The first Samudra Pasai tomb identified in historical scholarship, dated 831 (AD l428) (Plate 3), is the tomb of a woman, a descendant of Malik al-Salih (Snouck Hurgronje 1907: 9), who, according to the inscriptions, was a daughter of Sultan Zain Abidin, ibn al-Su n Ahmad, ibn al-Sultan Muhammad. al-Sultan Malik al-Salih This confirms The Malay Annals story that the successor of Sultan Muhammad was his son Ahmad (Moquette 1913: 12). He is most likely the ruler Battuta met in 1325 The tombstone of the daughter of Sultan Zain al-Abidin is elaborately carved in marble. Several tombstones, identical to this one, have been found in the region all imported from Gudjarat (Moquette 1913: 538). Consequently. it was wronglyassumed by some scholars that Islam came to South-East Asia from Gudjarat. All these types of tombstones were dated to the fifteenth century; however, a century and a half after Islam was formally established in north Sumatra. In the fifteenth century there was a great increase in Muslim shipping eastwards in the Indian Ocean, the result of the southern expansion of the Delhi Sultanate in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Gudjarat had come into Muslim hands in 1297. after which it was ruled by lieutenants of the Sultan of Delhi until 1396, when independent (Meilink-Roelofs 1962: 20). These marble tombs date from the period when Gudjarat had become a prosperous independent Islamic kingdom under Sultan Ahmad Shah (1411-41) (Marrison 1951: 33. Sumatran rulers and notables commissioned marble tombs from Gudjarat for their graves