Poelo Breuëh (also Poelau Bras; modern Pulau Breueh or Pulau Bras) is the island off the north-western coast of Groot-Atjeh in Atjeh on which — or, more precisely, on the nearby islet of Rabò — the inhabitants of the VI Moekim’s of Groot-Atjeh held, in the period documented by Snouck Hurgronje, an annual seven-day feast on the beach, the seventh day of which culminated in the ritual sacrifice of a buffalo that was first stabbed and then led bleeding over all the rice-fields so that none should miss the disaster-averting sprinkling of its blood. The island is named in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (p. 246) in connection with this Rabò sacrifice, cited from Snouck Hurgronje’s Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers ([[1893-94)|De Atjehers]] (vol. II, p. 315).
In De Karbouw
The Poelo Breuëh passage in De Karbouw (p. 246) runs:
“Op het nabij Poelo Breuëh (Poelau Bras) gelegen eilandje Rabò in Groot-Atjeh plegen de bewoners der VI Moekim’s elk jaar aan het strand een zevendaags feest te geven. De zevende dag van deze „kermis der losbandigheid” offert men een buffel, die eerst in een of ander lichaamsdeel gestoken en dan bloedend over alle rijstvelden wordt heengeleid ‘opdat geen daarvan de onheilwerende besproeiing met zijn bloed misse.’ Daarna slacht men het dier op rituele wijze en nuttigt zijn vlees. Het verzuim hiervan zou een jaar van misgewas tengevolg hebben.” The passage locates Poelo Breuëh as the parent island of which Rabò is an islet, and identifies it as the locus of the annual buffalo-sacrifice feast of the VI Moekim’s of Groot-Atjeh — the federation of six mukim (Islamic administrative units) that formed the territorial core of the Groot-Atjeh heartland. The feast is described as a kermis der losbandigheid (carnival of debauchery) lasting seven days, with the buffalo-sacrifice on the seventh day as its ritual climax; neglect of the rite is said to result in a year of crop failure (misgewas).
Historical-geographical context
Poelo Breuëh is the largest of a small archipelago of islands off the north-western coast of Atjeh — the same island group that includes Rabò (the islet specifically named in De Karbouw as the site of the feast) and a number of smaller islets. The islands lie at the northern entrance to the Strait of Malacca and have, accordingly, a long history of strategic and commercial significance; they figure repeatedly in the Dutch and British navigational and military literature on Atjeh. The VI Moekim’s whose inhabitants held the annual Rabò feast were the federation of six mukim that formed, with the XXII Moekim’s and other Atjehnese mukim-federations, the territorial-administrative structure of the Atjehnese state on the eve of the Dutch conquest.
Significance
Poelo Breuëh’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history is as the parent island of Rabò, the islet on which the annual buffalo-sacrifice feast of the VI Moekim’s of Groot-Atjeh was held — a documented instance of the wider Atjehnese pattern of bebloeding (ritual blood-sprinkling) of rice-fields as a disaster-averting magical act, performed here on a grand scale as a seven-day carnival with a buffalo-sacrifice at its climax. The island also figures in the wider Dutch and British navigational and military literature on Atjeh by virtue of its position at the northern entrance to the Strait of Malacca.
Sources
De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), p. 246.
De Atjehers, by C. Snouck Hurgronje, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1893-94), vol. II, p. 315. 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. De Kleine Oosterling — Iets uit de Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indië. Leesboekje voor de Lagere Scholen, door J. Wijma, Tweede Druk (Kampen: Laurens van Hulst, 1901), Les 38 (“Een nieuwe stad”). Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 263–264, 273. The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), pp. 147–149 (copper in Sumatra, Fig. 33 key, with the Atjeh localities).
Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)
Poelò Breuëh (Pulau Breueh) was the island off the north-west point of Atjeh where, immediately after the Dutch intervention of 1873, the establishments for the security of shipping were built — coal sheds, provision magazines and the lighthouse officially named Willemstoren by authority of King Willem III — and where the stranded crew of the Nisero had intended to take in coal in November 1883.
The Willemstoren and the establishments
The measures to erect a lighthouse on Poelò Breuëh were taken because such a beacon had been desired for the safety of the approach to the Strait of Malakka ever since steam navigation to the Indies had so considerably increased through the digging of the Suez Canal. On a height of 126 metres above the sea the tower arose — reached by a road laid through densely overgrown and difficult ground — 37 metres high, carrying a light-apparatus whose beams, 163.5 metres above the sea, were visible over a distance of 32 English nautical miles. With authority of King Willem III the name “Willemstoren” was given to the beacon. The personnel appointed for the light service on the island had initially to be relieved every month; only when the personnel had grown more accustomed to the climate was that term set wider. The unhealthiness there was in part ascribed to the forest-fellings and earth-shiftings done in the interest of the work, which laid the island bare to the rapid changes of temperature. At first the medical service on the island was performed by the surgeons of the warships stationed in the Lambalé bay, but in August 1874 a civil physician was appointed, and in December 1874 it was determined that the island would regularly be called at by the mail steamers running to and from Atjeh.
Shipping and trades
Ship-building was practised principally on Poelò Breuëh and on Simaloer, according to the economic survey the Government ordered from 1893 onward; and it was toward Poelò Breuëh that Captain Woodhouse of the English steamer Nisero, coming with a cargo of sugar from Soerabaja and bound for Suez, attempted to make for coaling in stormy weather, when in the night of 10–11 November 1883 his ship grounded on the West Coast at the mouth of the Panga river (see Nisero affair (1883-1884)).
See Also
- Bebloeding (rituele bebloeding)
- Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje
- Groot-Atjeh
- Kreemer’s De Karbouw (1956)
- Rabò annual seven-day feast
- Rabò
- Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers ([[1893-94)]]
- VI Moekim’s of Groot-Atjeh
- Acheh
- Acheh proper
- Pulo Batee
- Pulo We
- Burong Srabi
- De Kleine Oosterling
- Westkust van Atjeh
- Singkel
- Atjeh War
- Capture of the Kraton (24 January 1874)
- 1874
- Oeleh Leh
- Generaal Wiggers van Kerchem
- Generaal Pel
- Atjeh-rivier
- Kwala Atjeh
- Zeehoofd
- Aer Si Hajo
- Aer Talu
- Aloe Baru
- B. B. Lindberg
- Beutong
- Copper in Atjeh
- Gle Broë
- H. Wolvekamp
- P. J. J. Jansen
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1922
- Pulo Breueh
- Poelò We
- Sabang
- Nisero affair (1883-1884)
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 29–30, 32–33, 54, 67.