Teungku Lam Gut was the hereditary chief kali (qadi) of the XXVI Mukims of Great Acheh at the time of the Dutch arrival in Acheh in 1873. His name is given by Snouck Hurgronje as a typical example of the manner in which the great offices of the Achehnese sultanate had come to be held by men who had inherited them as a family chattel, irrespective of their personal qualifications for their discharge.
Teungku Lam Gut was born in Lam Gut, the village from which he took his name, and was appointed as the successor of his father, who had some reputation for learning. The hereditary principle was, in Acheh, applied even to offices which in their nature demanded special knowledge: the chief kalis of the three sagis were supposed to be appointed directly by the sultan, but the rule had speedily become a dead letter, and the practical results of the centralizing aims founded on this rule proved very trifling.
In consequence of his marriage, Teungku Lam Gut subsequently changed his abode from Lam Gut to Lam Bhu’ close to the Dalam. Here he married his daughter to a scholar of Pidie named Cheh Marahaban, long a resident in Mecca, who was ulama and kali to the sovereign of the port during the last years of the Sultanate. Teungku Lam Gut was thus able to rely in his official work on the superior knowledge of his son-in-law, for he himself, though a man of sound intelligence, was devoid of learning. This arrangement — by which a chief kali of little personal scholarship discharged the formal duties of his office through the agency of a learned relative — was, as Snouck observes, by no means uncommon in Acheh. The principle of inheritance could not, of course, be applied to learning itself; and so the holder of an hereditary office was often compelled to fall back upon the counsel of some learned man of only second or third rank.
The grandson of Teungku Lam Gut — the son of his daughter by Cheh Marahaban — was, at the time Snouck Hurgronje wrote, the hatib (preacher) of the principal mosque at Kuta Raja. The continuity of religious office in this single family, through three generations and across the great rupture of the war, illustrates the tenacity with which the Achehnese ulema class preserved its hold on the posts of religious instruction and justice, even after the political collapse of the sultanate that had created them.
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 Lam Gut was the hereditary chief kali (qadi) of the XXVI Mukims of Great Acheh at the time of the Dutch arrival in Acheh in 1873. His name is given by Snouck Hurgronje as a typical example of the manner in which the great offices of the Achehnese sultanate had come to be held by men who had inherited them as a family chattel, irrespective of their personal qualifications for their discharge.
Teungku Lam Gut was born in Lam Gut, the village from which he took his name, and was appointed as the successor of his father, who had some reputation for learning. The hereditary principle was, in Acheh, applied even to offices which in their nature demanded special knowledge: the chief kalis of the three sagis were supposed to be appointed directly by the sultan, but the rule had speedily become a dead letter, and the practical results of the centralizing aims founded on this rule proved very trifling.
In consequence of his marriage, Teungku Lam Gut subsequently changed his abode from Lam Gut to Lam Bhu’ close to the Dalam. Here he married his daughter to a scholar of Pidie named Cheh Marahaban, long a resident in Mecca, who was ulama and kali to the sovereign of the port during the last years of the Sultanate. Teungku Lam Gut was thus able to rely in his official work on the superior knowledge of his son-in-law, for he himself, though a man of sound intelligence, was devoid of learning. This arrangement — by which a chief kali of little personal scholarship discharged the formal duties of his office through the agency of a learned relative — was, as Snouck observes, by no means uncommon in Acheh. The principle of inheritance could not, of course, be applied to learning itself; and so the holder of an hereditary office was often compelled to fall back upon the counsel of some learned man of only second or third rank.
The grandson of Teungku Lam Gut — the son of his daughter by Cheh Marahaban — was, at the time Snouck Hurgronje wrote, the hatib (preacher) of the principal mosque at Kuta Raja. The continuity of religious office in this single family, through three generations and across the great rupture of the war, illustrates the tenacity with which the Achehnese ulema class preserved its hold on the posts of religious instruction and justice, even after the political collapse of the sultanate that had created them.
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.