Tgk. Tjhi Ma’at was the last leader of the Tiriō bende — the Acehnese religious resistance band descended from Teungkoe Sjech Saman di Tiri — who, as a boy of fifteen in 1911, carried on the family’s war against the K.N.I.L. in the bergland ten Oosten of Tangsé after the killing of Habib Teupin Wan, refused the submission urged on him by his aunt and by the three voornaamste Atjehse hoofden, and was killed on 3 December 1911 by the korporaal Nussy — aided by Rampisela and Koentjoeng — thereby becoming sjahid, geloofsmartelaar in de heilige oorlog. His death ended the colonne Schmidt and, with it, the last organised Acehnese armed resistance.
Birth and inheritance
“Teungkoe Tjhi Ma’at di Tiró, the son of Tgk. Mat Amin, who fell at Aneu’ Galong.” When his father fell at Aneu Galong in 1896 as a geloofsgetuige, Tjhi Ma’at was a zuigeling — an infant at the breast. By 1911 he was fifteen. He grew up with his ooms (his father’s brothers — Tgk. di Boekét and Tgk. Tjhi Majét) in the bergen, “van schuilplaats naar schuilplaats” — from hiding-place to hiding-place — moving as the patrouilles pressed. After the death of his ooms and of Habib Teupin Wan in September 1911, “slechts de jonge Tgk. Tjhi Ma’at was er over van heel de Tiri bende” — only the young Tgk. Tjhi Ma’at was left of the whole Tiriō bende.
The widow’s intercession
Luitenant Schmidt attempted to bring about his submission via his aunt — the widow of Teungkoe Asan Oeleë Toetoeë, whom Schmidt’s brigades had “pas enige maanden tevoren neergelegd.” Schmidt feared she would refuse because of her husband’s death; but Teungkoe di Teupin Radja reassured him: she would not hold it against him. “Haar echtgenoot in de heilige strijd was gevallen door zijn eigen vrije wil; u was slechts het werktuig in Allah’s hand, dat hem het paradijs deelachtig deed worden.”
The widow — “een eerbiedwekkende Atjehse vrouw, reeds op leeftijd” — went into the bergen. No patrouilles were to operate in that richting while she was there. She returned without needing to search: many Atjehers knew where the boy was, but “het verraden van een heilig man als een Tiriō Teungkoe is een zonde, die men niet straffeloos kan begaan.” The answer she brought back was Tjhi Ma’at’s: “Teungkoe Tjhi Ma’at zou het verzet voortzetten. Zijn Vader was als geloofsgetuige gevallen, hij zou in diens voetstappen treden. Allah’s wil zou geschieden.”
The killing (3 December 1911)
On 3 December 1911 sporen were found in het terrein in verschillende richtingen. Korporaal Nussy, alone after his spits turned back, gave the vogelgeluid signaal and waited. Three armed Acehnese approached. The voorste was Tjhi Ma’at, who aimed his revolver at Nussy. Nussy shot first; the bullet hit him in the borst. He fell but rose and fled. The second was killed outright. “Rampisela en Koentjoeng legden de man neer, terwijl ook de derde nog werd ingehaald” — Rampisela and Koentjoeng brought down Tjhi Ma’at. The book closes the episode with the religious framing Saman di Tiri had bequeathed: “Hier had Tgk. Tjhi Ma’at het lot van zijn Vader, zijn ooms en zovele andere verwanten gedeeld; hij was sjahid, geloofsmartelaar in de heilige oorlog geworden.”
The corpse, the begrafenis, and the relics
The corpse was carried out to Tangsé. “De bevolking van Tangsé liep uit naar de begrafenis.” The bandages and cloths in which the lijk was gewikkeld “werden in honderden stukjes gescheurd en meegenomen als heilige reliquiën” — were torn into hundreds of pieces and kept as holy relics, amulets. The book registers this without comment as a fact about the bevolking’s piety: the boy was now a saint of the resistance, and his relics would protect their bearers.
Significance
Tjhi Ma’at is the last of the Aceh War’s martyrs. His death on 3 December 1911 is the moment at which the K.N.I.L. could declare the Aceh War militarily over — though Generaal Swart would not hand the country over to a civilian Gouverneur until 1918. The boy’s refusal to submit — grounded in the prang sabi doctrine of his grandfather and the sjahid inheritance of his father — is the book’s clearest example of why the colonial army could not, by arms alone, end the resistance: it had to wait for the last heir of the doctrine to fall. The tearing of the relics at Tangsé is the book’s quiet acknowledgement that the boy’s death, far from extinguishing the doctrine, made it a permanent feature of the country’s religious memory.
Birth and inheritance
“Teungkoe Tjhi Ma’at di Tiró, the son of Tgk. Mat Amin, who fell at Aneu’ Galong.” When his father fell at Aneu Galong in 1896 as a geloofsgetuige, Tjhi Ma’at was a zuigeling — an infant at the breast. By 1911 he was fifteen. He grew up with his ooms (his father’s brothers — Tgk. di Boekét and Tgk. Tjhi Majét) in the bergen, “van schuilplaats naar schuilplaats” — from hiding-place to hiding-place — moving as the patrouilles pressed. After the death of his ooms and of Habib Teupin Wan in September 1911, “slechts de jonge Tgk. Tjhi Ma’at was er over van heel de Tiri bende” — only the young Tgk. Tjhi Ma’at was left of the whole Tiriō bende.
The widow’s intercession
Luitenant Schmidt attempted to bring about his submission via his aunt — the widow of Teungkoe Asan Oeleë Toetoeë, whom Schmidt’s brigades had “pas enige maanden tevoren neergelegd.” Schmidt feared she would refuse because of her husband’s death; but Teungkoe di Teupin Radja reassured him: she would not hold it against him. “Haar echtgenoot in de heilige strijd was gevallen door zijn eigen vrije wil; u was slechts het werktuig in Allah’s hand, dat hem het paradijs deelachtig deed worden.”
The widow — “een eerbiedwekkende Atjehse vrouw, reeds op leeftijd” — went into the bergen. No patrouilles were to operate in that richting while she was there. She returned without needing to search: many Atjehers knew where the boy was, but “het verraden van een heilig man als een Tiriō Teungkoe is een zonde, die men niet straffeloos kan begaan.” The answer she brought back was Tjhi Ma’at’s: “Teungkoe Tjhi Ma’at zou het verzet voortzetten. Zijn Vader was als geloofsgetuige gevallen, hij zou in diens voetstappen treden. Allah’s wil zou geschieden.”
The killing (3 December 1911)
On 3 December 1911 sporen were found in het terrein in verschillende richtingen. Korporaal Nussy, alone after his spits turned back, gave the vogelgeluid signaal and waited. Three armed Acehnese approached. The voorste was Tjhi Ma’at, who aimed his revolver at Nussy. Nussy shot first; the bullet hit him in the borst. He fell but rose and fled. The second was killed outright. “Rampisela en Koentjoeng legden de man neer, terwijl ook de derde nog werd ingehaald” — Rampisela and Koentjoeng brought down Tjhi Ma’at. The book closes the episode with the religious framing Saman di Tiri had bequeathed: “Hier had Tgk. Tjhi Ma’at het lot van zijn Vader, zijn ooms en zovele andere verwanten gedeeld; hij was sjahid, geloofsmartelaar in de heilige oorlog geworden.”
The corpse, the begrafenis, and the relics
The corpse was carried out to Tangsé. “De bevolking van Tangsé liep uit naar de begrafenis.” The bandages and cloths in which the lijk was gewikkeld “werden in honderden stukjes gescheurd en meegenomen als heilige reliquiën” — were torn into hundreds of pieces and kept as holy relics, amulets. The book registers this without comment as a fact about the bevolking’s piety: the boy was now a saint of the resistance, and his relics would protect their bearers.
Significance
Tjhi Ma’at is the last of the Aceh War’s martyrs. His death on 3 December 1911 is the moment at which the K.N.I.L. could declare the Aceh War militarily over — though Generaal Swart would not hand the country over to a civilian Gouverneur until 1918. The boy’s refusal to submit — grounded in the prang sabi doctrine of his grandfather and the sjahid inheritance of his father — is the book’s clearest example of why the colonial army could not, by arms alone, end the resistance: it had to wait for the last heir of the doctrine to fall. The tearing of the relics at Tangsé is the book’s quiet acknowledgement that the boy’s death, far from extinguishing the doctrine, made it a permanent feature of the country’s religious memory.
Succession to the Tirò leadership
The Tirò band had been driven from Geumpang to Pidië at the end of 1907 by the patrol movement of the marechaussée under Schmidt, so that for a considerable time no contact had been had with it. On 8 February 1908 Schmidt, following carefully traced tracks, surprised the band’s hiding-place on the kr. Meu’, in which five of the principal Teungkoes were killed.
In 1910 Boreel (Lam Meulò) and Schmidt (Tangsé) became the pace-setters in Pidië, Schmidt devoting himself in accordance with his commission exclusively to the destruction of what remained of the Tirò Teungkoes. In May came the first blow: after a masterly patrol Schmidt surprised the hiding-place of the two great Tirò men, Tgk. Tjhi’ Majét and Tgk. di Boekét, who fell with many followers. The headship of the Tirò band passed to Tgk. Ma’at, then sixteen years old, “the last surviving of the Tirò Teungkoes.”
In August and September 1910 further hard blows fell and division arose among the bands: the Pedireezen attached themselves to T. Dagang of Tangsé, while the strangers, mainly oelamas from Groot Atjeh, followed Tgk. Ma’at.
Death, December 1911
Schmidt’s special commission from H. N. A. Swart, given in December 1909, was accomplished on 3 December 1911 — after two heavy patrol years in continuous and complete independence — when the last surviving Tirò Teungkoe, “the young Tgk. Ma’at (who had rejected a last proposal of submission from Schmidt, because a Tirò Teungkoe preferred martyrdom to surrender)”, fell with his last followers.
From the remaining band members a few small bands still formed, but they were of no further significance. Swart learned the report of Tgk. Ma’at’s death from major Scheepens and wrote to Schmidt on 26 September 1911 — anticipating it — that “if that has indeed taken place, then only T. Dagang remains to you.”
Significance (du Croo, 1943)
With Tgk. Ma’at the line of the Tirò oelama’s — the family whose earlier heads Teungkoe di Tirò, who died in 1891, and Teungkoe Mat Amin, killed at Aneu’ Galong in 1896, had led the religious resistance since the beginning of the Atjeh-oorlog — came to an end. Du Croo described the struggle against and the eventual annihilation of “the holy Tirò Teungkoes” by Schmidt and his two famous marechaussée brigades under Molier and Von Gilsa, who devoted years exclusively to that task, as “the great epic of those stirring days,” already described as a classic example of the colonial kleine oorlog in Marechaussee in Atjeh.
See Also
- Teungkoe Sjech Saman di Tiri
- Tgk. Mat Amin
- Tgk. Tjhi Majét
- Habib Teupin Wan
- Colonne Schmidt campaign against the Tiriō Teungkoes (1910-1911)
- Nussy
- Schmidt
- Teungkoe Asan Oeleë Toetooë
- Teungkoe di Teupin Radja
- Sjahid
- Prang sabi
- Tangsé
- 3 December
- Tirò Teungkoes
- H. J. Schmidt
- Tgk. di Boekét
- T. Dagang
- Molier
- Von Gilsa
- Teungkoe Mat Amin
- Military Constabulary in Atjeh (1943)
- 1911
Source
Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., by G. W. T. Dames, Maj. Inf. K.N.I.L. b.d. (‘s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1954), chapter “De colonne Schmidt.”
Tgk. Tjhi Ma’at was the last leader of the Tiriō bende — the Acehnese religious resistance band descended from Teungkoe Sjech Saman di Tiri — who, as a boy of fifteen in 1911, carried on the family’s war against the K.N.I.L. in the bergland ten Oosten of Tangsé after the killing of Habib Teupin Wan, refused the submission urged on him by his aunt and by the three voornaamste Atjehse hoofden, and was killed on 3 December 1911 by the korporaal Nussy — aided by Rampisela and Koentjoeng — thereby becoming sjahid, geloofsmartelaar in de heilige oorlog. His death ended the colonne Schmidt and, with it, the last organised Acehnese armed resistance.
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter X, p. 93; Chapter XI, pp. 106–109; Chapter XIV, p. 141; Chapter XV, p. 145.