A Pasai chief with a Persian memorial inscription
This brief note by R. O. Winstedt reports on a Persian memorial inscription discovered near the village of Samudra in North Sumatra, associated with a Pasai chief named Husam al-Din.
Summary
Winstedt draws attention to a paper by Dr. H. K. J. Cowan in the Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde (1940) describing the tomb of Naina Husam al-Din, son of Naina Amin, who died in Shawwal 823 A.H. (October/November 1420 A.D.). The tomb bears an inscription containing verses in Persian, apparently from the Tayyibat of the poet Sa’di (A.D. 1193–1292), which Winstedt notes is unique in Malaysia (p. 149).
He further observes that Husam al-Din appears to have been a favourite name in Pasai, citing the “Chronicles of Pasai” and the “Malay Annals” to show that the name (or its variant Asmayu’d-din) was borne by a minister of Sultan Malik al-Saleh (d. 1297) (p. 149).