The prophet-king Solomon, a major figure in Acehnese religious imagination, appearing in the Hikayat Tamlikha and as the divine judge in the fable collection Plando’ Kanchi, where the mouse-deer serves as his nicknamed assessor “Teungku Waki.” The Acehnese regard his era as the time when beasts were gifted with speech and reason.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Raja Suloyman
Raja Suloyman (also spelled Suleman) was an Achehnese princely claimant, the ward and rival of his guardian Raja Ibrahim, in whose civil war the Niasese slave-soldiers of Acheh played a conspicuous part. He is mentioned in Vol. I of The Achehnese in the course of Snouck Hurgronje’s discussion of the slave population of Acheh.
The civil war between Raja Suloyman and his guardian Raja Ibrahim, which Snouck Hurgronje dates to 1854–1858, was — by his explicit judgement — “of small importance and little blood was spilt.” The reader is referred to Van Langen’s Atjehsch Staatsbestuur (p. 397) for the principal published account of the conflict, and to J. A. Kruyt’s Ajeh en de Atjehers (p. 144) for “a very correct estimate of the weight to be attached to civil wars in Acheh.” Kruyt’s caution is significant: Achehnese civil wars of the period were commonly fought less by the Achehnese themselves than by their Niasese dependants, and were characterised by raids and manoeuvres rather than by pitched battles.
Snouck Hurgronje’s specific reason for mentioning the war is to illustrate the manner in which the Achehnese used their Niasese slaves as soldiers. In the “endless little wars that divided the country against itself,” he observes, the Achehnese “employed them for ordinary tillage and for pepper cultivation, but also as soldiers”; and in the Suloyman–Ibrahim conflict “the supporters of [Raja Ibrahim] in particular usually employed Niasese to carry out all operations against the enemy.” This practice — the arming of imported slaves for local warfare — was one of the principal means by which the Achehnese, “on their own confession indolent and little fitted for regular work,” sustained their chronic internal conflicts.
Raja Suloyman is one of a number of mid-nineteenth-century Achehnese princely figures who appear in the European record only as names attached to a local disturbance. Like Raja Ibrahim himself, he belonged to the numerous class of royal kinsmen whose claims to the sultanate were exploited by stronger chiefs, and whose individual biographies have otherwise left little trace. The conflict of 1854–1858 falls within the last generation before the Dutch intervention of 1873, a period in which the authority of the Sultan of Acheh had so completely decayed that the country was, in effect, “split up into countless miniature states under chiefs whose power depended on personal energy.”
See Also
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.
The prophet-king Solomon, a major figure in Acehnese religious imagination, appearing in the Hikayat Tamlikha and as the divine judge in the fable collection Plando’ Kanchi, where the mouse-deer serves as his nicknamed assessor “Teungku Waki.” The Acehnese regard his era as the time when beasts were gifted with speech and reason.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Raja Suloyman
Raja Suloyman (also spelled Suleman) was an Achehnese princely claimant, the ward and rival of his guardian Raja Ibrahim, in whose civil war the Niasese slave-soldiers of Acheh played a conspicuous part. He is mentioned in Vol. I of The Achehnese in the course of Snouck Hurgronje’s discussion of the slave population of Acheh.
The civil war between Raja Suloyman and his guardian Raja Ibrahim, which Snouck Hurgronje dates to 1854–1858, was — by his explicit judgement — “of small importance and little blood was spilt.” The reader is referred to Van Langen’s Atjehsch Staatsbestuur (p. 397) for the principal published account of the conflict, and to J. A. Kruyt’s Ajeh en de Atjehers (p. 144) for “a very correct estimate of the weight to be attached to civil wars in Acheh.” Kruyt’s caution is significant: Achehnese civil wars of the period were commonly fought less by the Achehnese themselves than by their Niasese dependants, and were characterised by raids and manoeuvres rather than by pitched battles.
Snouck Hurgronje’s specific reason for mentioning the war is to illustrate the manner in which the Achehnese used their Niasese slaves as soldiers. In the “endless little wars that divided the country against itself,” he observes, the Achehnese “employed them for ordinary tillage and for pepper cultivation, but also as soldiers”; and in the Suloyman–Ibrahim conflict “the supporters of [Raja Ibrahim] in particular usually employed Niasese to carry out all operations against the enemy.” This practice — the arming of imported slaves for local warfare — was one of the principal means by which the Achehnese, “on their own confession indolent and little fitted for regular work,” sustained their chronic internal conflicts.
Raja Suloyman is one of a number of mid-nineteenth-century Achehnese princely figures who appear in the European record only as names attached to a local disturbance. Like Raja Ibrahim himself, he belonged to the numerous class of royal kinsmen whose claims to the sultanate were exploited by stronger chiefs, and whose individual biographies have otherwise left little trace. The conflict of 1854–1858 falls within the last generation before the Dutch intervention of 1873, a period in which the authority of the Sultan of Acheh had so completely decayed that the country was, in effect, “split up into countless miniature states under chiefs whose power depended on personal energy.”
See Also
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.