Djenamoe Atjeh

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tagsconcept, achehnese, sultanate, custom, ceremonial, gold, 18th-century, atjeh, aceh-war, 19th-century, constitutional
aliasesDjenamoe Atjeh, Jenamuh Aceh, Djenamoe, Jenamuh, coronation gold gift, 32 katies gold, Atjeh coronation tribute, Jināmat Atjeh, de Djenamoe Atjeh, het geschenk van 32 katies goud, Acehnese installation gift

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Djenamoe Atjeh was a ceremonial tribute of thirty-two katies (approximately 1.28 kilograms each, totalling about 40.96 kilograms) of gold paid by each newly enthroned sultan of Atjeh upon his accession, originating from the bribes distributed by the ferdanamantrie Maharadja Lela Malajoe to secure the election of his son Potjoet Din (Sultan Alaïdin Achmad Sjah) around 1723. The custom institutionalised the means by which the first sultan of the present (Bugis-descended) lineage had been placed on the throne and, according to Van Heutsz in his 1893 brochure, served as a permanent reminder that the sultanate of the current lineage was founded on bribery rather than hereditary right or military conquest.

Origin

When Sultan Djohar Alam Imadoedin Sjah died around 1723, the ferdanamantrie Maharadja Lela Malajoe persuaded the assembled court grandees in the Balei Blerong Sri within the Kraton to elect his son Potjoet Din as sultan, over the rival claimant Sjamsoel Alam who had been proclaimed by the chiefs of the V Moekims Montassik. To secure the election, Maharadja Lela Malajoe distributed gold as follows:

The total distributed was thirty-two katies of gold. From this event, Van Heutsz recorded, the custom arose that every new sultan, upon his coronation, paid thirty-two katies of gold under the name of Djenamoe Atjeh.

Significance in the Sultanate Debate

Van Heutsz cited the Djenamoe Atjeh as evidence against the restoration of the sultanate under Dutch sovereignty. The fact that the present sultan’s lineage had been installed by bribery — and that the bribery was institutionalised as a permanent coronation requirement — demonstrated, he argued, that the sultanate was a position bought rather than inherited or earned, and that the chiefs who accepted the gold had done so not out of loyalty but out of self-interest. This reinforced his broader argument that the chiefs did not genuinely want a sultan above them and that restoring the sultanate would merely recreate a figurehead whose real power would lie with the chiefs, not with the throne.

Account from De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893) — the Bugis line and the war-party invocation

Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract develops the Djenamoe Atjeh as part of the constitutional apparatus of the Atjehnese sultanate — the gift that constituted the sultan’s investiture and bound the sagi hoofden to his recognition — and as part of the religious-political apparatus the war-party invoked to sustain the resistance after the 1874 death of Sultan Machmoed Sjah. The Bugis sultan’s line, which the Djenamoe Atjeh had installed, was, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, descended from the Bugis Daeng Mancoer Boegis of Wadjo (Celebes) who had settled on the Westkust of Atjeh at Loong. The line was, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, “door omkooping van voorname hoofden in het toen reeds aan anarchie ten prooi zijnde rijk, tot het sultanaat wist te verheffen” (raised to the sultanate by the bribery of principal chiefs in a realm already given over to anarchy). The Djenamoe Atjeh was the constitutional form of that omkooping: the gift that constituted the sultan’s recognition by the Sagi-heads and bound them, in turn, to the throne they had been paid to acknowledge.

The arithmetic of the Djenamoe

Van Heutsz records the original omkooping on page 44 of the 1893 tract, with the full arithmetic of the Djenamoe:

“Om nu de voorname gezaghebbende hoofden van Groot-Atjeh voor die keuze te winnen (omtekoopen), zond hij aan ieder der sagi hoofden van de XXII en XXVI Moekims 10 katies goud, aan T. Kadli Malikoel Adil 2, aan T. Neq Poerba van de IX Moekims en aan T. Neq Radja Moeda Setia van Merassa ieder 5 katies, terwijl de panglimas-prang ter zee en te land mooie kleedingstukken ten geschenken kregen. Panglima Polim verjoeg toen sultan Sjamsoel Alam en in eene nieuwe in de Balei Blerong Sri belegde vergadering, werd Potjoet Din tot sultan uitgeroepen onder den titel van Sultan Alaïdin Achmad Sjah. Van dezen tijd dagteekent de gewoonte, dat de sultans bij hunne troons-bestijging 32 katies goud betalen, een geschenk, dat bekend is onder den naam van Djenamoe Atjeh”.

The arithmetic of the Djenamoe is, in Van Heutsz’s account, the arithmetic of the original omkooping: ten katies each to the two Sagi-heads of the XXII and XXVI Moekims (twenty katies in total), two katies to T. Kadli Malikoel Adil, five katies each to T. Neq Poerba of the IX Moekims and T. Neq Radja Moeda Setia of Merassa (ten katies in total), making thirty-two katies in all. The total — thirty-two katies — became, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the customary geschenk each sultan was obliged to pay on his troonsbestijging: the form in which the original omkooping was constitutionalised into the standing Djenamoe Atjeh. The constitutional consequence Van Heutsz draws is sweeping: the present Bugis sultan’s line had “nooit macht in het rijk bezeten” — never possessed power in the realm — and the sultan’s authority was, from the moment of the original omkooping, derivative of the Sagi-heads’ recognition rather than constitutive of it. The Djenamoe Atjeh is, in this diagnosis, the constitutional sign of the sultanate’s weakness: the gift that bound the sultan to the Sagi-heads, and so the form in which the sultan’s dependence on the Sagi-federations was institutionalised.

The war-party’s invocation of the aloude gebruiken in 1884

The Djenamoe Atjeh is, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, part of the religious-political apparatus by which the war-party sustained the resistance after the 1874 death of Sultan Machmoed Sjah. The constitutional framework of the sultanate — of which the Djenamoe was the installation form — was, after the 1874 death, the framework the war-party exploited to install the pretender-sultan Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed at Kemala and, in 1884, to hail him in the mesdjid Indrapoeri as sultan of the rijk. Van Heutsz records the installation on page 40 of the 1893 tract:

“de tegenpartij […] door de meerjarigheidsverklaring van Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed en diens uitroeping en huldiging in de mesdjid Indrapoeri tot sultan van het rijk, gevolgd door de inrichting van des sultans huis te Kemala voor zoover dat mogelijk was naar de aloude gebruiken”.

The aloude gebruiken — ancient customs — invoked by the war-party were, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the customs of which the Djenamoe Atjeh was the installation form: the gift, the huldiging in the mesdjid, and the inrichting van des sultans huis te Kemala. The constitutional predicate the war-party invoked was, in turn, the predicate Gouverneur Laging Tobias had sought to reverse by the derden weg of 1883 — the restoration of the sultanate under Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed by Dutch-managed settlement. The Djenamoe Atjeh is, in this sense, the constitutional form the derden weg was designed to appropriate: the Dutch recognition of the sultan’s installation, on the model of the aloude gebruiken, by which the war-party’s religious-political apparatus would be transferred from the resistance to the colonial state. The derden weg failed, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, because the sultan’s installation could not be transferred without the dwang — the compulsion — that would make the war-party’s recognition superfluous; and the Djenamoe Atjeh’s constitutional form remained, after the failure, the form the war-party continued to invoke.

The Djenamoe and the Peratoeran Makota Alam

The Djenamoe Atjeh is, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, part of the broader constitutional apparatus of the Atjehnese sultanate that included the Peratoeran Makota Alam — the law-code attributed to Sultan Iskandar Muda — and the customary huldiging of the sultan’s installation. The constitutional code of the sultanate was, in this apparatus, the framework within which the Djenamoe was the installation gift, the adat was the customary law, and the Peratoeran Makota Alam was the state-law. Van Heutsz records the framework’s invocation in the war-party’s installation of Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed on page 58:

“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 installation and the Djenamoe were constituted.

Significance of the Van Heutsz account

The Djenamoe Atjeh’s significance in the Aceh Wiki History record, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, rests on four things: it was the Acehnese installation-gift of thirty-two katies of gold that each sultan, on his troonsbestijging, was obliged to pay to the principal Sagi-heads and officers of the Atjehnese court — and so the constitutional form by which the present Bugis sultan’s line was installed in the early eighteenth century and sustained thereafter; it was the constitutional form whose origin — the omkooping of the Sagi-heads by the ferdanamantrie Maharadja Lela Malajoe — fixed, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the sultan’s dependence on the Sagi-federations’ recognition rather than the Sagi-federations’ dependence on the sultan’s authority; it was the constitutional form the war-party invoked in the 1884 installation of the pretender-sultan Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed in the mesdjid Indrapoeri — the aloude gebruiken the war-party appropriated to constitute the pretender’s recognition and to bind the sagi hoofden to his cause; and it was part of the broader constitutional apparatus — alongside the Peratoeran Makota Alam and the adat — that the Laging Tobias derden weg of 1883 had sought to appropriate by the Dutch-managed restoration of the sultanate. The Djenamoe Atjeh is, in Van Heutsz’s narrative, the constitutional sign of the sultanate’s weakness — the gift that bound the sultan to the Sagi-heads and so the form in which the war-party’s religious-political apparatus was, after the 1874 death of Sultan Machmoed Sjah, sustained.

See Also

Source

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. 40, 44, 48, 58. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.

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