Rome Below the Winds: A Javanese Timeline
- Thread starter Every Grass in Java
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Chapter 9: Java, 1570 AJ [1648 AD]
Mullā Maḥmūd was dead.
His carcass lay rotting by the roadside, already well on the way to decomposition. It was prone on the sand, the ground colored dark from blood long since bled, its arms and legs sprawled about like the shadow of some monstrous ape. The flesh was torn, and here and there one glimpsed the white of the bones. The scavengers must have come and gone. Now only the flies buzzed about the blackening flesh. The flies alone reveled here, feasting on the meat that was now as soft as Chinese tofu. They seemed entirely unaffected by the overwhelming odor of maggoty flesh.
An iron spike protruded from somewhere in the middle of the disintegrating mass. Baureksa supposed the heart had been impaled. No, not supposed – he hoped so. Then, at least, the Mullā would not have lingered in death. The end of the spike was dark and opaquely red. At first it seemed to be rust; but then it could just as well have been dried blood. The general watched a fly land on the very top of the iron. The insect rubbed its front legs together, slowly and meticulously. It was if it was making the sembah – the joining of the hands that signifies reverence to a superior in Javanese culture. Perhaps the fly was apologizing.
Even flies showed remorse and respect before Mullā Maḥmūd.
Was His Majesty worse than a fly?
Sultan Agung had died in the Javanese year 1568 [1646 AD]. The Crown Prince had taken power peacefully, but not without apprehension from most everyone in Java. In the security of the mosques on Friday afternoons, or in the quiet that comes under the palm trees at night, people whispered as they always did. They whispered that the new King really would slaughter his father’s ministers, that His Majesty really would break the clergy. Kangjeng Ratu kaya Jajal Lanat, they said, “His Majesty the King is like the Emperor of the Demons.” Baureksa too had heard those rumors, hoping – but doubting – that the Prince would mellow out as he reigned.
His doubts had been well-grounded. A year had passed since His Majesty’s accession and autocracy had only sharpened his brutality. It was said in the city streets that His Majesty had already beaten a dozen court ladies to death – Baureksa could never know how true that was, but it seemed fully compatible with the new king’s temper.
And now Mullā Maḥmūd. The Kurdish scholar had always been a little too righteous for His Majesty’s taste. Objecting to the king’s amorous liaisons, chastising his petty cruelties – in His Majesty’s view, the Mullā seemed little better than a nagging wife. How dare this doddering old man scold the autocrat of all of Java? One day, the king pressed trumped-up charges of treason on the logician. Everyone knew the Master to be innocent. Nobody dared speak out. At the end of the day, fear always trumps justice.
Master Maḥmūd was tortured, yet refused to confess to his so-called “treason.” He was finally impaled on an iron spike, his body left for the beasts on the outskirts of the capital. And so here lay Mullā Maḥmūd of Damascus, his soul already gone to the Lord of Mercy, his body collapsing into rot and grime.
“Who would ever shed a tear when a logician dies?” His Majesty had said to his court after the execution. “None at all, Your Majesty,” all the ministers – even Baureksa – had fearfully replied. But here, looking at the mangled corpse of the Master, General Baureksa could not help but shed a tear.
His thoughts turned to General Wiraguna. So long ago, or so it seemed, his colleague had sent him a letter. He had suggested that they oust His Majesty if he proved to be a tyrant. The king’s tyranny was already proven far too well by now. Yet there was still no coup. Wiraguna had been appointed Prime Minister in the wake of Sultan Agung’s death, but the new king immediately sent him to suppress a small Balinese rebellion. On the way to Bali, the general fell ill and died. Or so went the official narrative. Wiraguna’s daughter was sure that His Majesty had poisoned his own mentor. After all, who would ever send the highest official in the realm to suppress a few hundred rioting peasants? It had to be a plot to dispose of her father out of the sights of the court. Baureksa agreed. Wiraguna could not have died naturally. He was murdered – and there was only one suspect.
Yet with Wiraguna gone, Baureksa found himself unable to plot against His Majesty, tyrant that he was. He was too loyal for that. Or was it cowardice, not loyalty?
He remembered the mysterious adage he always had memorized, somewhere in his head. “There is nothing that can be compared to the service of the king; this is like being a piece of wood in the ocean, going where the waves bring you.” But what if the waves bring the piece of wood into a huge conflagration? What if the waves engulf the piece of wood and tear it apart with the ocean’s ferocity? Must the piece of wood always obey the waves, even then? Was the analogy valid at all? Was Baureksa simply wood to be simply used by the waves, or was he a man of his own who could forge his own paths?
His head hurt. He needed to leave. Baureksa would go to the southern coastline of Java, the realm of the Goddess of the Southern Ocean, and meditate there. Perhaps he would find an answer there.
* * *
The Chronicle of the Regulator of the Realm, a seventeenth-century Javanese biography of General Baureksa, describes an encounter between him and the Goddess of the Southern Ocean. According to this account, the general was mired in the contradictions between two obligations: his duty to serve the ruler and his mandate to counteract injustice. To find the right thing to do, he retreated into a seaside grotto and meditated. There, the Goddess came to him:
* * *
“Sire, you must hear the news.”
“Then tell me,” said Baureksa. He must have missed much during the weeks he had spent on the southern coast.
“While you were away, deep in your meditations, the king’s brother Prince Alit tried to rebel against His Majesty and seize the throne for himself. He was defeated, of course, and publicly garroted. But Sire, as you surely know, Prince Alit had a broad base of support. The Muslim clerics were all unanimously for him. They had grown weary of His Majesty’s impious sins.”
“Yes, yes, I know. So what happened then?”
“Rain fell heavily that day,” muttered the servant in a dreamy voice. “His Majesty had said he was taking a census of the leading imams and other holy men and men of religion. And everyone believed him! So on that day, that rainy day, every imam had gathered before the palace courtyard. And not just the imams. His Majesty had said that all the men of religion should bring their wives and children with them so the census could be improved. So there were five thousand people under the rain that day – thousands of holy men, thousands of women, thousands of children.
“Once every holy men was inside, the king raised his hand. At that sign, soldiers rushed in from the gates of the courtyard. They were armed with swords and daggers, and at once they began hacking into the crowd. Imams young and old, imams from Java and imams from Persia, crones and virgins, little boys and girls – none were spared. Infants were torn from their mother’s breasts and thrown to the ground for the soldiers to tramp on.
“The imams had been disarmed. There was no resistance. Some of the troops grew sick and threw down their swords, crying out that they could not kill so many. Then the king shouted out, “Kill, kill, kill – he who refuses to kill shall himself be killed.” So the troops hacked and slashed again, weeping as they did.
“The massacre took half an hour. In thirty minutes, five thousand people died.
“The bodies were not buried. The stench of their rotting flesh is everywhere now. His Majesty says it is a warning to those who would put religion above their king, and an admonition to those who would abet traitors and pretenders.”
Baureksa nodded slowly. His head felt very clear. If there had been any doubt before, it was gone now.
* * *
Back to narrative. The new king – IOTL we would call him Amangkurat I – did discretely assassinate his teacher and chancellor Wiraguna while dispatching him to lead an expedition to Bali. He also did murder some 2,000 Muslim clerics and their families, amounting to about five thousand people in total, just because some clerics had favored his brother Prince Alit. This massacre is discussed extensively in Dutch sources, where it is remarked that the corpses were still abandoned three years after the slaughter. Only one Javanese source, though, mentions the incident (the others were subject to censure). Here’s all that the chronicle says:
Baureksa’s encounter with the Goddess of the Southern Ocean is also taken directly from a Javanese chronicle, the Babad Dipanagara. English translation from The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, p. 145-146.
His carcass lay rotting by the roadside, already well on the way to decomposition. It was prone on the sand, the ground colored dark from blood long since bled, its arms and legs sprawled about like the shadow of some monstrous ape. The flesh was torn, and here and there one glimpsed the white of the bones. The scavengers must have come and gone. Now only the flies buzzed about the blackening flesh. The flies alone reveled here, feasting on the meat that was now as soft as Chinese tofu. They seemed entirely unaffected by the overwhelming odor of maggoty flesh.
An iron spike protruded from somewhere in the middle of the disintegrating mass. Baureksa supposed the heart had been impaled. No, not supposed – he hoped so. Then, at least, the Mullā would not have lingered in death. The end of the spike was dark and opaquely red. At first it seemed to be rust; but then it could just as well have been dried blood. The general watched a fly land on the very top of the iron. The insect rubbed its front legs together, slowly and meticulously. It was if it was making the sembah – the joining of the hands that signifies reverence to a superior in Javanese culture. Perhaps the fly was apologizing.
Even flies showed remorse and respect before Mullā Maḥmūd.
Was His Majesty worse than a fly?
Sultan Agung had died in the Javanese year 1568 [1646 AD]. The Crown Prince had taken power peacefully, but not without apprehension from most everyone in Java. In the security of the mosques on Friday afternoons, or in the quiet that comes under the palm trees at night, people whispered as they always did. They whispered that the new King really would slaughter his father’s ministers, that His Majesty really would break the clergy. Kangjeng Ratu kaya Jajal Lanat, they said, “His Majesty the King is like the Emperor of the Demons.” Baureksa too had heard those rumors, hoping – but doubting – that the Prince would mellow out as he reigned.
His doubts had been well-grounded. A year had passed since His Majesty’s accession and autocracy had only sharpened his brutality. It was said in the city streets that His Majesty had already beaten a dozen court ladies to death – Baureksa could never know how true that was, but it seemed fully compatible with the new king’s temper.
And now Mullā Maḥmūd. The Kurdish scholar had always been a little too righteous for His Majesty’s taste. Objecting to the king’s amorous liaisons, chastising his petty cruelties – in His Majesty’s view, the Mullā seemed little better than a nagging wife. How dare this doddering old man scold the autocrat of all of Java? One day, the king pressed trumped-up charges of treason on the logician. Everyone knew the Master to be innocent. Nobody dared speak out. At the end of the day, fear always trumps justice.
Master Maḥmūd was tortured, yet refused to confess to his so-called “treason.” He was finally impaled on an iron spike, his body left for the beasts on the outskirts of the capital. And so here lay Mullā Maḥmūd of Damascus, his soul already gone to the Lord of Mercy, his body collapsing into rot and grime.
“Who would ever shed a tear when a logician dies?” His Majesty had said to his court after the execution. “None at all, Your Majesty,” all the ministers – even Baureksa – had fearfully replied. But here, looking at the mangled corpse of the Master, General Baureksa could not help but shed a tear.
His thoughts turned to General Wiraguna. So long ago, or so it seemed, his colleague had sent him a letter. He had suggested that they oust His Majesty if he proved to be a tyrant. The king’s tyranny was already proven far too well by now. Yet there was still no coup. Wiraguna had been appointed Prime Minister in the wake of Sultan Agung’s death, but the new king immediately sent him to suppress a small Balinese rebellion. On the way to Bali, the general fell ill and died. Or so went the official narrative. Wiraguna’s daughter was sure that His Majesty had poisoned his own mentor. After all, who would ever send the highest official in the realm to suppress a few hundred rioting peasants? It had to be a plot to dispose of her father out of the sights of the court. Baureksa agreed. Wiraguna could not have died naturally. He was murdered – and there was only one suspect.
Yet with Wiraguna gone, Baureksa found himself unable to plot against His Majesty, tyrant that he was. He was too loyal for that. Or was it cowardice, not loyalty?
He remembered the mysterious adage he always had memorized, somewhere in his head. “There is nothing that can be compared to the service of the king; this is like being a piece of wood in the ocean, going where the waves bring you.” But what if the waves bring the piece of wood into a huge conflagration? What if the waves engulf the piece of wood and tear it apart with the ocean’s ferocity? Must the piece of wood always obey the waves, even then? Was the analogy valid at all? Was Baureksa simply wood to be simply used by the waves, or was he a man of his own who could forge his own paths?
His head hurt. He needed to leave. Baureksa would go to the southern coastline of Java, the realm of the Goddess of the Southern Ocean, and meditate there. Perhaps he would find an answer there.
* * *
The Chronicle of the Regulator of the Realm, a seventeenth-century Javanese biography of General Baureksa, describes an encounter between him and the Goddess of the Southern Ocean. According to this account, the general was mired in the contradictions between two obligations: his duty to serve the ruler and his mandate to counteract injustice. To find the right thing to do, he retreated into a seaside grotto and meditated. There, the Goddess came to him:
Then the general was sitting at night in his pavilion unattended by anyone, for they were all asleep. He was sunk deep in meditation with his back against a pillar. Heavy was his heart.
Now swiftly someone came.
It was as though a falling star had descended on the pavilion.
Immediately sitting before the sultan was the form of a woman. Two accompanied her, both women with a similar appearance which cannot be described. But, of the three, the one in the center was slightly different from those who escorted her. Different – but how different? This too cannot be described. For long the general did not address her. He gazed, dumbfounded. He closely observed her.
She was sitting but did not touch the ground.
The general said softly: “I ask your name, for I am quite mystified.”
The woman said, “My child Baureksa, you must know who I am.”
The general said, “Your Highness must surely be the Goddess of the Southern Ocean.”
The woman said she was indeed.
The general said in relief, “I beseech your help, Your Highness, for I am quite confused. Is it right to serve a king who is a tyrant? Is it right to oppose injustice though it comes from the rightful king?”
The Goddess said, “Oh, my child Baureksa, it is incumbent upon you to dethrone the king. Take the crown of Majapahit from this King of Devils and give it to a worthier man. It is the wish of God Almighty that the King of Mataram be brought to destruction on account of his tyranny and impiety. It has been revealed to me that you are the instrument of God for this task. It is by you that the state of the Islamic religion shall be restored to its splendor in Java. It is by you that the imperial writ of Java shall once again ring through the foreign lands.”
The general said, “But how shall it be? For the king is strong and I am but a servant.”
“Fear not, my child, for your mother shall stand by you in conquering Mataram. I shall fortify your troops with my spirit armies, I shall make your guns invincible in war – so bring war to the tyrant and give the kingship to a more righteous man.”
Then the general blinked. When he reopened his eyes, the Goddess was nowhere to be seen.
The general was much shaken with wonder.
Now swiftly someone came.
It was as though a falling star had descended on the pavilion.
Immediately sitting before the sultan was the form of a woman. Two accompanied her, both women with a similar appearance which cannot be described. But, of the three, the one in the center was slightly different from those who escorted her. Different – but how different? This too cannot be described. For long the general did not address her. He gazed, dumbfounded. He closely observed her.
She was sitting but did not touch the ground.
The general said softly: “I ask your name, for I am quite mystified.”
The woman said, “My child Baureksa, you must know who I am.”
The general said, “Your Highness must surely be the Goddess of the Southern Ocean.”
The woman said she was indeed.
The general said in relief, “I beseech your help, Your Highness, for I am quite confused. Is it right to serve a king who is a tyrant? Is it right to oppose injustice though it comes from the rightful king?”
The Goddess said, “Oh, my child Baureksa, it is incumbent upon you to dethrone the king. Take the crown of Majapahit from this King of Devils and give it to a worthier man. It is the wish of God Almighty that the King of Mataram be brought to destruction on account of his tyranny and impiety. It has been revealed to me that you are the instrument of God for this task. It is by you that the state of the Islamic religion shall be restored to its splendor in Java. It is by you that the imperial writ of Java shall once again ring through the foreign lands.”
The general said, “But how shall it be? For the king is strong and I am but a servant.”
“Fear not, my child, for your mother shall stand by you in conquering Mataram. I shall fortify your troops with my spirit armies, I shall make your guns invincible in war – so bring war to the tyrant and give the kingship to a more righteous man.”
Then the general blinked. When he reopened his eyes, the Goddess was nowhere to be seen.
The general was much shaken with wonder.
* * *
“Sire, you must hear the news.”
“Then tell me,” said Baureksa. He must have missed much during the weeks he had spent on the southern coast.
“While you were away, deep in your meditations, the king’s brother Prince Alit tried to rebel against His Majesty and seize the throne for himself. He was defeated, of course, and publicly garroted. But Sire, as you surely know, Prince Alit had a broad base of support. The Muslim clerics were all unanimously for him. They had grown weary of His Majesty’s impious sins.”
“Yes, yes, I know. So what happened then?”
“Rain fell heavily that day,” muttered the servant in a dreamy voice. “His Majesty had said he was taking a census of the leading imams and other holy men and men of religion. And everyone believed him! So on that day, that rainy day, every imam had gathered before the palace courtyard. And not just the imams. His Majesty had said that all the men of religion should bring their wives and children with them so the census could be improved. So there were five thousand people under the rain that day – thousands of holy men, thousands of women, thousands of children.
“Once every holy men was inside, the king raised his hand. At that sign, soldiers rushed in from the gates of the courtyard. They were armed with swords and daggers, and at once they began hacking into the crowd. Imams young and old, imams from Java and imams from Persia, crones and virgins, little boys and girls – none were spared. Infants were torn from their mother’s breasts and thrown to the ground for the soldiers to tramp on.
“The imams had been disarmed. There was no resistance. Some of the troops grew sick and threw down their swords, crying out that they could not kill so many. Then the king shouted out, “Kill, kill, kill – he who refuses to kill shall himself be killed.” So the troops hacked and slashed again, weeping as they did.
“The massacre took half an hour. In thirty minutes, five thousand people died.
“The bodies were not buried. The stench of their rotting flesh is everywhere now. His Majesty says it is a warning to those who would put religion above their king, and an admonition to those who would abet traitors and pretenders.”
Baureksa nodded slowly. His head felt very clear. If there had been any doubt before, it was gone now.
* * *
Back to narrative. The new king – IOTL we would call him Amangkurat I – did discretely assassinate his teacher and chancellor Wiraguna while dispatching him to lead an expedition to Bali. He also did murder some 2,000 Muslim clerics and their families, amounting to about five thousand people in total, just because some clerics had favored his brother Prince Alit. This massacre is discussed extensively in Dutch sources, where it is remarked that the corpses were still abandoned three years after the slaughter. Only one Javanese source, though, mentions the incident (the others were subject to censure). Here’s all that the chronicle says:
When “disappeared the teachers upon the road, men” [Javanese chronogram for 1570 AJ/1648 AD] departed from the rightful path. As if dimmed was the luster of the kingdom; rain fell heavily; the king constantly cherished a grim hatred and ordered the troops.
Baureksa’s encounter with the Goddess of the Southern Ocean is also taken directly from a Javanese chronicle, the Babad Dipanagara. English translation from The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, p. 145-146.
@Every Grass in Java if Baureksa died in 1628 OTL, then what was his encounter with the Goddess about in the Babad Dipanagara?
How does the Goddess fit into Javanese cosmology anyways? She seems to be much more commonly referenced then any other pre-Islamic spirit when it comes to Java. Is she the only one that survived Islamization?
How does the Goddess fit into Javanese cosmology anyways? She seems to be much more commonly referenced then any other pre-Islamic spirit when it comes to Java. Is she the only one that survived Islamization?
By modern standards Amangkurat I would be diagnosed as a Pathologically paranoid sadist. Which would be all the more reason to get rid of him before he cripples the empire enough for the Aceh and Gowa Sultanates(or the VOC depending on how the conflict stated in previous update turns out) to successfully pick apart ITTL.
Even though I don't know all that much about Java's history, I do know a lot about it's culture from studying it.
And the answer to your question is(apologies if I use a bastardization of the term) is that religions that entered
the Malay Archipelago where nativized quite extensively. Which is the reason you find elements of other religions
implemented.
Euurgh, Amangkurat is one insane ruler. The sooner he's gone, the better. 
Not exactly. Some parts of Java today still pay respects to the goddess Dewi Sri, whom is associated with rice and agriculture.
Not exactly. Some parts of Java today still pay respects to the goddess Dewi Sri, whom is associated with rice and agriculture.
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Euurgh, Amangkurat is one insane ruler. The sooner he's gone, the better.
Exactly, and if he was to stay in power, then his subjects would perceive an invasion(s) by the neighboring sultanates as liberation from Amangkurat.
I feel that with this kind of psychopathic ruler, eventually someone capable enough will come along and say "enough". He does sound like an utter barbarian.
Well to be fair, the author has stated Rams-I mean Araungmaut I will be killed off out of necessity for this timeline of a successful Mataram Empire.
So there's no need to worry.
Interesting TL.
-For Mataram, a strong Aceh is a permanent problem. This is for ideological rather than geopolitical reasons: Aceh regarded itself as something more than first among equals of the Muslim powers below the winds, and both Iskandar Thani and his father were fiercely opposed to any mysticism not harmonized with Shariah. Java and Aceh are going to have religious conflict at some point. From what I can tell the Makassarese were closer to the Acehenese than they were to the Javanese under Mataram on that point.
-I'm very skeptical of any alliance between Aceh and the Mughals before Aurangzev; Akbar was regarded, almost universally, as both heretic and tyrant by orthodox Muslims such as those in Aceh, and the Mughal court was pretty profoundly Sufi in ways that would be problematic for the Acehenese [Azfar Moin's book The Millennial Sovereign does an excellent job chronicling the extensive links between Mughal rulers and Sufis]. The re-islamization attempted by Aurangzev might make him more sympathetic to Aceh, but I don't see any permanent accord between Aceh and Mughal India before that point. In the end, the Duch can appease the Mughals and wait for them to fall out with Aceh.
-Honestly, Mataram expanding too much more wouldn't make all that much sense. East Indonesia would be divided between the Dutch and Makassar, Sumatra would involve tangling with Aceh, etc. I see Dutch-influenced regions in the Malukus, Sulawessi outside Makassar, Timor, Flores and Papua.
-Finally, this does very interesting things to the future development of Islam in the archipelago. If you have a legitimate school of Islam on Java descended from students of Mahmud who end up venerating him as a Sufi saint [a tenth Wali Sanga?], then the Javanese tradition of seeking spiritual legitimacy from Meccah--extensively chronicled in Laffan's Umma Below the Winds--might be dramatically altered. Meaning what he calls the "Muslim ecumene" in the archipelago gets definitively divided into "Jawi" and "Malay". There were already differences between Javanese and Malay Islam, but Laffan argues--and I think he's right--that Dutch colonialism, entirely inadvertently, broke down many of the barriers between them. Mataram on one hand and the Acehanese on the other will both be invested in actually widening the gap. So the ironic outcome may be that the archipelago gets divided up into several states.
-For Mataram, a strong Aceh is a permanent problem. This is for ideological rather than geopolitical reasons: Aceh regarded itself as something more than first among equals of the Muslim powers below the winds, and both Iskandar Thani and his father were fiercely opposed to any mysticism not harmonized with Shariah. Java and Aceh are going to have religious conflict at some point. From what I can tell the Makassarese were closer to the Acehenese than they were to the Javanese under Mataram on that point.
-I'm very skeptical of any alliance between Aceh and the Mughals before Aurangzev; Akbar was regarded, almost universally, as both heretic and tyrant by orthodox Muslims such as those in Aceh, and the Mughal court was pretty profoundly Sufi in ways that would be problematic for the Acehenese [Azfar Moin's book The Millennial Sovereign does an excellent job chronicling the extensive links between Mughal rulers and Sufis]. The re-islamization attempted by Aurangzev might make him more sympathetic to Aceh, but I don't see any permanent accord between Aceh and Mughal India before that point. In the end, the Duch can appease the Mughals and wait for them to fall out with Aceh.
-Honestly, Mataram expanding too much more wouldn't make all that much sense. East Indonesia would be divided between the Dutch and Makassar, Sumatra would involve tangling with Aceh, etc. I see Dutch-influenced regions in the Malukus, Sulawessi outside Makassar, Timor, Flores and Papua.
-Finally, this does very interesting things to the future development of Islam in the archipelago. If you have a legitimate school of Islam on Java descended from students of Mahmud who end up venerating him as a Sufi saint [a tenth Wali Sanga?], then the Javanese tradition of seeking spiritual legitimacy from Meccah--extensively chronicled in Laffan's Umma Below the Winds--might be dramatically altered. Meaning what he calls the "Muslim ecumene" in the archipelago gets definitively divided into "Jawi" and "Malay". There were already differences between Javanese and Malay Islam, but Laffan argues--and I think he's right--that Dutch colonialism, entirely inadvertently, broke down many of the barriers between them. Mataram on one hand and the Acehanese on the other will both be invested in actually widening the gap. So the ironic outcome may be that the archipelago gets divided up into several states.
This I can see as a possiblity in the future, though it all depends on how they get along with Spain and their ambitions in the East Indies
Wouldn't Mataram set up settlements in Northern Australia in the future, given how close by it is?
Concerning northern Australia, IIRC, Bugis sailors frequently visited to trade for sea cucumbers. Wouldn't this make it easier for Makassari influence to grow there?
Makassar's going to be a pivot-point. On one hand, they'll want to avoid falling too firmly into the influence of the Dutch, or whatever Christian power takes over the power vacuum in East Indonesia. On the other, if Java/Aceh conflict develops the way I think it might, Makassar has the potential to be both a commercial and an ideational balancer between the two.
I'm assuming Aceh is going to be the most westward-looking of the 3, in terms of its form of Islam. The idea of Aceh as the defender of "true" "orthodox" Islam is probably too well-established to change at this point [I think Ar-Raniri was one of the leading teachers in Aceh during the reigns of both Iskandars, and he's about as close to a Shariah absolutist as you'll find in the pre-1800 archipelago]. Makassar could well resent this, and seek for alternative spiritual power not found in either Java or Aceh.
I'm assuming Aceh is going to be the most westward-looking of the 3, in terms of its form of Islam. The idea of Aceh as the defender of "true" "orthodox" Islam is probably too well-established to change at this point [I think Ar-Raniri was one of the leading teachers in Aceh during the reigns of both Iskandars, and he's about as close to a Shariah absolutist as you'll find in the pre-1800 archipelago]. Makassar could well resent this, and seek for alternative spiritual power not found in either Java or Aceh.
Well in the likelihood of the Dutch being expelled or at least directed elsewhere from the East Indies. Would these sultanate try and convert the Australian Natives to Islam, and how would this affect Australia if it did?
@AJNolte What kind of differences between Javanese and Malay Islam were there? How did the Dutch break down the barriers?
I wonder if the historical Javanese population boom might happen earlier ITTL? I doubt it could much before the 19th century, but I am not overly familiar with why it happened OTL beyond "moderately improved infrastructure". It could however be used to great effect to unify the archipelago under one culture/language.
My question what will happen to sunda people now? There some sort rivalry between them and various javanese polity in the past with the most famous one is bubat accident with some of the effect still felt to some degree today. I don't know if they just easily assimiliate to the greater javanese culture.
So that question took up like three or four thousand words of a chapter of my dissertation, but I'll try to summarize. My sources for this are Michael Laffan, M.C. Ricklefs and Martin Van Bruinessen, for the most part; Ricklefs is the most general, and Laffan probably the most technical.
As a general rule, there were 3 substantial differences: geography/orientation toward the Middle East, the uses and development of mysticism, and political legitimization. Importantly, all these differences are differences of degree, and you'll find most Javanese and Malay Muslims on a spectrum on these issues. Geographically, Malay Muslims tended to be more closely connected with trade networks stretching back to the Islamic heartlands in India and the Middle East. Consequently, they had much more widespread access to the "yellow books" in which Arabic Qur'anic commentaries were brought into the region. Java, by contrast, was somewhat more isolated from these networks, though a substantial Javanese community did exist in Meccah as early as the eighteenth-century. Second, there was a difference in degree with respect to mysticism, in particular the doctrine ofWahdat Al-Wujud [identification of man with God]. The doctrine was present in both Javanese and Malay Islam, and condemned in both [for the very good reason that it's... not exactly widely-accepted as an orthodox interpretation of Islam]. In Malay contexts, the doctrine was outright rejected, and identification between man and God was pretty firmly excluded even by the more mystical thinkers like Hamza Al-Fansuri [and Ar-Raniri came down even harder on it]. In Java, by contrast, what evidence we have seems to suggest that the doctrine was condemned not so much because it was deemed heretical, but because it was seen as unfit for the common Muslim. There were two possible reasons for this: possible fear that public proclamation of this doctrine would weaken the necessary public piety of Islam, or a belief that revealing mystical knowledge widely might weaken the power and prowess of ruling elites.
And that brings in the third, and perhaps most salient, difference between the two, particularly as it pertains to Aceh and Mataram: political legitimization. Mataram was, to say the least, eclectic in its sources of spiritual legitimacy [and, remember, for southeast Asian polities, cosmic legitimacy really matters; as above, so below]. Mataram's founding mythology drew on the patronage of the Goddess of the Southern Ocean [mentioned upthread], Hindu-Buddhist sources from Majapahit, and a blessing from one of the nine saints [Wali Sanga] who claimed that Mataram's rise was God's will. Only the last of these was really in accordance with orthodox Muslim norms of political legitimization, and even that one, while pretty typical for the time period, would become very unfashionable with the rise of Islamic modernism. Aceh, by contrast, explicitly viewed itself as the most orthodox Muslim power, and took pains to legitimize itself as such. So Mataram's eclectic search for spiritual legitimization will naturally put it at odds with Aceh eventually.
IOTL, much of this conflict was muted by the Dutch, for a couple of reasons. First, the Dutch, for their own reasons, actually expanded trade networks, thereby facilitatingincreased connection between Java and the rest of the Muslim world. This was definitely an unintended consequence, and in fact one they tried to prevent via regulation of the number of pilgrims allowed on the Hajj. Second, Dutch oppression muted many internal differences in the archipelago, and actually fostered a common national idea based around mutual suffering at colonial hands. This also served to paper over differences within Indonesian Islam. Third, the Dutch broke the power of both the Mataram kings and the Sultans of Aceh. Hence, questions of how the various rulers legitimized themselves went by the wayside.
Now, the OP has already changed a couple of things. A major Sufi figure showing up on Java is actually a very important game-changer. His followers will probably not embrace the Wahdat Al-Wujud, meaning some of the mystical outlier nature of Indonesian Islam might be curbed. [On the other hand, the Wahdat Al-Wujud is also a natural bridge between Islam and Hinduism, and could be a means by which Mataram brings Balanese Hindus into the fold, so it might persist]. Also, having a Sufi leader and his followers in the Mataram court increases the stature of Java, and Javanese Islam, as does the title of Sultan. Consequently, Aceh may start to see Mataram as a rival for Islamic legitimacy.
It's all got some very interesting possibilities, that's for sure.
Improved infrastructure, enforced increases in population density, rice cultivation on a massive scale, etc. Some of that may happen, but a lot of it was driven by Dutch internal trade policies within the East Indies that may not apply here.
And unifying the archipelago linguistically and culturally is... a really tall order, population boom or no population boom. Just within Islam alone, there are huge differences. Add to that that large chunks of East Indonesia are Christian, or well on their way to converting, and that Malay linguistic and cultural identity is really deeply rooted in parts of proto-Indonesia and I think that level of unity seems difficult to achieve. Java will be bigger, more important and probably more internally unified, however, and with good infrastructure, it could be a regional power in its own right.