Sarakata

Properties3
descriptionThe sarakata — the manuscript letters-patent and royal edicts of the Sultanate of Acheh — comprising both the central royal edicts of the 17th–18th-century Sultans (regulating court ceremonial, trade, and religious observance) and the letters of appointment issued to regional chiefs as tokens of the Sultan's suzerainty over the Atjehsche Onderhoorigheden.
tagsconcept, document, achehnese, sultanate, diplomacy, law, adat, chancery, sovereignty, precolonial
aliasesSarakata, sarakata, sarakata', sarakataʼ, sarakat, brief van aanstelling, acte van bevestiging, letter of appointment, Royal edicts of Acheh, Achehnese edicts, Cap sikureung, Ninefold seal, Letters-patent of recognition, sarakata with chab sikureu'eng, chab sikureu'eng, sarahkata, royal charter, gift letter, vorstenedict, vorstenedicten

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The sarakata (also written sarakataʼ; plural sarakata’s; Gayo sarahkata, cf. Javanese piagem) was the generic Achehnese term for the manuscript royal edicts and letters-patent of the Sultanate of Acheh — decrees having the force of law ascribed to certain Sultans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and letters of appointment (brief van aanstelling) issued by the Sultan’s chancery to chiefs (landschapshoofden and uleebalangs) who came to pay him homage or to promise tribute. The sarakatas constitute the chief documentary source — alongside oral tradition — for the political institutions of Acheh under the Sultanate, and are treated at length by C. Snouck Hurgronje in the opening chapter of The Achehnese and by J. Kreemer in his Atjèh (1923), where they are alternatively characterised as vorstenedicten — “princely edicts” — and as recognition charters or “gift letters” (schenkingsbrieven) sealed with the ninefold seal. They form the only attempts at centralisation of authority or reformation, whether social, political, or religious, that can be discerned in the whole course of Achehnese history.

Two Faces of the Sarakata

The term covers two closely related documentary traditions, distinguished chiefly by their political setting:

  1. The central royal edicts of Acheh proper. These are the manuscript edicts of the great Sultans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — above all Sultan Meukuta Alam (Iskandar Muda, reigned 1607–1636) — regulating court ceremonial, the trade of the port, the collection and distribution of taxes, and the stricter observance of Mohammedan law. They constitute the only surviving programme of centralised royal authority in Achehnese history.

  2. The letters of appointment issued to the chiefs of the Onderhoorigheden. In the outlying polities — the Atjehsche Onderhoorigheden (Achehnese Dependencies) on the north, east, and west coasts — the sarakata took the form of a brief van aanstelling (letter of appointment) by which the Sultan’s court recognised a landschapshoofd (regional chief) who had come to pay homage or to promise tribute. By Snouck Hurgronje’s time these were likewise stamped with the chab sikureu’eng — Kreemer’s tjab sikoereuëng — or ninefold seal.

Authors and Dates of the Central Edicts

The central sarakatas most commonly cited are ascribed to Sultan Meukuta Alam (also called Iskandar Muda, reigned 1607–1636) and to Shamsul-alam, who reigned for a period of one month only (1726–1727) according to the Achehnese chronicles. During his residence in Acheh, Snouck Hurgronje obtained copies of a number of other sarakatas not included among those published by Van Langen in his Atjehsch Staatsbestuur (1888). These were as a rule lengthy documents and most of them bore dates. Examples include:

  • one of Meukuta Alam or Iskandar Muda, dated 1607, revived by the princess Sapiatodin in 1645, intended to regulate the court ceremonial and solemnities at festivals (very rich in details);
  • two of Meukuta Alam Iskandar Muda, dated respectively 1635 and 1640;
  • one of Jamalul-Alam (in Achehnese Jemnaloj) dated 1689, revived by Alaedin Juhan, the second prince of the latest dynasty, in 1752;
  • one of Alaedin Mahmut dated 1766;
  • and certain undated edicts of Sapiatodin, Amat Shah Juhan (the first prince of the latest dynasty), and Badrudin Asem (Hashim), all dealing 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.

Notable sarakatas in Kreemer’s account

In his Atjèh (1923) Kreemer catalogues a parallel series of named sarakatas, several of them surviving only in copies recovered after the loss of the originals. The most famous of the vorstenedicten is the Adat Meukoeta Alam attributed to Sultan Iskandar Moeda (1607–1636); its originals were captured at the mosque of Indrapoeri in 1879 but lost in the 1886 flood, so that only the copies published by Van Langen now remain. The same fate overtook the edict of Sultan Djamaloe ‘l-alam (reigned 1703–1726), which was likewise captured at Indrapoeri in 1879 and lost in 1886.

Kreemer records the following specific sarakatas as particularly noteworthy:

  1. Adat Meukoeta Alam — attributed to Sultan Iskandar Moeda; originals captured at the mosque of Indrapoeri in 1879 but lost in the 1886 flood.
  2. Edict of Sultan Djamaloe ‘l-alam (reigned 1703–1726) — also captured at Indrapoeri in 1879 and lost in 1886.
  3. Sarakata of Pö Rachman (1771) — issued by Sultan Sultan Mahmoed Sjah (Meulaböh) to establish the Kawaj XVI federation.
  4. Sarakata of Beutöng — dated 1163 A.H. / 1749 A.D., the oldest in the Meulaböh region.
  5. Sarakata’s of Moehamat Dawöt (1887–1888) — issued by the pretender Sultan to Gajö moefi’s who paid him homage.
  6. Sarakata’s of Sultan Mantsoer Sjah — issued to the heads of Paté and Lhö Gloempang and to the bestuurder of Lhö Kroeët; granted the Tadj-oel-moelk request.

The sea-strip definition

One old sarakata cited by Kreemer defined the extent of a chief’s territory “as far as one can fish with seine nets” — that is, extending into the sea itself, so as to include the sea-strip adjacent to the coastal lands. This formula testifies to the Sultan’s historic claim of sovereignty not only over the land but over the inshore waters on which the trade of the chief’s landschap depended.

Contents: Old and New

It is not difficult, Snouck 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. The new elements may be classified as follows:

  1. Attempts at extension of the Sultan’s authority 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; in a word, some very moderate efforts at centralisation of authority, having it for their object to make the Sultan primus inter pares, and the establishment of a kind of indication of fealty.
  2. Stricter observance of Mohammedan law — certain rules intended to bring about a more rigorous compliance with the religious law.
  3. 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.

Kreemer’s enumeration of the contents of the vorstenedicten runs in parallel: regulations on court ceremonial, on harbour trade (including the office of the sjahbandar), on religion and Islamic practice, and on legal procedure and justice.

Practical Development

The rules dealing with trade and ceremonial are those which had most significance in actual practice; during the reign of their promulgator at least, they exercised some degree of authority over life and trade in the seaport town. Of the other innovations, however, hardly a single one passed from document into actuality. The state of things the sarakatas reveal as already in being has, on the other hand, continued its existence.

The ordinary Achehnese holds the sarakatas in great reverence, because 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 their authors. 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 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, while what conflicts with their own pretensions they quietly pass over.

The Chab Sikureu’eng: The Ninefold Seal

A distinctive sub-category of the sarakata is the sarakata with chab sikureu’eng (Kreemer’s spelling tjab sikoereuëng) — the Sultan of Acheh’s letters-patent of recognition, bearing the chab sikureu’eng or “ninefold seal” from which the documents derive their common name. By these letters-patent newly appointed uleebalangs and the principal hereditary holders of offices or titles were formally confirmed in their dignities by the Sultan. Some show of supremacy was maintained by the sarakatas even at the late period of which Snouck Hurgronje writes: they were among the few surviving instruments by which the Sultan’s government attempted to keep up the appearance of authority over the uleebalangs of the three sagis of Acheh proper.

At the top of such a sarakata, in the middle of the sheet, is the chab sikureu’eng — the ninefold seal — which contains the name of the reigning Sultan in the central space, and in eight circular spaces surrounding it the names of eight of his predecessors. The choice of nine names is in keeping with the Achehnese preference for odd numbers, which Allah is regarded as specially favouring; the blessing of the identical sultans whose names appear in the seal is invoked in the document. It is noticeable that the only additional name in some later sarakatas is that of Muhamat (1824–1838). As a rule, only three or four of the names contained in the seals are repeated in the body of such documents.

The sarakata sets out, in the high style of Achehnese chancery prose, the duties of the office confirmed. Among the chief duties of an uleebalang according to the sarakatas with the chab sikureu’eng are: to maintain the public prayers and especially the Friday service, to compel his subjects to observe the fasts in the month appointed, to build meunasahs and deahs, to contribute the zakat and pitrah on all things that be subject thereto, and where any is able, to accomplish the journey to Mekka to undertake the haj. The sarakata thus articulates the religious obligations of the uleebalang’s office and presents him not merely as a territorial chief but as the local guarantor of Islam.

The löh pira’ silver plate

Kreemer records that the sarakata of installation was sometimes accompanied by a löh pira’ — a silver plate engraved with the “tjap sambilan” (the “ninefold stamp”) — presented to the newly confirmed chief alongside the patent itself. The plate, like the sarakata it accompanied, was a tangible emblem of the Sultan’s investiture; without a sarakata, a chief’s authority was not considered fully legitimate.

By Snouck Hurgronje’s time, however, the sarakata had become a form rather than a power. The uleebalangs of the three sagis regarded their rights as by no means dependent on such letters-patent, though both the old and the new holders of titles set some value on them as an embellishment of their rank. Those who lived outside the reach of the Sultan’s government — on the far side of the Dutch linie or pale — continued to seek the sarakata by pilgrimages to Keumala, where the shadow sultanate still resided, and the document remained a treasured symbol of legitimacy long after the authority it represented had ceased to be effective. Snouck Hurgronje appends to his chapter a translation of one of the latest products of the chancery — the sarakata issued to the under-pretender Sultan Tuanku Muhamat Dawot — as a specimen of the form.

Sarakatas in the Atjehsche Onderhoorigheden

In the outlying dependencies of the Sultanate, the sarakata took the form of a brief van aanstelling — a letter of appointment — by which the Sultan’s court preserved, even in the era of its decline, a “schijn van opperhoogheid” — a semblance of suzerainty — over the innumerable small polities of the Atjehsche Onderhoorigheden. De Buitenbezittingen describes the sarakata as the indispensable “ornament” of native legitimacy, prized by chiefs even when their authority was in fact independent of any royal grant.

The handbook explains that the Sultan’s court, after the fragmentation of the great sixteenth-century Achehnese empire into “vele kleine landschapjes ter Noord-, Oost- en Westkust, welke, hoewel inderdaad onafhankelijk, meestal niet geheel den band met het Atjehsche Sultanshof verbraken” (many small regional polities on the north, east, and west coast which, though in fact independent, mostly did not wholly break the tie with the Achehnese Sultan’s court), preserved its shadow of suzerainty “o.a. door het uitreiken van ‘brieven van aanstelling’ (sarakata’s) aan de landschapshoofden, welke den Sultan hulde kwamen betuigen of hem schatting beloofden” (among other things by the issuing of “letters of appointment” (sarakata’s) to the regional chiefs who came to pay homage to the Sultan or promised him tribute). The instrument was thus the written form of the personal act of homage. “Voor de wettigheid hunner heerschappij waren deze Sarakata’s weliswaar niet noodzakelijk” — for the legality of their rule these sarakata’s were by no means necessary — “maar toch stelden de onafhankelijke landschapshoofden veel prijs als ‘ornament’, als tastbaar bewijs hunner waardigheid” — yet the independent chiefs set great store by them as ornament, as tangible proof of their dignity.

The Westkust

The best-documented issuance of sarakata’s was on the Westkust, where in the year 1185 of the Mohammedan era (approximately 1760 AD), “zestien hoofden uit het Meulabôhsche, onder geleide van een voornaam handelaar van die havenplaats, hunne opwachting maakten bij den Sultan, die hun, tegen belofte van geregelde schatting, brieven van erkenning (sarakata’s) uitreikte” (sixteen chiefs from the Meulaböh region, under the conduct of a prominent trader of that port, paid their respects to the Sultan, who issued them, in exchange for the promise of regular tribute, letters of recognition (sarakata’s)). Their conductor was appointed the Sultan’s customs-collector, with the title keudjeuroeën Tjhïʼ, to whom the tribute of these sixteen chiefs was to be paid — an act that created the historic Kawaj XVI. Other Westkust chiefs later received their own sarakata’s but were not subordinated to the collector.

Tamiang and the Gayo Lands

In Tamiang the sarakata played a foundational role. According to the oldest history of that region, after a period of regeeringloosheid (anarchy) following a war with a Javanese prince, Batak immigrants near Tandjoeng Karang secured an understanding with the Acehnese Sultan, “zoodat deze hun hoofd (radja Mengkoeta) een sarakata verleende als vorst over Tamiang” (such that the latter granted their chief (radja Mengkoeta) a sarakata as prince over Tamiang).

In the Gayo lands, by contrast, the Achehnese sarakata was unknown: the source records that “in plaats van de voor de hoofden der Atjehsche Onderhoorigheden gebruikelijke sarakata’s of acten van bevestiging, gaf men den Gayösche kédjoeröns, die vermoedelijk destijds al even zelden als thans de schrijfkunst beoefenden, ieder een blank wapen, een soort van dolkmes, als teeken hunner waardigheid” (instead of the sarakata’s or acts of confirmation customary for the chiefs of the Achehnese Dependencies, each of the Gayo kédjoeröns — who presumably then as now seldom practised the art of writing — was given a blank weapon, a kind of dagger-knife, as a token of their dignity). The substitution marks the cultural frontier between the Atjehsche polity and the highland Gayo sphere.

Account from Atjèh by J. Kreemer (Deel II)

Kreemer provides the following supplementary account of sarakata’s, adding details about specific specimens not in Snouck Hurgronje’s account.

Sarakata (Gayo: sarahkata, cf. Javanese piagem) was the Atjèhnese term for recognition charters or “gift letters” issued by Sultans to Oelèëbalang’s and Keudjroeën’s as installation certificates, sealed with the tjab sikoereuëng (ninefold seal). The sarakata was sometimes accompanied by a löh pira’ (silver plate engraved with the “tjap sambilan”).

Several specific sarakata’s are recorded by Kreemer:

  1. Adat Meukoeta Alam — attributed to Sultan Iskandar Moeda; originals captured at Indrapoeri in 1879, lost in the 1886 flood
  2. Edict of Sultan Djamaloe ‘l-alam (reigned 1703–1726) — also captured at Indrapoeri in 1879 and lost in 1886
  3. Sarakata of Pö Rachman (1771) — issued by Sultan Mahmoed Sjah to establish the Kawaj XVI federation
  4. Sarakata of Beutöng — dated 1163 A.H. / 1749 A.D., the oldest in the Meulaböh region
  5. Sarakata’s of Moehamat Dawöt (1887–1888) — issued by the pretender Sultan to Gajö moefi’s who paid him homage
  6. Sarakata’s of Sultan Mantsoer Sjah — issued to the heads of Paté and Lhö Gloempang and to the bestuurder of Lhö Kroeët; also granted the Tadj-oel-moelk request

One old sarakata cited by Kreemer defined the extent of a chief’s territory “as far as one can fish with seine nets” — indicating the Sultan’s historic sovereignty over the sea-strip adjacent to coastal lands.

Aftermath

Even after the effective disappearance of Sultanate authority — and especially after the Dutch abolition of the Sultanate in the late nineteenth century — the sarakata retained its talismanic value. Chiefs continued to prize and display the documents inherited from their ancestors, while Dutch recognition was conveyed through the parallel instrument of the Korte Verklaring.

See Also

Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu

Formal appointment documents issued by the Sultans to the oelèëbalangs; had to be replaced by written agreements with the Dutch government when the Dutch stepped into the Sultan’s place.

Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 336.

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.

De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 2: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), pp. 47–48, 53–55, 78. Citing C. Snouck Hurgronje, De Atjehers, Vol. I, p. 136.

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; PPN 395084288. Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 336.

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