The Keureukon Katiboy Muluk — more properly katib ul-mulk (“writer of the kingdom”), vulgarly Katiboy Mulut in Achehnese — was the title of the royal secretary or private secretary of the Sultan of Acheh in the period of prosperity of the sultanate. The hereditary bearer of the title, Teuku Keureukon, served during the sultanate’s golden age as confidential secretary to the sultan, drafting the royal correspondence and edicts; by the late nineteenth century, however, the office had become, in Snouck Hurgronje’s phrase, an “imaginary private secretary,” its title preserved only in the formulae of royal documents while the actual work of writing and composing Malay correspondence had long since fallen into abeyance or been carried on by humble servitors of no rank. The title-bearers descended from the former royal secretaries succeeded in establishing one branch of the family in the Mukim Lhee — the district now officially known as the III Mukims Keureukon of Great Acheh — where, however, “they have never come to be recognized as its chiefs.” The case is, in Snouck Hurgronje’s account, a classic example of the degeneration of offices in Acheh.
The Office in the Period of Prosperity
In the period of prosperity of the sultanate, the Keureukon Katib ul-mulk served as confidential secretary to the sultan and drafted the royal correspondence and edicts — the practical work of the katib ul-mulk, “writer of the kingdom.” The opening formula of the sultans’ letters and edicts — “His Majesty ordered this to be written by the Keureukon katibulmuluk” — was, in this period, the regular record of an actual secretarial function: the sultan’s commands reduced to writing by the Keureukon, sealed with the sultan’s thunder-seal, and dispatched to the uleebalang addressees throughout the sultanate’s territories. The office was one of the principal court offices of the sultanate’s golden age, ranking alongside the hereditary offices whose bearers — the Teuku Kali Malikon Ade and the imeums — would in later centuries similarly degenerate from religious or secretarial functionaries into petty adat-chiefs.
The Degeneration of the Office
The title “could more easily pass from father to son than the art of composing and writing Malay letters; and besides, the importance and extent of such correspondence dwindled with the decay of the court.” The work once performed by the Keureukon Katiboy Mulut — insofar as it did not altogether fall into abeyance — came to be carried on by common servitors of no rank called Krani Pbteu (or Krani Poteu), “writers to our supreme lord.” Yet, since all official documents continued to be modelled on the pattern of those of the prosperous period, the words “His Majesty ordered this to be written by the Keureukon katibulmuluk” were still regularly found at the beginning of letters and edicts of the sultans of Acheh, long after the actual Keureukon had ceased to perform any secretarial function.
As Snouck Hurgronje observes, the work performed in earlier times by the Keureukon Katiboy Mulut, “in so far as it did not altogether fall into abeyance, was carried on by common servitors of no rank, who were called Krani Poteu or ‘writers to our supreme lord’.” The sarakatas (letters patent) continued, however, to be modelled on the pattern of those of the prosperous period, and the name of the Keureukon continued to appear at their head.
The hereditary title-bearer thus became an uleebalang poteu (lord “of our supreme lord”) without work or fixed income and without territory — the title surviving as a fossil of the secretarial function it had once denoted. This process is, in Snouck Hurgronje’s analysis, a typical instance of the way in which Achehnese institutions survived in form long after they had ceased to function in fact — a theme that pervades the whole of Vol. I of The Achehnese. The episode is cited as another example of the degeneration of offices in Acheh — the same process that converted the Teuku Kali Malikon Ade and the imeums from religious or secretarial functionaries into petty adat-chiefs.
The 1889 Letters Patent to Panglima Meuseugit Raya
The case is well illustrated by the letters patent given to the Panglima Meuseugit Raya under Sultan Alaedin Muhamat Dawot Shah Juhan in 1889. The document, dated 4 Rabi’ al-Awwal 1307 H, opens: “His Highness sat upon the throne in Kuta Keumala, His exalted Majesty, the Prince of the world spoke unto the Keureukon Katiboy Muluk (or Mulut), bidding him draw up a document with the thunder-seal, to be vouchsafed unto Our uleebalang, who is called the Panglima of the Meuseugit Raya of Banda Acheh, the Seat of Peace.” The fiction of the royal secretary is thus preserved even in a document which, in reality, can only have been composed by some humble Krani Pbteu.
Snouck Hurgronje, in a footnote, calls this “imaginary private secretary” — a literary survival rather than a real office — and observes that “some writers have made a false deduction from this circumstance, and would have us suppose that the office of confidential secretary here referred to was in active existence down to the most recent times.”
The III Mukims Keureukon and the Hereditary Bearers
The title “Teuku Keureukon” — the hereditary bearer of the katib ul-mulk — is the eponym of the III Mukims Keureukon district of Great Acheh. The name of the district, Snouck Hurgronje explains, points to the efforts made by the holders of the hereditary title to gain the supremacy there. The title-bearer was descended from the former royal secretaries, and one branch of the family had succeeded in establishing itself in the Mukim Lhee — the district now officially known as the III Mukims Keureukon — a district of Acheh proper that belonged to none of the Three Sagis, but was claimed by both the XXVI Mukims and the XXII Mukims. Since the establishment of one of their number in the Mukim Lhee, the Keureukons have been among those whose influence is a factor to be reckoned with in that wakeueh-district, although they have never come to be recognised as its chiefs.
Significance
The Keureukon Katiboy Muluk stands as a typical example of the way in which Achehnese institutions survived in form long after they had ceased to function in fact — a theme that pervades the whole of Vol. I of The Achehnese. The hereditary transmission of a literary office, the substitution of common servitors for the hereditary secretary, and the survival of the opening formula of the sarakata long after the office itself had fallen into abeyance together illustrate the fossilisation by which the formal apparatus of the sultanate of Acheh — its katib ul-mulk, its seal, its sarakata — continued to be reproduced even as the sultan’s effective authority contracted to the walls of the kraton. The territorial establishment of the Keureukon family in the III Mukims Keureukon, in turn, illustrates the secondary process by which the bearers of decayed court offices converted their residual prestige into local uleebalang status — a process parallel to that which gave the Teuku Kali Malikon Ade and the imeums their adat-chief authority in the same period.
See Also
- Sarakata (royal edicts of Acheh)
- Sarakata with chab sikureu’eng
- Letters patent with the ninefold seal to Panglima Meuseugit Raya
- Sultan Alaedin Muhamad Daud Shah Juhan
- Tuanku Muhamat Dawot
- Panglima Meuseugit Raya
- Teuku Keureukon
- Mukim Lhee
- III Mukims
- Three Sagis (XXVI, XXV, XXII Mukims)
- XXVI Mukims
- XXII Mukims
- Teuku Kali Malikon Ade
- Imeum of Chadé
- Kuta Keumala
- Keumala
- Great Acheh
- Acheh proper
- Acheh
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- 1889
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.