Krueng Blibeh (Achehnese Kruëng Blibëh) is a holy well in the IX Mukims of Great Acheh, mentioned in The Achehnese Vol. I as one of the natural objects credited with the power of bringing rain, and resorted to accordingly in the rain-making superstitions of the country.
The well is named in a footnote to Snouck Hurgronje’s account of the pantang (taboo) rules affecting the Achehnese sukeës or tribal confederacies. Illustrating the kind of sacred natural objects that form the centre of local vows and observances, the footnote groups together a number of parallel examples: “Ja Karieng, a dreaded tree on Pulo Lam Puyang, the subject of many vows; Eumpee Lulu, a mountain on the coast of the IV Mukims which plays a part in the rain-making superstition; Krueng Blibeh, a holy well in the IX Mukims, which also helps to cause rain; and so forth.” The list is intended to convey the kind of natural objects that attract vows and observances — trees, mountains, wells, and similar features of the landscape — without entering into the detailed ritual of each.
What distinguishes Krueng Blibeh in this list is its double character. It is at once a holy well — that is to say, a spring or water-hole venerated for its sanctity, perhaps from association with the memory of some saint or from a tradition of miraculous origin — and an instrument of the rain-making cult. The Achehnese, like other rice-growing peoples of the archipelago, were much concerned with the regularity of the rainfall, and a number of natural objects were credited with the power to bring on or to withhold the rain. The cult of such objects is essentially pre-Mohammedan in character, but — as with the pantang rules of the sukeës — it had been quietly absorbed into the popular Islam of the country and was practised without any sense of incongruity by devout Mohammedans.
The Achehnese word kruëng — “river” or “watercourse” — is the common designator of running water throughout the country’s nomenclature, and is applied alike to considerable rivers such as the Krueng Daroy and to lesser streams, springs, and wells. The application of the word to a well is a slight extension of its usage; the qualification by the place-name Blibeh serves to identify the well as a particular spot in the IX Mukims, a chiefdom whose chief uleebalang, Teuku Ne’ Peureuba Wangsa, was in Snouck’s time one of the two “grandfather” Ne’s of the sultan. The IX Mukims themselves belonged to the XXV Mukims sagi of Great Acheh, and the rain-making well of Krueng Blibeh thus lay in a country that was, in the late nineteenth century, one of the most actively contested theatres of the Achehnese War.
Additional account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Krueng Blibeh
Krueng Blibeh (Achehnese Kruëng Blibëh, also read in Snouck’s text as Eumpèe Blieng) is a holy well in the IX Mukims of Great Acheh, mentioned by Snouck Hurgronje in a footnote on the smaller kawoms whose memory survives in the rain-making superstitions of the Achehnese.
The Footnote on the Smaller Kawoms
In the course of his discussion of the Achehnese kawom — the agnatic clan-grouping whose political weight had once been considerable but had by the late nineteenth century much declined — Snouck notes that the constitution or appellation of some of the smaller kawoms appears to him not improbably to have been absorbed into local superstitions. “Compare Ja Kariéng, a dreaded tree on Pulo Lam Puyang, the subject of many vows; Eumpèe Luluh, a mountain on the coast of the IV Mukims which plays a part in the rain-making superstition; Eumpèe Blieng, a holy well in the IX Mukims, which also helps to cause rain, etc.”
The Achehnese word eumpèe — Snouck’s eumpèe in the printed text is, in the original, a slightly irregular form — is here glossed in the sense of “high place” or “elevated feature,” but its application to a well is unusual. The reference to a holy well places Krueng Blibeh in the same category of sacred water-sources as the better-known wells of the Mohammedan world: the Well of Zamzam at Mecca, the holy wells of the Hadramaut, and the numerous local springs which, in every part of the Indian Archipelago, were credited with miraculous properties.
The IX Mukims
The IX Mukims — the “Nine Mukims” — is a district of Great Acheh, lying in the highland sagi of the XXII or in the adjacent territory of the XXV. Snouck’s account of the IX Mukims places it among the smaller territorial divisions of the kingdom, and the holy well of Krueng Blibeh is one of the natural features by which the district was known to the Achehnese. The IX Mukims is also named elsewhere in The Achehnese in connection with the cultivation of padi, the institution of the imeum, and the political constitution of the sagis; the well of Krueng Blibeh is one of the small topographical facts by which the district is fixed in the Achehnese memory.
The Rain-Making Superstition
The rain-making observances attached to Krueng Blibeh are not described in detail by Snouck. The parallel with the mountain of the IV Mukims and the dreaded tree of Pulo Lam Puyang suggests that the well was the object of vows and small offerings, and that its water — or the act of drawing it — was believed to have the power of compelling the fall of rain. Such observances were, in Snouck’s time, already of the nature of survivals; their association with the half-forgotten names of small kawoms points to an age in which the kawom and the natural feature had been part of a single local cult, and the holy well of Krueng Blibeh is one of the small relics of that older order.
The Sacred Wells of the Achehnese
The holy well of Krueng Blibeh is one of a class of sacred water-sources which the Achehnese venerated alongside the tombs of their saints and the trees of their vows. The same chapter on the smaller kawoms which mentions Krueng Blibeh also mentions the Krueng Daroy — the river at the source of which the Habib Samalanga practised his tapa — and the Krueng Acheh — the principal river of the Achehnese lowlands. The three water-sources together — the well, the river of the tapa, and the great river of the plain — represent the principal forms in which the sacred water-geography of the Achehnese was constituted.
See Also
- IX Mukims
- Gunong Lhee
- Ja Karieng
- Pulo Lam Puyang
- Krueng Daroy
- Teuku Ne’ Peureuba Wangsa
- XXV Mukims
- Great Acheh
- Aceh River
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.