The capital of the Ottoman Empire. Snouck cites the Turkish sultan and the great Ottoman caliphate as the effective political centre of Islam in its later period. The Habib (Habib Abdurrahman) was absent from Acheh on a voyage to Constantinople, ‘whither he had gone to seek for help.’ A Malay treatise by an Achehnese was lithographed in Constantinople in A.H. 1304. Abdurra’uf’s Malay translation of Baidhawi’s Quran commentary was published in Constantinople in A.H. 1302. In the hikayats, ‘Koseutantiniah’ is the country of Kamarodaman (corrupted from Constantinople). The sadati performance references the ‘dances of Stambul.’ Also, in 1893, the Governor-general of Algeria Jules Cambon submitted to the Mekkan muftis a question regarding the emigration of Algerian Muslims to Syria.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Turkey (Ottoman Empire)
Turkey — the Ottoman Empire, whose sovereign the Achehnese called the Raja Rom (“Lord of Rome”, i.e. of the eastern Roman dominions) and revered as “the lord of all believers” — is, in The Achehnese, the distant Islamic superpower to which an Achehnese sultan of the sixteenth century sent a celebrated embassy, and from which he received in return a great cannon and a colony of skilled artisans. The legend of this embassy is one of the few episodes of foreign relations narrated at length in Vol. I, and it is treated by Snouck Hurgronje as the legendary foundation of two enduring features of Achehnese religious life: the universal observance of the feast of the Prophet’s birth (Mo’lot), and the cult of Tuan di Bitay as the patron of the cannon-casters.
According to the Achehnese tradition, when Acheh “began to grow powerful” in the sixteenth century, “one of the Sultans — we know not which — thought that the time had come to bring his kingdom to the notice of the lord of all believers, the Raja Rom, i.e. the Sultan of Turkey.” He caused one of his biggest ships to be laden with pepper as an offering of homage. At Stambul (Esentaniboy), “no one had ever heard of the existence of Acheh”, and the ambassadors, after exhausting their means by selling their pepper piecemeal, were at length espied by the Sultan himself among the crowd of spectators as he returned from the Friday mosque. He rebuked his officials for their foolish pride, granted the strangers an audience, and accepted the single chupa’ of pepper that remained of their cargo.
The Sultan of Turkey then “ordered a great cannon to be given them as a return present, and to this was given the name of Lada Sichupa’ (‘Pepper of a Chupa’). In compliance with their request he also gave them a number of skilled artisans from his kingdom to instruct their fellow-countrymen in various arts hitherto unknown to them.” A number of these instructors, who came from Syria, settled in a gampong close to the Dalam, “and in remembrance of their native land gave the village the name of Bitay (Ach. pronunciation of Betal, an abbreviation of Betal-makdis = Jerusalem).” In Bitay, the tomb of the saint Teungku di Bitay, “who according to the tradition belonged to this colony of strangers”, was revered down to Snouck Hurgronje’s own time.
The Sultan of Turkey further “considered it unbefitting to bind his new vassal to the regular despatch of embassies or tribute, since the great length of the journey presented too many difficulties.” In place of tribute, he prescribed the universal observance of the feast of the Prophet’s birth: “Let the faithful observance, said he, of a religious custom in your country take the place of the yearly payments which elsewhere constitute the mark of submission to a suzerain. The observance of the feast of Mohammad’s birth is among the most meritorious of works of devotion. So let there be no village in Acheh where the inhabitants do not publicly hold a Mo’lot feast: that shall be your tribute to the lord of the Faithful.” This legend, Snouck Hurgronje observes, is the Achehnese explanation of the fact that the Mo’lot feast has been “always so strictly observed in Acheh” — so strictly that in former times “the headman of a gampong who did not make provision in due time for the holding of this annual feast was fined by the uleebalang for neglect of duty.”
The historical kernel of the legend — the intercourse between Acheh and the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, and the introduction of new crafts, including the casting of cannon — is well attested from independent sources; the legend itself, with its circumstantial detail of the cannon’s name and its etymological explanation of Bitay, is “somewhat legendary” in Snouck Hurgronje’s view. The Ottoman connection is, however, the most tangible thread of Achehnese diplomacy with the wider Moslem world, and the figure of Teungku di Bitay remains the most enduring monument of that connection.
See Also
Source
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.