Tengkoe Tjhi Maät di Tiro — Tgk. Tjhi Maät, in some reports Tgk. Maät — was the last male descendant of the great Tengkoe Sjech Saman di Tiro, a grandson of the founder of the line and the son of Tgk. Mat Amin, who had fallen at Aneukgalong in 1896. He was then only a small child; in 1910 he was a youth of about sixteen, the last of the name still wandering the forests of Tangsé and Pidië after the killing of his uncle Majet on 5 September 1910.
Schmidt’s last attempt at quarter
So much blood of the Tiro family had been spilled, the method of their extermination was so merciless, that Schmidt wished to make one last attempt to save at least this sixteen-year-old boy. This was not easy: the unyieldingness of these men was like a harness that let through no attempt at compromise, and a letter promising personal safety and treatment according to their rank was answered with silence and later found on the corpse. Schmidt, with general Swart’s permission, approached a venerable and loyal Atjeher, Tengkoe di Teupin Raja, a member of the moesapat at Sigli; this man advised him to apply to the widow of Tengkoe Oeléë Toetoë, who had been killed on 27 May 1911 by Schmidt’s brigades. Tgk. Oeléë Toetoë had been married to a daughter of the great Tgk. Sjech Saman di Tiro, so that his widow was an aunt of the young wanderer.
Schmidt sent her a polite note requesting her to visit him at Sigli. In the afternoon she came, in black pantalon and baadje with gold buttons; her slendang too was black, and the grey of her hair seemed white as snow against it. This granddaughter of the great Tiro-oelama was a princely figure, and she looked the officer straight in the eyes. After the customary pleasantries he came to the point: he must catch or kill the boy, and was sorry, for he was of good lineage; would she go and speak with him? She answered: “I will try.” She went to Tangsé, knew at once where the boy was hidden, and after some days returned to stand again before the officer, calm and dignified. She spoke only these words: “Hana djalan, Toean. Dji haro’s keu sjahid lagèë koedjih!” — “There is no means, sir. He wishes to become sjahid as his father.” Schmidt said: “Then it will go badly with him.” She answered: “Taqdir Allah.” — Allah’s will be done. She refused any compensation: she had only formally acted, had conveyed a message whose answer she had never for a moment doubted.
The killing, 9 December 1910
A few days after the failure of this last attempt, early in December 1910, word came to Tangsé that one Pang Tjoet, a member of the Tiro-bende, had descended to the plain for the Hari Raja marking the end of the Poeasa and then gone back into the mountains from kampong Koeala Kroeëng. On 3 December the 5th and 6th brigades under Schmidt marched out and found the spoor leading in the direction of the Aloeë Bhot, where a small bende had eaten wild doerian. The celebrated spoorzoeker Nussy, scouting alone, saw the bushes part and a very young, slender Atjehser, with elegantly folded headcloth and a revolver in his hand, begin to climb the slope. Nussy let him come so close that he could not miss. His first shot struck the young Atjeher, who dropped the revolver and sank — but he got up, ran down the slope, picked up the revolver. Nussy’s second shot killed one of the others; he raised the piercing Alfurese war-cry. Other maréchaussée’s rushed forward and fired; the young Atjehser, already wounded by Nussy’s first shot, fell.
From the seal-ring on his girdle it appeared that he was Tengkoe Maät — fallen, like his father at Anakgalong, in the holy war. Tgk. Maät was a fairly light-skinned young man of distinguished appearance; he wore black silver-stitched trousers and a black baadje with gold buttons. Around his head hung the red-silk headcloth, and his right hand still held the revolver in death. One of the shots had struck him in the heart; his broken eyes still seemed to gaze at the free air above him. So was his wish fulfilled: to become sjahid as his father.
Significance
His death closed the epos of the Tiro-oelama’s: the unyielding and strong men who in the days of Dutch weakness struck the colonial government about the ears with humiliations, and who went down as they had lived — fierce and unyielding — once the Leger had recovered its self-confidence. Schmidt and his men stood for a moment in reverent silence by the body of the “son of his father,” a right-minded Atjehser like so many others, to whom the homage and admiration of the victors also go out.
See Also
- Tengkoe Sjech Saman di Tiro
- Tengkoe Mat Amin di Tiro
- Tengkoe Majet di Tiro
- Tengkoe di Boekit
- Tiro-oelama
- Pursuit of the Tiro-oelamas (1908-1910)
- Schmidt
- Tangsé
- Sjahid
- Prang sabil
- 1910
- Aceh War
Source
Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.