Tengkoe Sech Ibrahim — Tgk. Sech Ibrahim — was, after the killing of the last of the Tiro-oelama’s in 1910, regarded as the head of the once-great Tiro family. He is the figure to whom Zentgraff turns, in his chapter Van den sjahid, for a witness of the living power of the Atjehsche war-literature in the generation that came after the great fighters.
”I myself still get excited”
Of the hikajat prang — the booklets or writings in which the war against the unbelievers is preached in fierce and passionate language, and in which the enjoyments that await him who falls in that war in paradise are described — Zentgraff writes that they have always exercised great influence on the minds and have brought thousands of wavering men over the dead-point. Tengkoe Sech Ibrahim, who after the falling of the last of the Tiro-oelama’s was regarded as head of that renowned family, told him once:
“Ik zelf raak nog in opwinding als ik ze hoor voorlezen.”
That is: “I myself still get excited when I hear them read.” Zentgraff cites this admission in close conjunction with his discussion of the hikajat prang of Tgk. Sjech Saman di Tiro — the Karangan Tiro Oelama, written during the war by the famous founder of the Tiro-line, “one of our greatest adversaries” — and with the Tambikoel Rafilin of Tgk. Djalaloeddin. There was very dangerous reading in these booklets: if they were read aloud in the evening in an attentive circle, the hearts grew warm with longing for the war against the unbelievers, and many a young man set the first steps on the war-path under the mighty impression of such reading on his emotional soul. In several fights hikajat prang were found on the bodies of the fallen; on Tgk. Doellah too, who was killed at Lhong in 1933, were found a couple of booklets, among which a hikajat prang.
Significance
Tengkoe Sech Ibrahim is the bridge between the active generation of the Tiro-oelama’s and the generation that inherited the war-literature without inheriting the war. His testimony — that even he, the head of the family after the falling of the last Tiro-oelama, was still moved by the reading of the hikajat prang — is, in Zentgraff’s argument, the proof that the written literature of the Atjeh-oorlog had a living power in the 1930s, when the book itself was being written. The continuing prestige of the Tiro-family after the killing of its last fighting head is the same prestige that protects the secret grave of Tgk. Majet di Tiro at Tangsé and the relics of his blood-soaked bandages.
See Also
- Tiro-oelama
- Tengkoe Sjech Saman di Tiro
- Tengkoe Majet di Tiro
- Tengkoe Tjhi Maät di Tiro
- Hikajat prang
- Sjahid
- Prang sabil
- Lhong
- Tangsé
- 1910
- 1933
- 20th-century
- Aceh War
Source
Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.