The letters patent with the ninefold seal to Panglima Meuseugit Raya are the most fully translated example in The Achehnese of a sarakata — a formal deed of appointment sealed with the chab sikureu’eng or ninefold seal of the Achehnese sultans. They were issued on the 4th of Rabi’ al-Awwal 1307 H (28 October 1889) by the pretender-sultan Sultan Alaedin Muhamad Daud Shah Juhan to the Panglima of the Meuseugit Raya of Banda Acheh, the capital. The document was published as the appendix to Chapter I of Vol. I, where C. Snouck Hurgronje gives a full translation from the mixed Malay and “bad Arabic” of the original.
At the head of the document stands the latest chab sikureu’eng — a large central circle containing the reigning sultan’s name surrounded by eight smaller circles, each bearing the name of a celebrated predecessor. In the present letters patent the eight names are those of Sultan Sayyidi al-Mukamnal (Alaedin al-Qahhar, 1530–1557), Sultan Meukuta Alam (Iskandar Muda, 1607–1636), Sultan Tajul-alam Sapiatodin (1639–1675), Sultan Ahmat Shah (1723–1735), Sultan Juhan Shah (1735–1760), Sultan Alaedin Mahmut Shah (1781–1795), Sultan Jauhar Alain Shah (1802–1824), and Sultan Alaedin Manso Shah (1838–1870). To the right of the ninefold seal sits the small oblong private seal of the sultan (as-Sultan Muhamat Dawot Shah), regarded as more or less establishing the legality of the larger one; in the left-hand top corner stands the word al-mustahiqq (“the rightful possessor”), by which the pretender asserts his claim to the throne of Acheh. The blessing invoked is that of the eight sultans named in the seal and of one additional figure — Sultan Alaedin Muhamat Shah (1824–1838) — whose mediation (afwah) alone, among all the sultans not in the seal, is regularly invoked in such documents.
The body of the letters patent appoints the Panglima Meuseugit Raya — whose ancestors had held the office “even down to our own times” — to his hereditary dignity, and commands him “to fulfil all the duties that appertain to that office” by “commanding the good and forbidding the evil to all chiefs who are subject to his official orders.” It directs him to see that the Friday service and the five daily prayers are duly performed, that mosques, prayer-houses (deahs) and meunasahs are built, that zakat and pitrah are paid, and that those who are able undertake the journey to Mecca for the haj. It further makes him the sultan’s deputy for all matters of pasah (divorce by judicial decree), marriage, and the payment of pitrah for orphans among the subjects within his jurisdiction. Should he himself be insufficiently versed in the law, he may appoint an upright ulama as his deputy; should he “fail to act conformably with the word of Allah, the law of Mohammad and Our institutions,” he shall forfeit his high office.
As Hurgronje notes, the contents of this document — and especially the last clause — form “an absurd contrast to the actual state of affairs in Acheh,” and show the composition of the earlier models on which such letters patent were based to have been “the work of ulamas.” Like the Adat Meukuta Alam and the other sarakatas, the letters patent tell us less about how Acheh was actually governed than about how the religious party would have wished it to be governed; their value is constitutional in the formal sense, but their practical weight was already negligible by the time of their issue in 1889, when the sultan’s authority scarcely reached beyond the walls of his own Dalam.
See Also
- Panglima Meuseugit Raya
- Tuanku Muhamat Dawot
- Sarakata
- Adat Meukuta Alam
- Keureukon Katiboy Muluk
- Friday service (Jum’at)
- Five daily prayers (seumayangs)
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.