Teungku di Lheue was an Achehnese ulama of inferior repute, mentioned by Snouck Hurgronje in his account of the kali-ship of the XXII Mukims. He owed his place in the record not to any personal distinction, but to the fact that the hereditary kali of that sagi, the learned Teungku Tanoh Abee, declined to act as a sort of acolyte of the Panglima of his sagi and refused to appear at the latter’s call. The Panglima, “constrained when need arose to seek the help of teungkus of inferior qualifications,” found in Teungku di Lheue the most readily available substitute.
The Office of the Kali in the XXII Mukims
The kali-ship of the XXII Mukims, though hereditary in custom, was in fact filled, at the time Snouck Hurgronje describes, by a man of real learning. Teungku Tanoh Abee, who died in 1893, was so highly esteemed for his scholarship that he would not stoop to act as a mere assistant to the powerful hereditary chief of his sagi. The Panglima Polem, in consequence, was obliged to make shift with humbler ulamas whenever religious business — the formal recitation of a nomination, the verification of a marriage or divorce, the registration of a conversion — required a kali’s intervention. Teungku di Lheue was “the chief of those who rendered service in this way.”
The Relation between Office and Learning
The case of Teungku di Lheue illustrates one of the structural peculiarities of the Achehnese religious establishment: the gap between the titular kali, whose office descended in his family, and the working ulamas, who supplied the actual learning. Where a kali like Teungku Tanoh Abee refused to put his scholarship at the disposal of a political superior, the gap was filled by men of lesser reputation. The arrangement, however convenient for the Panglima, necessarily lowered the dignity of the religious office in the eyes of the laity, and helps to explain why the ulamas — pandits whose authority rested on personal learning rather than on inherited office — gradually rose, in the course of the nineteenth century, to a position of influence that often overshadowed that of the kalis themselves.
Teungku di Lheue, then, is one of the shadowy figures whose very obscurity throws light on the institutional life of pre-war Acheh. He is not remembered for any teaching or writing of his own; his importance lies in the fact that his existence was made necessary by the pride of a greater contemporary, and that his name thus survives as a footnote to the history of the kali-ship in the XXII Mukims.
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 di Lheue was an Achehnese ulama of inferior repute, mentioned by Snouck Hurgronje in his account of the kali-ship of the XXII Mukims. He owed his place in the record not to any personal distinction, but to the fact that the hereditary kali of that sagi, the learned Teungku Tanoh Abee, declined to act as a sort of acolyte of the Panglima of his sagi and refused to appear at the latter’s call. The Panglima, “constrained when need arose to seek the help of teungkus of inferior qualifications,” found in Teungku di Lheue the most readily available substitute.
The Office of the Kali in the XXII Mukims
The kali-ship of the XXII Mukims, though hereditary in custom, was in fact filled, at the time Snouck Hurgronje describes, by a man of real learning. Teungku Tanoh Abee, who died in 1893, was so highly esteemed for his scholarship that he would not stoop to act as a mere assistant to the powerful hereditary chief of his sagi. The Panglima Polem, in consequence, was obliged to make shift with humbler ulamas whenever religious business — the formal recitation of a nomination, the verification of a marriage or divorce, the registration of a conversion — required a kali’s intervention. Teungku di Lheue was “the chief of those who rendered service in this way.”
The Relation between Office and Learning
The case of Teungku di Lheue illustrates one of the structural peculiarities of the Achehnese religious establishment: the gap between the titular kali, whose office descended in his family, and the working ulamas, who supplied the actual learning. Where a kali like Teungku Tanoh Abee refused to put his scholarship at the disposal of a political superior, the gap was filled by men of lesser reputation. The arrangement, however convenient for the Panglima, necessarily lowered the dignity of the religious office in the eyes of the laity, and helps to explain why the ulamas — pandits whose authority rested on personal learning rather than on inherited office — gradually rose, in the course of the nineteenth century, to a position of influence that often overshadowed that of the kalis themselves.
Teungku di Lheue, then, is one of the shadowy figures whose very obscurity throws light on the institutional life of pre-war Acheh. He is not remembered for any teaching or writing of his own; his importance lies in the fact that his existence was made necessary by the pride of a greater contemporary, and that his name thus survives as a footnote to the history of the kali-ship in the XXII Mukims.
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.