The Great Mosque of Banda Aceh: Its History, Architecture and Relationship to the Development of Islam in Sumatra

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The Great Mosque of Banda Aceh: Its History, Architecture and Relation-ship to the Development of Islam in Sumatra presents the complete history of the iconic monument of Aceh, Sumatra, a crucial symbol of Achenese identity. We follow the Great Mosque (Masjid Beit ur-Rahman) from its first incarnation four centuries ago, during Aceh's Golden Age, through to the local response to colonialism in the 19th century, and the political struggles of recent decades. Aceh became a prominent center for Islamic Learning and Literature in the 16th century. A new and unique style of Islamic Architecture arose dur-ing Aceh's Golden Age, under the rule of Sultan Iskandar Muda. In the 19th century, colonial influence resulted in a Christian style replacing the older tradition. However, over time, this was transformed by the Acehenese into one of the most beautiful Islamic hypostyle mosques in the country. In August 2005, Aceh signed a Peace Agreement ending the long and violent struggle for Independence from the Republic. Now Aceh is flourishing again, as in the 15th and 16th centuries. Bouwsema-Raap's reconstruction of the history of the mosque's different phases takes us from Aceh's position as the most powerful and wealthy state in the region and an international center of trade and Islamic learning, via the Dutch-Colonial period with its territorial aggression and curious cultural policies, up through the first half-century of independent Indonesia, with the long-overdue return of decision-making power over the mosque to the Ache-nese themselves. In a world struggling with the collapse of rich histories and cultures into politicized fundamentalist stereotypes, and in the space where the disciplines of Southeast Asian Studies and Southeast Asian art history intersect, this book makes a welcome and important contribution. Astri Wright, Professor of Southeast Asian Art History, University of Victoria, BC, Canada.

Wilhelmina Bouwsema-Raap, born in The Netherlands, lives on a small acreage in Victoria, British Columbia. She holds a Visual Arts diploma from Camosun College, and BA and MA degrees in History in Art, with a concentra-tion on Islamic art, from the University of Victoria. As a volunteer for Canadian Crossroads International in Indonesia, she assisted in translating a book celebrating women in the history of Aceh and has also lectured on Islamic art. She has traveled widely in Europe and South East Asia. She combines beekeeping with scholarly work, and has three adult daughters and eight grandchildren.

The Malay Archipelago has been a meeting-place between North, East and West since pre-historic times, where information and goods were exchanged. The earliest evidence of Islam in Indonesia is references to small Muslim communities along trade routes in the seventh century. The earliest writings about Arab and Chinese trade with the Malayo-Indonesian area date from the beginning of the eleventh century. The first Muslim-ruled state, Samudra-Pasai, dates from the end of the thirteenth century. This minor trading center developed into a large prosperous Islamic Kingdom of Aceh, which enjoyed its Golden Age under Iskandar Muda during the seventeenth century. Indonesia is the most populous Islamic country in the world today. The Islamic art and architecture of this part of the Muslim world, however, has hardly been researched in depth: no basic monograph exists on the Islamic art and architecture of Indonesia. This book investigates the arrival of Islam in Indonesia and the history of the earliest mosque known to have been commissioned by a ruler, from its founda-tion to the present day, a period of almost seven centuries. In the history, patronage and architecture of this mosque much is revealed about the visual culture of Islam in Aceh. Over four hundred years, three different mosques stood on its site. Each provides valuable information about the cultural background of their patron. The Great Mosque, the Mesjid Raya, is examined in Chapter 3, 4 and 5, as a product of a particular Islamic society. At its time of building, it was an original type of mosque for what is now Indonesia and can be understood in the context of mercantile prosperity, expansionist politics and a religious environment in which mysticism was prominent and favored. Primary sources used were: early Malay literature; inscriptions on early Islamic tombstones of members of the ruling fami-lies, Muslim mystics and merchants; and reports by early European travelers. In addition to the indigenous and colonial-era historical texts, I have used information from mystical literature by Hamza Fansuri and others. In this study I have divided the time span into two main periods. Period I is concerned with the 7th-18th centuries. Chapter 1 deals with the advent of Islam in Indonesia and the establishment of the first Islamic Sultanate of Samudra-Pasai Chapter 2 describes the founding of Aceh and its Golden Age under Sultan Iskan-dar Muda (1607-36), and Chapter 3 examines the Golden Age of Aceh until its waning in the early eighteenth century. Period, 2, discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, is the late 19th, the 20th and the early 21st centuries, an era marked by European struggles for control over Aceh, the Aceh war and subsequent Dutch control, and the independence of Aceh and of Indonesia after 1945. Soon after the advent of Islam during the early seventh century AD, coastal trading communities in Indonesia' converted to Islam. With the coming of Islam, Malay became an Islamic vehicle of expression, and the development of Malay literature coincided with the establishment of the new religion. Malay literature is especially rich in histories that incorporate legendary information and history. Islamic scholarship was centered at the court. Travelers such as Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta visited the area in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and their reports tell about the scholars, many from abroad, whom they met at the court. The Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai or Pasai Chronicles, written between 1350 and 1524, and the Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals, written before 1536, are among the earliest Muslim literary works in Malay. The former presents the creation and conversion myth of the ruling house of Samudra-Pasai, the first Islamic kingdom in what is now Indonesia, and the history of the dynasty until 1377. The latter is the main source for the history of the Sultanate of Malacca, but also includes the history of Samudra as part of the history of Malacca, as Malacca converted to Islam from Pasai during the early fifteenth century. The only material remains of the first few hundred years of Islam in present-day Indonesia are tombstones. The first of these were found at the end of the nineteenth century in North Sumatra. In the early twentieth century, European scholars began publishing some of the inscriptions. These include names and dates of death, as well as quotations from the Koran. The two most important tombs for my study are those of the first and second Sultans of Samudra-Pasai, Sultan Malik al-Salih (d. 1297), and his son, Sultan Malik al-Zahir (d. 1326). Aceh grew from an unimportant coastal pirate state into the largest center at the crossroads of international trade.