The prestige of the Haddji title in Atjeh, as described by R. L. Mellema in De Islaam in Indonesië (in het bijzonder op Java) (Amsterdam, 1947), is the social capital accruing, in Atjehnese society, to those who had completed the pilgrimage (haddj) to Mekka and could thereupon assume the title of Haddji. Mellema records the title’s prestige in two distinct connections: first, in his general account of the returned pilgrim as a figure of authority in the religious life of the archipelago; and second, in his account of the oelama’s diversion of the zakaat during the Atjehoorlog, where the Haddji title is the religious-cultural complement to the fiscal-military base supplied by the zakaat and so the second of the two means by which the oelama’s built up an ascendancy over the population greater than that of the official chiefs.
The returned pilgrim in the archipelago
In his chapter on the haddj — the fifth pillar of the Muslim law, the pilgrimage to Mekka — Mellema describes the position of the returned pilgrim in the Indonesian society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the earlier period, he writes, when a much smaller number of Indonesians performed the pilgrimage owing to the far greater difficulties of the journey, the returned Haddji could still occupy a singular place in the stratified society of the archipelago: “Het kon gebeuren, dat zo iemand zelfs nog bij zijn leven een zekere graad van heiligheid bereikte” — it could happen that such a person attained, even in his lifetime, a certain degree of holiness.
The Dutch, Mellema continues, saw in the returned Haddjis a kind of “priesters” (priests) — especially when, after their return, they continued to wear Arab dress or at least distinguished themselves from their fellow-countrymen by a white cloth wound round the head in the manner of a turban. Mellema is careful to add, however, that “de pelgrims zijn na hun terugkeer geen priesters” — the pilgrims are not priests after their return — since Islam knows no priesthood; and that the majority of the pilgrims returned no different from how they had departed, and were not, in general, “infected” in Mekka with ideas dangerous to the state. The Dutch suspicion of the returned Haddji as a potential carrier of pan-Islamic or anti-colonial politics is thus, in Mellema’s account, overstated: the pilgrimage, in its ordinary forms, made the pilgrim a more respected figure in his community, not a revolutionary.
The Haddji as religious teacher
The returned Haddji who had spent some years in Mekka in the study of the law and the faith might, Mellema records, feel called to impart his newly acquired knowledge to his “onwetende landgenoten” (ignorant compatriots). Such a man would settle somewhere as godsdienstleraar (religious teacher) — goeroe — and give instruction in the village prayer-house, known in Atjeh as the meunasah or rangkang. The Haddji title thus opened the way to the office of the religious teacher, and the office of the religious teacher was, in turn, the point of entry into the personnel of the mosque and, potentially, into the class of the oelama’s. The trajectory — pilgrimage, study, teaching, authority — is the institutional path by which the Haddji title was converted, in Atjehnese practice, into religious and social office.
The Haddji among the oelama’s of the Atjehoorlog
It is in connection with the diversion of the zakaat as a war-chest that Mellema records the political significance of the Haddji title in Atjeh. The oelama’s who, during the Atjehoorlog, acted as zakaatinner (zakaat-collectors) and formed a particuliere krijgskas (private war-chest) from which they paid their followers, thereby gained “een persoonlijk overwicht op de bevolking” (a personal ascendancy over the population) and “groter invloed … dan de officiele hoofden bezaten” (greater influence than the official chiefs possessed). The ascendancy so gained was further strengthened when the oelama could in addition assume the title of Haddji:
“Wanneer zij dan daarenboven nog de titel van Haddji konden aannemen, omdat zij een tocht naar Mekka hadden volbracht, kon dit slechts het aanzien, dat zij in de ogen van het volk genoten, verhogen.”
That is: when, in addition, they could assume the title of Haddji, because they had accomplished a journey to Mekka, this could only enhance the prestige they enjoyed in the eyes of the people. The Haddji title is thus, in Mellema’s account, the religious-cultural complement to the fiscal-military base supplied by the zakaat: the one gave the oelama the material means to pay a following, the other gave him the charismatic authority to command one. Together, the two made the oelama’s the effective rivals of the official, territorial chiefs — the uleebalangs — in the society of wartime Atjeh.
Relation to the Snouckian account
Mellema’s account of the Haddji title’s prestige is the brief, comparative counterpart to the much fuller Snouckian treatment of the same institution in De Atjehers. Snouck Hurgronje, who had himself lived in Mekka and studied the Jawah colony there, gives in his monograph a detailed account of the Atjehnese pilgrimage, of the prestige of the Haddji title, and of the suspicion with which the Dutch colonial government regarded the returned pilgrims. Mellema’s survey, written half a century later for a general metropolitan readership, condenses the Snouckian account into the comparative frame of the archipelago-wide institution, and adds the specific observation that the Haddji title reinforced the oelama’s ascendancy during the Atjehoorlog — an observation that connects the religious-cultural prestige of the title to the fiscal-military base of the zakaat and so to the political shift of authority from the uleebalangs to the oelama’s.
Significance
For AcehWiki, Mellema’s account is significant as an independent comparative source for the prestige of the Haddji title in Atjeh, and as the source that most explicitly links the title’s charismatic authority to the oelama’s fiscal-military ascendancy during the Atjehoorlog. The account also records the Dutch colonial suspicion of the returned Haddji — the perception of the pilgrim as a kind of “priest” and as a potential carrier of dangerous politics — and Mellema’s measured qualification of that suspicion (the majority of pilgrims returned no different from how they had departed). The entry thus complements the corpus’s treatments of the haddj, of the sabil contributions, of the oelama’s zakaat war-chest, and of the uleebalang–oelama rivalry that would, in 1945–1946, culminate in the social revolution in Atjeh.
See Also
- De Islaam in Indonesië (Mellema, 1947)
- R. L. Mellema
- Oelama zakaat war-chest in the Atjehoorlog (Mellema 1947)
- Haddj
- Hajj
- Oelama
- Uleebalang
- Meunasah
- Rangkang
- Sabil Contributions
- Aceh War
- ulama-uleebalang social revolution in Atjeh (1945-1946)
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers (1893-94)
- Mekka
- Acheh
- 1947
Source
De Islaam in Indonesië (in het bijzonder op Java), by Drs. R. L. Mellema. Mededeling No. LXXVII, Afd. Volkenkunde No. 25. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Vereniging “Indisch Instituut,” 1947. “De haddj, de 5e zuil van de wet,” pp. 36–39; and “De zakaat, de 3e zuil van de wet,” pp. 34–36; and Register, s.v. haddj and haddji.