T. Radja Sabi — Teukoe Radja Sabi, the Eagle’s Child, l’Aiglon — was the son of T. Tjhi Toenong and Tjoet Meuthia, born about 1899, and the rightful heir to the oeléëbalangschap of Keureutoe. After his father’s execution on 5 March 1905 he became the legitimate head of the resistance party, the adelaarsjong carried by his kawans through the forests of northern Atjeh from 1905 to 1919 — fourteen years, mostly in the wilderness, under the constant pursuit of the Dutch maréchaussée.
The palladium of the resistance
After Tjhi Toenong’s fusillade the greater part of the submitted population of Keureutoe openly took the side of his son, then about five years old, against the new oeléëbalang Tjhi Bentara, of whom it was said that he had brought about the death of his half-brother. With the boy as their palladium the partisans were assured of the majority of the population of Keureutoe. The oath Tjoet Meuthia had sworn at her husband’s death-bed was kept: after her forty-four days of purification she married Pang Nanggroë, and Pang Nanggroë and Pang Lateh appeared with a strong bende in the kampong where Tjoet Meuthia with her little son waited; she was placed in a tandoe, while the eagle’s child was entrusted to the care of about ten kawans, tried men who were to guard and protect him everywhere.
For years they did their work so well that not one of the brigades that repeatedly overvalled the bende of Pang Nanggroë ever set eyes on the boy. From September 1905 Pang Nanggroë developed a tremendous activity; the bende, at first under the supreme leadership of Teukoe Ben Pira (a brother of Tjoet Meuthia), came entirely under him when Ben Pira was killed in 1907. In 1908 the six-year-old child was solemnly elevated by Pang Nanggroë to oeléëbalang of Keureutoe — in the mountains, as the official head of the resistance party; the old charter with the tjap sikoereuëng (nine circles) of the Sultan had passed to him, and he was carried about everywhere, protected and guarded like the Ark of the Covenant among the Israelites.
The fall of his protectors
On 26 September 1910 Pang Nanggroë was killed by Van Slooten’s brigade in the Paja Tjitcem moeras, shot at a distance of about two hundred paces. The boy, in the schuilplaats of his foster-father, saw the fatal shot. He bowed — and before the maréchaussée’s could reach the place where the dead man lay, T. Radja Sabi climbed into a tree and held himself hidden. So for the second time, still a child of about ten, his mother became a widow by the bullets of the kaphé.
A month later, on 25 October 1910, his mother was killed in Mosselman’s overval at the Kroeëng Peutoeë. The boy, fishing in the beek, was seized by a kawan and borne into the wood at the warning cry “Kaphé datang”. “Saja tida lihat lagi lboe” — “I have not seen my mother again.” Only later, when some scattered members of the broken bende found each other again, did he hear of her death; her grave he never found.
The wandering life in the forests, after his mother’s death, would last nearly nine more years. He lived on the mereng of the pisang monjet (wild banana) and what else the wood yielded; always the maréchaussée behind him, so that he lived in continual fear of overval, like a man of the cave-bear age, afraid of his own shadow. There were kinder periods: at kampong Lho Reuhat, where he was known, his secret was kept, and the people even slaughtered a goat as a sign of reverence for the descendant of the balangscaans of Keureutoe. He joined himself for a time to the famous oelama Mata Ië, but the man was so hunted by the military that there was neither rest nor peace with him.
The tiger of Goenoeng Pandjang
Once, in the early morning, he saw a strange figure slip silently into the bushes — a creature of short stature, hairy and horrible as a figure in a frightening dream. Years later he heard speak of the orang pendek, and he is sure he has seen one. There are more strange things in those forests. He remembered also a tiger that came to be familiar with him in Goenoeng Pandjang.
Submission, 13 March 1919
At length, when he was about eighteen, he felt that he was at the end of his strength and said: “saya tida tahan lagi” — “I can bear it no longer.” He descended from the mountains to the plain, and near kampong Aloë Mira made himself a hiding-place in the bushes, going into the kampong by night to seek food. Nobody seemed to know him any more; he was like a stone thrown into the sea, the water closing over him forever, he thought. From his hiding-place he gradually extended his expeditions to the keudé’s, showing himself at Panton Leubeuë, at Simpang Olim, elsewhere. One day he walked to Lho Seumawé — a tremendous town for one who had wandered fourteen years in and about the forests — and there one of his old kawans recognised him, took him by the arm, and said: “Now it is over with that wandering; now you must ‘mèl’!” He brought him to his uncle T. Tjhi Bentara, oeléëbalang of Keureutoe. This was on 13 March 1919.
Waarnemend oeléëbalang, 1937
His return — his identity now no longer in doubt — was the topic of the day on the whole North Coast and part of the East Coast. At Koetaradja measures were taken. Caron saw to it that he was sent to school there, at the cost of the landschapskas, to make of this half-wild man someone who could later become oeléëbalang. For, in truth, the Kompeuni had something to make good to him. His uncle Tjhi Bentara was later succeeded as oeléëbalang of Keureutoe by his son; but this young man failed, in the bestuur’s judgement, by acting Western instead of properly Eastern. In the last part of 1936 he was suspended, and in 1937 T. Radja Sabi received the place that was his right: he became waarnemend oeléëbalang of Keureutoe. Of these things the adelaarsjong, now a man of nearly forty, spoke with Zentgraff in the pasanggrahan of Lho Soekon.
Significance
The figure of T. Radja Sabi, Zentgraff writes, bears some comparison with the l’Aiglon of Rostand: “Eh bien! moi, sans pouvoir, sans titre, sans royaume, / Moi qui ne suis qu’un souvenir dans un fantôme, / Moi… qui, triste, ne peut rien.” He saw again all the bloody episodes of his existence: the fusillading of his father, the fall of his foster-father Pang Nanggroë, of his mother, of Pang Lateh, of Pang Badon, of all those who with exemplary devotion protected him; the Life seemed to him a simple sum, always: minus one, and this had gone on with the pitiless regularity of fate itself.
Childhood in the resistance
T. Radja Sabi was born about 1901 to Tjoet Meutia and Teukoe Tjoet Moehamat, later T. Tjhi’ Toenòng, the excluded heir to the oelèëbalangschap of Keureutòë. His father was arrested at H. N. A. Swart’s order after the surprise of sergeant Vollaers’ patrol at Meurandéh Paja on 26 January 1905, and executed after Van Daalen converted the sentence of banishment to death.
With his father dead and a younger sibling stillborn or dead in infancy, the child became — together with his mother — the actual claimant to the oelèëbalangschap, a claim the population accepted. Forty-four days after her delivery Tjoet Meutia married Pang Nanggròë, who formed a band around her and around the boy. In November 1907, when the half-brother T. Tjhi’ Béntara was restored to the office of oelèëbalang, Pang Nanggròë proclaimed the six-year-old T. Radja Sabi oelèëbalang of Keureutòë — an act that drew new members to the band and raised his influence among the population.
Survival of the two great attacks
When Pang Nanggròë was killed in the Paja Tjitjém on 26 September 1910 by the brigade of sergeant Slooten, neither Tjoet Meutia nor the boy was found. Years later it emerged that T. Radja Sabi had hidden in a tree during the attack.
A month later, on 25 October 1910, he escaped again: in W. J. Mosselman’s attack on the hiding-place in a side-stream of the Kroeëng Peutòë, in which his mother, Tgk. Sjeh di Paja Bakong and the latter’s son Tgk. Mat Saleh were killed, “andermaal is T. Radja Sabi den dans ontsprongen.”
By 1911 he was, at twelve years old, the only figure of significance still at large in the district, wandering with the band of his stepfather. He is listed in the survey of 1913 among the last unsubmitted resistance leaders of Lho’ Soekon as “the wandering youngster.” In 1913 his last followers surrendered at Lho’ Soekon, and thereafter he wandered alone.
“For nine years he remained a wanderer; around him his commanders and followers fell, new ones always stood ready, and again and again the population supported him and betrayed nothing.”
The mystification: Si Doelah
Then he heard that he had reported himself to the administration. This mystification really occurred, but it happened entirely without the wanderer’s knowledge. Si Doelah, the son of a simple oelama, came to play the role of T. Radja Sabi; countless Acehnese recognised the substitute as T. Radja Sabi, showed him respect and submission, and even appeared before him deeply moved; and they permitted him to be accepted and brought up as future oelèëbalang.
Why they did so “could never be answered by anyone, not even by Swart.” Did they hope by the substitution to keep the real T. Radja Sabi safely out of range? Did the substituters count on a high reward? “Who shall say…? Atjeh remains Atjeh.”
Fairly soon reports came in to the bivouacs that the real T. Radja Sabi was still very much at large.
The attempt of 1916
In 1916 Schouten received reports so positive that he resolved, with the oelèëbalang of Seuleuma, to make one more attempt: the vechttijd was past, and why should the boy go on wandering? With the co-operation of all the chiefs and of T. Tjhi’ Béntara, the half-brother, who went along in person, a discussion was held “somewhere in the rimba.”
The condition set by the other side proved a stumbling-block: “we shall bring the real T. Radja Sabi down when it is first established that the boy at Koetaradja is not genuine — that is, when the Great Master acknowledges that a wrong person has been designated as T. Radja Sabi.” And so T. Radja Sabi continued to wander in the forests of the lonely Goenòng Panjang.
Submission, 1919, and installation, 1937
On 13 March 1919 — Swart having already retired — and in his eighteenth year, after years in which he had now and then also stayed in inhabited places, T. Radja Sabi was recognised at Lho’ Seumawè by one of his former kawans (comrades), who brought him to his uncle T. Tjhi’ Béntara: the wandering had to end, he must “mèl” (report, submit).
That was the final recognition: the substitute disappeared and ended as a road overseer (wegmandoer).
In 1937, when the son of his uncle — who had proved a failure as oelèëbalang — had been suspended in 1936, T. Radja Sabi at last became oelèëbalang of Keureutòë.
Significance (du Croo, 1943)
The story of T. Radja Sabi spans the whole arc of the pacification: begun in an administrative injustice of 1899, carried through the war years by his father, mother and stepfather, and closed only in 1937 with his installation in the office of which his father had been deprived. Du Croo presented it as the exemplary Acehnese drama, and closed his account with the words of H. C. Zentgraaff: “men and women who would be the pride of any people and who yield nothing to the most brilliant of our own figures of war.”
See Also
- T. Tjhi Toenong
- T. Tjhi Bentara
- Tjoet Meuthia
- Pang Nanggroë
- Pang Lateh
- Tengkoe di Paja Bakong
- Execution of T. Tjhi Toenong (1905)
- Pursuit of the Tiro-oelamas (1908-1910)
- Death of Tjoet Meuthia (1910)
- False T. Radja Sabi (1913)
- Keureutoe
- Lho Seumawé
- Lho Soekon
- Simpang Olim
- Koetaradja
- Uleebalang
- Tjap sikoereuëng
- 1905
- 1910
- 1919
- 1937
- Aceh War
- Tjoet Meutia
- Si Doelah
- M. Schouten
- Goenòng Panjang
Source
Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter X, pp. 94–102; Chapter XI, p. 104; Chapter XII, pp. 117–118.