North Sumatra, a production base for precious forest and mineral products, played a significant role in international maritime trade from early centuries. Contacts with the outside world through trade helped to develop coastal entrepots exporting products from the interior. The linkage between the coastal port and the hinterland has been one of the central issues for scholars working on Sumatran maritime trade history and its political culture. The coastal port needed the hinterland for its products, and the hinterland needed the coastal port in order to barter products for necessities of salt and cotton cloths. Royal chronicles of Sumatran port polities often connect their
raison dêtre with the support of hinterland peoples.
The 15-17th century activation of maritime trade in Southeast Asia reconfirmes the symbiosis between the two entities. During this period there appeared the prosperous coastal principalities of Aceh, Pasai, Aru and Barus in north Sumatra. In order to respond to increased demands by visiting merchants for forest and mineral products and also pepper, the coastal rulers needed to mobilize their hinterland peoples more effectively. The military superiority of the coastal principalities may have given them greater influence over their hinterlands. Nevertheless, for these principalities it was difficult to handle affairs in the interior consistently, and particularly to guarantee that the agricultural system would allow the people to collect and cultivate their products.
In this context the hinterland authority, which the interior people believed was associated with the fertility of their agricultural production, was regarded as a highly important figure to the coastal rulers. The Batak case of the rise of the divine king, Si Singa Mangaraja, in the Toba lakeside region of Bakkara from about the 16th century shows us one example of one hinterland counterpart to the prosperous coastal principalities of Barus and Aceh.
According to the royal chronicle of Barus Hilir (Downstream Barus), the Si Singa Mangaraja I was a son of Sultan Ibrahim, the first legendary king of Barus Hilir. Barus had been well-known as a forest products export harbour since at least the 9th century. Sixteenth century Barus became fairly prosperous as many Muslim merchants began to visit the west coast of Sumatra after the Portuguese capture of Malacca. Descriptions by Tomé Pires, who visited Barus in the 1510s, and by the Dutch East India Company, which established a factory there in 1668, show that a large quantity of the forest products of camphor and benzoin were brought to the port by the Batak interior people. In order to mobilize the interior people to bring forest products, Barus needed to establish its legitimacy among them by associating itself with the hinterland authority, which was believed to insure their agricultural production. The place where the Si Singa Mangara ja resided was one of the most productive hinterland
sawah (wet rice cultivation) areas. Batak legends generally regarded the Si Singa Mangaraja as a reincarnation of Batara Guru and as having supernatural power to control the growth of rice and ubi, and the supply of the water which was essential to cultivation. There were successive Si Singa Mangaraja figures in Bakkara, constantly “reincarnated” until the last one (usually called Si Singa Mangaraja XII) was killed by the Dutch colonial army in 1907. Every Si Singa Mangaraja endeavoured to maintain stable trading relations between Barus and the hinterland. The power of these figures was also highly regarded by the people where Barus Hulu (another royal family of Upstream Barus) was influential.
Aceh and other coastal principalities in Sumatra's east coast also appreciated the existence of this Batak divine king.
From the period of Sultan Alau'd-Din Ri'ayat Syâh al-Kahar to that of Sultan Iskandar Muda, Aceh endeavoured to establish its hegemony over both t
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