Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/162

 restored to power. When the Nantas were expelled, the Dutch Government appointed as Chief Teuku Raja Itam, a son of the Teuku Nèʾ who was ulèëbalang of Meuraʾsa at the beginning of the Dutch operations in Acheh].

A teacher of celebrity, Teungku Hamba Alah whose tomb in the mukim of Silang is still revered as a holy place, exercised during his life a powerful influence on the people of the XXVI Mukims. The panglima of that sagi, whether from respect for his learning or in order to neutralize his influence, made over to him the government 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 ulèëbalangship of the "XIII Mukims Tungkōb" 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 Tungkōb.

To take one or two further examples from the dependencies, the title Teuku Hakim borne by one of the three chiefs in the upper part of Daya points to the fact that its bearer was originally charged with the administration of justice; but within the memory of man he who holds this title has been nothing more than an ordinary datōʾ, as the adat chiefs are generally called on the West Coast. The Pangulèë Sidéʾ of Meulabōh, who who was undoubtedly at one time an official under the chief of that place, charged with the task of making judicial enquiries, is now in fact no more than headman of Pulò U (vulg. Simalur).

So little control had the Sultans of Acheh over the course of events, that whatever may have been their purpose in establishing these various offices, the latter became in a short time part and parcel of the indigenous institutions of the country, or else disappeared altogether.

The portion of the port-king's supremacy which survived longest was a kind of lordship exercised over the neighbouring seas and harbours, and this it is in which we must seek the true significance of the sultanate from the very commencement. With the shortlived period of prosperity ended all such glorious expeditions as those undertaken in the 17$th$ century against Malacca and Pahang, but the bold seafarers and pirates of Acheh continued to make themselves dreaded along the coasts of Sumatra and among the surrounding islands. The monopoly of trade claimed by the great sultans could in the end no longer be