Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/158

 political meaning. According to this one of the early sultans succeeded in getting the ruling chiefs both in Acheh proper and the various dependencies to consent to a certain portion of their territories (usually 3 mukims) being severed from their control. The chief or chiefs of these smaller districts were thus brought directly under the sultan's rule and withdrawn from that of the ulèëbalangs.

It is said that the inhabitants of some of these wakeuëh-districts were bound to render certain services to the sultan on particular occasions. At the same time there is clear evidence that the institution of wakeuëh-districts was not due to the sultan's requiring labourers or servants. Their object was to possess within the sphere of each powerful ulèëbalang a territory of their own on which they could rely to give support to their efforts at centralization.

The inhabitants of such a district were required to refrain from taking any part in the incessant quarrels between great and small ulèëbalangs, to stand without and above parties, and to maintain a neutral field of observation and operation for their superior lord, who could appoint as chiefs of these districts persons in whom he reposed the greatest confidence. The word wakeuëh in the Achehnese vernacular represents more than one of the ideas just alluded to. That some truth lurks in the last mentioned political explanation may be gathered from certain features of the condition of the country as the Dutch found it at the commencement of the Achehnese war.

The district of the "III Mukims" par excellence, generally called Mukim Lhèë, and now officially known as the III Mukims Keureukōn, belonged to none of the three sagi of Acheh. Both the sagi of the XXVI and that of the XXII Mukims claimed that this district originally belonged to them, but both allowed that it had for a long time past been withdrawn from all connection with their Panglimas. The people of the "Mukims Three" were also well aware of this, though they acknowledged that they were ureuëng Tunòng, thus admitting the correctness of the assertion of the sagi of the XXII Mukims.

In the wars between the two above-named sagi, the Mukims III took part with neither side. The people of the latter thus removed the