The haq thilangkob (bah kajëë) — “the right of the felling-length (of the trunk)” — was an obsolete Atjehnese rule by which a claimant to previously cultivated land, able to point only to a single isolated tree, could extend his claim to a circle around that tree with a radius equal to the tree’s own height.
The rule
D. W. N. de Boer described the rule as it had formerly operated. Where on disputed ground outside the gampong no remains of an old pagar could be discerned, nor any other visible evidence of an earlier plantation, but only one single standing tree — and by preference a fruit tree such as a doerian or manggistan — the person setting himself up as the earlier clearer of the ground could still extend his claim to a circle around that tree, with the felling-length of the tree as radius. That was the haq thilangkob.
Obsolescence and its record
“Dit recht op de vallengte komt thans als zoodanig niet meer voor” — this right of the felling-length no longer occurs as such, De Boer wrote. He recorded it only for the sake of completeness, “omdat opteekening van adatrechterlijke antiquiteiten van nut kan zijn voor een vergelijkende of verklarende studie van het adatrecht in andere streken” — because the noting-down of adat-law antiquities can be of use for a comparative or explanatory study of the customary law of other regions.
Modern replacement
In such a case, De Boer recorded, the proven possessor of the tree was in his own day awarded either the right of ownership in the tree alone, or a sum of expropriation to be fixed by the judge — the radja.
See Also
Source
Het recht op den grond in Atjeh, by D. W. N. de Boer, dated Scheveningen, November 1931, pp. 59-80. Offprint DLP-141, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, ‘s-Gravenhage; Bibliotheek KITLV accession 0060 4460 60 081470 428.