Ashura (Achehnese Achura; Javanese Sura) is the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Mohammedan year. In the books of Mohammedan law it is set down as sunat — a meritorious though not obligatory work — to fast on this day. None but very devout persons observe the custom, so that the day passes almost unnoticed as far as concerns its celebration in Acheh. In Java the day has given its name Sura to the whole month of Muharram, but in Acheh the month bears the popular name Asan-Usen, after the commemoration of Hasan and Husain on the 10th day.
The Shi’ite countries observe the day in a manner wholly different from the Sunnis. There the first ten days of Muharram are devoted to all manner of ceremonies, processions, discourses, and theatrical representations purporting to commemorate the conflict between Mohammad’s grandson Husain and the Umayyads. These festivities culminate in the Ashura, on which day Husain perished on the plains of Kerbela, and a number of ceremonies follow, extending over the next three days and consecrated to the memory of his burial. The dances and bonfires, the dikrs with their mourning for the martyrs, the wild frenzies in which the mourners gash their own bodies with knives, the theatrical representations sometimes confounded with reality by the spectators so that the actor who takes the part of the murderer of Husain becomes exposed to actual violence, and the mad processions particularly common in Hindustan — all this specially belongs to Persia and the Shi’ite portions of British India.
The popular Hasan-Husain Festival that is celebrated on a smaller scale in different parts of Netherlands-India, especially on the West Coast of Sumatra (Padang, Bencoolen, and elsewhere), and even in Trumon in the manner customary in the Deccan, is a surviving trace of this Shi’ite observance. Snouck Hurgronje notes that Hasan, innocent as he was of all martyrdom, has been enrolled in the band of saints together with Husain, and that the Ashura-festival bears the names of both brothers. The popular tales current in the East Indian Archipelago of Hasan and Husain are of the same character as those current in India, and were disseminated through Indian rather than Arabian channels.
In Acheh, beyond the cooking of kanji Ashura, the day passes almost unnoticed. The kanji is a pottage or porridge (the Javanese bubur) consisting of rice, cocoanut milk, sugar, and pieces of cocoanut, mixed with various fruits cut into small pieces — papayas, peas, pomegranates, plantains, sugarcane, and various edible roots. It is not cooked in every separate house; one or two large pots full suffice for a whole gampong. Those who undertake the cooking receive voluntary subscriptions from their fellow-villagers. The kanji Ashura is the sole Achehnese observance of a day that, in Shi’ite lands, gives rise to the most impassioned religious pageantry of the year.
Additional account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Ashura (10th of Muharram)
The kanji Ashura — the pottage or porridge cooked in Acheh on the 10th of Muharram (called in Achehnese Achura, in Javanese Sura) — is brought as a kanduri to the mosque or meunasah in much the same way as the round flat cakes known as apam are brought during the month of Rajab. The parallel is observed by Snouck Hurgronje in his account of the Achehnese months: “On some one day of the month of Rajab the well-known round flat cakes known as apam, made of ordinary rice-flour and cocoanut milk, are baked in every house. A number of these are brought as kanduri to the mosque or meunasah, just in the same way as the kanji Ashura.” The kanji Ashura is therefore one of the two chief annual kanduris of the Achehnese mosque-calendar, and the chief observance by which the day of Ashura is marked in Acheh.
The kanji and the apam: parallel kanduris
The two kanduris resemble each other not only in their destination but in their form. The kanji Ashura is a pottage of rice, cocoanut milk, sugar and pieces of cocoanut, mixed with various fruits cut into small pieces — papayas, peas, pomegranates, plantains, sugarcane and various edible roots. The apam is a small round cake of rice-flour and cocoanut milk; as many as a hundred of these little cakes are piled upon a dish, and to this is added a basin of sauce which is called seurawa and consists of cocoanut milk, sugar and beaten-up eggs. Both are carried to the mosque or meunasah, and both are eaten communally by the faithful frequenters of the mosque and by the youthful hordes that lurk in the vicinity — to such an extent, Hurgronje notes, that the frequenters “suffer from apam-indigestion during this month, or that in spite of the large share that falls into the hands of the youthful hordes that lurk in the vicinity, many apam-cakes have in the end to be thrown away.”
The Ashura day itself
Beyond the cooking of the kanji Ashura, the day passes almost unnoticed in Acheh. “In the books of Mohammedan law it is set down as sunat — a meritorious though not obligatory work — to fast on this day. None but very devout persons observe the custom, so that the day passes almost unnoticed as far as concerns its celebration in Acheh.” The kanji is not cooked in every separate house; “one or two large pots full suffice for a whole gampong. Those who undertake the cooking receive voluntary subscriptions from their fellow-villagers.” The mess is brought to the meunasah or sometimes to the junction of the gampong-path with the main road. All who wish fall to and gormandize, generally to such an extent as to cause indigestion. “The blessing of the bubur by a prayer, though common in Java, is not customary in Acheh. In neither country is the feast strictly limited to the 10th of the month, but often extends some days beyond.”
The parallel with the apam of Rajab
The parallel between the kanji Ashura and the apam of Rajab throws light on the practical character of Achehnese religious life. The two kanduris are not, in their popular observance, attached to any very definite theological meaning; they are rather the established foods of two of the sacred months, brought to the mosque in the same way, and eaten in the same communal fashion, by the men and boys of the gampong. The observance of the Ashura day in Acheh, in this respect, is the precise counterpart of the observance of an unspecified day of Rajab — and both are, in their Achehnese form, the simple and nearly obsolete remnants of customs that, in other parts of the Mohammedan world, have given rise to the most impassioned religious pageantry of the year.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.