Tengkoe Majet di Tiro — Tgk. Majet, also written Tgk. Tjhi Majet or Tgk. Maët — was the last adult of the Tiro family, the second son of Tengkoe Sjech Saman di Tiro to carry the war forward after the death of his eldest brother Mat Amin at Aneukgalong in 1896 and the death of his brother Tgk. di Boekit in the overval of 21 May 1910. With his brother’s death the family was reduced, in its adult leaders, to one man; and the days of this last Tiro-oelama were now numbered.
The days of hiding
He spent those days in very remote schuilplaatsen, as a pious man at peace with his God. The bevolking of Tangsé, full of awe for this last commander out of a family of great warriors, kept silence. Patiently at his post at Tangsé, Schmidt waited for his day, and every report that touched Tgk. Majet had his full attention. It was not much. Yet one report promised something, because it agreed with what his captured young son had once told about a schuilplaats where djagoeng (maize) grew. And there was this: the keutjhi of Tangsé, Bèn, must, towards the end of the fasting month, by old custom deliver an ox to Tgk. Majet before the slametan and send it to his schuilplaats. Schmidt, who knew the weak spot in the Atjehsche character, gave Keutjhi Bèn the money to buy the ox, which two members of the bende would fetch and bring into the rimboe.
The killing, 5 September 1910
On 31 August Schmidt marched out, exactly two days after the men with the * sapi* (ox) had gone into the forest. For some days one searched in vain, crossing the mountains and cutting across various paths. On 1 September, scouting by the Kroeëng Balé, the celebrated spoorzoeker Nussy saw the footprint of an Acehnese and, after he had with a little stick removed the leaves lying on the path, the spoor of a * sapi*. Now the bekas was good. Though the Acehnese had repeatedly laid false spoor, led the ox in a circle, and covered every track with leaves or washed it out with water, the brigades held on like hounds on the scent of the stag. In the late afternoon of 3 September 1910 the schuilplaats was found, but the overval failed because a young and inexperienced maréchaussée at the spits shot an Acehnese he happened to meet with the carbine when he should have used the silent klewang. The bende fled, but the spits saw that the thick, heavily-built man in the black jas and topi, followed by a few adherents, took a different direction from the rest. In the pursuit the spoor of a shod foot was seen — the story the boy had told.
On 5 September, after a pursuit without equal through wild and at times barely passable terrain, they saw on the rotshelling the “heavily-built man in the black jas and topi” resting with his carbine between his knees. Perhaps he was tired; perhaps, after months of being hunted, his energy had given way. So he sat on the helling, staring out before him. Perhaps his spirit saw things that escaped his eye. The troop made an encirclement, and when the carbines crackled the last Tiro-oelama fell, with two bullets in the heart.
The relics and the grave
When his body, its wounds bound, was brought to Tangsé, the bevolking tore the bandages to pieces; it was the very privileged who obtained a scrap of the blood-soaked bandage. These relics are still in Tangsé, kept very secretly as precious memorials of the last of the Tiro-chiefs. The body of Tgk. Tjhi Majet di Tiro is buried beside the mesdjid of Tangsé; and when curious strangers ask after it the oeléëbalang says he knows nothing of it, for these are things that do not concern outsiders. Zentgraff repeatedly tried to get a photograph of the grave but the bevolking has its objections.
Significance
With Majet’s death the epos of the Tiro-oelama’s was all but closed; only the sixteen-year-old Tgk. Tjhi Maät remained, and he would fall on 9 December 1910. Schmidt’s respectful silence before the body of the “son of his father” — the right-minded Atjehsche whom the soldiers of the victors also honoured — closes one of the most methodical pursuits in the Atjehsche history.
See Also
- Tengkoe Sjech Saman di Tiro
- Tengkoe Mat Amin di Tiro
- Tengkoe di Boekit
- Tengkoe Tjhi Maät di Tiro
- Tiro-oelama
- Pursuit of the Tiro-oelamas (1908-1910)
- Schmidt
- Tangsé
- Sjahid
- Prang sabil
- 1910
- 1908
- Aceh War
Source
Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.