Jakarta, IO – On Saturday, the 29th of June 2024, a screening was held of the documentary film, ‘Raihna Boki Raja’ at the Cemara 6 Gallery in Menteng, Central Jakarta. The film was the brainchild of the founder of the gallery, the late Toeti Heraty Noerhadi Rooseno, a philosopher, political activist, academician, psychologist and cultural savant. The 29-minute film is extremely well-edited, with much beautiful photography and a very interesting story.
Raihna Boki Raja is a little-known 16th century queen of Ternate (an island located in the North Moluccas which is a part of Indonesia). For a period of almost 25 years, she played an important role on the political stage of Ternate which at the time was one of the most important kingdoms in the clove growing area of the North Moluccas. It was the time of the great voyages of discovery and cloves were one of the spices that the Europeans were searching to find a direct route to.
Toeti Heraty who was also a feminist was concerned about the lack of Indonesian women mentioned in the official history books which are written mostly by men and became interested in Raihna Boki Raja, the forgotten queen of Ternate. In 2010, she wrote a book of lyrical prose about Raihna Boki Raja and was determined to produce a documentary film based on the history of the Ternatean queen. One of the last things she did before her death was to attend Deborah Gabinetti’s Bali Film Festival in search of collaborators for such a film. Unfortunately, not long thereafter, COVID made further work on the film project extremely difficult and Ibu Toeti, herself passed away in 2021 before being able to produce the film.
After Ibu Toeti’s death, her daughter Inda Citraninda Noerhadi took over the Cemara 6 Gallery and created the Toeti Heraty Museum. Before the start of COVID, she accompanied her mother to Goa in India to try to find Raihna Boki Raja’s grave. Nearly a year ago, she began work on the production of a documentary film depicting Raihna Boki Raja’s life story. The film was first screened on Toeti Heraty’s birthday last year. It was filmed in Ternate with Inda Noerhadi as executive producer of the film which is narrated by renown Indonesian actress Christine Hakim. The script was written by historian Linda Christanty in collaboration with Inda Heraty and the rest of the team. It was directed by Fendi Siregar with musical arrangements by Ananda Sukarlan. The film will be played at the next Ubud Writers Festival and Inda hopes that the film will be shown at an exhibition commemorating 75 years Indonesian-American diplomatic relations in New York later this year.
Inda Noerhadi explained, “Raihna Boki Raja was of such interest to my mother because she was an important figure for nearly 25 years in Ternate history who had to struggle not only against Portuguese colonialism but also against the patriarchy controlling both the Ternate kingdom and Moluccan culture. She is now a forgotten figure and it is hoped that this film will help to make people aware of her again and the role she played in Indonesian history.”
The Indonesian maritime historian, the late Prof Dr Adrian Lapian wrote that the first Indonesian historian to research the Portuguese archives and write about Raihna Boki Raja and thereby bring her back into the collective memory of Indonesians was the late historian Paramitha Rahayu Abdurachman who was herself an interesting figure on the stage of modern Indonesian history. Cornell scholar Ruth McVey who wrote about Indonesian Communism, described Paramita Abdurachman in her obituary in the Cornell University Press Journal, as both a revolutionary as well as an aristocrat.
Paramita came from an influential, aristocratic family and was well versed in both Javanese as well as Sundanese high cultural traditions. Nevertheless, she was also a revolutionary who participated in the struggle for independence where she was active in the Red Cross and in the Department of Foreign Affairs, both of which she helped to establish. Her uncle was Achmad Soebardjo Djojoadisoerjo, the first Foreign Minister of Indonesia.
Towards the end of the War, Paramitha met Tan Malaka and was his secretary until his arrest in 1946 (Some say that she was also involved with him romantically). She worked hard for the Red Cross and other social efforts during the Indonesian Revolution. After the War she went with the Indonesian army to the Moluccas where she was in charge of distributing relief in the south Moluccas after the defeat of the RMS. It was here that she first developed her love of the Moluccas and was why later as a historian, she specialized in this area of Indonesian history. For a long time, she was perhaps the only Indonesian historian who was fluent in Portuguese and Spanish which gave her direct access to primary sources of Moluccan history.
It was based on old Portuguese documents that Paramita was able to reconstruct the story of Raihna Boki Raja which she then wrote in a paper titled ‘Niachile Pokaraga (Nyaichile Boki Raja), a Sad Moluccan Queen’. Prof Lapian wrote that after Paramita’s death in March 1988, her family found galley proofs of the article from the Cambridge University journal, ‘Modern Asian Studies’. Prof Lapian was asked to check the proofs before returning them to the journal where it was published later that year in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3, a special issue published in honour of Professor Charles Boxer. Later Toeti Heraty found very little documented or even oral history regarding Raihna Boki Raja in Ternate and with the Ternate royal family. She therefore used Paramitha’s article as the basis of the research for her book.
It is not easy to trace the history of Raihna Boki Raja for in Ternatan history she is rather a forgotten figure despite having played a very influential role in the 16th century history of the North Moluccas. Adrain Lapian wrote that even Naidah who in the 19th century wrote the Hikayat Ternate or ‘A Saga of Ternate’ fails to mention her. It is only through Portuguese documents from Raihna Boki Raja’s time that we hear of her.
However, even there the information is limited for as Paramitha Abdurachman herself wrote, the Portuguese seldom wrote much about women. Despite the fact she was the only woman who was the focus of Portuguese documents from 1522-1548, none of the Portuguese mentioned her personal name. They referred to her by her titles or simply as the queen so that we do not even know for certain her personal name.
The Portuguese referred to her as Raihna Niachile Poka Raga but this is merely her title. Raihna is Portuguese for ‘queen’. The name Nachile comes Na (or Nyai) which is the title of a woman of high birth like Cut Nyak (Nyai) Din and cili or cilik which means small or young. So, it is a title meaning ‘a young woman of high birth’. All, we have left now is an oral tradition that survives in the Ternatan royal family that her personal name was Nukila. The current 49th Sultan of Ternate, Sultan Hidayatullah Sjah has reportedly said that he does not even know where her grave is located.
In the 16th century there were four powerful kingdoms in the North Moluccas namely Bacan, Halmahera, Ternate and Tidore which frequently went to war with each other. The Sultan of Ternate was Sultan Bayan Sirrullah who believed that Ternate should be the leader amongst them and in order to achieve that status, he brought to the Ternatean court, a Portuguese named Francisco Serrao as his military advisor. Serrao was on the first Portuguese fleet to sail into the East Indies after the fall of Malacca in 1511 and Sultan Bayan had heard of his prowess in Hitu and also of the Portuguese military might of the Portuguese in defeating the powerful sultanate of Malacca.
Francisco Serrao was an interesting person. He was a close friend and probably also cousin of Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 27 April 1521) whose fleet was the first to circumnavigate the globe. Magellan was in part able to do so because of the navigational information provided to him by Serrao about the East Indies. They never met again but continued to correspond with each other until they both died nearly at the same time in 1521.
Serrao accepted Sultan Bayan’s offer at first as a military advisor with his small company of men acting as mercenaries but later, he settled down in Ternate and became a trusted councillor also on state and family matters. Serrao encouraged Sultan Bayan to marry the daughter of the Sultan of Tidore to build an alliance to further strengthen Ternate. The marriage was to Raihna Boki Raja. She was only 15 years old whereas her husband was already in his fifties. Nevertheless, she became his main wife and the Queen of Ternate.
In 1521, both Sultan Bayan Sirrullah as well as Serrao were poisoned and her young underage son Abu Hayat became sultan. On his deathbed encouraged by Serrao, he signed a testament appointing Raihna Boki Raja guardian for his underaged son and queen regent of Ternate. This was unheard of in Moluccan traditions and the Council of Elders appointed Bayan’s brother Kachil Darwis as Governor with the help of the Portuguese garrison in the fort.
Raihna Boki Raja was always in a very difficult position as queen regent of Ternate which was aligned with the Portuguese, and as the daughter of the Kolano (ruler) of Tidore who was aligned with the Spanish and therefore in competition with the Portuguese. At different times her children were held hostage by the Portuguese and she witnessed their deaths, two of them by poisoning. Her father was also eventually poisoned.
Added to the pressure were the many very bad representatives that the Portuguese sent to Ternate; one of whom even executed their own ally Kachil Darwis. It finally became too much for Raihna Boki Raja and when they continued to hold her sons hostage, she carried out her biggest achieveshment. She was able to unite not only all her people to attack and capture the Portuguese fort and kill its captain but also to unite the other three kingdoms to later besiege the fort again and have her sons released. No other Indonesian monarch ever succeeded in capturing a Portuguese fort – yet she is a forgotten figure.
Later, Raihna Boki Raja was sent into exile in Goa by the Portuguese. After her return the Portuguese aligned themselves with other pretenders to the throne and finally, she was left with neither power nor possessions. It was then, that she went to live with her step-daughter Dona Catharina who had married a Portuguese trader-settler, Balthasar Veloso who lived in Ternate. He was by all accounts a good man, respected by Ternatans as well as Portuguese, and they gave her shelter in her old age.
Adrian Lapian believes that Raihna Boki Raja lost her power because she converted to Catholicism and before that allowed her son to do so. In the film it is stated that she was forced to convert however, that is not really clear from the historical sources.
Rainha Boki Raja first met St Francis Xavier when she was exiled to Goa by the Portuguese with her son Tabarija who later became sultan in 1535. When in 1537 he wanted to convert to Catholicism she did not prevent him from doing so however, she herself did not convert. They later were allowed to return to Ternate where her son was the Kolano of Ternate and she ruled as queen-regent.
In 1546, long after she had lost all power and wealth, St Francis Xavier visited Ternate and stayed at the house of her son-in-law Veloso. She was very well-versed in the Qur’an and often had religious discussions with St Francis Xavier during her exile in Goa. In Ternate during her old age when she was powerless and without possessions Prof Lapian writes that she was baptized by St Francis and found comfort in Christianity. She took the name Dona Isabel.
The first half of the 16th century can be described as a very fluid period in time. There were many changes and choices facing both the North Moluccans as well as the Portuguese and Spanish in the area. It was clearly a time of new ideas, new technology and discoveries, and new beliefs. It was a confusing time, full of struggle for dominance and freedom, new alliances even friendships but also betrayals and tragedy as exemplified by Raihna Boki Raja’s life. There is material for many more book and films about this period. However, as Dr Bondan Kanumoyoso, Dean of the Faculty of Cultural Sciences of the University of Indonesia put it, “There are not many Indonesian scholars who have researched the 16th century and the sources available are very limited. So, this film is really quite extraordinary. Toeti Heraty’s book was inspired by Paramita Abdurachman’s research and it is to be hoped that their work and the film will inspire further research and creative endeavours highlighting Raihna Boki Raja’s life and times from an Indonesian perspective.” (Tamalia Alisjahbana)
