Paduka Seri Baginda Sultan Zainatuddin Kamalat Syah (died 1700) was the seventeenth ruler of
Aceh Darussalam. She reigned from 1688 to 1699, being the fourth and last ruling queen (sultanah) in succession.
Background
When the old sultana
Inayat Zakiatuddin Syah
Sultan Inayat Zakiatudin Syah (c. 1645 - 3 October 1688) was the sixteenth monarch of the Aceh Sultanate, Acèh Darussalam and the third Queen regnant, sulṭāna regnant to rule in succession. Her reign lasted from 1678 to 1688 and was generally ...
died in October 1688, Sultana Zainatuddin Kamalat Syah succeeded to the throne. There is no contemporary evidence about her relationship to the previous queens. According to a manuscript preserved at
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
The National University of Malaysia ( ms, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, abbreviated as UKM) is a public university located in Bandar Baru Bangi, Hulu Langat District, Selangor, Malaysia. Its teaching hospital, Universiti Kebangsaan Malays ...
, she was the daughter of Syekh Muhammad Fadlil Syah Teungku di Kedirian, son of Abdullah Fadlil, son of Muhyuddin Fadlil, son of Sultan
Sri Alam. This would need further verification. Not all the ''orang kayas'' (grandees of the kingdom) supported the choice. Some wanted a king rather than a female ruler. Four ''orang kayas'' marched against the capital with considerable forces; however, the opposition soon receded and the queen was acknowledged.
Reign
After almost six decades of female rule there was increasing pressure for a male sultan. A Dutch visitor. Jacob de Roy, reported in 1696 that the sultana formally held unlimited powers and convened the assembly of grandees; however, she had to await the approval of the majority of the counselors. He also wrote that groups of people sometimes gathered in the capital
Kutaraja and performed demonstrations in favour of a king. The syahbandar (harbour master) entertained plans to arrange a marriage between the queen and his son, a captain of the guard who stood in high regard with Zainatuddin Kamalat Syah. He asked Jacob de Roy to mediate in the affair since he realized that a marriage would evoke the envy of the ''orang kayas''. Another Dutch writer,
Francois Valentijn indicates that the marriage was eventually concluded. In 1699 a purported
fatwa arrived from
Mecca
Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow ...
, issued by the
qadi
A qāḍī ( ar, قاضي, Qāḍī; otherwise transliterated as qazi, cadi, kadi, or kazi) is the magistrate or judge of a '' sharīʿa'' court, who also exercises extrajudicial functions such as mediation, guardianship over orphans and mino ...
Malik al-Adil. Whether it was genuine or if the authority of Mecca was employed to make an impression is debatable. The fatwa deemed that the rule of a woman was contrary to the principles of
Islam. Upon this the sultana was replaced by an Arab of
sayyid
''Sayyid'' (, ; ar, سيد ; ; meaning 'sir', 'Lord', 'Master'; Arabic plural: ; feminine: ; ) is a surname of people descending from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his grandsons, Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali, sons of Muhamma ...
descent,
Badr ul-Alam Syarif Hasyim Jamaluddin
Badr ul-Alam Syarif Hasyim Jamaluddin (died 1702 or after 1717) was the eighteenth Sulṭān of Acèh Darussalam in northern Sumatra. His brief reign (1699–1702) marked a transition to more unsettled conditions in Aceh, as persons not belong ...
. It is sometimes speculated that he became her husband.
Zainatuddin died one year later, in 1700.
References
Literature
* Djajadiningrat, Raden Hoesein (1911). "Critisch overzicht van de in Maleische werken vervatte gegevens over de geschiedenis van het soeltanaat van Atjeh", ''Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde'' 65, pp. 135–265.
* Hasjmy, A (1977). ''59 tahun Aceh merdeka dibawah pemerintahan ratu''. Jakarta: Bulan Bintang.
* Khan, Sher Banu (2009). ''Rule Behind the Silk Curtain: The Sultanahs of Aceh, 1641–1699''. Ph.D. thesis, University of London.
* Khan, Sher Banu (2010). 'The sultanahs of Aceh, 1641-99', in Arndt Graaf et al. (eds.), ''Aceh: History, Politics and Culture''. Singapore: ISEAS, pp. 3–25.
* Ricklefs, Merle C. (1994). ''A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1300'', 2nd ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
External links
WOMEN IN POWER 1670-1700
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zainatuddin Of Aceh
1700 deaths
17th-century women rulers
Sultans of Aceh
Year of birth unknown
17th-century Indonesian women