A Dutch scholar whose works on Malay manuscripts and the Mohammedan clergy of Java are frequently cited by Hurgronje, who criticizes him for misclassifying pesantrens as “schools for the priesthood” and for misidentifying the rateb sadati he witnessed in 1881 as Naqshibandiyyah when it was actually the rateb Saman.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — L. W. C. van den Berg
L. W. C. van den Berg was a Dutch colonial official and scholar of Mohammedan law who served as secretary to Mr. T. H. der Kinderen during the latter’s enquiry into the administration of justice among the native population of Great Acheh. He is known to readers of The Achehnese as the author of three works subjected to repeated and severe criticism by Snouck Hurgronje: the Beginselen van het Mohammedaansche Recht (“Principles of Mohammedan Law”), the essay on the “Divergences from the Mohammedan law as to family and inheritance in Java and Maduré” (Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 1892, p. 454 et seq.), and the explanatory memorandum attached to the Ordinance of 14 March 1881 regarding the administration of justice in Great Acheh.
In his capacity as Der Kinderen’s secretary, Van den Berg was responsible for the “entirely superficial enquiry” which, in Snouck Hurgronje’s words, “proved abortive.” The enquiry into Achehnese legal institutions was conducted by catechism: the Achehnese chiefs were asked whether any ancient popular customs conflicting with Islam existed in the country. Within a few years of their first subjection to a non-Mohammedan power, the chiefs — suspicious of rumours that the Gompeuni intended to introduce Christian laws — gave evasive answers, or quoted ceremonial and administrative rules in place of material law. From these replies Van den Berg and his principal drew the conclusion that there was “no trace of ancient popular customs in conflict with Islam” in Acheh — a conclusion Snouck Hurgronje dismisses as “audacious as they are untrue.”
Van den Berg’s essay on the Divergences is criticised on methodological grounds: he employs, as data for determining the ancient institutions of Java, regulations appearing in law-books compiled under Hindu influence — a method whose “folly” Snouck Hurgronje illustrates by imagining a future revolution in Java after which “complete codes of Mohammedan law” would be found everywhere, and from which a future investigator might “present to our view a Javanese code of law more strictly Mohammedan than has ever been enforced in any Moslim country.” His notes on Java and Madura, made during a long residence in those regions, “really contain hardly a trace of what is peculiarly characteristic of the practice”; the institution of the tahkim is wholly absent from his essay and from the Beginselen; and the very characteristic institution of the talak is treated only as it appears in printed books, “and is thus very incomplete and often absolutely incorrect.”
Snouck Hurgronje returns to the charge when treating of the marriage contract in Acheh. Van den Berg’s account of the Mohammedan marriage contract in the Beginselen and the Afwijkingen is “very imperfectly” done, “some of his principal facts being erroneous, and the necessary notes on the actual practice in the E. Indies entirely wanting.” The essay “shows that Van den Berg has never studied on the spot the subjects he treats of, and that the printed works containing comments thereon by sundry lay writers were never even opened by him until after his return to Europe.” The woman, contrary to Van den Berg’s statement in the Afwijkingen, is not “the subject of the contract into which her guardian enters on her behalf”; certain Shafi’ite teachers allege that the subject is the woman, others the man and wife, but they always add that it is not their persons but the enjoyment of connubial bliss that is intended. The authority called kunangsa kakara in Java, which Van den Berg would identify with the power to conclude marriages generally, is in fact confined to marriages where the woman has no wali at her disposal. The penalty for neglected prayers, so prevalent a custom in Java and Acheh, “is perhaps superfluous to observe that Mr. L. W. C. Van den Berg never mentions … either in his Mohammedaansch Recht or in his essay on the Afwijkingen.”
Despite these strictures, Van den Berg’s Beginselen and Afwijkingen remained, at the time Snouck Hurgronje wrote, the only European works attempting a systematic account of Mohammedan law as applied in Netherlands India, and they are repeatedly cited as the starting-point from which the more accurate descriptions of Vol. I depart.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Van den Berg
L. W. C. van den Berg was a Dutch orientalist and author of the Beginselen van het Mohammedaansche recht (“Principles of Mohammedan Law”) and of the essay commonly cited in Vol. I as the Afwijkingen (“Deviations” — more fully, his contributions to the Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut, 1892). He is repeatedly invoked — and as often sharply criticised — by Snouck Hurgronje in the long comparative chapters of Vol. I that treat Mohammedan marriage adat, the taʿlīq (the conditional divorce pronounced by the husband at marriage), and the position of the pangulu (district religious official) in Java.
Snouck Hurgronje’s criticism
Snouck’s central complaint against van den Berg is methodological: that he constructed his account of Netherlands-Indian Mohammedan law chiefly from printed works “which he studied in Holland,” supplemented by Winter’s brochure and the dictionaries of de Wilde and Coolsma, and that he therefore lacked the personal observation which the subject demanded. The introduction to the Afwijkingen speaks, Snouck notes with sarcasm, of “notes personally made by him,” yet in matter after matter “not a trace of personal observation” is to be found.
The criticism is illustrated at length. Van den Berg at first represented the Mohammedan marriage in Netherlands-India as concluded in the presence of a “priest” who recites a passage from the Quran and receives a small recompense. In the later essay he retracted this “absurdity,” only to substitute for it another: that the pangulu “joins the couple in marriage, just as the Registrar does with us.” This, says Snouck, is again wrong: in Java, as in other Mohammedan lands, the official as wakil or agent of the wali offers and accepts the contract on the bride’s behalf; he does not himself “join” the parties.
The taʿlīq and the pangulu
Van den Berg’s treatment of the taʿlīq adat — by which the bridegroom at marriage pronounces a conditional divorce taking effect if he should desert or fail to maintain his wife — comes in for special reproof. In 1888 Snouck informed him verbally, on the basis of conversations with Javanese at Mecca, that the adat was widespread in Java. Van den Berg denied it; when Snouck proved its existence at Batavia by reference to a fatwa composed by Sayyid ‘Uthman, he conceded only that it might “perhaps appear sporadically.” The Afwijkingen later spoke, more cautiously, of “the use sometimes made of (the permission) to pronounce a conditional divorce.” Snouck insists that the custom is in fact “the established rule throughout the whole of Java,” its omission being sporadic, and that van den Berg’s reading of the registers of the Mohammedan courts misled him. The Beginselen, Snouck complains, contains “not a single word about this most important adat,” and barely alludes even to the possibility of a conditional talaq.
Van den Berg is also taken to task for confusing the function of the agent of the wali with the kuwasa kakim (delegated judicial authority) of the pangulu; for his account of the consequences of impotence; for his surprise at Winter’s use of the term khulʿ; and for his “curious deduction” that a given adat is “specially Javanese” because it also occurs in such outlying Dutch possessions as Southern Celebes. Throughout, Snouck uses van den Berg’s errors as foils against which to display the results of his own field observation in Acheh and elsewhere.
Sources
Drie Atjeh-mannen: Snouck Hurgronje — Van Heutsz — Van Daalen, door H. T. Damsté (September 1936). OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-111-Drie_Atjeh_mannen_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 3–4, 18.
See Also
- Acheh
- Batavia
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Coolsma
- de Wilde
- Java
- Rateb Saman
- Sayyid ‘Uthman
- T. H. der Kinderen
- Ta’liq
- Van Langen
- Der Kinderen
- Verslag omtrent de religieus-politieke toestanden in Atjeh
- De Atjehers (Snouck Hurgronje)
- Bekendmaking Nederburgh
- Van Dedem
- Goldziher
- Aceh War
- Atjeh-oorlog
- April 1883
- 1884
- 1892
- 1893
- 1894
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
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.
A Dutch scholar whose works on Malay manuscripts and the Mohammedan clergy of Java are frequently cited by Hurgronje, who criticizes him for misclassifying pesantrens as “schools for the priesthood” and for misidentifying the rateb sadati he witnessed in 1881 as Naqshibandiyyah when it was actually the rateb Saman.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — L. W. C. van den Berg
L. W. C. van den Berg was a Dutch colonial official and scholar of Mohammedan law who served as secretary to Mr. T. H. der Kinderen during the latter’s enquiry into the administration of justice among the native population of Great Acheh. He is known to readers of The Achehnese as the author of three works subjected to repeated and severe criticism by Snouck Hurgronje: the Beginselen van het Mohammedaansche Recht (“Principles of Mohammedan Law”), the essay on the “Divergences from the Mohammedan law as to family and inheritance in Java and Maduré” (Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 1892, p. 454 et seq.), and the explanatory memorandum attached to the Ordinance of 14 March 1881 regarding the administration of justice in Great Acheh.
In his capacity as Der Kinderen’s secretary, Van den Berg was responsible for the “entirely superficial enquiry” which, in Snouck Hurgronje’s words, “proved abortive.” The enquiry into Achehnese legal institutions was conducted by catechism: the Achehnese chiefs were asked whether any ancient popular customs conflicting with Islam existed in the country. Within a few years of their first subjection to a non-Mohammedan power, the chiefs — suspicious of rumours that the Gompeuni intended to introduce Christian laws — gave evasive answers, or quoted ceremonial and administrative rules in place of material law. From these replies Van den Berg and his principal drew the conclusion that there was “no trace of ancient popular customs in conflict with Islam” in Acheh — a conclusion Snouck Hurgronje dismisses as “audacious as they are untrue.”
Van den Berg’s essay on the Divergences is criticised on methodological grounds: he employs, as data for determining the ancient institutions of Java, regulations appearing in law-books compiled under Hindu influence — a method whose “folly” Snouck Hurgronje illustrates by imagining a future revolution in Java after which “complete codes of Mohammedan law” would be found everywhere, and from which a future investigator might “present to our view a Javanese code of law more strictly Mohammedan than has ever been enforced in any Moslim country.” His notes on Java and Madura, made during a long residence in those regions, “really contain hardly a trace of what is peculiarly characteristic of the practice”; the institution of the tahkim is wholly absent from his essay and from the Beginselen; and the very characteristic institution of the talak is treated only as it appears in printed books, “and is thus very incomplete and often absolutely incorrect.”
Snouck Hurgronje returns to the charge when treating of the marriage contract in Acheh. Van den Berg’s account of the Mohammedan marriage contract in the Beginselen and the Afwijkingen is “very imperfectly” done, “some of his principal facts being erroneous, and the necessary notes on the actual practice in the E. Indies entirely wanting.” The essay “shows that Van den Berg has never studied on the spot the subjects he treats of, and that the printed works containing comments thereon by sundry lay writers were never even opened by him until after his return to Europe.” The woman, contrary to Van den Berg’s statement in the Afwijkingen, is not “the subject of the contract into which her guardian enters on her behalf”; certain Shafi’ite teachers allege that the subject is the woman, others the man and wife, but they always add that it is not their persons but the enjoyment of connubial bliss that is intended. The authority called kunangsa kakara in Java, which Van den Berg would identify with the power to conclude marriages generally, is in fact confined to marriages where the woman has no wali at her disposal. The penalty for neglected prayers, so prevalent a custom in Java and Acheh, “is perhaps superfluous to observe that Mr. L. W. C. Van den Berg never mentions … either in his Mohammedaansch Recht or in his essay on the Afwijkingen.”
Despite these strictures, Van den Berg’s Beginselen and Afwijkingen remained, at the time Snouck Hurgronje wrote, the only European works attempting a systematic account of Mohammedan law as applied in Netherlands India, and they are repeatedly cited as the starting-point from which the more accurate descriptions of Vol. I depart.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Van den Berg
L. W. C. van den Berg was a Dutch orientalist and author of the Beginselen van het Mohammedaansche recht (“Principles of Mohammedan Law”) and of the essay commonly cited in Vol. I as the Afwijkingen (“Deviations” — more fully, his contributions to the Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut, 1892). He is repeatedly invoked — and as often sharply criticised — by Snouck Hurgronje in the long comparative chapters of Vol. I that treat Mohammedan marriage adat, the taʿlīq (the conditional divorce pronounced by the husband at marriage), and the position of the pangulu (district religious official) in Java.
Snouck Hurgronje’s criticism
Snouck’s central complaint against van den Berg is methodological: that he constructed his account of Netherlands-Indian Mohammedan law chiefly from printed works “which he studied in Holland,” supplemented by Winter’s brochure and the dictionaries of de Wilde and Coolsma, and that he therefore lacked the personal observation which the subject demanded. The introduction to the Afwijkingen speaks, Snouck notes with sarcasm, of “notes personally made by him,” yet in matter after matter “not a trace of personal observation” is to be found.
The criticism is illustrated at length. Van den Berg at first represented the Mohammedan marriage in Netherlands-India as concluded in the presence of a “priest” who recites a passage from the Quran and receives a small recompense. In the later essay he retracted this “absurdity,” only to substitute for it another: that the pangulu “joins the couple in marriage, just as the Registrar does with us.” This, says Snouck, is again wrong: in Java, as in other Mohammedan lands, the official as wakil or agent of the wali offers and accepts the contract on the bride’s behalf; he does not himself “join” the parties.
The taʿlīq and the pangulu
Van den Berg’s treatment of the taʿlīq adat — by which the bridegroom at marriage pronounces a conditional divorce taking effect if he should desert or fail to maintain his wife — comes in for special reproof. In 1888 Snouck informed him verbally, on the basis of conversations with Javanese at Mecca, that the adat was widespread in Java. Van den Berg denied it; when Snouck proved its existence at Batavia by reference to a fatwa composed by Sayyid ‘Uthman, he conceded only that it might “perhaps appear sporadically.” The Afwijkingen later spoke, more cautiously, of “the use sometimes made of (the permission) to pronounce a conditional divorce.” Snouck insists that the custom is in fact “the established rule throughout the whole of Java,” its omission being sporadic, and that van den Berg’s reading of the registers of the Mohammedan courts misled him. The Beginselen, Snouck complains, contains “not a single word about this most important adat,” and barely alludes even to the possibility of a conditional talaq.
Van den Berg is also taken to task for confusing the function of the agent of the wali with the kuwasa kakim (delegated judicial authority) of the pangulu; for his account of the consequences of impotence; for his surprise at Winter’s use of the term khulʿ; and for his “curious deduction” that a given adat is “specially Javanese” because it also occurs in such outlying Dutch possessions as Southern Celebes. Throughout, Snouck uses van den Berg’s errors as foils against which to display the results of his own field observation in Acheh and elsewhere.
See Also
- Acheh
- Batavia
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Coolsma
- de Wilde
- Java
- Rateb Saman
- Sayyid ‘Uthman
- T. H. der Kinderen
- Ta’liq
- Van Langen
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
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.