Toekoe Kadli — Teungku Kadli — was an Atjehnese Kadli (kadi, Islamic judge) of the Sultan’s court in Groot-Atjeh who, in the years before the Dutch attack of 1873, served as one of the three principal advisers consulted by the Sultan Toeankoe Machmoed on the question of whether to open negotiations with the Dutch. He is named in the Atjeh-Album of 1896 in the chapter on Habib Abdoe’r Rachman as one of the three hoofden — together with Toekoe Imam Longbattah and Toekoe Noq van Marassa — who declared themselves in agreement with the Habib’s position.
The council of three
The Atjeh-Album records that, when the Sultan Toeankoe Machmoed commissioned Panglima Tibang to open negotiations with the Dutch steamship Maar en Waul then lying at the roadstead of Groot-Atjeh, the Habib insisted that zulke gewichtige saangelegenheid (such a weighty matter) could not be decided by the Sultan alone. The matter was referred to a council of three chiefs — Toekoe Imam Longbattah, Toekoe Kadli en Toekoe Noq van Marassa — who declared themselves in agreement with the Habib and accompanied him to Batavia on the steamship Patti (Captain Roura) to treat with the Governor-General.
The Habib’s opponent
The Atjeh-Album records that Toekoe Kadli was, in another context, an opponent of Habib Abdoe’r Rachman. The album records that, when the Habib received permission to build a new great mosque — for which 3000 dollars were given to him — the hoofden (chiefs) supplied the houtwerk (woodwork) that was dragged along roads that the Habib had improved. But despite the incitement of Toekoe Kadli — in weerwil van het opstoken van Toekoe Kadli — the Habib bleef in de gunst van den vorst (remained in the favour of the prince). The album’s reference identifies Toekoe Kadli as one of the hoofden who, on at least one occasion, sought to undermine the Habib’s position at court — and it identifies the mosque-building episode as one of the principal occasions of the conflict between the Habib and the hoofden.
Significance
Toekoe Kadli’s significance in the documentary record of the Atjeh-oorlog is as the Kadli — the Islamic judge — of the Sultan’s court, and as one of the three named advisers consulted by the Sultan on the question of whether to open negotiations with the Dutch. His dual role — supporter of the Habib’s pro-Dutch policy on one occasion, opponent of the Habib’s mosque-building on another — illustrates the way in which the hoofden of the late sultanate could shift between coalition and opposition on different issues, and it identifies the Kadli office as one of the principal religious-official positions at the late sultanate court.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege twice names “Toekoe Kadli, the chief who had come over to the Dutch already in 1874”: as an addressee, together with the imam Longbatta, of general van Swieten’s letter of 8 February 1874 announcing that the Kraton would be arranged “als een kota voor de Nederlanders” (“as a kota [fort] for the Dutch”), under whose administration safety and protection would be given to all who settled in its neighbourhood, and that “at Atjeh a great trading city would be founded” — the promise that Verstege compares with the safety as it was ten years later within the concentrated line of 1885; and as the intermediary to whom, in 1879, Toekoe Moeda Daoed of Selimoen addressed his request for intercession with Van der Heyden (see Toekoe Moeda Daoed).
See Also
- Habib Abdurrahman Zahir
- Toeankoe Machmoed
- Toekoe Imam Longbattah
- Toekoe Noq van Marassa
- Panglima Tibang
- Batavia
- Kraton of Aceh
- Aceh War
- Atjeh-Album (Eigen Haard, 1896)
Source
Atjeh-Album van Eigen Haard, uitgave van de N.V. Het Tijdschrift “Eigen Haard”, Amsterdam, 1896, pp. 14–15 (De Geestelijkheid in Atjeh — Habib Abdoe’r Rachman).
Account from Van Swieten (1879): Acting Bandhara and the Negotiations of March 1873
Lieutenant-General Van Swieten, in De waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh (1879), identified Toengkoe Kadli with the fuller title “Toengkoe Kadli Malikoel Adil” and described him as the Sultan’s second father-in-law — having married the Sultan to his daughter in early 1873 — and the acting bandhara (treasurer and chief minister) of the Acehnese court. Van Swieten’s account provided crucial testimony from Toengkoe Kadli himself, given after his submission and arrival in Batavia, where he stayed for half a month at the home of Councillor of the Indies Levysohn Norman.
Role in the March 1873 Negotiations
According to Toengkoe Kadli’s later testimony, the Sultan’s willingness to accept a treaty with the Dutch was defeated by the opposition of the sagie chiefs, “and among these the most vehement was Panglima Polim.” The Sultan, Toengkoe Kadli said, lacked not the will but the courage to defy them. A treaty would have been advantageous for the Sultan — it would have given him Dutch protection and an increase in income — but the sagie chiefs would not permit it.
Toengkoe Kadli confirmed that the dispatch of the Dutch letter via Sidi Tahil in March 1873 had produced a poor impression. Sidi Tahil, he said, behaved clumsily. When the conversation turned to the question of what flag would be flown, Sidi Tahil allegedly remarked — unprompted — that the Acehnese flag could continue to fly, but under the Dutch flag. This statement aroused such indignation among those present that they nearly attacked him, and Toengkoe Kadli had to intervene to protect him.
The Fire at Penajoeng
During the Second Expedition, Toengkoe Kadli had been inclined to come forward and accept the Dutch. But on 19 December 1873, his house in the kampong of Penajoeng (Penajong) was set on fire under mysterious circumstances. The house, described as a substantial plank-built dwelling, contained the Acehnese state archive, which was lost in the flames. Toengkoe Kadli, his confidence destroyed, fled into the interior and took no further part in the negotiations.
When Levysohn Norman later asked him why he had not approached the Dutch general, his answer was: “Toekoe Nek also advised me to do so, and promised a favourable reception. I was also minded to do it; but when on 19 December, at the arrival of the troops at Penajoeng, my house was set on fire, my confidence was destroyed and I took flight.”
Source (Van Swieten account)
De waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh, door den Luitenant-Generaal J. van Swieten. Zalt-Bommel, Joh. Noman en Zoon, 1879, pp. 20–25 (Inleiding).
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 35, 61. OCR: DLP-158.