The Prang toedjéh tahoen — the “War of Ten Years” — was the conflict between Ménèt of the Boekét Ewéh lineage and the Sultan of Atjeh that broke out when the former refused to pay the haol — the customary tribute — owed to the Acehnese overlord, and that ended with the capture of many *rédjë*‘s of the Meerstreek by an Acehnese expeditionary force and the surrender, as ransom, of the bawar known as the keris kepala soeasa. The war occupies a central place in the foundation legends of the Boekét polity of the Gajolanden and explains the long-running rivalry between the Boekét-Lah and Boekét-Ewéh lines over the dignity of kédjoerön Boekét.
Background: the stolen bawar
The immediate prelude to the war was an act of deception within the Boekét family itself. Mérah Lama, eldest son of Saëda by the latter’s second Acehnese wife, had inherited the bawar — the set of five ornamenten conferred by the Sultan of Atjeh on Saëda as tokens of his dignity as Rëdjë Boekét — and ruled as kédjoerön from Kébajakan. During Mérah Lama’s reign, however, his stepbrother Ménèt “door een list” secured the principal bawar, the “keris kepala soeasa,” and refused to return it. As the adat held that “wie de bawar heeft, ook kédjoerön is,” Ménèt thereby arrogated the kédjoerönship to himself — a usurpation that his half-brother Panglima Dagang, the progenitor of the Boekét Lah lineage, sought to remedy by returning to the Meerstreek and assuming the title of kédjoerön Boekét from Seroelë.
Refusal of tribute and Acehnese reprisal
The two parallel kédjoeröns now coexisted uneasily — Ménèt in the Meerstreek, Panglima Dagang at Seroelë. The crisis came when Ménèt refused to pay the haol due to the Sultan of Atjeh. The “weigering om haol voor den Sultan van Atjeh op te brengen” precipitated the prang toedjéh tahoen. The war “eindigde met de gevangenneming van tal van rédjë’s uit de Meerstreek door de Atjehers” — the Acehnese captured many rédjë’s of the Meerstreek. To ransom them, Ménèt was compelled to hand over the bawar — the keris — to the Acehnese commander. He thereby “verloor feitelijk zijne aanspraken op het kédjoerönship” — in fact lost his claims to the kédjoerönship — the more so because Panglima Dagang, “de andere kédjoerön Boekét,” managed to buy back the kris and so to reunite “alle bawars in één hand.”
Significance
The prang toedjéh tahoen resolved the contest for the Boekét kédjoerönship in favour of the Boekét-Lah line: Panglima Dagang’s grandson, as Rëdjë Boekét of Seroelë, was after a three-month war acknowledged by all the chiefs as kédjoerön Boekét, and the dignity “ook steeds in het geslacht Boekét-Lah is gebleven.” Yet the Boekét-Ewéh descendants of Ménèt, “ondanks het gemis der officieele waardigheidsteekenen,” continued to style themselves kédjoerön and to act as the equals of the Lah’s, generating “voortdurenden naijver en onderlingen strijd” that persisted into the Dutch period. The episode is also the clearest demonstration in the Gayo foundation-legends of the reach of the Sultanate of Atjeh into the interior — a suzerainty exercised not through permanent garrisons but through occasional punitive expeditions backed by the symbolic capital of the bawar.
See Also
- Saëda
- Ménèt
- Mérah Lama
- Panglima Dagang
- Boekét
- Boekét Lah
- Boekét Ewéh
- Bataq doeloe poeloh toedjéh
- Sultans of Atjeh
- Gajoland
- Bawar
- Kédjoerön Boekét
Source
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 2: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), p. 97.