Taj ul-Alam

Who was Taj ul-Alam?

Ratu Safiatuddin Taj ul-Alam was the fourteenth Sultana of Aceh. She was the daughter of the sultan Iskandar Muda and the wife of his successor, Iskandar Thani, who became sultan upon the death of her husband. She was the first of four women to hold the position, thanks to the efforts of the Acehnese nobility to weaken royal power following Iskandar Muda's administrative reforms aimed to undermine them. These efforts were largely successful, and from her reign on the sultanate became a weak symbolic institution, whose authority was limited to capital city itself, while real power was held by the hereditary rulers of outlying districts and the religious leaders.

Taj ul-Alam inherited a tradition of Islamic scholarship in the court. She was not as favorable to Nuruddin ar-Ranirias her predecessor, and he left the royal employ in 1644. The major writer in her reign was Abdurrauf of Singkil, who wrote on Shafi'i jurisprudence as well as mysticism. Towards the end of her reign, the reputation of the court as a center of Islamic scholarship had faded along with its political fortunes.