Adat Meukuta Alam

The Adat Meukuta Alam — also known as the Makota Alam, the Adat Kanun, or the edicts of Meukuta Alam — is the body of written ordinances ascribed to Sultan Meukuta Alam (Iskandar Muda, reigned 1607–1636) and regarded by the Achehnese as the chief monument of royal legislation in their history. The sultan, as C. Snouck Hurgronje explains, “was himself called Meukuta Alam after his death, and his ordinances are thus known as Adat Meukuta Alam.” The ordinances themselves, however, are more commonly referred to by the alternative names Makota Alam and Adat Kanun — the latter a compound of the Arabic ʽādah (custom) and qānūn (law), which denotes a body of written regulations of royal or governmental origin. Together with the sarakatas (letters patent) of later sultans, these edicts constitute the only attempts at centralisation of authority or reform — social, political, or religious — that can be discerned in the whole course of Achehnese history.

Preservation and transmission

The Adat Meukuta Alam is preserved, along with other Achehnese sarakatas, in manuscript documents of varying age and authority, and was published in part by Van Langen in his Atjehsch Staatsbestuur (1888). They contain, besides ceremonial of court and festival and the collection and disposal of taxes on imports, certain regulations touching the court of the sultan and maritime commerce. As the Dutch official Van Langen observed in the account quoted by Hurgronje: “We find in existence undang-undang or collections of such public ordinances attributed to various Achehnese rulers, all dealing with trade, navigation, import and export duties, administration and ceremonial. Sultan Iskandar Muda (1607–1636) in particular appears to have applied himself to calling into existence a system of rules on these subjects. His code, if we may so term it, is called Makota Alam or Adat Kanun, but copies of this are rare.”

During his residence in Acheh, Hurgronje obtained copies of a number of sarakatas not included among those published by Van Langen. They were as a rule lengthy documents, and most of them bore dates. Those ascribed to Meukuta Alam include: one dated 1607, revived by the princess Sapiatodin in 1645, intended to regulate the court ceremonial and solemnities at festivals (very rich in details); and two dated respectively 1635 and 1640 (sic). These documents, together with certain undated edicts of Sapiatodin, Amat Shah Juhan (the first prince of the latest dynasty), and Badrudin Asem (Hashim), deal with commercial and port regulations as affecting different nationalities and different kinds of merchandise, and the collection and distribution of taxes. In these documents are even found detailed customs-tariffs.

Contents

It is not difficult, Hurgronje observes, to distinguish in these edicts the old and already established conditions from the new ones which they purport to introduce. The principal features of the old status were the great independence of the numerous chiefs and the all-prevailing influence of traditional custom. Even the demands made on the uleebalangs by the port-kings in the most flourishing period of their rule — the second half of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century — were extremely moderate, and bear witness partly to the want of power on the part of these princes to control the government of the interior, and partly to the small interest they seem to have taken in any such interference. Even the edicts ascribed by general consensus to Meukuta Alam (1607–1636) confine themselves within very narrow limits, although that prince had at his command a considerable fleet and a small standing army. Besides, these documents are not evidence of a state of things that ever actually existed, but simply the expression of the wishes of the king and his councillors as to what they would see carried out.

The new elements which the Adat Meukuta Alam introduces may be classified, in Hurgronje’s summary, under three heads:

1. Extension of the Sultan’s authority — attempts at an extension of the authority of the sultan by allotting to him — the “king of the port” — a certain control over the succession of the other chieftains of the land, over the disputes of these chiefs with one another or those between the subjects of different chiefs, and over the interests of strangers.
2. Stricter observance of Mohammedan law — certain rules intended to bring about a stricter observance of Mohammedan law.
3. Trade, ceremonial, and religious festivals — regulations dealing with trade then confined to the capital, the shares of certain officials established in the capital in the profits drawn from this trade by the king of the port, the court ceremonial, and the celebration of great religious festivals.

Practical development

The practical fate of the Adat Meukuta Alam was very limited. The rules dealing with trade and ceremonial exercised, during the reign of their promulgator at least, some degree of authority over life and trade in the seaport town. Of the other innovations, however, “hardly a single one has passed from document into actuality, but simply the state of things they reveal as already in being has continued its existence.” Perpetual dynastic struggles leading to the death or downfall of the rulers, the unstable character of the rulers themselves, the endeavours of chiefs and officials even in the capital to promote their own authority and profit, the want of a proper machinery of government based on other principles than “might is right” — all this ensures that no period can be pointed out in which even the regulations affecting the capital passed current as the living law of the land.

It was enough for the successive Sultans to have immunity from annoyance at the hands of the numerous potentates of the interior, and this object they easily gained by the means that lay beneath their hand.

Popular reverence and constitutional myth

The ordinary Achehnese, however, holds the edicts of Meukuta Alam in great reverence. All that recalls to him the greatness of his country is closely connected with the names of those very princes who are generally regarded as the authors of the sarakatas. He firmly believes that all that he reveres as the sacred institutions of his country — albeit not mentioned in a single one of the edicts — is adat Meukuta Alam, or at any rate adat pôteu meureuhôm, “adat of defunct royalties,” and he is convinced that information respecting them is of a certainty contained in some one or other of the sarakatas.

The Adat Meukuta Alam has nonetheless exercised a deep influence on the Achehnese political imagination, since “the general tendency is to refer all that has become customary law to the Sultans in general (adat pôteu meureuhom) and to Meukuta Alam in particular.” How little reliance can be placed on Achehnese data in respect to the origin of such written laws may be seen from the mention of the tomb of Teungku Anjong (died 1782) in the so-called laws of Meukuta Alam — a saint who, as Hurgronje drily notes, “was not even born in the reign of Meukuta Alam († 1636).” The ascription of all customary law to a single name has thus become a kind of constitutional myth: the Adat Meukuta Alam is less a code than a fiction of legitimacy, by which the Achehnese explain to themselves the existence of the customs under which they live.

The Achehnese chiefs have a secondary aim in referring with a certain emphasis to these edicts as the laws of Acheh: all that is contained therein respecting court ceremonial, festivals, religion, and so forth, they exalt; what conflicts with their own pretensions they quietly pass over.

Comparative context

The same process may be observed in other Malayan countries, where the Hukum Kanun of Malacca and similar codes “are expressive not of decay, but of a temporary desire for order and reform. Of these the same holds true as of the Adat Meukuta Alam in Acheh.” The code thus belongs to the same class as the Hukum Kanun of Malacca and similar compilations in other Malayan countries — codes expressive not of decay, but of a temporary desire for order and reform.

Significance

The Adat Meukuta Alam — whatever its practical ineffectiveness — remains the chief documentary source, alongside oral tradition, for the political institutions of the Sultanate of Acheh at its apogee. It records, however imperfectly, the aspirations of the most powerful of the Achehnese sultans to impose order on a fragmented polity; and its persistence in the Achehnese political imagination as the emblem of a lost greatness testifies to the depth of that aspiration’s failure. In Hurgronje’s reading, the Adat Meukuta Alam is at once the principal monument of Achehnese royal legislation and the principal witness to the impossibility of centralised authority in a country whose political constitution guaranteed the perpetual independence of its chiefs.

Account from Atjèh by J. Kreemer (Deel II)

Kreemer provides the following account of the Adat Meukoeta Alam.

The Adat Meukoeta Alam was a sarakata (royal edict) attributed to Sultan Iskandar Moeda (reigned 1607–1636), containing regulations on court ceremonial, harbour trade, religion, and justice. Its originals were captured at the mosque of Indrapoeri in 1879 during the Atjèh-oorlog. The edict of Sultan Djamaloe ‘l-alam (reigned 1703–1726) was also captured there. However, both originals were lost in the 1886 flood that devastated the Koeta Radja area. Only copies survive, published by Van Langen in his works on the Atjèhsche staatsbestuur.

The Adat Meukoeta Alam mentions several officials who were under direct Sultan authority and resided in Koeta Dar al-Doenja (the Sultan’s capital), including Teukoe Nanta Seutia — the hereditary ambtsnaam of the Oelèëbalang’s of the VI Moekim’s (sagi XXV). The edict thus provides evidence of the administrative structure under Iskandar Moeda.

Account from De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893) — the constitutional framework

Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract invokes the Peratoeran Makota Alam — in Van Heutsz’s spelling also de Makota alam, the Adat Makota Alam, or the Laws of the Crown of the World — as the constitutional framework within which the sultan’s authority had historically been exercised. The code fixed the succession of the panglima sagi, the installation of the oeleebalangs, and the customary huldiging by which the sultan’s recognition was constituted. Van Heutsz invokes the code as part of the constitutional order to argue that the Van der Heijden conquest of 1878–1879 had, volgens de Atjehsche begrippen, door het recht van verovering, seated the Dutch administration op den troon van den Sultan.

Attribution to Sultan Iskandar Muda and the unified sultanate

The Peratoeran Makota Alam is, in Van Heutsz’s argument, the constitutional legacy of Sultan Iskandar Muda — the early-17th-century sultan whose reign is, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the unique historical instance of unified Atjehnese authority. Van Heutsz invokes the Sultan on page 23 of the 1893 tract, in the counterfactual of what the Van der Heijden governorship would have completed had it not been dismissed in early 1881:

“In het sedert 11/2 eeuw door anarchie zoo verdeelde en verbrokkelde rijk zou dan weldra éénheid zijn en de Atjehers zouden allerwegen gezien en gevoeld hebben, dat de te Kota-Radja gevestigde Ned. autoriteit de eenig machthebbende was in het geheele rijk, wiens bevelen evenzeer moesten worden gehoorzaamd als die van den in ‘t begin der 17e eeuw over Atjeh regeerenden alom bekenden sultan Iskander Moeda, den eenigen, wiens naam nog met een aureool omgeven is en die in de herinnering van alle Atjehers voortleeft als de stichter van Atjeh’s grootheid”.

The invocation is, in Van Heutsz’s argument, doubly significant. First, it identifies Iskandar Muda as the unique figure of unified Atjehnese greatness — the only sultan whose name retained the aureool in Atjehnese memory, and so the only sultan whose authority had been recognised throughout the geheele rijk. Second, it identifies Iskandar Muda as the constitutional legislator — the sultan whose Peratoeran Makota Alam had been the framework within which the unified authority had been exercised, and so the framework whose memory the Dutch authority at Kota-Radja would have had to assume to be received as legitimate.

Provisions on panglima sagi succession

The most extensive provisions of the Peratoeran Makota Alam Van Heutsz cites are those governing the succession of the panglima sagi — the Sagi-head whose installation, in the code’s framework, was the constitutional act by which the Sagi-federation’s recognition was constituted. Van Heutsz cites the provisions on page 104 of the 1893 tract, in the prescription half of the tract, with reference to the translation by Van Langen:

“In de Makota alam b. v. staat daaromtrent: (zie vertaling van Langen) ‘I geval een panglima sagi sterft, is het plichtmatig voor de oelebalangs in die sagi, er den vorst eerbiedig kennis van te geven’ en verder: ‘Indien de oelebalangs in de sagi den vorst geen kennis doen dragen van het overlijden van hun panglima sagi, dan zijn die oelebalangs schuldig. Zij moesten dan hiervoor vergiffenis vragen onder voldoening van eene opgelegde boete’”.

The provision is, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the constitutional form by which the sultan’s authority over the Sagi-succession was exercised: the oelebalangs were obliged, on the death of their panglima sagi, to give the sultan eerbiedig kennis — respectful notice — and were schuldig — guilty — if they failed to do so, liable to a boete — fine — and a demand for vergiffenis. The provision is, in this sense, the constitutional form of the sultan’s supremacy over the Sagi-federations: not the power to appoint the panglima sagi, but the power to be informed of his death and to receive the oelebalangs’s petition for vergiffenis when they had failed in their duty.

Van Heutsz’s prescription, in the 1893 tract, was that the Dutch should require the same huldiging from the newly-chosen panglima sagi: “Thans moet men eischen, dat ook de nieuw gekozene hulde brengt aan ons als souverein; tegenover een krachtig bestuur mag dat niet nagelaten worden, al bestaat ook het feit, dat de hoofden zich tegenover de sultans van deze en de vorige eeuw weinig stoorden aan de gebruiken”. The Peratoeran Makota Alam’s provision was, in this prescription, the constitutional form the Dutch should appropriate: the requirement that the nieuw gekozene — the newly chosen Sagi-head — pay huldiging to the Dutch as souverein, on the model of the gebruiken the Peratoeran Makota Alam prescribed for the sultan’s recognition.

Provisions on oelebalang installation

The Peratoeran Makota Alam also contained, in Van Heutsz’s citation, provisions governing the installation of the oelebalang — the territorial chief whose installation was, in the code’s framework, the constitutional act by which the Sagi-federation’s recognition of a subordinate chief was constituted. Van Heutsz cites the provisions on page 104:

“In de Makota alam b. v. staat daaromtrent: ‘In geval een panglima sagi of oelebalang behoort te worden aangesteld in een der drie sagi’s van Groot-Atjeh of zijne onderhoorigheden, behooren zijne erfgenamen te overleggen met de oudsten in het bewuste gebied, die in het bezit zijn hunner verstandelijke vermogens, te weten de ketjiks, wakils en imams benevens de oelama’s omtrent zijn opvolger. Indien men zijn opvolger heeft gevonden onder zijne erfgenamen richtte men een feest aan, en vergaderen alle naburige oelebalangs om hem tot de waardigheid te verheffen en hem den titel te geven, die hem toekomt. Daarna moet hij (de opvolger) zijne opwachting maken bij den vorst en een presenteerblad medebrengen, waarop zich zijn huldebewijs bevindt, verschillend al naar gelang zijn rang is. Hij ontvangt bij die gelegenheid 21 saluutschoten’”.

The provision is, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the constitutional form of the oelebalang’s installation: the erfgenamen (heirs) consult the ketjiks, wakils, imams and oelama’s on the succession; a feest is arranged; the naburige oelebalangs convene to verheffen the successor to the waardigheid; the successor pays opwachting to the vorst (sultan), bringing a presenteerblad on which his huldebewijs (homage) is set out; and the vorst acknowledges the homage with twenty-one saluutschoten (salute-shots). The provision is, in this sense, the constitutional form of the sultan’s supremacy over the oelebalang’s installation: not the power to choose the successor, but the power to receive his huldebewijs and to acknowledge it with the saluutschoten that constituted his recognition.

The war-party’s invocation in 1884

The Peratoeran Makota Alam is, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the constitutional framework the war-party invoked to constitute the recognition of the pretender-sultan Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed in 1884. Van Heutsz records the invocation on page 58 of the 1893 tract: “onze pogingen om hem op vredelievende wijze, langs een politieken, z. g. diplomatischen weg tot onderwerping te brengen, had de hoofden, die wij daartoe bezigden, er toe gebracht dien sultan hulde te gaan brengen overeenkomstig de gebruiken van de Peratoeran Makota Alam”. The gebruiken van de Peratoeran Makota Alam — the customs of the Peratoeran Makota Alam — were, in this invocation, the framework within which the sultan’s recognition by the Sagi-heads was constituted, and the huldiging the chiefs paid to the pretender-sultan was, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the huldiging the Peratoeran Makota Alam prescribed.

The constitutional consequence Van Heutsz draws is that the Peratoeran Makota Alam’s framework was, after the 1874 death of Sultan Machmoed Sjah, the framework within which the war-party’s religious-political apparatus was sustained: the huldiging the chiefs paid to the pretender-sultan constituted his recognition, and the gebruiken the war-party invoked were, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the gebruiken the Peratoeran Makota Alam had prescribed for the sultan’s installation. The Dutch response, in Van Heutsz’s prescription, was to appropriate the same framework — to require the huldiging of the nieuw gekozene panglima sagi on the model of the Peratoeran Makota Alam — by which the war-party’s religious-political apparatus would be transferred from the resistance to the colonial state.

The Poeloe Waij revenue-rights

The Peratoeran Makota Alam is, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the constitutional framework within which the sultan’s revenue-rights were also fixed. Van Heutsz records the framework’s application to the revenues of Poeloe Waij — the island off the XXVI Moekims coast whose tanah waqf (endowment) the Dutch had declared under direct rule — on page 106 of the 1893 tract: “De inkomsten van het eiland werden echter volgens de Makota alam voor een gedeelte getrokken door enkele hoofden van moekims in het Noorden der XXVI Moekims, aan zee gelegen”. The Makota alam’s provision was, in this application, the constitutional form by which the sultan’s revenue-rights were shared with the hoofden van moekims of the XXVI Moekims — the form the Dutch had overridden by declaring Poeloe Waij tanah waqf under direct Dutch rule.

Significance of the Van Heutsz account

The Peratoeran Makota Alam’s significance in the Aceh Wiki History record, in Van Heutsz’s 1893 diagnosis, rests on four things: it was the traditional Acehnese state-law code attributed to Sultan Iskandar Muda — the early-17th-century sultan whose reign is, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the unique historical instance of unified Atjehnese authority — and so the constitutional legacy of the unified sultanate Iskandar Muda had founded; it was the constitutional framework within which the sultan’s authority over the Sagi-succession was exercised — the provisions on the panglima sagi’s death and the oelebalang’s installation that fixed the sultan’s supremacy over the Sagi-federations’ recognition — and so the framework the Dutch, in Van Heutsz’s prescription, should appropriate by requiring the huldiging of the nieuw gekozene on the model of the Peratoeran Makota Alam; it was the constitutional framework the war-party invoked in 1884 to constitute the recognition of the pretender-sultan Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed — the gebruiken van de Peratoeran Makota Alam under which the chiefs paid huldiging to the pretender — and so part of the religious-political apparatus the war-party sustained; and it was the constitutional framework within which the sultan’s revenue-rights were fixed — the provisions on Poeloe Waij’s inkomsten shared with the hoofden van moekims of the XXVI Moekims — and so the framework the Dutch had overridden by declaring the island tanah waqf under direct rule. The Peratoeran Makota Alam is, in Van Heutsz’s narrative, the constitutional form of the unified sultanate whose memory the Dutch authority at Kota-Radja could aspire to recreate — and the constitutional form the war-party’s religious-political apparatus had appropriated to sustain the resistance.

See Also

• Sultan Meukuta Alam
• Iskandar Muda
• Sarakata
• Princess Sapiatodin
• Amat Shah Juhan
• Badrudin Asem
• Bugis-Origin Dynasty
• Teungku Anjong
• K. F. H. van Langen
• Van Langen
• C. Snouck Hurgronje
• Hukum Kanun of Malacca
• Malacca
• Uleebalang
• Acheh
• Aceh Sultanate
• Adat
• Letters patent with the ninefold seal to Panglima Meuseugit Raya
• Atjehsch Staatsbestuur
• J. B. van Heutsz
• De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893)
• Onderwerping
• Mèl
• Djenamoe Atjeh
• Panglima Polim
• Van der Heijden
• Sultan Machmoed Sjah
• Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed
• Toeankoe Haschim
• Laging Tobias
• Groot-Atjeh
• XXII Moekims
• XXV Moekims
• XXVI Moekims
• Poeloe Waij
• Kemala
• Kota Radja
• Indrapoeri
• 1874
• 1878
• 1879
• 1881
• 1884
• 1886
• 1893
• 1607
• 1635
• 1636
• 1640
• 1645
• 1782
• 1888

Sources

The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.

Atjèh. Algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en onderhoorigheden, door J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut. Tweede Deel. Leiden: N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill, 1923. Identifier: Delpher MMKB02B:000001798.

De onderwerping van Atjeh, door J. B. van Heutsz, Majoor der Infanterie, gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef; Batavia: G. Kolff en Co., 1893, esp. pp. 23, 40, 58, 104, 106. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.