Note on nomenclature. The title is variously spelt in the sources as Teuku Kali Malikon Ade, Teuku Malikon Ade, Kali Malikon Ade, and Kali Malikul-adil. The Achehnese forms Malikon Ade / Kali Malikul-adil render the Arabic Qāḍlu Malikul ʿĀdil (“Judge of the Righteous King”). The prefix Teuku borne by the title-holder points unequivocally to the complete secularisation of the office by the late nineteenth century. All forms denote the same hereditary dignity — the chief judicial office of the Sultanate of Aceh — and the same lineage of bearers descended from the Ja Sandang tribe. The article treats the title and lineage as a single entity.
Teuku Kali Malikon Ade — Achehnese form of the Arabic Qāḍlu Malikul ʿĀdil, “Judge of the Righteous King” — was the hereditary title of the chief judicial officer of the Sultanate of Aceh, originally the president of the royal court of justice, but which in the course of two and a half centuries so completely deteriorated that by the late nineteenth century its holder was no judge at all, but an uleebalang of twelve gampongs on the right bank of the Acheh River, a court dignitary, and a master of ceremonies at the Sultan’s court. As Prof. Niemann noted, Malikul Adil is a common title for qadhis in Malay countries. The most important religious-administrative official in the capital of Aceh, the Chief Kali, whose office adjudicated inheritance, marriage, and other religious law matters, the Teuku Kali was among those who persuaded Cheh Marahaban to settle at the capital after his return from Mecca, and was a leading figure in the early phases of the Aceh War, appearing in the Hikayat prang Kompeuni as a chief speaker in the council held in the Dalam when Dutch ships first arrived demanding submission.
Origin and the Ja Sandang Tribe
The institution of the office belongs to the period — perhaps the reign of Meukuta Alam or an earlier sovereign — when the centralising port-kings of Aceh were seeking to organise the administration of justice on a footing more consonant with Islamic law. The original intention of the powerful port-king who instituted the title was, according to Snouck Hurgronje, to have a president of the royal court of justice possessed of an adequate knowledge of the religious law. Some Acehnese chiefs assert that the wish of the creating prince was that his kali should apply the adat (customary law) as well as the hukom (religious law), and on this account gave him, in contradistinction to the Kali Rabon Jale (“Judge of the Almighty Lord”) of the three sagis, the title of “Judge of the Righteous King.” Whether the sultan wished at the same time to endow his own judge with a measure of supremacy over the other three chief kalis remains uncertain; in practice, any such scheme miscarried, since the great independence of the three sagis would have resisted it.
The Sultan “chose his court judge from the tribe of Ja Sandang, which had meantime greatly increased in dignity. This official received the title of Kali Malikul-adil (Malikon Ade) and the judicial office or at least the title appertaining to it remained hereditary in his family.” The choice fell upon Ja Sandang, according to the legendary account preserved in the chronicles, because an ancestor of that tribe — a man of humble rank from Lam Panaih in the XXII Mukims — had once assuaged the Sultan’s thirst with milk in a bamboo vessel carried sandang-wise on his shoulder, and had been promised in return the favour of the court. The original holder of the title was thus the first of a long line of hereditary judges and court dignitaries whose descendants, in Snouck Hurgronje’s day, still bore the secularised dignity of Teuku Kali (or Teuku Kali Malikon Ade) at the Dalam.
Deterioration of the Office
The office very quickly deteriorated. The causes were, first, the hereditary nature of the office, which did not ensure that the heir should be as learned as his predecessor; secondly, the residence of the holder in the immediate neighbourhood of the court, by which he gained an opportunity of having his office converted into a sort of uleebalangship — the end and aim of all Acehnese office-bearers; and lastly, the rapid decay of the central power, by which various offices created during the brief period of prosperity lost the reason for their further existence.
Even in the later royal edicts, which always more or less idealised the facts, the Kali Malikon Ade appears not as a great jurist but as a distinguished courtier, a sort of master of court ceremonies to whom a fixed portion of the harbour dues was assigned. He became what was called uleebalang peuteueng, “uleebalang of our lord” (the sultan), equal in rank to the almost independent provincial chiefs, with all the worldly pretension appertaining to that rank, but without territory. The official title of Teuku which he bore and still bears points unequivocally to the complete secularisation of his office. Writers on Aceh had accustomed readers to the idea that, above the kalis of the uleebalangs and of the panglima sagi, there was enthroned in the capital a supreme hereditary judge who bore this title; Snouck Hurgronje argues that this notion rested largely on the exaggerated self-description of the then holder of the office, whom Mr. T. H. Der Kinderen had taken as his chief guide, and that the actual position was far more modest.
Acquisition of Territory and Rivalry with Panglima Meuseugit Raya
The ambitious efforts of the Teuku Kali Malikon Ade towards the acquisition of territory were eventually crowned with success. Finally one of the holders of this title, making use of the special favour of the prince towards him and of the weakness of the then Panglima Meuseugit Raya (the hereditary head of the 24 or more gampongs on either side of the Acheh River, in the neighbourhood of the court and principal mosque), succeeded in wresting from that chief half of his territory — twelve gampongs on the right bank of the Acheh River adjoining the Dalam.
Thus the Teuku Kali attained the acme of the wishes of an Acehnese official: chief of a small but important territory, and at the same time, in his capacity as a court dignitary, not without influence in the choice of a successor to the throne. How little these two uleebalangs could be recognised as simply servants of the sultan is shown by the fact that they occasionally made war on one another; the sultan helped first one and then the other with money and munitions of war, and when a dispute arose as to the succession to the throne, the Panglima Meuseugit Raya and the Teuku Kali Malikon Ade usually espoused opposite sides, with the sultan’s own followers to be found in both camps.
Court Ceremonial and Insignia
In his capacity as master of court ceremonies, the Teuku Kali Malikon Ade was on terms of greater intimacy with the royal family than the rest of the uleebalangs. During the great feasts the uleebalangs in the neighbourhood of the Dalam together with some distinguished ulamas used to wait on the sultan and be presented with articles of dress; the Teuku Kali Malikon Ade alone used to come and present his felicitations on the actual feast day, when he, as well as the members of the Sultan’s family and his household servants, received a share of the royal slaughter.
At the solemn installation of a new sultan the Kali Malikon Ade performed his functions within the space surrounding the branda seumah, the coronation platform, with his blunderbuss hanging from his shoulder and a white cocoanut spathe wound in his head-cloth. The bearers of the title “gradually acquired the positions of masters of ceremonies at the Court. Those who have seen them in the exercise of their functions at the installation of a new Sultan, can testify that on such occasions the Teuku Kali wore a white cocoanut spathe under his head-cloth, and a blunderbuss attached to a leathern belt passing over his shoulder. The reason given for adhering to this adat is that the titular ‘judge’ appeared also in the character of the representative of his tribe the Ja Sandang. As, however, customs change with lapse of time, the later Sultans had permitted the holders of this office to exchange the bamboo vessel for a blunderbuss and to hide the cocoanut spathe to some extent beneath their head-cloth.” The insignia of the office thus preserved the memory of its popular origin in the milk-carrying ancestor from Lam Panaih.
Snouck Hurgronje’s Critique of Der Kinderen
Snouck Hurgronje observes that Mr. Der Kinderen quite missed the mark in finding anything extraordinary in the fact that the “hereditary supreme judge” of the kingdom could neither read nor write. The Teuku Kali was uleebalang of twelve gampongs, and shared this ignorance with many of his equals in rank; those who were charged with administering justice according to religious law could all read and write, and most had carried their learning much further. Snouck uses the “wholly unlettered” Kali Malikon Ade of his own day as evidence against the romantic picture of an Aceh once governed by learned jurists, observing that the holder shared the prevailing ignorance of Mohammedan law common to most chiefs.
Even in the rare cases where the Sultan of Aceh had need of the advice of those learned in the law, his real adviser was Cheh Marahaban and not the Teuku Kali. In Teungku Tiro’s pamphlet to the Dutch Government, the Teuku Kali is named among the four — Teuku Kali, Teuku Ne’ of Meura’sa, the Panglima Meuseugit Raya and the Imeum of Lueng Bata — on whose counsel the Sultan was obliged to depend. The pretensions to supremacy over the Kali Rabon Jale of the three sagis were, however, the fruit of the misleading information given by a later holder of the title to Mr. T. H. Der Kinderen in 1881.
Role in the Aceh War
The Teuku Kali Malikon Ade was a leading figure in the early phases of the Aceh War. He appears in the Hikayat prang Kompeuni as a chief speaker in the council held in the Dalam when Dutch ships first arrived demanding submission. He was also among those who persuaded Cheh Marahaban to settle at the capital after his return from Mecca.
Significance
The decay of the central power in Aceh thus converted an ancient judicial office into a sort of uleebalangship — the end and aim of all Acehnese office-bearers — furnishing a classic example of the degeneration of offices remarked by Snouck Hurgronje throughout the institutions of the sultanate. The founder of the line — whoever he was — thus became, in the course of two and a half centuries, the ancestor of an hereditary dignity at once more worldly and less learned than the office of his first institution.
See Also
- Aceh
- Aceh War
- Acheh River
- Cheh Marahaban
- Dalam
- Hikayat prang Kompeuni
- Imeum of Lueng Bata
- Ja Sandang
- Kali Rabon Jale
- Kutaraja
- Lam Panaih
- XXII Mukims
- Panglima Meuseugit Raya
- Prof. Niemann
- Sultan Meukuta Alam
- Sultanate of Acheh
- T. H. der Kinderen
- Teuku Ne’ of Meura’sa
- Teuku Nanta Seutia
- Teungku Tiro (Muhamat Amin)
- Uleebalang
- Coronation of the Sultan
- 1881
Source
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.
The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.