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was in a great measure withdrawn from their direct control in the period of their decline. Some few gampōngs, peopled for the most part by strangers or servants or slaves of the sultan, remained subject to the private lordship of the rajas, but the major portion of the territory adjoining the Dalam, about 24 gampōngs in all, was administered by a Panglima as an appurtenance of the principal mosque (Meuseugit Raya). The office of Panglima Meuseugit Raya was hereditary, and thus soon came to be distinguished from an ordinary ulèëbalangship only through the name and proximity of the Dalam.
The ambitious efforts of Teuku Kali Malikōn Adé towards the acquisition of a territory which would make him an ulèëbalang in the full sense of the word, were crowned with success at a favourable moment, and he wrested from the weak Panglima Meuseugit Raya the half of his territory, twelve gampongs on the right bank of the Acheh river.
How little these two ulèëbalangs can be recognized as simply servants of the sultan, may be judged from the fact that they occasionally made war on one another. The sultan helped first one and then the other with money and munitions of war, and his followers were to be found in both the rival camps. When a dispute arose as to the succession to the throne the Panglima Meuseugit Raya and the Teuku Kali Malikōn Adé usually espoused opposite sides.
Besides this special territory of the sultans, which quickly dwindled to such slender proportions, Achehnese tradition notices an important means adopted by the earlier sultans for strengthening their internal authority, namely the institution of wakeuëh lands[1].
Wakeuëh lands.Wakeuëh (wakap in Javanese, Malay and Sundanese) is the Arabic waqf. This last word signifies property withdrawn in perpetuity by its owner from all alienation, and devoted to some object permitted by the Moslim law. Wakeuëh is known to the Achehnese also in this sense; they use it especially to denote things the use or proceeds of which are devoted by the original owners to the purposes of a mosque,
- ↑ It is impossible to fix the exact time when this institution was first established. Sundry kindred institutions are undoubtedly assigned to too late an epoch by Van Langen in his Atjehsch Staatsbestuur pp. 405 seqq. The great antiquity of wakeuëh appears from the fact that the peculiar position of the people of the Mukim Lhèë or the III Mukims Keureukōn may be directly traced to it, though the original intention was never attained. Besides, it could only have originated at a time when the sultans still exercised considerable power.
