The XIII Mukims Tungkob — the “Thirteen Mukims of Tungkob”, a subdivision of the Sagi of the XXVI Mukims of Acheh — is, in The Achehnese, the hereditary appanage of the Teuku Imeum Tungkob line of uleebalangs. The district and its chief illustrate the way in which a religious foundation of the sultans could, in course of time, be transformed into an ordinary hereditary chieftainship.
The origin of the XIII Mukims Tungkob, Snouck Hurgronje explains, lay in a grant by a sultan who “made over to a certain teungku the supervision of thirteen of his mukims and let him enforce Allah’s law there to his heart’s content. Circumstances favoured the efforts of his descendants to retain this control, and thus the hereditary uleebalangship of the ‘XIII Mukims Tungkob’ became established without any distinctively religious character, so that the later bearers of the title have exchanged the religious dignity of Teungku for the worldly one of Teuku Imeum Tungkob.” The transformation of a religious delegate into a temporal chief was, in this case, complete; the title Teuku Imeum preserved only a fossil memory of the original imamic character of the office.
Teuku Imeum Tungkob is described by Snouck Hurgronje as “to this day a powerful chief in the XXVI Mukims”, and is listed among the principal uleebalangs who, in the native adat enumeration, were reckoned among the “twelve uleebalangs, who appoint and dethrone princes.” For the XXVI sagi, the four chiefs in this enumeration are the panglima sagi, Teuku Ateue’ (chief of the IV Mukims), Teuku Imeum Tungkob and one other. Snouck Hurgronje warns, however, that this list “at most represents the conditions that existed during a short period” and that the number twelve is “the product of the Achehnese predilection for round numbers”; the real balance of power in each sagi shifted over time, and the formal enumeration does not necessarily reflect the actual preponderance of the chiefs at any given moment.
The XIII Mukims Tungkob thus exemplify, in Vol. I, the typical Achehnese process by which religious or court offices, originally conferred by the sultan, became hereditary in particular families and eventually lost their original character. The Teuku Imeum Tungkob’s authority in the XXVI Mukims was a survival of this process: the chief of a religious delegation that had hardened, in the course of generations, into an hereditary temporal lordship, distinct alike from the panglima sagi and from the other uleebalangs of the confederation.
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.