Acehnese

The Acehnese are an Austronesian people of the northern tip of Sumatra, whose forebears, Chamic speakers, crossed from the Southeast Asian mainland around the beginning of the Common Era and blended with local peoples.

Hindu and Buddhist influences gave way to Islam through Indian Ocean trade, and in 1267 Samudera Pasai became an early Muslim state; Marco Polo in 1292 found the coast split among small kingdoms. By 1337 Pasai thrived, while Acehnese, kin to the tongues of Champa, spread along the coast.

Around 1496 Ali Mughayat Syah founded the Aceh Sultanate, which absorbed Pasai in 1524 and became a major Strait of Malacca power, rivaling Portuguese Malacca and Johor in pepper and peaking under Iskandar Muda in the early seventeenth century, its court also a center of Islamic scholarship. Society formed gampong villages grouped into mukim districts, with communal life and rice farming.