The Raja of Idi — referred to by Snouck Hurgronje as “the lately deceased raja of Idi (vulg. Edi)” — was, at the time of writing, the recently deceased chief of Idi on the East Coast of Achehnese territory. He is mentioned in Vol. I of The Achehnese in connection with the early settlement and pioneering of that district by a sayyid of the ʿAidarus family, whose sanctified son was, in Snouck Hurgronje’s day, “a half-crazy young man” venerated as a Habib kramat.
The notice occurs in Snouck Hurgronje’s discussion of the sayyids of Acheh. “Among the living,” he writes, “we find a Habib kramat of the famous family of ʿAidarus, a half-crazy young man, the son of Teungku di Buket. The father, who also enjoyed a reputation for sanctity, was in conjunction with the lately deceased raja of Idi (vulg. Edi) the first pioneer of that district.” The collaboration between a sayyid of a celebrated Hadrami family and a local chief in the opening of a new settlement is a pattern typical of the East Coast, where religious prestige and political enterprise were commonly joined in the foundation of new communities. A member of the same family, Snouck Hurgronje adds in a footnote, “lies buried at Luar Batang in Batavia. His tomb is widely venerated.”
Idi itself — known in the vulgar form Edi — was, at the time of the Dutch intervention of 1873, one of the more considerable of the East Coast states, with a population made up of Achehnese settlers, Malay traders and immigrant Chinese. Its chiefs, like those of the neighbouring coast, enjoyed a quasi-independent position under the loose supremacy of the Sultan of Acheh, and were frequently engaged in the pepper and betel-nut trade that formed the basis of the coast’s prosperity. The opening of the district by the Raja and his sayyid companion — a foundation myth typical of the East Coast — gave to the settlement the double legitimacy of political authority and religious blessing.
The Raja of Idi is not further discussed in The Achehnese. He belongs, with many other chiefs of the East Coast and the dependencies of Acheh, to that numerous class of late-nineteenth-century Achehnese rulers whose individual biographies have left little trace in either native or European sources, but whose names are preserved in the records of the colonial administration that succeeded them. The mention of his death, in a work written in the closing years of the nineteenth century, fixes his activity in the generation immediately preceding the Dutch conquest of the East Coast.
See Also
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.
The Raja of Idi — referred to by Snouck Hurgronje as “the lately deceased raja of Idi (vulg. Edi)” — was, at the time of writing, the recently deceased chief of Idi on the East Coast of Achehnese territory. He is mentioned in Vol. I of The Achehnese in connection with the early settlement and pioneering of that district by a sayyid of the ʿAidarus family, whose sanctified son was, in Snouck Hurgronje’s day, “a half-crazy young man” venerated as a Habib kramat.
The notice occurs in Snouck Hurgronje’s discussion of the sayyids of Acheh. “Among the living,” he writes, “we find a Habib kramat of the famous family of ʿAidarus, a half-crazy young man, the son of Teungku di Buket. The father, who also enjoyed a reputation for sanctity, was in conjunction with the lately deceased raja of Idi (vulg. Edi) the first pioneer of that district.” The collaboration between a sayyid of a celebrated Hadrami family and a local chief in the opening of a new settlement is a pattern typical of the East Coast, where religious prestige and political enterprise were commonly joined in the foundation of new communities. A member of the same family, Snouck Hurgronje adds in a footnote, “lies buried at Luar Batang in Batavia. His tomb is widely venerated.”
Idi itself — known in the vulgar form Edi — was, at the time of the Dutch intervention of 1873, one of the more considerable of the East Coast states, with a population made up of Achehnese settlers, Malay traders and immigrant Chinese. Its chiefs, like those of the neighbouring coast, enjoyed a quasi-independent position under the loose supremacy of the Sultan of Acheh, and were frequently engaged in the pepper and betel-nut trade that formed the basis of the coast’s prosperity. The opening of the district by the Raja and his sayyid companion — a foundation myth typical of the East Coast — gave to the settlement the double legitimacy of political authority and religious blessing.
The Raja of Idi is not further discussed in The Achehnese. He belongs, with many other chiefs of the East Coast and the dependencies of Acheh, to that numerous class of late-nineteenth-century Achehnese rulers whose individual biographies have left little trace in either native or European sources, but whose names are preserved in the records of the colonial administration that succeeded them. The mention of his death, in a work written in the closing years of the nineteenth century, fixes his activity in the generation immediately preceding the Dutch conquest of the East Coast.
See Also
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.