The Kanduri Apam — the “kanduri of apam-cakes” — is the Achehnese popular name for the seventh month of the Mohammedan year, Rajab. As C. Snouck Hurgronje explains, the month “holds its place in the official calendar of feasts chiefly because Mohammad’s celebrated ‘journey to heaven’ is supposed to have taken place on the night of (or rather the night before) the 27th of this month. For the commemoration of this night the people assemble either in the mosque or in their own houses, and a history of the miʽraj as it is called (Ach. meureu’ët) is recited. This recitation consists in a description of the ascension in rhyming prose and verse, similar to those of the birth and life of the Prophet.” This pious custom, however, “is observed in Acheh, but not to any greater extent than in other parts of the Indian Archipelago. In a word, its observance is confined to those who profess special devotion to religion, such as the leubes, maleins etc. It is not a national festival in any sense of the words.”
What gives the month its Achehnese name is a different and more popular observance. On some one day of Rajab, the well-known round flat cakes called 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 of Asan-Usen. “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. It is not surprising that the faithful frequenters of the mosque 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 Achehnese account for the custom by a legend. “Once on a time a certain Achehnese, possessed by curiosity as to what befalls man in the tomb, and especially as to the investigations of the angels of the grave, Munkar and Nakir, and the punishments they are supposed to inflict, feigned death and was buried alive. He was soon subjected by the two angels to an enquiry as to his faith and works, and as he was found wanting in many respects, they began to smite him with their iron clubs. None of the blows, however, reached him. Something that he could not clearly distinguish in the darkness of the tomb, but which seemed to resemble the moon in its circular form, interposed itself as a shield and warded off the blows. He contrived to work his way out of his narrow prison and hastened to his relatives, who received him with amazement. After relating his adventures he came to know to what he had to attribute his merciful deliverance from flagellation by the ghostly clubs. At the very moment when the moon-shaped shield was giving him its shelter, the members of his family were in the act of preparing for a kanduri the apam cakes, which are in fact round like the moon.” Thus it became “a certainty that apam-cakes exercise a specially favourable influence on the fortunes of the dead.”
Besides this general feast, two other Achehnese customs are explained by the same legend. The first is “a domestic kanduri apam held on the seventh day after the death of any person,” and the second is “a similar feast on the occurrence of an earthquake, which is supposed to have a peculiarly discomposing effect on the material remains of the deceased.” Hurgronje, characteristically, lets “the details of this explanation of the kanduri apam pass for what they are worth. At the same time it is quite conceivable that the custom had its origin in the worship of the dead and a certain connection between the shape of the cakes which form the offering and some now forgotten notions connected with the moon is at least not impossible.” The 18th of Rajab is also the occasion of one of the three principal annual kanduris at the tomb of the great saint Teungku Anjong in Gampong Jawa, given in honour of his consort Aja Eseutiri (Fatimah bint Abdarrhaman ʽAidid), who died on the 18th of Rajab 1235 (May 1820).
See Also
- Kanduri (general)
- Kanduri Bu
- Great Feast of Sacrifices)
- Asan-Usen
- Teungku Anjong
- Aja Bseutiri
- Munkar and Nakir
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.