The Journey of Teuku Ne’ and followers to Keumala — described by C. Snouck Hurgronje in The Achehnese as a “famous journey” — was the pilgrimage of Teuku Ne’ of Meura’sa, chief of the mukim of Meura’sa (and earlier of the VI Mukims), to the court of the pretender-sultan Tuanku Muhamat Dawot at Keumala. The journey is the more notable for the religious sentiment it excited among the followers of the chief, who implored their friends and relations to bring back with them some water wherein the pretender to the sultanate had washed his feet.
The Court at Keumala
By the time of the journey, the Dalam of Banda-Acheh had fallen into Dutch hands, and the sultanate had been reduced to a wandering court maintained by the pretender Tuanku Muhamat Dawot at Keumala. Although the pretender was, as Snouck Hurgronje observes, “a young ne’er-do-well,” he was for some time regarded by a portion of his subjects as kramat — that is, miraculously revealed as the chosen friend of God. The journeys to Keumala undertaken by the uleebalangs who had tendered their submission to the Dutch Government were, in form, pilgrimages to a sovereign; in practice, they were diplomatic errands by which the chiefs obtained from the pretender sealed letters-patent (Sarakata) confirming them in their offices.
The Journey
The “famous journey” of Teuku Ne’ of Meura’sa was distinguished from the ordinary Keumala pilgrimage by the religious enthusiasm it aroused. The Teuku Ne’ in question was the chief of Meura’sa — one of the two uleebalangs with the official title of ne’ (“grandfather”) of the sultan. His journey to Keumala was accompanied by a body of followers who, on their return, were implored by friends and relatives to bring back some of the water in which the pretender had washed his feet. This water, by contact with the person of the kramat prince, was held to be sanctified; it was carried home as a relic and presumably used for pious or curative purposes.
Significance
The journey is cited by Snouck Hurgronje as an illustration of the way in which the respect in which the reigning house was held developed “a sort of religious aspect.” This feeling of reverence was founded partly on the fact that the Dalam was the centre and apparently the origin of the glory of a past almost fabulous in comparison with later times, and partly on the kindred fact that the Achehnese (though wrongly, as Snouck Hurgronje had already shown) ascribed all the adats of the country to the earlier sultans. These princes did indeed to some degree regulate the existing adat and endeavoured in vain to abolish a portion of it; yet what they did sufficed to stamp all unwritten laws and customs of the country as “adat pōteu meureuhōm” — “the adats of our late Lords.”
Limits of the Reverence
Yet this feeling of awe, however remarkable, was always coupled, Snouck Hurgronje continues, with the conviction that the sole sovereign prince of the country exercised no perceptible influence on the conduct of affairs, and was in fact but an expensive luxury like the documents sealed with the chab sikureu’eng (the ninefold seal). All this reverence was, “comparatively speaking, of very slight value from a practical point of view.” The pretender was compelled, some years before the publication of The Achehnese, to break up his court at Keumala and to lead a wandering life; he submitted to the Dutch Government in January 1903, and with him numbers of adventurers, fanatical leaders, and uleebalangs tendered their submission in the years that followed.
See Also
- Teuku Ne’ Raja Muda Seutia
- Tuanku Muhamat Dawot
- Keumala
- Sarakata
- Sarakata with chab sikureu’eng
- Election of Sultan Muhamat Dawot Shah
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.