REINTERPRETING WAR LITERARY TEXTS AS A MODEL CONFLICT MITIGATION AND GLOBAL PEACE EDUCATION: A HERMENEUTIC STUDY OF ACEHNESE WAR HIKAYAT

War-related literary texts are often interpreted narrowly as narratives that legitimize violence and glorify armed struggle. In the Acehnese context, Hikayat-Hikayat Perang have long been positioned as texts of resistance and warfare, resulting in limited scholarly attention to their potential role in peace-building discourse. This study aims to reinterpret Acehnese war hikayat as a model for conflict mitigation and global peace education by uncovering their deeper moral, ethical, and sociocultural dimensions. Employing a qualitative hermeneutic approach, this research analyzes selected Acehnese war hikayat through close textual reading and contextual interpretation to examine how narratives of conflict simultaneously construct values of restraint, moral responsibility, collective ethics, and reconciliation. The findings reveal that, beyond their overt depictions of war, these texts embed strategies of conflict mitigation such as moral persuasion, social negotiation, spiritual reflection, and ethical boundaries of violence. These elements indicate that Acehnese war hikayat function not merely as instruments of mobilization but also as cultural texts that encode peace-oriented knowledge grounded in local wisdom. This study contributes theoretically by expanding the interpretation of war literature within peace and conflict studies and practically by proposing Acehnese war hikayat as alternative pedagogical resources for global peace education. By repositioning traditional war narratives within a framework of conflict mitigation, this research demonstrates the relevance of local literary heritage in addressing contemporary global challenges related to social conflict and peace-building.