The Kanduri T’eungku Anjong is the third of the three principal annual kanduris held in the deah (prayer-house) at the tomb of the great saint Teungku Anjong in Gampong Jawa, on the night preceding the 14th of Ramadhan. As C. Snouck Hurgronje records, it is “more especially dedicated to the saint himself, who according to the Achehnese died on the 14th of Ramadhan 1196 (August 1782).” It is from him that the feast takes its name. The other two annual kanduris at the same sacred tomb — the kanduri Mo’lot on the 12th of Mo’lot (Rabiʽ al-awwal) and the kanduri Aja Bseutiri on the 18th of Rajab — are dedicated respectively to the Prophet Mohammad and to the saint’s consort; the Kanduri T’eungku Anjong alone commemorates the saint himself.
The feast, like its two companion kanduris, is celebrated with considerable ceremony. The faithful assemble in the deah beside the tomb, where one or more buffaloes are slaughtered and the meat is shared among those present. Sundry ulamas also receive a share, pieces of meat being sent them by the guardian of the tomb. The three kanduris together form a cycle which gives the calendar of Achehnese saint-veneration its peculiar density in the months of Rabiʽ al-awwal, Rajab and Ramadhan; each is modelled on the same pattern, and the Kanduri T’eungku Anjong, falling in the great fasting month, has a special solemnity derived from its coincidence with the season of nightly devotions.
The saint himself, Teungku Anjong, is one of the most venerated figures of the Achehnese religious landscape, and his tomb in Gampong Jawa is a place of pilgrimage throughout the year. The annual kanduri in his honour is at once an act of communal piety, a renewal of the bond between the saint and the inhabitants of the surrounding mukims, and an occasion for that display of liberality which the Achehnese expect from all who are blessed with worldly means. Hurgronje notes that, as with the other two kanduris at the same tomb, the Kanduri T’eungku Anjong “resembles exactly the two others that are celebrated at that sacred tomb,” so that the worshipper may attend all three in succession and find in each the same sequence of prayer, slaughter, feasting and distribution.
The position of the Kanduri T’eungku Anjong on the 14th of Ramadhan — that is, on the eve of the 15th, the middle of the fasting month — gives it a natural place in the sequence of Ramadhan observances. It falls within the period during which the devout are most assiduous in their nightly devotions, and just before the great nights of the qadar with which the last third of Ramadhan culminates. In this, as in much else, the Achehnese calendar interweaves the universal observances of Islam with the cult of local saints, so that even the fasting month is punctuated by feasts which, while not enjoined by the law, have become inseparable from the lived religion of the country.
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.