Lam Seupeu’eng is one of the principal gampongs of Banda Acheh, named in The Achehnese among the cluster of fine and prosperous villages that, before the Dutch war, had formed the immediate hinterland of the Dalam — the residence of the Sultan of Acheh.
A Gampong of the Capital
The Dalam, which the Dutch incorrectly termed the Kraton and which was also known as Kuta Raja (“the king’s fort”) — a name improperly extended by Europeans to the whole capital — formed before the war the nucleus of a number of flourishing settlements. Their centre, with its mosque and market-place, was called Banda Acheh, “the capital or trading-mart of Acheh,” and gave the tone to the whole country in matters of custom, dress, and so forth. The most important of these gampongs, Snouck Hurgronje enumerates, were Gampong Jawa, Pande, Peunayong, Lam Bhu’, Lu’eng Bata, Lam Seupeu’eng, Ateung, Batoh and Meura’sa.
The Banda Acheh Civilization
The inhabitants of these and the neighbouring villages — together with their language and customs — were distinguished by the epithet banda, “town-bred” or “civilised.” It was from this circle of gampongs that the standards of dress, deportment and speech radiated outward to the lowland districts of Great Acheh. Families of standing in the Tunong (the interior) conformed as far as possible to the manners of the capital; in the more distant lowland districts, by contrast, the influence of Banda Acheh was scarcely traceable.
The inclusion of Lam Seupeu’eng in this privileged list indicates that the gampong was, in the late nineteenth century, a settlement of some substance, integrated into the market economy of the capital and sharing in the urbanised culture that set Banda Acheh apart from the rural mukims of the sagis. Beyond this single notice, Snouck Hurgronje does not describe Lam Seupeu’eng in detail; its importance for the ethnographer lies in its membership of the network of villages whose collective life constituted the social order of pre-war Banda Acheh.
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.