Teungku Beb was a son of the celebrated Achehnese ulama Teungku Tiro (Muhamat Amin) and, after the death of his elder brother Mat Amin in 1896, one of the principal continuators of his father’s religious and political work on the North Coast of Acheh. He is mentioned in The Achehnese Vol. I in a footnote recording the fates of the descendants and kinsmen of Teungku Tiro in the years following his father’s death in December 1885.
The elder son and putative successor of Teungku Tiro was Mat Amin, who had been trained by his father as a soldier rather than as a pandit and had become a well-known guerilla leader. After Teungku Tiro’s death, however, Mat Amin gave the rein more than ever to his evil passions and the great body of the adherents of Teungku Tiro at once melted away. Mat Amin was killed in action in 1896 when the Dutch troops captured the fortress of Aneu Galong.
It was after this disaster that Teungku Beb, together with his brother Teungku Mahidin (also called Ma’ Et) and their kinsman Teungku Chot Plieng, took up the work of maintaining the collections of the sabil contributions in the dependencies on the North Coast. The sabil contributions (lui sabi aqq sabil) — a portion of the zakat tax set apart for the holy war — were the financial sinew of the Achehnese resistance to the Dutch, and their regular collection in the dependencies was the chief practical task that remained to the religious party after the collapse of organised resistance in Great Acheh.
Snouck Hurgronje notes that, by the time he wrote, Great Acheh no longer furnished a field for the labour of these men and their fellows; the collections had therefore to be carried on in the dependencies of the North Coast, where the influence of the Tiro house still survived. Teungku Beb discharged this duty until his own death in 1900. The brevity of his mention in the text should not obscure the importance of the work to which he was devoted: the maintenance of the sabil contributions, in a country increasingly penetrated by the Dutch, was both a financial and a symbolic task, by which the religious party kept alive the spirit of resistance among the populations still outside the area of effective Dutch control.
Teungku Beb and his brother Teungku Mahidin, together with Teungku Chot Plieng, represent the last Achehnese generation in which the legacy of Teungku Tiro’s authority could still be transmitted by direct descent or kinship. After their deaths, the religious leadership of the resistance passed into other hands, and the office of Teungku Tiro became a dignity rather than a working direction of the holy war.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
Teungku Beb was a son of the celebrated Achehnese ulama Teungku Tiro (Muhamat Amin) and, after the death of his elder brother Mat Amin in 1896, one of the principal continuators of his father’s religious and political work on the North Coast of Acheh. He is mentioned in The Achehnese Vol. I in a footnote recording the fates of the descendants and kinsmen of Teungku Tiro in the years following his father’s death in December 1885.
The elder son and putative successor of Teungku Tiro was Mat Amin, who had been trained by his father as a soldier rather than as a pandit and had become a well-known guerilla leader. After Teungku Tiro’s death, however, Mat Amin gave the rein more than ever to his evil passions and the great body of the adherents of Teungku Tiro at once melted away. Mat Amin was killed in action in 1896 when the Dutch troops captured the fortress of Aneu Galong.
It was after this disaster that Teungku Beb, together with his brother Teungku Mahidin (also called Ma’ Et) and their kinsman Teungku Chot Plieng, took up the work of maintaining the collections of the sabil contributions in the dependencies on the North Coast. The sabil contributions (lui sabi aqq sabil) — a portion of the zakat tax set apart for the holy war — were the financial sinew of the Achehnese resistance to the Dutch, and their regular collection in the dependencies was the chief practical task that remained to the religious party after the collapse of organised resistance in Great Acheh.
Snouck Hurgronje notes that, by the time he wrote, Great Acheh no longer furnished a field for the labour of these men and their fellows; the collections had therefore to be carried on in the dependencies of the North Coast, where the influence of the Tiro house still survived. Teungku Beb discharged this duty until his own death in 1900. The brevity of his mention in the text should not obscure the importance of the work to which he was devoted: the maintenance of the sabil contributions, in a country increasingly penetrated by the Dutch, was both a financial and a symbolic task, by which the religious party kept alive the spirit of resistance among the populations still outside the area of effective Dutch control.
Teungku Beb and his brother Teungku Mahidin, together with Teungku Chot Plieng, represent the last Achehnese generation in which the legacy of Teungku Tiro’s authority could still be transmitted by direct descent or kinship. After their deaths, the religious leadership of the resistance passed into other hands, and the office of Teungku Tiro became a dignity rather than a working direction of the holy war.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.