Potjoet — Cut Potjoet — was an Atjehnese noblewoman, the daughter of Toekoe Moeda Baid (the oeloebalang of the VII Moekims), the widow of Sultan Saleiman Iskander (who died in 1837), and subsequently the wife of Habib Abdoe’r Rachman. Her marriage to the Habib was both a marriage alliance that bound the Habib to the kinship network of the late Sultan and a political instrument by which the Habib sought to consolidate his regency for the young Toeankoe Machmoed — son of Potjoet by Sultan Saleiman Iskander.
The 400-dollar marriage promise
The Atjeh-Album of 1896 records that Habib Abdoe’r Rachman sought Potjoet’s hand in marriage after the death of her husband Sultan Saleiman Iskander. The marriage was, however, contested by Potjoet’s brother Toekoe Moeda Baid, who — for a sum of 400 dollars — gave the Habib the toezegging (promise) of the marriage, but who stelde de uitlevering van de bruid zoolang uit (deferred the delivery of the bride so long) that the Habib was genoodzaakt (compelled) to march on Toekoe Moeda Baid’s kampong of Tjot Bada with a groote macht (great force) to compel the surrender of the bride.
The episode is one of the album’s principal illustrations of the way in which marriage alliances were transacted in the late Atjehnese sultanate — the oeloebalang of the VII Moekims accepted a payment for the marriage promise but used the deferral of the actual delivery as a political instrument against the Habib’s centralising reforms. The marriage was, in this reading, both a marriage and a political contest — and the Habib’s recourse to armed force to compel the surrender of the bride was the political response to the oeloebalang’s delaying tactic.
The departure for Mekka
The Atjeh-Album records that, after the Habib’s political eclipse and his withdrawal to Mekka, Potjoet accompanied him. The album’s narrative places Potjoet at the Habib’s side in the wit blinkend Mekka te midden van de gele zanden der woestijn — the white gleaming Mecca amidst the yellow sands of the desert — where the Habib rested from his zwerftochten over den aardbol (wanderings over the globe) at the side of his oude en rimpelige eerste liefde, zijn Sjarifa Fatina, die hem er opwachtte, als Penelope haar Ulysses — his old and wrinkly first love, his Sjarifa Fatina, who awaited him there as Penelope [awaited] Ulysses. The album’s comparison of Potjoet — or rather, of the Habib’s first wife Sjarifa Fatina — to Penelope is the principal classical reference in the album’s narrative.
Significance
Potjoet’s significance in the documentary record of the Atjeh-oorlog is as the noblewoman whose marriage to Habib Abdoe’r Rachman was both a marriage alliance and a political instrument — and whose contested delivery by her brother Toekoe Moeda Baid was one of the principal occasions of the conflict between the Habib and the oeloebalang class. Her appearance in the Atjeh-Album of 1896 is brief, but her marriage is one of the principal documented instances of the way in which marriage alliances were transacted in the late Atjehnese sultanate, and of the way in which the deferral of delivery could be used as a political weapon.
See Also
- Habib Abdurrahman Zahir
- Sultan Saleiman Iskander
- Toekoe Moeda Baid
- Toeankoe Machmoed
- Tjot Bada
- VII Moekims
- Sjarifa Fatina
- Mekka
- Aceh War
- 1837
- Atjeh-Album (Eigen Haard, 1896)
Source
Atjeh-Album van Eigen Haard, uitgave van de N.V. Het Tijdschrift “Eigen Haard”, Amsterdam, 1896, pp. 14–15, 21 (De Geestelijkheid in Atjeh — Habib Abdoe’r Rachman).