continue his predecessor's military successes, but he was a strong ruler who suppressed the orang kaya nobility and worked to centralise royal power as Iskandar Muda had done.¹ The Indonesian article describes his judicial reforms, restricting proof by ordeal and torture and replacing it with witness procedure as Islamic law requires.² His rule was too short for major accomplishments, and after his death the elite reasserted their influence and placed his widow, Taj ul-Alam, on the throne.¹

Like Iskandar Muda's, the court of Iskandar Thani was known as a centre of Islamic learning: he was patron of Nuruddin ar-Raniri, the scholar from Gujarat who arrived in 1637, denounced the work of the earlier court scholars, ordered their books burned, established literary and religious standards, and composed the Bustan al-Salatin under his patronage.¹² The Indonesian article calls ar-Raniri a Shafi'i scholar — that is the scholar's school, not the sultan's.²