Lébé — Dutch/Atjehnese spelling of standard Indonesian lebe, from Malay lebai (itself from Arabic laʾib or related forms), in Atjehnese leubé — is the title of the village-level Islamic religious official in the Dutch East Indies, the lowest grade of the religious-official hierarchy that ascends through the modin and the panghoeloe to the kadi. The term is recorded in Prof. Dr. Kernkamp’s chapter De invloed van den Islam in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946).
Kernkamp’s account
Kernkamp introduces the lebé in the course of his discussion of the djakat (zakat) collection. His wording: “In West Java one knows a hierarchical collection by the religious officials, beginning in the desa and with the top at the Regentship-head-place. There the lebé’s go round in the villages in harvest month and get from each tani some padi. (In the Gajo and Alas lands, the imam does this, for example.) Elsewhere, for example in Atjeh, the candidates wait calmly for what one wishes to bring them.” The West-Javanese lebé is thus the village-level collector of the agricultural tithe; in Gajo and Alas the same function is performed by the imam, and in Atjeh proper by no hierarchical collector at all.
The same chapter elsewhere distinguishes the lebé from the village Quran-teacher (goeroe ngadji). In West Java, Kernkamp notes, “one will also never forget the Quran-teacher (Goeroe ngadji), who has given the children some religious instruction. If there the local adat brings it that one brings the pitrah to the lebé or modin of one’s own kampong, and the goeroe-ngadji lives far away (which happens there), then one even pays this religious tax twice”.
Atjeh form: leubé
The Atjehnese form of the term is leubé (so spelled in the corpus, e.g. in the description of the Atjeh Teungku in Kernkamp’s chapter: “the Teungkoe, the ‘mother of the gampong’ … who … is expected to be leubé, that is, ‘pious’, and to faithfully perform his religious duties”). In Atjeh, the leubé virtue (piety and the faithful performance of religious duties) is an expectation of the Teungkoe office rather than a separate office itself; the institutional separation between the lebé (as village religious official) and the teungku (as mosque/meunasah director and religious teacher) that obtains in West Java does not obtain in Atjeh, where the teungku combines the two functions. The Atjeh leubé is thus less an office than a quality — the quality of piety expected of the village religious teacher.
Significance
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the lebé / leubé is significant as one of the principal village-level Islamic offices of the Indies, and as a marker of the institutional difference between the hierarchical West-Javanese system (in which the lebé collects the djakat village by village) and the looser Atjeh system (in which the teungku combines religious and educational functions, and the djakat is collected on a “wait and see” basis at the meunasah). The same difference, in Kernkamp’s account, marks the Atjeh case as institutionally less developed than the West-Javanese — a difference that fits the wider pattern of Atjeh Islam being presented as more vigorous in practice but looser in institutional structure than the Javanese variant.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- Nederlandsch-Indië — Netherlands Indies
- invloed van den Islam — influence of Islam
- goeroe ngadji — Quran-teacher
- goeroe — teacher
- adat — customary law
- kadi — religious judge
- imam — prayer-leader
- panghoeloe — mosque director
- lebé — village religious official
- leubé — pious (Atjeh form)
- modin — village religious official
- teungku — religious teacher
- Teungku — religious teacher (Atjeh form)
- Teungkoe — religious teacher (Atjeh form)
- Meunasah — village prayer-house
- meunasah — village prayer-house
- pitrah — fast-breaking alms
- djakat — wealth-alms
- zakat — wealth-alms
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Java — Java
- Gajoland — Gayo country
- Gajo — Gayo
- Alaslanden — Alas lands
- Alasland — Alas land
- Alas — Alas
- padi — unhusked rice
- Regent — Regent
- desa — village
- kampong — village ward
- gampong — village (Atjeh form)
- Prof. Dr. — Professor Doctor
- Dr. — Doctor
See Also
- Panghoeloe
- Teungku
- Meunasah
- Djakat
- Pitrah
- Imam of Longbatta
- Acheh
- Gajoland
- Alaslanden
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- J. Kreemer
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- W. J. A. Kernkamp
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), pp. 86 and 92 (chapter De invloed van den Islam door Prof. Dr. W. J. A. Kernkamp).