Teuboih (Malay tebus) was the redemption of a pledge of land in Atjeh — the act by which a pledgor recovered ground given in gala.
Fixing of the term
The term of redemption was fixed by written contract or by oral agreement in the presence of witnesses. A minimum duration of the contract was sometimes stipulated, namely where the pledgee intended to make the land more remunerative by better irrigation or other improvements at his own cost, and therefore needed some certainty as to how long he would enjoy it.
Single annual opportunity
There was opportunity for redemption only once a year, namely between the harvest — keumeukoh — and the first working of the ground, meu’oeë, of the following season.
Practical failure of redemption
Because the pledge sum, initially about half the sale value, could gradually be raised by repeated further borrowing until it practically equalled the sale value, redemption in such cases generally never took place at all, and the pledged field might remain so long in one family’s hands that its origin was forgotten in good faith — the source of the protracted lawsuits between the heirs of original owners and those of money-lenders described by C. Snouck Hurgronje in De Atjehers, Vol. I, p. 315.
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.