Tengkoe Tjot Plieëng — Tengkoe di Tjoet Plieëng — was, in Zentgraff’s phrase, the heiligste en hoogste onder de strijdbare geestelijke hoofden — the holiest and highest of the fighting religious heads of the Atjeh-oorlog. He was the foremost among them all; and after his return from Mekka he led for years the resistance against the Kompeuni, although he did not himself take part in the fighting and lived in afzondering (seclusion). All the threads of the resistance came together at him, and when he pulled them the whole of Pidië was set in motion. He was kramat and the bearer of the famous rantej boei — the magical stone, formed by lime-deposit in the jaw of a wild boar, that protects its bearer from lance and bullet.
The flight from Captain Stoop, June 1904
The best Dutch patrol-commandants had no shadow of a chance against him; no Atjeher would have dared to point out the schuilplaats of an oelama so kramat. For years the patrols sought his spoor. In June 1904 captain Stoop discovered his schuilplaats between two outflow-spurs of the Gle Keulabéë Asap; but the Tengkoe escaped, though he left behind his Koran and his zegelamulet (seal-amulet). That amulet was a very particular piece: in earlier years it had been the property of the still more famous Tgk. Sjech Saman di Tiro, the head of the great family of the Tiro-oelama’s, for many years the most stubborn and dangerous of the Dutch enemies. That Tengkoe Tjot Plieëng lost this amulet was — despite his rantej boei — like the writing on the wall. All that is written, di taqdir, comes to pass for the believer; and so the doom crept nearer to the oelama. Now there need only be a chance, a small thing that runs straight through all precautions.
The accidental death
It was a patrol under lieutenant Terwogt that, wholly by chance, came into the schuilplaats of the Tengkoe and shot him. The rantej boei, still found on his body, had not been able to turn fate. Does not the magic in nearly the whole Archipelago teach that mystical means do not always retain their value but in the end lose their power? But see what happened to his body. It was brought to one of the bivaks for identification, and after a couple of days it still showed no sign of decomposition. Even Panglima Polem was called in for the identification, and he bent himself over the corpse that did not stink, in the midst of a group of Atjehers dumb with awe at this proof of the grace of Allah. “This was God’s secret,” the old Polem said at Zentgraff’s last meeting with him.
The rantej boei’s after-life
They took the rantej boei from the body of the Tengkoe and gave it to Van Daalen, but this was not a man for such magic means; he gave it to Waki Wahab, the Atjeher who had worked for years as a spy with the Dutch. The Kwab, as he was universally called because he had a swelling on his neck, was the only European-side figure who could use such a protective means; spies have an unhealthy life. The Kwab was in truth a great sinner; he may not have felt at ease with the amulet of so holy a man as the slain oelama, and so it happened that the Kwab, when the great work in Pidië was over, made a present of it to Veltman, who was ill. He might get better from it, the giver will have thought. Veltman too did not wear it; men of this kind put more trust in sharp steel and a good service-revolver. He is probably the only European to have had a rantej boei; he later gave it to the Koloniaal Museum at Amsterdam, where it still lies in a collection of Atjehsche ethnografica. Zentgraff, through the help of the old maréchaussée-officer Lamster, obtained a photograph of it.
Significance
The story of Tengkoe Tjot Plieëng is one of the central instances in Zentgraff’s chapter on Atjehsche magic and the rantej boei. It binds the fate of the Tiro-oelama’s — whose father’s amulet he had borne — to that of the great Pidiësche resistance; and it shows the respect in which even the Dutch victors held a holy man whose body did not decay. The image of Panglima Polim bending over the corpse that did not stink is one of the iconic moments of the war.
See Also
- Tengkoe Sjech Saman di Tiro
- Tiro-oelama
- Panglima Polim
- Waki Wahab
- Veltman
- Van Daalen
- Rantej boei
- Kramat
- Sjahid
- Prang sabil
- Pidië
- Gle Keulabéë Asap
- 1904
- Aceh War
Source
Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.