Teuku Panglima Polem’s Purse

The Dutch colonial wars in Southeast Asia had manuscripts as by-products. The subject of the present article is the content of the purse of Teuku Panglima Polem (d. 1940), an Acehnese leader during the final episode of the colonial war that the Dutch waged in Aceh, a staunch Muslim country in the Northern part of Sumatra. The captured purse was part of war booty in 1899. It contained a number of short Islamic texts, written in anyone of the three languages that at the time were in current use in Aceh: Acehnese, Malay and Arabic. It is, in fact, a small portable library. A full description of the purse’s contents is given and an attempt is made to offer an analysis of the texts that Panglima Polem carried on his person. Such documents were often considered as subversive by the colonial authorities. In an appendix, the author identifies a considerable number Islamic manuscripts in the Leiden collection with similar provenances.