The Malam salikur — the night preceding the 21st of Ramadhan — is, in the Achehnese as in the wider Mohammedan calendar, one of the five odd-numbered nights of the last third of the fasting month in which the night of the qadar (the “night of power” or “night of divine decree”) is believed to fall. As C. Snouck Hurgronje explains, the qadar night is the night on which, according to the tradition, the eternal Quran was sent down by Allah to the world below, to be finally revealed to Mohammad piece by piece through the agency of the Archangel Gabriel. On this special night, “no less than on that of the middle of Shaʽban, all manner of rich blessings are supposed to be dealt forth by Allah to those who keep vigil therein, wakeful and if possible engaged in pious devotions.”
The identification of the qadar night with one of the last five odd-numbered nights of Ramadhan — the nights preceding the 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th or 29th — is the only certain element in the tradition. As Hurgronje observes, “at the present time, however, no one can fix the date with certainty. The sole rule is the prevalent idea that the night of the qadar is one of the last five odd-numbered nights of the fasting month.” A weighty reason is found herein for devoting all of them to devotional exercises; these nights are, in all Mohammedan countries, spent by the devout in recitations from the Quran and other such-like devotions. Here and there we find certain superstitious practices resorted to by the people for the purpose of drawing down upon their own heads the blessings of the qadar night. In Java, feasts known as malamans are given on these nights by princes and other persons of distinction to a multitude of guests.
Among these five nights, two — the 21st and the 27th — dispute with each other the right to the name of qadar night with a greater show of probability than the other three. As Hurgronje records, “the 21st (malam salikur) enjoys this preference throughout a great portion of Java, a preference which displays itself principally in popular rejoicings. In Acheh it is on the night before the 27th that the greatest animation is displayed.” The Achehnese preference for the 27th, rather than the 21st, is thus one of the points at which the religious practice of Acheh diverges from that of Java; but the malam salikur itself is, of course, observed in Acheh as one of the five possible qadar nights, and the devout devote it to recitation and prayer no less than its fellows.
The Achehnese observance of the malam salikur is, in fact, part of a larger pattern of nightly devotion during the last ten days of Ramadhan. Before every housedoor on the night before the 27th is set a lighted lamp with seven mouths, or “eyes” as the Achehnese call them; the young amuse themselves by letting off crackers (beudé China, “little Chinese guns”), and at sunset persons of substance bring complete idangs to the meunasah, so that the celebrants of the feast may enjoy a hearty meal instead of the preliminary mess of pottage with which they usually break their fast. The tradition has it that, during the qadar night, the very trees bow to the ground in awe in the direction of the kiblat, toward the Sacred Mosque at Mecca — a phenomenon believed by the Achehnese to be rarely visible to the eyes of ordinary mortals, but sought by expeditions of young folk on the night of the 27th “to seek trees doing obeisance.”
The malam salikur, as one of the five nights in which the qadar may fall, is thus an integral part of the Achehnese observance of the last third of Ramadhan. Its position alongside the Kanduri T’eungku Anjong — held on the night before the 14th of the same month — and the great observance of the night before the 27th, gives the Achehnese Ramadhan its distinctive character: a month in which the universal Islamic devotion to the qadar is interwoven with the local cult of the saints and the nightly round of pious offerings, so that the believer who keeps vigil through all five of the possible qadar nights is, at the same time, participating in the most solemn phase of the Achehnese religious 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.