147
Before the Dutch gained possession of the Dalam, the sultan had disappeared from the scene. During the subsequent course of the conflict, it was always separate and independent bodies of troops, led either by adat-chiefs or by some newly-arisen commanders of energetic personality, that turned their arms against the invaders through their own impulse or to advance their own interests. Thus the most powerful compulsion from without could produce no union in Acheh, utterly broken up as she was. The sole individual who succeeded during the first portion of the war in organizing the forces to a comparatively high degree was an ambitious and skilful foreigner, Sayyid Abdurrahman Zahir by name.
When Sultan Mahmut Shah died shortly after the loss of the Dalam, it was not thought necessary even in so perilous a crisis to select from among the candidates for the succession to the throne a man before all things. They contented themselves with a child, Tuanku Muhamat Dawōt; and though his guardian Tuanku Asém (Hashim) was a man of royal blood most bitterly hostile to the Dutch Government, even he preferred to watch the contest with interest from a distance rather than himself to take a serious share in it, much less to enter the lists as a leader.
The Sultanate after the taking of the Dalam.When once the fugitive "court" had found a safe place of refuge in Pidië territory, far removed from the theatre of the conflict, the condition of the sultanate became very much the same as it had been before the war, the scene alone being changed.
The young sultan, gradually emerging from childhood, soon showed that he aspired to something very different from sharing the weal or woe of his country as leader of the contest against the Gōmpeuni. True to the traditions of his house, he sought and still seeks diversion in lawful and unlawful love, drink, fiddling, fights of animals, gambling and the pursuit of elephant and deer. His letters to the Achehnese chiefs still always commence with the solemn admonition continually to remember "Allah, his Messenger, the departed sovereigns and ourselves;" and this last reminder takes tangible form in the latter portion of these letters in a request to forward a certain sum of money or some costly merchandise.
The ulèëbalangs and chiefs of the dependencies held only just so much intercourse with the "court" as their own inclination dictated. The edicts whereby some among them are confirmed as holders of
