The Intelectual Network in the Era of the Aceh Sultanate

Although Aceh may now be considered a marginal backwater on the periphery of global currents, for many centuries it served as one nodal center for extensive commercial, cultural and intellectual currents spreading across the Islamic lands. Aceh functioned as one nexus for the bustling cross-currents of Muslim commercial activities and Islamic cultural and intellectual networks connecting the Islamic lands from South West Asia to Central Asia and India as far as China—and eventually even linking with North American shipping commerce in the nineteenth century. That was the time when Boston clipper ships made round trips from the East coast of America to Aceh for the pepper trade. What were the reasons for its creative energy and its successful integration into the ebb and flow of trans-continental currents? One of the vital factors for Aceh’s fertile civilisational activity was the organically embedded social role exercised by its cultural and intellectual leaders. We are referring to the ‘Ulama who advised the political class and endowed them with legitimacy, and who gave the commercial leaders their moral compass, while fulfilling the fundamental task of religious and legal guidance for common people. Knowledge was arguably the most distinguishing feature of Islamic civilization, and the guild of trained knowledge-holders until recently exercised a preponderant role in almost every sphere of life. This outstanding feature has been well highlighted by Professor Franz Rosenthal in his classic study Knowledge Triumphant.