Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/155



Our description of the political system of the Achehnese has made it apparent that the "Sultan of Acheh" is far from being an indispensable element therein. Yet so far back as the sources of history extend, Acheh has always had her kings. In the official (Malay) documents the king is called sultan. The Achehnese, however, term him raja Acheh and also call him pòten (= "our lord") in the third person, and in the second harab meulia, sometimes pronounced haram lia (lit. "may splendour be thy portion"; but the expression has obtained the force of a title and is used to signify "Your Majesty"). The affirmative answer to a question, command or remark of the sultan is dèëlat (i. e. daulat, prosperity or happiness).

In the introduction we have already learned in a general way the true significance of these port-kings in the history of the country of which they are the nominal rulers. There is nothing to justify us in regarding the condition of misrule in which we find the country as the ruins of a past well-ordered government. Even the demands made on the ulèëbalangs by the port-kings in the most flourishing period of their rule, the second half of the 16$th$ and first half of the 17$th$ century were extremely moderate and bear witness partly to the want of power on the part of these princes to control the government of the interior and partly to the small interest they seem to have taken in any such interference. Even the edicts ascribed by general consensus to Meukuta Alam (1607–36) confine themselves within very narrow limits, although that prince had at his command a considerable fleet and a small standing army. Besides, these documents are not evidence of a state of things that ever actually existed, but simply the expression of the wishes of the king and his councillors as to what they would see carried out. It was enough for the successive Sultans to have immunity from annoyance at the hands of the numerous potentates of the interior, and this object they easily gained by the means that lay beneath their hand.

The portion of the lowlands which they governed directly as their actual domain was not very extensive, and even this small territory