Tjap — the passport or stamp of the Atjeh court — was the official permit required for foreign ships to come ashore at the Atjeh river and to trade in the sultanate. In Godee Molsbergen’s account of Soury’s embassy of 1641 the tjap is the formal instrument by which the Sultan’s authority over the port was exercised: it was brought by the Sabandaar (harbour-master) together with the chief eunuch of the Sultana at the river-mouth, as the formal permission for the Dutch legation to come ashore.
Etymology
Tjap (also cap) is the Malay-Indonesian rendering of the Persian/Arabic ṭābiʿ or of the Chinese chop (印) — in either case, a stamp, seal, or official mark. In the early modern Malay-Indonesian world, a tjap was the physical stamp or seal applied to a document to authenticate it; by extension, the document itself (the passport or permit) was called a tjap. The tjap of the Atjeh court was thus the Sultan’s permit, sealed with his stamp, that authorised a foreign visitor to come ashore.
Role in the Soury embassy, 1641
When Commissaris Pieter Soury’s embassy reached the Atjeh river in 1641, the Sabandaar and the chief eunuch of the Sultana came out together with the Dutch Opperhoofd of the lodge to greet the ships. “Den havenmeester of Sabandaar, die het tjap of paspoort tot aan land komen meebracht” — the harbour-master or Sabandaar, who brought the tjap or passport to come ashore. The tjap was thus the Sultan’s formal permission for the legation to land.
The presentation of the tjap by the Sabandaar in person was the formal act of welcome, but also of control: the Sultan’s permission was being granted, and the limits of that permission were being marked. Without the tjap, no foreign ship might lawfully send a boat to land. The passport was the Sultan’s instrument of port-regulation.
Significance
For Atjeh’s history, the tjap is the principal instrument of the sultanate’s port-regulation — the official permit by which the Sultan’s authority over the port was exercised. The presentation of the tjap by the Sabandaar at the river-mouth was the formal act by which a foreign embassy was admitted to the sultanate’s territory, and the absence of the tjap would have been an effective bar to any foreign landing. The institution of the tjap testifies to the sultanate’s organised control of its port and its foreign trade — a control that the Soury embassy record preserves in the small but consequential detail of the tjap brought at the river-mouth.
See Also
- Pieter Soury’s mission to Atjeh (1641)
- Atjehsche ambassade ceremony (1 July 1641)
- Sabandaar
- Atjeh-rivier
- Eunuchs of Atjeh court
- Dutch lodge at Atjeh
- Sultana of Atjeh (1641)
- 1641
- Acheh
Source
Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, by Dr. E. C. Godee Molsbergen, Oud-Hoogleeraar, Landsarchivaris te Batavia (Amsterdam: N.V. Swets & Zeitlinger Boekhandel en Uitgevers Mij., 1932), chapter XI (“Atjehsche ambassade. Inlandsche feesten. Maagden als losprijs”), pp. 39–43 of the numbered-letter sequence.