The Imeum of Teunom — the “present chief of Teunom” at the time of Snouck Hurgronje’s writing, and elsewhere in The Achehnese also called simply the Chief of Teunom — was the energetic hereditary chief — imeum — of the district of Teunom on the West Coast of Acheh. He is mentioned by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese both as the type of the powerful and capable adat-chief against whose entrenched local authority even the most enterprising of the Achehnese guerilla leaders could make little headway, and as a striking example of the way in which Achehnese chiefs devised and inflicted arbitrary punishments outside the formal framework of either the hukom (religious law) or the adat (customary law).
The office of imeum and its degeneration
In Snouck Hurgronje’s political sociology of Acheh, the country was “practically split up into countless miniature states under chiefs whose power depended on personal energy.” Within this system, the office of imeum — though nominally subordinate to the uleebalang, and though its holder had originally been a religious functionary connected with the mosque of his mukim — could, in the hands of a strong man, become a centre of effective resistance to any outsider, however daring. The Imeum of Teunom thus stood, like the Imeum of Lueng Bata in the war with the Dutch, as an example of the same process of degeneration of the imeum-ship by which a religious office was transformed into an independent adat-chieftainship, and by which a hereditary chief might, by personal force, hold his ground against the most formidable of the guerilla adventurers thrown up by the Achehnese War.
His place among the West-Coast chiefs
Snouck Hurgronje’s reference to the Imeum of Teunom occurs in the course of his celebrated portrait of Teuku Uma, the unscrupulous adventurer who, from a mere panglima in the war against the Dutch, raised himself to be “the dreaded lord of almost the whole West Coast.” Uma’s methods — political marriage alliances, the violent suppression of hereditary chiefs, the purchase of the sultan’s patents, the manipulation of blood-feuds — succeeded in almost every quarter of the West Coast. Yet there were limits to his progress, and these limits, Snouck Hurgronje notes, were set by the personal character of the chiefs whom he encountered.
“Much however depends on the personal character of these chiefs. They have equal opportunities for winning the affections of their rakans and more means at their disposal for increasing their influence than an ambitious leader of troops. Against an energetic chief such as the imeum of Teunom even Teuku Uma could make but little head.”
This relative independence is striking, given Teuku Uma’s general dominance of the West Coast; it testifies to the personal energy and local following of the Imeum of Teunom, and goes some way to explain the self-confidence with which he administered his own distinctive brand of justice. The case is also revealing of the structural weakness that beset any attempt to consolidate power in Acheh from below. A Teuku Uma might dominate the West Coast for a season, but the persistence of strong hereditary chiefs in particular districts — Teunom among them — meant that his “lordship” remained conditional, contested, and liable to dissolve as soon as his personal ascendancy declined. The Imeum of Teunom is thus cited not as a great figure in his own right, but as an instance of a general Achehnese pattern: that even the most successful adventurer could not, in the long run, overcome the local rootedness of an energetic hereditary chief.
Arbitrary punishments inflicted
In Acheh and its dependencies, just as in other Mohammedan countries, “arbitrary punishments are often elaborated and inflicted by the chiefs.” The Imeum of Teunom is one of Snouck Hurgronje’s principal illustrations of this proposition. The present chief of Teunom “used often to cause adulterous lovers to be deprived of their virility by the objects of their passion”. He also “punished many transgressors of the law as to fasts by having them led about the country on all fours for some days with rings in their noses like buffaloes, and forcing them to eat grass”. The mutilation of adulterers was a private vengeance imposed through the wounded party; the buffaloing of those who transgressed the law of the fasts — presumably the Ramadhan fast — was a more theatrical form of public humiliation, intended to advertise the chief’s zeal for the observance of religion.
These punishments, Snouck Hurgronje emphasises, “are applied at the whim of the uleebalang, not only in the case of illicit intercourse but also of other favourite sins of the Achehnese, whether some sacred occasion or place has been thereby extraordinarily polluted, or where the offence has been perpetrated with outrageous shamelessness, or by persons who are specially obnoxious to the chiefs or whose misdeeds they do not feel bound to overlook”. The Imeum of Teunom is thus a particularly vivid example of a general Achehnese pattern.
Comparative Achehnese context
The punishments inflicted by the Imeum of Teunom should be read alongside those of the late chief of Lho’ Kruet on the West Coast, who used to set offenders on a cow-buffalo and lead them round to a hooting and jeering crowd. Together, the two chiefs illustrate the latitude that Achehnese uleebalangs enjoyed in devising penalties, and the wide range of conduct — from illicit intercourse to breaches of the fast — that they were prepared to bring within the scope of their own arbitrary justice.
See Also
- Teunom
- Teuku Uma
- Imeum of Lueng Bata
- Imeum of Chadé
- Chief of Lho’ Kruet
- West Coast (of Acheh)
- Acheh War
- Ramadhan (fasting month)
- Acheh
- Peutasa’ ordeal
- Submission of Teuku Uma
- Defection of Teuku Uma
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.