Aceh

Aceh lay at Sumatra's northern tip, around Bandar Aceh. Before the sultanate arose, the region was known as Lamuri, an early center of Islam in the archipelago.

In 1520 Ali Mughayat Syah began the campaigns that founded the sultanate. Iskandar Muda conquered Pahang in 1617, but his fleet was destroyed before Portuguese Malacca in 1629. A Bugis dynasty took the throne in 1727; in the 1820s Aceh produced over half the world's pepper, and Tuanku Ibrahim restored the sultan's authority over its pepper-growing rajas.