Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/133

 should apply the adat as well as the hukōm, and on this account gave him, in contradistinction to the "judges of the Almighty Lord" in the three sagis, the title of "judge of the righteous king". In fact it is in this way that the difference in nomenclature can be best explained.

Whether the sultan who established the office in question wished at the same time to endow his own judge with a measure of supremacy over the other three chief kalis, remains uncertain. We only know that if such a scheme existed, nothing came of it. In the first place the great independence of the three sagis would have resisted any such attempt, and in practice a higher appeal from the sentences of the "judges of the Almighty Lord," to the royal court of justice would have miscarried owing to sundry insurmountable difficulties. But besides this the office of "judges of the righteous King" very quickly deteriorated, until in the end it retained nothing more than the title indicative of its origin.

Various causes combined to bring about this deterioration. First the hereditary nature of the office which did not of course endure that the heir should be as learned as his predecessor; then the residence of the holder of the title in the immediate neighbourhood of the court, by which he gained a favourable opportunity of having his office converted into a sort of ulèëbalangship, the end and aim of all Achehnese office-bearers; and lastly the rapid decay of the central power, by which various offices created during the brief period of prosperity lost the reason for their further existence.

Even in the later edicts, which always more or less idealize facts, we find the Kali Malikōn Adé represented as a distinguished courtier, a sort of master of court ceremonies, to whom a fixed portion of the harbour dues was assigned. He became what was called ulèëbalang pòten, "ulèëbalang of our lord" (the sultan), equal in rank to the almost independent provincial chiefs, with all the worldly pretension appertaining to their rank, but without territory. The official title of Teuku which he bore and still bears, points unequivocally to the complete secularization of his office.

Finally one of the holders of this title, making use of the special favour of the prince towards him and of the weakness of the then