Senaia had promised to put the citadel into his hands, and this had certainly been executed but for an accident that discovered his treasonable designs. The crews of some vessels of the Achinese fleet landed on a part of the coast not far from the city, where they were well entertained by the natives, and in the openness of conviviality related the transactions which had lately passed at Achin, the correspondence of Senaia, and the scheme that was laid for rising on the Portuguese when they should be at church, murdering them, and seizing the fortress. Intelligence of this was reported with speed to the governor, who had Senaia instantly apprehended and executed. This punishment served to intimidate those among the inhabitants who were engaged in the conspiracy, and disconcerted the plans of the king of Achin.
This appears to be the last transaction of Ibrahim's reign recorded by the Portuguese historians. His death is stated by De Barros to have taken place in the year 1528 in consequence of poison administered to him by one of his wives, to revenge the injuries her brother, the chief of Daya, had suffered at his hand. In a Malayan work (lately come into my possession) containing the annals of the kingdom of Achin, it is said that a king, whose title was sultan Saleh-eddin-shah, obtained the sovereignty in a year answering to 1511 of our era, and who, after reigning about eighteen years, was dethroned by a brother in 1529. Notwithstanding some apparent discordance between the two accounts there can be little doubt of the circumstances applying to the same individual, as it may well be presumed that, according to the usual practice in the East, he adopted upon ascending the throne a title different from the name which he had originally borne, although that might continue to be his more familiar appellation, especially in the mouths of his enemies. The want of precise coincidence in the dates cannot be thought an objection, as the event not falling under the immediate observation of the Portuguese they cannot pretend to accuracy within a few months, and even their account of the subsequent transactions renders it more probable that it happened in 1529; nor are the facts of his being dethroned by the brother, or put to death by the sister, materially at variance with each other; and the latter circumstance, whether true or false, might naturally enough be reported at Malacca.
1529.
His successor took the name of Ala-eddin-shah, and afterwards, from his great enterprises, acquired the additional epithet of keher or the powerful. By the Portuguese he is said to have styled himself king of Achin, Barus, Pidir, Pase, Daya, and Batta, prince of the land of the two seas, and of the mines of Menangkabau.
1537.
Nothing is recorded of his reign until the year 1537, in which he twice attacked Malacca. The first time he sent an army of three thousand men who landed near the city by night, unperceived by the garrison, and, having committed some ravages in the suburbs, were advancing to the bridge, when the governor, Estavano de Gama, sallied out with a party and obliged them to retreat for shelter to the woods. Here they defended themselves during the next day, but on the following night they re-embarked, with the loss of five hundred men. A few months afterwards the king had the place invested with a larger force; but in the interval the works had been repaired and strengthened, and after three days ineffectual attempt the Achinese were again constrained to retire.
1547.
In the year 1547 he once more fitted out a fleet against Malacca, where a descent was made; but, contented with some trifling plunder, the army re-embarked, and the vessels proceeded to the river of Parles on the Malayan coast. Hither they were followed by a Portuguese squadron, which attacked and defeated a division of the fleet at the mouth of the river. This victory was rendered famous, not so much by the valour of the combatants, as by a revelation opportunely made from heaven to the celebrated missionary Francisco Xavier of the time and circumstances of it, and which he announced to the garrison at a moment when the approach of a powerful invader from another quarter had caused much alarm and apprehension among them.
Many transactions of the reign of this prince, particularly with the neighbouring states of Batta and Aru (about the years 1539 and 1541) are mentioned by Ferdinand Mendez Pinto; but his writings are too apocryphal to allow of the facts being recorded upon his authority. Yet there is the strongest internal evidence of his having been more intimately acquainted with the countries of which we are now speaking, the character of the inhabitants, and the political transactions of the period, than any of his contemporaries; and it appears highly probable that what he has related is substantially true: but there is also reason to believe that he composed his work from recollection after his return to Europe, and he may not have been scrupulous in supplying from a fertile imagination the unavoidable failures of a memory, however richly stored.
1556.