Ratu Safiatuddin Taj ul-Alam (d. 1675) was the fourteenth sultan 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 (the uleëbang set up by Iskandar Muda) and the religious leaders (imam or ulama). The Sultanate of Aceh was a sultanate centered in the modern area of Aceh Province, Sumatra, Indonesia, which was a major regional power in the 16th and 17th centuries, before experiencing a long period of decline. ... Iskandar Muda (1583?[1] - December 27, 1636[2]) was the twelfth sultan of Aceh, under whom the sultanate achieved its greatest territorial extent, and was the strongest power and wealthiest state in the western Indonesian archipelago and the Strait of Malacca. ... Iskandar Thani Alauddin Mughayat Syah (d. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Ulema, a community of legal scholars of Islam and the Sharia. ...

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. Islam (Arabic:  ) is a monotheistic religion based upon the teachings of Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure. ... The Šāfiˤī madhab (Arabic: شافعي) is one of the four schools of fiqh, or religious law, within Sunni Islam. ... Islam (Arabic:  ) is a monotheistic religion based upon the teachings of Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure. ...

References

• M.C. Ricklefs. A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1300, 2nd ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994, pp. 35-36, 51.