Alas is the highland country of interior northern Sumatra inhabited by the Alassers, who together with their neighbours the Gayos occupy the central highlands from which Great Acheh is separated by a “huge ring of forest”. In The Achehnese the Alas country appears chiefly as a refuge and hiding-ground for Achehnese bands operating beyond the settled districts of the sultanate, and as part of the wider Mohammedan hinterland of Acheh proper.
Snouck Hurgronje describes the situation of the Achehnese warrior in time of war: between the populated districts he could conceal himself “sometimes jungles and sometimes swamps”, but “from the central highlands of North Sumatra where the Gayos and Alassers live, a huge ring of forest separates him.” In ordinary times the Achehnese made clearings for pepper and rice fields in the jungle; in time of need, such clearings offered excellent hiding-places over which armed bands could scatter. The Alassers and Gayos were “Mohammedan subjects of Acheh” — that is, they stood in a loose dependency upon the sultans, sufficient to give Achehnese bands safe hiding-places when they wished to withdraw from the immediate theatre of operations.
In contrast with the territories of Pidie, the East Coast dependencies, and the politically organised sagis of Great Acheh, the Alas country and the Gayo lands were but lightly touched by the sultan’s authority. Their inclusion in the loose sphere of Achehnese influence is taken as evidence of the wide, if mostly nominal, extent of the Achehnese kingdom at the height of its power — bounded, according to the Achehnese themselves, on the East Coast by Tamiang and on the West Coast by Baros, but with a hinterland of forest and highland that the sultan’s officers never effectively controlled.
Snouck Hurgronje does not describe the institutions of the Alassers at any length in Vol. I; they are noticed only as one of the dependent highland peoples whose existence on the margins of Acheh gave the sultanate its wide, vaguely defined extent in Sumatra, and whose forests and clearings served Achehnese tactics in the long contest with the Dutch.
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.