Toekoe Moeda Daoed (also written Toekoe Moeda Daud) was an hoeloebalang who exercised authority at Selimoen on the Atjeh-rivier in Atjeh and had hitherto been known as one of the Dutch army’s most stubborn enemies, but who, in the Selimoen expedition of August 1879, voluntarily submitted to the Dutch together with other chiefs, declaring in his letter: “The great misfortune, brought by the war upon the three sagis of the land, makes me decide to offer my submission.” His submission, communicated through the mediation of Toekoe Kadli and the blind priest Habib Machmoed and completed on the ground on 14 August 1879 — the Dutch entry of 20 August 1879 in Generaal Van der Heijden’s foreword of 1889 marks its formal dating — marked the end of the large-scale resistance in Great Acheh.
The Submission
On 30 July 1879 two Atjehers with a white flag presented themselves to the Dutch authority at Indrapuri, as envoys of the blind priest Habib Machmoed, who with 25 followers waited outside the fortification and was the bearer of a letter from some chiefs, among whom Toekoe Moeda Daoed, who exercised authority at Selimoen and had hitherto been known as one of the Dutch army’s most stubborn enemies. In that letter they offered the governor and military commander their submission and declared that they would exhort their people to return from the mountains and the woods to the kampongs. By another letter, addressed to Toekoe Kadli, the latter’s mediation with the governor was invoked: “The great misfortune, brought by the war upon the three sagis of the land, makes me decide to offer my submission.”
The Selimoen Expedition, 13-15 August 1879
The march to Selimoen, which had first been given up, was now, in order to hasten the somewhat protracted negotiations, undertaken after all. On 13 August 1879 the columns of Indrapuri and Lamtobah set out at the same time. The latter still had to fight at Kepaja Doewa and Lam Soemboeng, and reached Selimoen on 15 August 1879. The other column had already arrived there the day before. It had met the most serious opposition at Lampisang, where Toekoe di Tiroe with his band had awaited it.
Toekoe Moeda Daoed and other chiefs now submitted; those who, like Panglima Polem and the Imam Longbatta, refused to give up the fight, fled to the upper lands of Pedir. “The return march to Indrapuri resembled a triumphal procession. Everywhere the population showed a peaceful disposition; in all kampongs, even on the commanding hills, white flags were planted; the troops, accompanied by the chiefs who had come in submission, were awaited in the kampongs by men, women and children, and provided with refreshments; all enemy bentings were abandoned.”
The eyewitness account at Selimoen, 14–17 August 1879
The fullest description of Toekoe Moeda Daoed is that of W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer in Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889). He had on 14 August 1879 voluntarily submitted to Majoor Lubeck, whose column had reached and occupied Selimoen that day, and had promised to go with him to Kota Radja; hostages had therefore not been demanded. On the next morning, when the column of Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach came over the mountains from Lamtoba, he awaited it near the kampong: “on the far side of a dry slokan he stepped forth from behind the brushwood, while a great white flag was held above his head. Although his clothing was in nothing remarkable, and he wore above the wide, dark, silken Atjehnese trousers only a white jacket, yet everything in him marked the supreme head. Not great of stature, without beard or moustache, light-yellow of complexion, with great dark eyes, straight nose, firmly closed mouth, he stood there awaiting the column-commandant with calm dignity.”
Because the population had remained in the kampong, it was at his request proclaimed to the column that no one might leave the bivouac and that all contact of soldiers and coolies with the population must be prevented; to Gerlach’s refusal of the alternative — a bivouac wholly outside the kampong, which Majoor Lubeck through Controleur Kamp had given him hope of — he made no objections; and the houses of the fugitives of the XXII and XXVI Moekims were with his consent placed at the troops’ disposal for shelters and firewood. It was from his information that the column learned the fate of the irreconcilables: his brother Massa-an, Panglima Polim, Toekoe Radja Koeala, the Iman Longbattah and other prominent hostile chiefs had still been assembled at Selimoen on the day before the columns’ arrival, had deliberated in the missigit on what stood before them, and had fled to Reng-Reng in the VII Moekims of Pedir. On the morning of 17 August 1879 Majoor Lubeck — having waited for him a couple of hours in “a time of great tension”, for he had promised in his report to the General to bring this chief to the Kraton — marched back to Indrapoeri with Toekoe Moeda Daoed, Toekoe Ajer Alang and some retinue, being everywhere received by the population in the most peaceable manner; thence he went on to Kota Radja, as promised.
The disambiguation in Van der Heijden’s foreword of 1889
That this Toekoe Moeda Daoed — “head of Selimoen, one of the pretenders to the Sultan’s throne, who submitted to him on 20 August 1879” — is not to be confounded with the then-current Sultan-pretendant, is expressly noted by Generaal K. van der Heijden in his foreword to the book of Cool and Hooijer: of the latter pretendant — the youth watched over by Toewankoe Haschim, destined for the Sultan’s rank in 1874 — the coming had indeed been announced, on the same date, by the likewise newly submitted Toekoe Ajer-Alang, but he had excused himself “uithoofde der naderende poeasa” — by reason of the approaching fasting month. The remark distinguishes the Selimoen chief who came in at Selimoen from the royal pretendant of the mountain resistance, two figures that later accounts risked conflating.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege, following Kielstra (III, p. 417), gives the submission of the chief of Selimoen its full setting: on the heels of the triumphant campaign of 1879, Toekoe Moeda Daoed — “een onzer hardnekkigste vijanden” (“one of our most tenacious enemies”), who in remote Selimoen held the chief command in the Sagie of the XXII Moekims — addressed a letter to Toekoe Kadli, who had come over to the Dutch already in 1874, asking that chief’s intercession with generaal van der Heyden and writing, in words that Verstege calls in themselves the most eloquent proof that the Atjeher would bow only to recognised supremacy of arms: “Het groote ongeluk door den oorlog thans over de drie Sagies des lands gebracht, doet mij besluiten, mijne onderwerping aan te bieden” (“The great misfortune, brought by the war over the three Sagies of the land, decides me to offer my submission”). As he did not appear quickly, Van der Heyden had him fetched by a fighting force (27 July-2 September 1879); Selimoen was reached on 15 August after several tiring day-marches, nearly without resistance; Toekoe Moeda Daoed awaited the column with a numerous retinue and a white flag, while the population, to prove its submission, had remained in the kampongs; the same afternoon his brother-in-arms Toekoe Tjoet Hadjet, brother of Panglima Polim, came in to submit. On 17 August both went with one of the two columns to Indrapoerie through kampongs planted everywhere with white flags, even on the dominating hills, with men, women and children bringing refreshments — a real triumphal march; and on 20 August 1879 they swore their submission to the general (see Van der Heijden’s pacification of Groot-Atjeh).
See Also
- Selimoen
- Habib Machmoed
- Toekoe di Tiroe
- Panglima Polim
- Imam of Longbatta
- Lamtobah
- Kepaja Doewa
- Lam Soemboeng
- Lampisang
- Indrapoeri
- Majoor Lubeck
- Massa-an
- Reng-Reng
- Submission of Toekoe Moeda Daoed (August 1879)
- Selimoen Expedition (August 1879)
- Aceh War
Source
De geschiedenis van Nederland in onzen tijd, by J. A. de Bruyne, Directeur der Hoogere Burgerschool te Zierikzee. Deel IV. 1872-1883. Nieuwe uitgave. Schiedam: J. F. Dupont, 1912, Hoofdstuk I, pp. 107-108.
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), voorwoord pp. V-VII, en pp. 52-58. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), p. 61. OCR: DLP-158.