This article discusses representations of religious practice and authority in Acehnese epics (hikayats) from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth century. In this period, I argue, a paradigmatic shift took place from an understanding of Islam as grounded in a cosmological model of divine kingship to an individualized and reflexive Muslim ethics. To explain this shift, it is necessary to take into consideration three transformative processes, namely the gradual decline of royal power, the integration of the rural interior in the globalizing economy and the emergence in rural areas of religious teachers (ulama) as a new and influential social group. The hikayats were one of several genres that articulated a new sense of religious individuality. Compared to other textual forms, however, these works had a relatively wide reach, raising important questions about the representation and transformation of religious personhood, in Aceh and in Muslim Southeast Asia more broadly.
Hikayat is a word of Arabic origin that is commonly translated into English as “story” or “romance.” Containing myths and stories about prophets, kings and heroes, these texts constitute a specific genre within the Malay-Indonesian literary tradition. Unlike kitab (“books”), the theological tracts written by and for a specialised scholarly elite, the hikayats were not meant to be read or studied. Rather, they were recited or sung, requiring a narrative structure and, in some cases, a meter. In Aceh, the hikayats covered a somewhat broader terrain, incorporating not just worldly romances and religious legends but also down-to-earth moral lessons and manuals.Footnote 1 Another special feature is that, while Malay language hikayats were usually set in prose, the Acehnese literary tradition is set, almost entirely, in verse.Footnote 2 So far, scholarly attention for the Acehnese hikayats has come mostly from the fields of philology and literary studies, and their potential as a historical source has remained to be largely unfulfilled.Footnote 3
I start this article with a brief consideration of the place of the hikayats in Southeast Asian historiography and the ways in which these works represent both views of the past and visions of the future. I then proceed to discuss four major epics. The seventeenth century (Malay-language) Hikayat Aceh is a hagiographic description of the life and rule of Sultan Iskandar Muda. The (Acehnese-language) Hikayat Malem Dagang and Hikayat Pocut Muhamat were composed between the late-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, a period in which Acehnese royal power was in sharp decline. The Hikayat Prang Sabil, finally, is a prominent example of the Acehnese war literature that emerged in the late nineteenth century.Footnote 4 I conclude by placing the Acehnese epic tradition in a broader context of literary genres expressing attitudes of religious individuality.
Versions of the past, visions of the future
In recent years, the hikayats have gradually overcome their status as (mere) “legends” to become a source for studying communal identities. Three decades ago, Virginia Matheson analysed the ways in which indigenous Malay writings represented changing ideas about the meaning of “being Malay.”Footnote 5 In subsequent years, historians increasingly turned to indigenous literary traditions (typically in combination with other types of sources) to study the construction of ethnicities or religious communities.Footnote 6 An important question, in this regard, concerns the relationship between the content of these works, their function and the historical context in which they were produced. In his ground-breaking work on Malay literature, Vladimir Braginsky distinguished, analytically, between three “functional spheres,” namely beauty, benefit, and spiritual perfection.Footnote 7 What made the hikayats into a particularly powerful genre, he argued, was the fact that, like the narrative poems known as syair, they incorporated all three functions.
Another important aspect of the hikayat genre concerns its moral, or edifying component. In recent years, various works have been analysed (or reanalysed) in order to demonstrate the ways in which indigenous epics emphasized a social or moral order, or the ways in which these works taught listeners/readers how to be, or become, part of a particular (ethnic, religious or political) community.Footnote 8 One of the central issues is the composition of the audience. While it is quite common to speak of court literature, Southeast Asian oral traditions did not just serve courtly elites. Audiences probably included a range of social classes, from workers in court environments to ordinary villagers. These audiences, though illiterate in the technical sense of the term, were all practiced listeners.Footnote 9 In Java, the recitation of poetic works was a common feature of village ritual events, a practice facilitated by the literate environments of religious schools (pesantren).Footnote 10 We know less about Aceh, but it is plausible that the emerging climate of learning centred on the networks of local religious teachers contributed to the dissemination of popular literature at village level. More generally, it may be assumed that literary performances strengthened the role of religious institutions (such as mosques and local prayer houses, but also Sufi orders, and, from the nineteenth century onwards, the institutions known today as dayah, or religious schools) in connecting the social spaces of courts and villages.Footnote 11
In Aceh in the nineteenth century, the recitation of hikayats was one of the most common forms of group relaxation, appreciated both for its educational value and as popular entertainment, enjoyed “by the chiefs and by the petty people, by old and young of both sexes.”Footnote 12 At the same time, the practice may have been regarded, by reciters and listeners alike, as a form of worship.Footnote 13 The reason for my focus on epics is that these works deal explicitly with Acehnese history and society (unlike, for example, the stories set in Arabia around the time of the Prophet or the mythical or romantic tales about faraway lands). This makes them into a particularly suitable source for studying the dynamic relationship between evolving literary styles and the social and political contexts in which these works emerged. Different expressions of religious practice and authority in the Acehnese hikayats reflect changes in the genre as much as they reflect changes in Acehnese society. This makes it pertinent, as I will do in the sections to follow, to read these texts alongside other historical sources and secondary materials.
While it is impossible to assess in any reliable way the level of correspondence between the moral messages contained in the hikayats and the life worlds of ordinary Acehnese living in the past, elements of style and content do give us some information about the moral repertoires available (and interesting) to people in different periods. My main conceptual guide, in this respect, is Nancy Florida’s monumental work on the Babad Jaka Tingkir (“The Story of Jaka Tingkir”), a long “forgotten” Javanese epic poem composed in the nineteenth century by an anonymous author residing at the court of Surakarta (Solo). Like the Acehnese language hikayats, this poem was set in an indigenous sung meter. Essentially a work of history, providing a description and interpretation of Java around the turn of the sixteenth century, it also functioned as a “prophetic script for the future,” produced “with an eye toward its own potential future readings” and suggesting “alternative futures” for the present.Footnote 14 Florida’s work inspires my attempts to read against the grain of popular, sometimes highly politicised, indigenous interpretations of Acehnese history, as well as a Western historiography that has tended to reify these representations. Like Florida, I do not intend to reproduce, on the basis of the hikayats, a particular period or episode in Acehnese history. Rather, I have tried to scrutinize these works for clues about the relationship between religious practice and authority and (the representation of) religious experience, in the context of both contemporary changes and morally inspired aspirations for the future.
My approach also carries resemblance to the ways in which Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman have read Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit texts. In their work on a poetic tradition known as cātu, they distinguish between the “recorded text—the fixed work in its entirety, in set sequence—and the received text, that is, the living work quoted, excerpted, sung, and selectively commented upon by the community that uses it.” The cātu were a form of communication of knowledge and ideas. They were also, however, a “creation of the community,” circulating in and (partially) constitutive of, “a premodern cultural public space.”Footnote 15 It seems reasonable to assume that the hikayats had a similar function. Equally relevant for my purposes is the emphasis placed by Narayana Rao and Shulman, especially in the works they co-authored with Sanjay Subrahmanyam, on the use of literary genres as historical sources and the role played by indigenous literature in the development of vernacular historiographies.Footnote 16
The Acehnese epics were not an isolated tradition. They were part of the literary networks that facilitated the complex, elongated and uneven processes of Islamic conversion in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, involving, in the words of Ronit Ricci, “shared texts, including stories, poems, genealogies, histories, and treatises on a broad range of topics, as well as the readers, listeners, authors, patrons, translators, and scribes who created, translated, supported and transmitted them.”Footnote 17 Like Ricci, I see these texts as “dynamic sites of interaction, contestation, and the negotiation of boundaries.”Footnote 18 However, in contrast to Ricci’s work, which focuses on transoceanic connections and practices of translation, this article explores the relationship between literary expressions and the social and political contexts in which they first emerged.
Affirmation of a moral order
Around the turn of the seventeenth century, Aceh was the political and cultural leader of the Malay world, both superior in a military sense and authoritative in terms of scholarly and literary production.Footnote 19 Aceh’s rise to power resulted from a combination of revived Indian Ocean trade, control over pepper-producing regions in Sumatra and the Malay peninsula and the conquest of rivals (particularly Johor in 1564).Footnote 20 In 1525, the incorporation of the kingdom of Pasai on the Sumatran north coast led the rulers of Aceh to legitimise their position on the basis of an Islamic model of kingship, fashioned in turn after the great Islamic empires to the west (the Mughals, the Savafids and the Ottomans). In the course of the sixteenth century, a centralised political system was developed, based on an intricate (and increasingly splendid) court and Islamic doctrine as its ideological principle.Footnote 21
The Acehnese sultan was a principal among equals, who emanated (typically) from a class of rich traders known as orangkaya (literally “rich men”). The orangkaya upheld the relationship between the centre and the interior, operating either from Banda Aceh (the seat of the sultanate) or from other, smaller ports. Some held military titles, such as uleebalang or panglima, a practice modelled on examples in the Muslim world, notably the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal dynasty in South Asia.Footnote 22 They were integrated in the state administrative structure through a royal seal, the sarakata, which legitimised their privileged position, but also tied them to the sultan as vassals, obliging them to pay revenues in times of peace, military service in times of war, and, increasingly, services as officers of the state. The relationship between the sultan and the orangkaya was ambiguous, however. Although the sultan depended on the nobility to rule, he also competed with them over commercial interests. This was not a fair competition, for the sultan was able to use his military power to create monopolies, particularly in the lucrative pepper trade.Footnote 23
Although we have several descriptions of Banda Aceh in the seventeenth century, we know very little about the social organisation of rural areas.Footnote 24 It is sometimes assumed that the sultanate imprinted on its subjects a strict Islamic normative code. According to the French commander Beaulieu, who authored the most detailed account of the port city, a sophisticated system of Islamic law did indeed exist.Footnote 25 However, his only reference to the interior is that “principal orangkaya” were responsible for “[ordering] a watch of two hundred horse that patrols every night in the country and along the shore.” It is unclear to what extent the sultan and the orangkaya controlled activities in smaller port cities, let alone the interior. Beaulieu mentioned that the orangkaya presided personally over their province or country-district, “where [they] give orders, and [administer] justice to the inhabitants,” but there are no other sources to confirm or elaborate this point.Footnote 26 While the judicial system thus functioned to maintain order in a bustling and increasingly complex confluence of people and commodities, there is neither evidence to support that this system reached far beyond the confines of the city, nor reason to believe that its establishment caused a uniform, or evenly spread process of “Islamisation.”
Indigenous sources from this period present the sultans as patrons of a just (adil) society, who presided over a system of laws and norms based on an amalgam of Islamic (scriptural) law and local customs (adat) and promoted Islam by upholding a relationship with the wider Islamic world.Footnote 27 The court actively attracted scholars from other parts of the world to study and teach Islamic subjects, such as law, jurisprudence and mysticism.Footnote 28 A central element in this culture of learning was the attachment to an ideal of divine kingship, which was reminiscent of a pre-Islamic past and infused by a dominant strand of Islamic mysticism commonly referred to as “monistic theosophy,” or the model of the “Perfect Man” (al-insan al-kamil).Footnote 29 The divine kingship model presented the king as a magical figure, positioned at the centre of a cosmological order and commanding the right, power, and moral qualities to govern his subjects as an absolute ruler.Footnote 30 Stories and chronicles were an important medium for reproducing and disseminating this model.
The Hikayat Aceh is different from earlier court chronicles, such as the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai (“The Story of the Kings of Pasai”) or the Taj al-Salatin (“The Crown of Kings”), in the sense that it discusses the life of a single person, Sultan Iskandar Muda (r. 1607–36). Although “Malay” in composition, the text represents an older hagiographic tradition fashioned mainly after Persian examples.Footnote 31 It was probably commissioned by Iskandar Muda’s daughter, Sultana Safiyyat al-Din Syah (r.1641–1675), who, in the words of Braginsky, was “badly in need of a great and glorious ancestor to enhance her right to [the throne].”Footnote 32 The first part deals with the mythological roots of the dynasty. The remainder concentrates on the life of Iskandar Muda himself (designated as Johan Alam, Alam Syiah or Perkasa Alam, all variations on “Ruler of the World”), giving special attention to his birth, the defining episodes of his youth, and the various signals and omens that give meaning to these events.Footnote 33 The Hikayat Aceh depicts him as a natural ruler, one of the “two great Islamic kings” in the world, the other one being the Ottoman sultan.Footnote 34
In the Hikayat Aceh, religious knowledge and practice are a matter of the elect. When Johan Alam is eleven years old, he leaves the palace (Dar ad-Dunia, “House of the World”) to play. Immediately a surge of poor people emerges (segala fakir dan segala miskin terlalu banyak berduyun) who ask the boy for alms. When Johan Alam learns about their poverty, he gives them money and food. He then goes on to visit a family member. On the doorstep he is approached by an old fakih (“ascetic,” or “knowledgeable person”), called Malik al-Amin, who crosses a river to greet him. Johan Alam notices that the old man’s clothes are still dry and expresses his worry that he has crossed the river naked. The fakih laughs and answers: “Praise God, nothing unusual can still escape from the attention of My Lord. This is yet another of many signs that My Lord is a representative of God (wali Allah).” Johan Alam invites the man to sit next to him. A company of officials arrives (including the syahbandar and the syarif), together with a congregation “of all those who know how to chant the praise of God (segala jemaah yang tahu zikir Allah).” They chant for three hours, after which Johan Alam and his company return to the palace, on the backs of their elephants and horses, accompanied by the people who sing and make music. The story concludes that this episode in the life of Johan Alam constitutes “a signal of greatness from God and a sign that God will endow Johan Alam the status of Caliph.”Footnote 35
In another story, Johan Alam miraculously learns the core tenets of Islamic knowledge at the age of thirteen. He is apprenticed by his father to the fakih Indera Purbo. “As a consequence of fate (maka dengan takdir Allah),” Johan Alam masters the Quran and the kitab in a very short time. The fakih, who is promptly elevated to the rank of Kadi Malik al-Adil (“The Just King’s Judge”), tells the prince: “My lord, we, your servants, are all astonished to see His Excellency the prince become a learned person (alim) in just a few months. Even in the land of Mecca and Medina, and among the children of the mufti, there is not one person like Your Excellency the Prince. Thus, we all speak of Your Excellency the Prince as our great sovereign and majesty (daulatnya dan saadatnya).”Footnote 36
Although Iskandar Muda is remembered until this day as one of Aceh’s greatest leaders, he also left his realm in deep turmoil. A series of futile military excursions to Malacca and a strategy of relatively tight domestic control over agriculture and trade had exhausted the interior.Footnote 37 As a result, the first years of Safiyyat al-Din’s rule were marked by social and economic crisis.Footnote 38 In the meantime, the monistic thought at the basis of the divine kingship model came under the attack of a radical, and in the long run extremely influential strand of reformist theology.Footnote 39 It is no surprise, then, that in this period of upheaval a text appeared with a politically conservative message. The Hikayat Aceh, it appears, was composed to help safeguard political stability in the face of an uncertain future. It emphasises the ruler’s supernatural qualities, while paying due respect, at the same time, to religious scholars, Sufis and sayids (descendents of the Prophet), whose judgements in return confirmed and predicted his future greatness.Footnote 40 It offers a moral message, not in terms of commands or recommendations, but through a confirmation of the relationship between rulers and ruled, and the establishment of Islamic norms on the basis of a predetermined and unchangeable cosmological order.
Responsibility and consequence as ethical categories
During the second half of the seventeenth century, Acehnese power declined. The incursions of the Dutch VOC (particularly the conquest of Portuguese Malacca in 1641) and the revival of Aceh’s main rival Johor damaged Aceh’s position in the Straits trade. Under Safiyyat al-Din, the politics of exhaustive military expansionism and the costly glitter and glamour of the court were abandoned.Footnote 41 By the end of the century, the area controlled directly by the sultan had shrunk to the northern tip of Sumatra. In the wake of receding opportunities for overseas trade, both the sultan and the orangkaya turned to the interior, where they tried to secure their wealth by levying, in the words of the English traveller Thomas Forrest, the “land and industry of [its] inhabitants.”Footnote 42 In the course of this process, the power of the sultan vis-à-vis the orangkaya was gradually reduced.
Political fragmentation continued in the eighteenth century. In 1699, the forced abdication of Aceh’s fourth queen in a row, Kamalat Zainat al-Din Syah, signified the end of a long period of female rule and the beginning of a relatively unstable period of foreign rule, in which sultans succeeded each other rapidly.Footnote 43 In 1726, Sultan Jamal al-Alam Badr al-Munir, the last of a brief dynasty of Arab sultan-sayids, was overthrown by the Bugis leader Sultan Ala al-Din Ahmad Syah, the progenitor of all subsequent Acehnese sultans until the Dutch abolished the institution in 1903.Footnote 44 The decline of royal power notwithstanding, Banda Aceh remained an important port.Footnote 45 The rural interior, however, experienced a significant social restructuring. The central regulation of long distance trade was surpassed by the regional trade in cash crops. The latter was supervised by territorial chiefs, who increasingly positioned themselves as autocrats. Although remaining, formally, vassals of the sultan, their political authority was based on local connections, which tied them to the clan-like forms of organization adopted by the communities that inhabited their territories. Previously uninhabited areas on the east and west coasts were opened up by enterprising chiefs for cash crop cultivation (particularly pepper), leading large Acehnese speaking (migrant) communities to emerge in these places.Footnote 46 At the same time, Aceh changed from a rice-importing to a rice-producing area.Footnote 47
Decentralisation and political fragmentation were accompanied by social change. In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a three-way divide emerged between the royal court, the so-called sagi (federations of smaller territories, or mukim, dividing the fertile Aceh River valley) and the further-flung (coastal) territories controlled by local chiefs.Footnote 48 While the sultan remained the head of the Acehnese polity, the titles of the orangkaya became increasingly hereditary and tied to geographically defined units (such as the mukim and the sagi), with kinship bonds holding their class together. At the same time, religious teachers established themselves in rural areas, organized (probably rather loosely) in Sufi orders (tarekat) and perhaps, as in nearby Minangkabau, in networks of local prayer houses (meunasah).Footnote 49 Although we know very little about these figures, they must have contributed significantly to the transformation of the Acehnese interior. While the treatises written by religious scholars at the Acehnese court included guides for moral development, they were intended for a scholarly elite. Through the combination of decentralization, the transformation of the economic basis of Acehnese society, and the development of rural religious networks, such knowledge became increasingly accessible to (and explicitly directed at) other segments of the population, including ordinary villagers.Footnote 50
The Hikayat Malem Dagang deals, like the Hikayat Aceh, with the reign of Iskandar Muda. It focuses on the king’s maritime ventures, which are assembled into a single story climaxing in a battle with Johor.Footnote 51 The composer is unknown, as is its exact date of origin.Footnote 52 Most probably, it was composed just before or after the turn of the eighteenth century. The story begins with the arrival in Aceh of a princess from Pahang, and her husband, a prince called Raja Raden. The two convert to Islam and subject themselves to the king. Si Ujud, the brother of Raja Raden and designated alternately as the king of Johor, Banang, Malacca and Goa, also arrives in Aceh. He disagrees with the conversion. When his brother refuses to renounce his new faith, Si Ujud takes off again, leaving behind a trail of destruction, plunder and death. Iskandar Muda and Raja Raden are furious and prepare to do battle against Si Ujud. As they sail along the north coast looking for reinforcements, they appoint Malem Dagang as the commander of the fleet. During the final battle at Johor, Si Ujud is defeated. The Acehnese take him back to Aceh, where, after refusing to embrace Islam, he is killed.
There are several differences between the Hikayat Malem Dagang and the Hikayat Aceh. While, in the Hikayat Aceh, Iskandar Muda is depicted as a divine creature, in the Hikayat Malem Dagang he depends heavily on the support of others, including uleebalang, advisers and commoners. Nothing human is strange to him. He is energetic, but also ignorant, arrogant and easily scared. Malem Dagang, the main hero, seems to be an ordinary villager. He is also a grandson of a famous ulama from Medina, Ja Pakeh, who joins the expedition as a spiritual leader. The difference I want to emphasize, however, bears on the representation of religious practice and authority. In the Hikayat Aceh, religious practices seem self-evident. The Hikayat Malem Dagang, in contrast, discusses the effect and rewards that specific practices—such as prayer, divination or conversion—are supposed to bring about.
Consider, for example, the story of a magical war vessel, called Cakra Dunia (“Wheel of the World”). This ship has been constructed by the Acehnese from an enormous, unmanufactured keel from Goa, which is inhabited by a spirit. When the ship refuses to move and remains stuck on the shore, the king calls upon a number of religious experts (teungku pakeh, ureueng leubee ulama raya) to perform a prayer (beuet dua). When this is done—and only then—it is possible to launch the ship and embark on the campaign against Johor.Footnote 53 Another example is a divination performed by the queen, which needs to ensure the success of the expedition. Her prophecies lead, ultimately, to the appointment of Malem Dagang as the chief commander of the fleet, a defining moment in the story.Footnote 54 In yet another passage, the king (still on the Acehnese north coast, now in Samalanga) is approached by a mysterious person while performing his daily prayers (neuseumayang). The man tells him that the adjacent river is full of large fish. In response, the king orders local chiefs to develop the area.Footnote 55
The most ostentatious piety, however, is expressed in the context of war. At the battle for Asehan, Malem Dagang summons his chiefs, who have become scared, to swear an oath together on a dagger (kreh alat sinjata). The chiefs confirm their loyalty to Malem Dagang, after which the battle is won and the king of Asehan converts to Islam together with his vassals. Before the coast of Johor, Malem Dagang is withheld from doing battle by Ja Pakeh, who does not consider the time ripe. He loses the argument, withdraws to his private quarters, purifies himself, prays, and recites the Quran while waiting, patiently, for a positive sign of the ulama. The ultimate battle, as said, is won.Footnote 56
These references to a more personalised, future-oriented and consequence-driven approach to religious practice and authority are even more explicit in the Hikayat Pocut Muhamat. The author of this work identifies himself as Teungku Lam Rukam, a man “who knew how to compose a story about princes (tuan nyang phom karangan raja).” He explains that he was assisted by an informant, Leube Beuah, and a third person, Pakeh Salikan, who wrote the story down.Footnote 57 Judging from its content, the Hikayat Pocut Muhamat must have been composed in the mid-eighteenth century. While it also deals with war, internal contestations have taken over from the struggle against overseas rivals. The story begins with the death of the first Bugis sultan, Ala al-Din Ahmad Syah (1735). In the confusion surrounding the succession by his son, Sultan Ala al-Din Johan Syah, former sultan Jamal al-Alam Badr al-Munir (called Jeumaloy Alam, or Poteu Jeumaloy) sees an opportunity to reclaim his thrown. This must be prevented by Pocut (“Prince”) Muhamat, a younger brother of Ala al-Din Johan Syah. Like the Hikayat Malem Dagang, this poem describes a lengthy campaign, in which support is sought for the impending battle. One of the central figures is a warlord, called Bentara Keumangan, without whom the war cannot be won. Despite the fact that Bentara Keumangan is the adopted son of Poteu Jeumaloy, he is persuaded by Pocut Muhamat to choose his side. With the help of Bentara, Jeumaloy Alam is finally defeated.
Compared to the Hikayat Malem Dagang, which focuses on Malem Dagang’s leadership in battle and Ja Pakeh’s spiritual guidance, the Hikayat Pocut Muhamat operates a more formal concept of authority. For example, when visiting an area called the Seven Mukims, Pocut Muhamat finds out that this territory is ruled by just three uleebalang, seven imeums and a few village heads (peutua, keuchik). He regards this unacceptable and tells the people that each mukim requires four village heads, who are “capable, reliable and honest (nyang raghoe-raghoe teugoh seutia).” Their position should be hereditary, he continues, so that they cannot be appointed randomly, and “anyone going to law must at least have a place to lodge his complaint.” After a communal meal and a recital of the Quran, he appoints a man called Po Minat as the keuchik of the Seven Mukims, telling him: “Administer justice for God’s sake, without regard to persons… Whoever the litigant may be, he should have only himself to thank for the issue. Go together with the jurisprudents and the scribes (ulama siah), and do not disregard the Quran.”Footnote 58 The message is clear. People should rely on local leaders, who, in turn, should rely on the literate and the ulama to help them administer the law. In the meantime, Pocut Muhamat admonishes the people to take into account the Quran and to reflect carefully on what is wrong and what is right.
A key expression of this double message is the attitude of the warlord Bentara Keumangan and the moral question of whom he should fight for. Tied to (the former king) Jeumaloy in a complex relationship of debt and reciprocity, Bentara initially refuses to receive a message (in the form of a letter) from Pocut Muhamat. He is persuaded, however, by one of his chiefs, who suggests that consultation (mupakat) is the only reasonable attitude in the circumstance of the impending war. Bentara decides to ask the advice of an ulama, for “[a] scholar always sees clearly what is hard and what is easy after reflecting on it (meung ka sipatan)” and sends for Syaikh Rambayan, who teaches nearby.Footnote 59 The following morning, Syaikh Rambayan comes to see Bentara. The scholar reads the letter and suggests that Bentara joins the company of Pocut Muhamat.Footnote 60 Bentara and Pocut Muhamat swear loyalty to one another, after which they force victory over Jeumaloy. In the final battle Bentara Keumangan is killed.
While the Hikayat Aceh reflects on the place of a Malay-Islamic kingdom in a wider Muslim world, the Acehnese-language Hikayat Malem Dagang and Hikayat Pocut Muhamat discuss the bonds between villagers and local (adat) leaders. As Leonard Andaya has argued, the emphasis in these texts on the trials and tribulations of rural life and local particularities constitutes a fundamental difference with earlier (Malay language) literary expressions.Footnote 61 The most important relation, however, is that between the individual and God. Formative events, such as the election of leaders, the decision to go to war and the acceptance of death, are understood, much more explicitly than in the Hikayat Aceh, from the perspective of a world governed by God, and articulated through relatively abstract ideas, values, and qualities, such as harmony, loyalty, chastity, patience, sacrifice, and piety. Those who are able to internalise these values the best succeed in winning the favour of God. The figures who come closest to reaching this state of mind are the ulama Ja Pakeh (in the Hikayat Malem Dagang) and Syaikh Rambayan (in the Hikayat Pocut Muhamat). Their views and advices are crucial for the ways in which the stories unfold.
It would be wrong, however, to conclude that the fortunes of “the people” (rakyat) are entirely dependent on the mediation of the ulama. Agency is expressed through the acknowledgement of consequences and responsibilities associated with ritual practice and human life more broadly. This is true for the heroes and their advisors, but also for common villagers and soldiers. One of the greatest dilemmas faced by Pocut Muhamat is the fact that the enemy king, Jeumaloy Alam, is a sayid, a descendent of the Prophet. Thus, in the midst of the battle, he says to his men: “You are fighting a sayid, a descendent of the Prophet, a holy man, descended from the Prophet. Let none of you be too exultant; do not be haughty (teukabo), brothers!” The soldiers answer: “We are not haughty, prince; we only thank our Lord!,” after which the prince says: “I trust myself to the Lord; let the will of God the Only One be done. Let all of us do likewise and trust ourselves to the Lord Most High!”Footnote 62
Ethical reflection in the nineteenth-century war literature
The expansion of European trade affected indigenous polities in different ways. On the one hand, trade could be disruptive, as indigenous rulers and local chiefs jostled for newly found resources, such as tin or gold. On the other hand, European demand incited a revival of royal power.Footnote 63 In Aceh, both trends occurred simultaneously. The arrival on the archipelago of English and American traders ignited a new pepper boom, causing large parts of previously uncultivated land on both coasts to be opened up by enterprising chiefs. By the early 1820s, Aceh was responsible for over half of the world’s production of pepper. From the late eighteenth century onwards, an increasing number of ships left directly from Meulaboh and other ports on the west coast to Penang (established in 1789), Malacca (ceded to the British in 1824) and Singapore (established in 1819), evading the sultan’s toll.Footnote 64 Trade was further encouraged by the establishment of British ports and fortresses in Bengkulu and Padang. By the end of the eighteenth century, American traders came directly to the ports on the west coast to fetch shiploads of pepper.Footnote 65
As a result, the position of the sultan became increasingly precarious. Sultan Ala al-Din Muhammad Syah (r. 1781–1795) reportedly kept a band of private soldiers (sepoys) permanently on his side.Footnote 66 After his death in 1795, the Panglima’s Sagi appointed his son, Ala al-Din Jauhar al-Alam Syah, as the new king. Ala al-Din Jauhar faced opposition, financial troubles and even a full-scale revolt between 1814 and 1819.Footnote 67 According to a British report, the Panglima’s Sagi came to Banda Aceh in 1814 to overthrow him. Their decision was announced in the presence of a “gathering of the other important orangkaya, uleebalang, and ulama of Aceh,” who cited as their main reason the king’s questionable behaviour. According to the nobles, the sultan refused to keep to God’s commands and follow the customs of previous kings, and it was even said that he had become an unbeliever by converting to the religion of the English.Footnote 68 While these accusations were closely connected to the political intrigues of the moment, the story illustrates the long way Aceh had gone from a dominant model of divine kingship to a political culture in which it was expedient to denounce the ruler, simply, as “un-Islamic.”
In his underrated analysis of the nineteenth century Acehnese polity, Karel van Langen described a strongly decentralized political order. Large villages overseeing fertile terrain produced powerful leaders, even if these did not belong to the local aristocracy, and charismatic ulama with worldly ambitions were able to accumulate considerable power.Footnote 69 It is in this context of fragmented authority, that the Dutch colonial army invaded Aceh in 1873. The official reason for the war—the sultanate’s alleged support for piracy in the Strait of Malacca—obscured the logic of modern imperialism. An 1871 treaty with the British had “allocated” the whole of Sumatra to Dutch sovereignty. Dutch administrators subsequently reasoned that the region should be integrated, politically and economically, into their realm.Footnote 70
The Dutch saw Aceh as an easy conquest. Instead, the invasion turned into a grinding and extremely bloody campaign. Up until the 1890s, the Dutch controlled only a small territory, comprising a number of defensive works on the coast connected by a tramline. The momentum changed in 1891, when the scholar-cum-adviser Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje found out that, behind the “line of concentration,” a bitter conflict over arms, resources and authority was taking place between local chiefs (the uleebalang) and a faction of ulama, who considered the struggle as a holy war (jihad). Snouck Hurgronje’s advice to support the uleebalang and ruthlessly persecute the resistant ulama ultimately shifted the balance into the advantage of the Dutch. In 1903, after thirty years of war, Sultan Muhammad Daud Syah (who was only a child, and not yet sultan, when the war began) surrendered. It was not until the late 1910s that the remaining centres of resistance were crushed and outbreaks of violence continued to occur up until the end of Dutch rule in 1942.
If the war turned out to be a grave problem for the Dutch, for the Acehnese it was simply devastating. The attack was total. Acehnese leaders were co-opted or killed, and the areas brought under the control of the Dutch were fundamentally reshaped. In the words of James Siegel, this was a period “in which one out of eight Atjehnese was killed or displaced and in which the economic base of Atjehnese society was drastically altered.”Footnote 71
The Hikayat Perang Sabil (“Story of the Holy War”)—or a version of it—was composed by a certain Dokarim (Abdul Karim), who hailed from the village of Glumpang Dua in Aceh Besar. According to Snouck Hurgronje, who met him in person, Dokarim was a specialist of seudati, an Acehnese dancing style and literary performance inspired by Sufi motifs. Apparently, Dokarim could read nor write and sang his composition by heart.Footnote 72 In the early twentieth century, the Hikayat Prang Sabil circulated widely across Aceh in many different versions. The Dutch scholar H.T. Damsté wrote that, while residing in Idi (East Aceh) in 1911 to study the Acehnese war literature, copies of the poem were sent to him by military officers, who seized them from the shelters of Acehnese guerrilla fighters. A decade later, it was still “on many lips.”Footnote 73 By the 1920s, the poem had evolved into a genre of its own, characterized by the narrative elements composed by Dokarim, admonitions of famous ulama who played a leading role in the struggle, and elements from other texts that glorified the holy war (such as Abd al-Samad of Palembang’s Fadail al-Jihad [“The merits of jihad”]).Footnote 74
The core message of the Hikayat Prang Sabil is that Muslims should concentrate on the rewards and punishments in the afterlife rather than this-worldly matters. Some sections are directed at a wealthy segment of the population, stating that the holy war is not just about fighting and martyrdom, but also about financial support. In connection, the poem contains numerous references to internal social divisions, while rejoicing in the idea (or the fantasy) that the act of uniting Muslims in the fight against the infidels would make it possible to transcend these divisions. Holy war, the poem states, is an obligation similar to the daily prayers and the fast (seumayang puasa). It applies to every Muslim, including the poor and the rich, the young and the old, men and the women, local leaders (keuchik waki), the pious (alim) and slaves.Footnote 75
To underscore this message, the poem elaborates on the prospect of living under the rule of the Dutch. If no one resists, it states, every single person will be encumbered. No village or sagi will be spared from Dutch taxes, duties and fines. People will be prohibited to travel without a pass. Goods will be appropriated. Half of the possessions will be taken, the other half may be kept, for “that is the rule with the Kompeuni.” The Dutch will destroy religion, because they change the law (hukum). Once in power, they will incite people to gamble and smoke opium, while pocketing their losses. Dutch soldiers will be given free rein to admit to their sexual desires and take delight in local virgins and married women.Footnote 76 The prediction of a morally and economically ruined society is directed at the rich and powerful as much as common people, for in places where the Dutch are already in control, “[e]veryone is made the same (habeh bandum jipeusanteut). (…) who is slave, who is lord, it is no longer visible. The unbeliever levels out everything (buet si kaphe jipeurata).”Footnote 77
Scholarly analyses of the Hikayat Perang Sabil tend to regard the work as a symbol of religious militancy.Footnote 78 Both in the academic literature and in the collective memory of the Dutch and the Acehnese, an image has taken root of a black and white struggle between colonial conquerors and fanatical Muslims. Whether the poem really persuaded ordinary peasants to leave their homes and families and join the struggle is difficult to say. Dutch administrators and military leaders, who assumed that the poem found fertile soil in the inherently violent nature of the Acehnese “race,” were certainly convinced of its status as a dangerous piece of propaganda.Footnote 79 They ordered their soldiers to actively seek and destroy copies of the poem, a practice that went on until deep in the twentieth century. It would be wrong, however, to view the poem solely as an epitome of piety. In fact, its message is more ambivalent than commonly assumed. On the one hand, the poem describes the Dutch invasion as an existential threat to the social order, and indeed, to Islam. On the other hand, it argues that the war presents opportunities for ethical improvement, inspiring a new religious consciousness and aspiration for the future.
Consider, for example, this passage at the beginning of the poem, which compares the actions of the Dutch to those of jinn, (potentially) evil spirits:
The deceptions of those jinn-like kafirs (tipee jeen kaphe), no one can resist them. If adat and faith (iman) are ruined, people do not care. Thus speaks the devil (seetan), who commands to live with the Kompeuni. Surrender to God. How could you resist. If you fight, you leave behind many rice storages, children, women, possessions (…). Let us stay here in the village (gampong) and accept what God ordained. (…) Listen not to the fallacies of the devil. Have faith in God and the Prophet. When the unbelievers take the land (…), do not trifle, go to battle and follow the Prophet.Footnote 80
Jihad, here, is presented as a personal, spiritual development, a way of strengthening oneself against the diabolical tricks rousing Muslims into passive compliance. This admonition is further strengthened through developing a critical stance toward religious authorities:
Many [teungku; religious teachers, pious persons] may be seen as having become kafir. Not one is strong in faith (iman). A sign that the end of the world is drawing near. The teungku have been betrayed by the jinn. Those who gathered lots of knowledge do not put this to use. Thus speaks the devil to the teungku when he is at work in their hearts. How would you go to war, teungku. How would you care for the country’s people (rakyat lam nanggri). (…) Thus are the tricks [the devil] uses against the village leaders (keuchik) and teungku, and thirdly to the deputies [waki], until the children of the land (aneuk nanggroe) think—our teungku has not descended to the countries below, what hurry is there for us. Perhaps this war is not imperative. Perhaps we should not go now. Were it customary to go to war, surely the teungku, our teacher, would care. Because he is a learned person (ureueng malem). He reads, day and night. He recites the kitab and the Quran, which deal with the holy war.Footnote 81
This passage might be read as a reckoning with lazy or irresponsible ulama, who are not prepared to lead the struggle. At the same time, it may be regarded as a message to ordinary (lay) villagers, who should be aware that, ultimately, no one should be trusted more than oneself.
According to Ibrahim Alfian, the Aceh War was a manifestation of the “Smaller Jihad” (jihad al-asghar), or “Jihad with the sword,” rather than the “Greater Jihad” (jihad al-akbar), which includes the “struggle against the devil” (jihad al-shaytan) and the “struggle against oneself” (jihad al-nafs).Footnote 82 In my view, however, the content of the Hikayat Prang Sabil contains an important subtext of spiritual development, one that is embedded in the contemporary conditions of Acehnese society. Already before the war, Acehnese society was marked by shifting loyalties and sharp contestations about the position of sultans and local chiefs. Village leaders, such as the keuchik (village head) or the teungku meunasah (the head of religious ceremonies) were drawn in continuous, albeit highly localised, struggles for power and resources. The Hikayat Prang Sabil demonstrates that these contestations were infused with moral appeals emanating from different layers of society and related to divergent ideas about the question of how society should be organised. Underneath the bombast of heroic warfare, then, personal ethical reflection is a crucial theme, warning the audience to investigate, and critically evaluate, the sincerity of both others and the self.
Locating expressions of religious individuality
Religious change in Aceh was not a top-down process. It was a result of complex interactions, based on an understanding of Islam as both a universal category and an adaptable system of thought and practice. Moral values acted simultaneously as a source of authority for rulers and a source of agency with the potential to subvert or compromise political power at the local level. In this article, I have used examples from the hikayat tradition to locate this tension and to investigate its temporal dynamic. Until the late seventeenth century, Islamic religiosity was presented primarily as a category of ritual practice, based on a Sufi-inspired cosmological order that was centred, in turn, on a model of divine kingship. In the eighteenth century, this moral configuration was gradually undermined by an ethics of individual responsibility. The epic hikayats thus reflect a shift from a socio-religious orientation based on the “acting” Muslim, engaged in the ritualistic affirmation of a moral order, to the idea of “being” Muslim, based on an individualized process of ethical reflection. This shift was facilitated by three interrelated developments, namely the fragmentation of the sultanate state, the integration (through cash cropping) of the interior in the globalizing economy, and the emergence in rural areas of a class of religious specialists.
Concepts of self and individuality are historically contingent. It has been argued that religious transformations in the first millennium BCE—and the emergence of monotheism in particular—led to “a new reflexivity of the self,” in which “[o]ne learned to observe oneself, to look for or even seek transformation, often of a moral character.”Footnote 83 Late antiquity saw the birth of religious concepts related to the need for individuals to be “saved,” such as repentance, conversion and salvation.Footnote 84 It is subject to debate whether “modern” religious forms constitute another significant transformation or rather a continuation of earlier models of the relationship between God, religious authority and the self.
Throughout Islamic history, adherents to mystical strands in particular have pondered the relationship between God and individual humans, and the vexing question of how to transform the self “from its lowly instinctual nature to the ultimate state of subsistence in God.”Footnote 85 Among historians, there is a general consensus that before the twentieth century, practicing Muslims in Southeast Asia were Sufis, though generally in an orthodox (“Ghazalian”) rather than a radically heterodox mould.Footnote 86 In the early twentieth century, mystical practices were challenged by Islamic reformers, who stated that these practices constituted dangerous innovations leading Muslims astray from the correct interpretation of their faith. This challenge was connected to a debate about the fact that the Muslim world was increasingly dominated by non-Muslim forces. A central aspect of the reformist movement was what Francis Robinson (focusing on South Asia and adopting a concept developed by Charles Taylor) termed the “inward turn.” “Whereas in the past the reflective believer, the mystic, might have meditated upon the signs of God, the new type of reflective believer meditated increasingly on the self and the shortcomings of the self. Now the inner landscape became a crucial site where the battle of the pious for the good took place.”Footnote 87 In contrast to established Sufi dispositions, then, these reformers framed the cultivation of the self as a “this-worldly” rather than an “other-worldly” affair, framing the quest for individual salvation in terms of a broader attempt to change society for the better. In the first half of the twentieth century, doctrinal issues at the basis of this contestation led to a sharp conflict between “modernist” and “traditionalist” Muslims.
As I have tried to show, however, it is important not to reduce expressions of religious individuality to doctrinal contestations alone. The main theme of the Hikayat Aceh—Iskandar Muda’s predestination as a king with divine characteristics—is deeply rooted in Sufism. The poem was not, however, meant as a guide to lead individuals on a path of spiritual development. Instead, it was most probably a political message directed at preserving order in a period of instability. The Acehnese language epics that emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while criticizing the divine kingship model, were still saturated with Sufi themes. At the same time, these texts contained distinctly “this-worldly” elements and constituted forceful social critiques. The Hikayat Perang Sabil, discussing the necessity to transform pious selves in order to fend off the threat of non-Muslim domination and prevent the destruction of religion, communicated a proto-reformist message. At the same time, it contained a substratum of personal ethical reflection and ambivalence about the role of religious authorities. The relationship between “this-worldly” and “other-worldly” concerns, in other words, was complex and ambiguous, evolving gradually in a period in which the dispositions that would be central to the twentieth Islamic reformist movements had far from crystallized.
By making this point, I do not mean to argue that doctrinal debates, or evolving scholarly ideas about correct interpretations of Islam, were unimportant. Quite to the contrary. The Hikayat Aceh fitted a broader context in which public expressions of Islam were “state” or “raja-centred.”Footnote 88 As a result of religious professionalization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, awareness of doctrinal debates increased and authoritative positions became more widely shared and discussed. In this period, religious scholars increasingly engaged with the moralities and private lives of ordinary people, directing commands and fatwa’s at “issues of family life, of sex, of appropriate conduct.”Footnote 89 In the early nineteenth century, religious texts offered “the first whisper of an intimate ‘I,” of interiority and of an awareness of a split audience of European and local readers.”Footnote 90
This direct engagement with personal religiosity was not limited to scholarly texts. In his work on cultural transformation in West Sumatra, Jeffrey Hadler made extensive use of late nineteenth century school (exercise or examination) booklets (D: schoolschriften). These “autoethnographic texts” contained deep reflections on personal religiosities and ethical formation.Footnote 91 The same period saw the maturation of “Hajj memoirs” as a genre, characterized by Eric Taggliacozzo as “dialogues between the self and an intended audience, with all of the friction that such a meeting of viewpoints potentially implies.” Munshi Abdullah, a Malay writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, “uses the first person ‘I’ in narrating his journey [to Mecca], one of the first to do so in all of the traditional Malay literature.” These expressions appeared at a time in which “the art of letter writing became very important (…) as well.”Footnote 92 The emergence of a sense of religious individuality in the Acehnese hikayats suggests that, rather than being reserved for a scholarly or educated elite, attitudes toward a more personal and reflexive religiosity were widely disseminated.
