Acheh River

The Acheh River (Krueng Acheh, debouchement Kuala Acheh) was the principal river of Great Acheh and an important geographic and administrative landmark. The mouth of the Acheh River — the kuala Acheh — suggested to the Acehnese fancy the somewhat sharply pointed mouth of a jeuëë (winnowing-basket), which they used as a metaphor for the shape of their homeland.

Administrative Division

Proceeding down the Acheh River, one found on the left the territory of the XXV Mukims and on the right that of the XXVI Mukims. The right bank was home to twelve gampongs over which the Panglima Meuseugit Raya and Teuku Kali Malikon Ade contested control — the Teuku Kali Malikon Adé having wrested twelve gampongs on the right bank from the Panglima Meuseugit Raya in a period of rivalry.

Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Aceh River

The Aceh River (in Achehnese usage generally referred to as the Krueng Aceh, and at its mouth as the kuala or estuary) is the principal river of the capital of Acheh, which descends from the highlands through the lowlands and discharges into the sea at the kuala of Acheh. In The Achehnese the river figures chiefly as the channel by which the coastal settlements of the capital communicate with the interior, and as the scene of the great lanchang ceremony performed in time of epidemic.

The most concrete notice of the Aceh River in Vol. I is in Snouck Hurgronje’s account of the lanchang ceremony. “Formerly, when an epidemic prevailed, the Sultan would command a great lanchang built of wood or bamboo and furnished with a quantity of rice and meat. A pretended human sacrifice to the sea was also made; some poor man who was willing to play the part of victim for a few dollars was placed on board the boat and set off to drift down the Acheh river and out of the kuala. At the river’s mouth he would manage to regain the shore, leaving the rice and meat to their strife with the waves.” The lanchang, in Acheh as in the Malay peninsula, was supposed to carry away the hantu or evil spirit that caused the epidemic; the same word is used in the northern part of the Malay peninsula for the analogous boat, while in the south it is called rakit. The Achehnese lanchang of the Sultan was thus a piece of royal folk-medicine, performed on the river of the capital, by which the sovereign sought to avert epidemic from his kingdom.

The Aceh River is also the scene of one of the most famous episodes of Achehnese folk-legend. The unhappy Rabiah, who after death became the dreaded Burong Srabi, fled with her lover down the river in a boat, intending to escape to the West Coast. “They dropped down the river in a boat, but before they reached the open sea, the man slew his paramour and casting her body into the water, pursued his journey to the West alone.” Her body was found near Kaje’e Jat’oe — “just about where the hospital at Kuta Raja now stands” — and was pulled out of the water by the people of that gampong, who carried it to Tanjong in the mukim of Pagaraye for burial. The legend gives a vivid picture of the river as the great artery of communication between the capital and the West Coast, and as the natural route of flight for those who wished to leave the country by sea.

The Aceh River, like the kuala at its mouth, was thus both the practical channel of the capital’s external trade and the symbolic channel by which evils — whether the hantu of an epidemic or the unhappy Rabiah — were carried out to sea. Its importance in Vol. I is principally as the geographical backbone of the capital district of Banda Acheh, and as the route by which the lowlands of Great Acheh were connected, through the rantos of the West Coast, with the wider Achehnese dominion.

Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Acheh River

The Acheh River (Achehnese Krueng Acheh; Kuala Acheh at its mouth) is the principal watercourse of the capital plain of Acheh, running past the court and the Meuseugit Raya or principal mosque before debouching into the sea. In The Achehnese Vol. I, Snouck Hurgronje treats the river as both a geographical and a constitutional feature of the old sultanate.

Form of the True Acheh

The Achehnese delight to compare the form of “true Acheh” — the kernel of the kingdom that supplied outlying districts with inhabitants — to that of a winnowing-basket (jeu’ee). The debouchement of the Acheh river (kuala Acheh) suggests to their fancy the somewhat sharply pointed mouth of the winnower, “whence all unclean particles adhering to the husked rice are shaken out.” Proceeding downstream, one has on the left the territory of the XXV Mukims and on the right that of the XXVI Mukims, the intervening space being occupied by the XXII Mukims. This configuration gave rise to the comparison of the three confederacies with the three angles of a triangle, the three sagis of Acheh.

The Panglima Meuseugit Raya

The Panglima Meuseugit Raya — literally “Commander of the Great Mosque” — was the head of the twenty-four or more gampongs on either side of the Acheh river, in the neighbourhood of the court and principal mosque. Through a long process of degeneration he succeeded in gaining control over half the jurisdiction of the Teuku Kali, the hereditary chief justice of the kingdom. The river thus marked not merely a topographical axis but the political spine of the port-king’s domain.

The Tanoh Raja Reserve

A notable institution connected with the river was the tanoh raja (“king’s land”): a strip of ground seven great fathoms (deuëpa meunara) on each side of the Acheh river, reserved from ancient times to the sultan. Subjects might build or plant within this reserve, but the land never became their property, and the sultans could always withdraw the right of user. This royal privilege no doubt originated in the interest of an unimpeded exercise of sovereignty by the kings of the port. The word wakeuëh is more commonly used than tanoh raja to describe this reservation, although wakeuëh also designates the inhabitants of certain districts relieved from sundry burdens and exempted from the authority of the local chiefs.

Account from Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 — Acheh River

The Acheh River (Dutch Atjeh-rivier; modern Krueng Aceh) is the river discharging into the sea at Banda Acheh, the capital of the sultanate of Acheh. Its mouth, commanding the roadstead on which European shipping anchored, made it a strategic point in the defence of the capital and is mentioned twice in Van der Kemp’s narrative.

Fortification in 1819

When the Raffles–Coombs commission arrived before Banda Acheh in 1819 and anchored there on 14 March, the city was without a sultan in residence. The deposed Sultan Jauhar Alum had withdrawn to Pedir and the upstart Sultan Saif ul-Alum had fled to Telok Semawé. Effective authority lay with the Three Sagis, in practice with Panglima Polim of the XXII Mukims. As the commission’s stay lengthened — it would last nearly seven weeks — rumour spread that the British had come to take possession of the country. “De bevolking liep te hoop en richtte aan den mond der Atjeh-rivier eene versterking op”, Van der Kemp records, “welke vijandige houding de commissie zich bij Polim beklaagde”. The hostile posture of the population at the river-mouth was the subject of a formal complaint by the commissioners to Polim.

Jauhar Alum’s stockade

The river-mouth reappears in Fullerton’s minute of 21 March 1825 on the state of Acheh after the treaty of London of 1824. Reviewing the futility of the Acheh treaty of 1819, Fullerton observed that Sultan Jauhar Alum had never recovered his authority, and that “the remaining years of his life were spent in one stockade at the mouth of the Acheen river without commanding influence or even respect”. Jauhar Alum had died in December 1823 (the Death of Sultan Jauhar Alum), having never been able to establish himself at the capital in the manner the treaty of 22 April 1819 presupposed. The stockade at the river-mouth was the outward symbol of his impotence.

The Acheh River also gave its name to the description of the Wilhelmina affair, in which Bouwens was murdered “op de hoogte van Atjeh” — off Acheh — before his ship drifted on to Pasangan and Telok Semawé.

Account in Hooijer’s De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897)

The Acheh River — the Atjeh-rivier or Atjeh-stroom of Dutch usage — was the principal river of Groot-Atjeh, whose broad, sharply incised valley formed the theatre of the outpost campaign described in De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh.

Course and valley

G. B. Hooijer described the valley as a flat, marshy floor bounded on the south by a steep mountain range behind Biloel, on the east by bare hill country, and running upstream past Indrapoeri to Lambaroe and beyond to the point where the Atjeh-stroom and the Selimoen-rivier unite in the deepest part of the valley. Its yellow waters (hare gele wateren) rolled through the kampong (village) chain in which the post of Lam Barih was placed, and described a wide bend below the kampongs (villages) of Anagaloeng, where the top of the steep bank was visible above the plain of high grass.

Flooding and drainage

When the thunder echoed from the Goudberg to the Glé Raja, lightning lit the darkened country and tropical rains clattered on the motionless trees, the surplus water of the middle valley — gradually raised by the sediment of earlier floods — ran off towards the feet of the hills and bounding mountains and trickled thence through creeks and streams to the lower river or to the sea coast. The waters once rose so high at Anagaloeng that the two Dutch encampments there were buried two metres deep and the soldiers had to take refuge on the high kampong ground.

Bridges and traffic

At Anagaloeng the river was crossed by an iron bridge and, between the two bivouacs of General van der Heijden, by a vlotbrug or float-bridge. On the stream lay great Chinese barges in which the sick were carried down to the Kraton. The post of Lam Soet was erected on the river a few days after that at Anagaloeng to secure the road from Lambaroe; its parapet was left open on the river side, and the commandant’s summer-house on the rampart gave a view over the water. Rifle-shots at Lam Soet were mostly aimed at iguanas appearing at or in the river.

Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu

River whose eastern bank was fortified after 1874, running from Koeta Radja to the coast at Oelèë Lheuë.

Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 25, 190, 320.

Sources

Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, by Dr. E. C. Godee Molsbergen, Oud-Hoogleeraar, Landsarchivaris te Batavia (Amsterdam: N.V. Swets & Zeitlinger Boekhandel en Uitgevers Mij., 1932), chapter XI (“Atjehsche ambassade. Inlandsche feesten. Maagden als losprijs”), pp. 39–43 of the numbered-letter sequence. De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 1: Sumatra, Algemeene Hoofdstukken, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), Hoofdstuk I (Oro-hydrographisch), pp. 11–12, 28–29. 20260707_232246_DLP-55-De_geschiedenis_van_het_Nederlandsche_Korps_Mariniers_van_1665_1945_OCR.txt, p. 125. The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.

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. Chapter I, §§ 1–7, pp. 1–120.

Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159–239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.

De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh, door G. B. Hooijer, Gep. Luit.-Kolonel O. I. Leger, met 24 platen (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam. OCR-filename: 20260719_140140_DLP-134-De_verlaten_posten_in_Groot_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 49.

Acknowledgement of sources. This article is a single consolidated account combining the material previously held in this entry with the account given in De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897) by G. B. Hooijer. Dutch terminology has been rendered in English, the original Dutch being retained only in direct quotations and in bibliographic citations.

Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 25, 190, 320.

tags	place, river, waterway, capital, banda-aceh, coast, atjehnese, geography, atjeh, hydrography, dutch-colonial, groot-atjeh, aceh, 1873, military, aceh-proper, river-mouth, aceh-war
aliases	Krueng Acheh, Kuala Acheh, Aceh River, Krueng Aceh, Sungai Aceh, Atjeh-rivier, Acheen River, Atjeh river, rivier van Atjeh, de Atjeh-rivier, Atjehrivier, Kroeëng Atjeh, Mouth of the Acheh River, Kuala Achèh, River-mouth of the Aceh, Atjeh-stroom, the Atjeh valley, Atjeh-vallei

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