Mandi Safar (“bathing of Safar”), known in Acheh as Rabu Abeh (“the final Wednesday”), was the ceremonial bathing observed on the last Wednesday of the month of Safar (the second month of the Mohammedan year). The belief was universal in the Mohammedan world that Safar was pregnant with evil, and that one might feel very thankful when he reached the last Wednesday of this month without mishap. The reason for this was said to be that in this month the fatal sickness of Mohammad, to which he succumbed in the third month of the year, first began to show itself. However that might be, the day nowhere passed wholly without notice. In Acheh, many took a bath on this day—the dwellers on the coast in the sea, others in the river or at the well.
It was considered desirable to use for this bath water consecrated by contact with certain verses of the Quran. To this end a teungku in the gampong gave to all who asked slips of paper on which he had written the seven verses of the Quran in which Allah addressed certain men with the word salām (“blessing” or “peace”). These papers were thrown into the sea, river or well, and the water was thereby believed to be given salutary powers. Others drank water from a platter on which these verses were inscribed, the writing being partially dissolved in the water. With this bathing were connected other regulations in regard to the toilet such as shaving, cutting of nails and the like, but the Achehnese did not pay much attention to these.
The bath taken on this occasion was a ritual one (ghusl) and was preceded by the utterance of the niyyat or intention to perform a task prescribed by the law of Allah. Among the Malays of Penang and Province Wellesley the Mandi Safar was one of the most popular of festivals, the method of its observance being almost identical with that of the Achehnese as here described. Those who lived near the sea-shore were especially fond of the Rabu Abeh picnics. Each brought his contribution (ripè) for the feast, which exhibited not the smallest trace of its religious origin. These social gatherings were called meuramiën. In Java also these picnics generally took place in seaside localities. The common people knew no more than that this “Final Wednesday” was appointed for bathing, drinking charmed water and holding social gatherings, and did not concern themselves as to the traditional origin of the custom. Such was also the case in Arabia.
Some pious persons performed on the afternoon of the Rabu Abeh a special voluntary seumayang consisting of two or more divisions, on the ground of a tradition characterised as “weak” by the expounders of the law. But for the great majority the day was a secular picnic—an occasion for bathing, feasting and friendly assembly, stripped of the more sombre associations of the month of Safar and reshaped as a community gathering at the seaside. In this guise it survived alongside the more strictly religious observances of the Achehnese year, providing an outlet for the social pleasures which the rigorous discipline of Ramadhan would shortly curtail.
The Mandi Safar thus stands at the head of that sequence of “bathing” and “cooling” ceremonies by which the Achehnese marked the transitions of the religious year, from the peusijuek of domestic life through the peujraʿ of the convalescent to the great communal bath of the Rabu Abeh. Its proximity to the Malam beureu’at of Shaʿban and the fasting month gave it a particular poignancy: it was the last great secular festival before the solemnities of Ramadhan began.
Sources
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.
See Also
- Rabu Abeh
- Peusijuek
- Malam beureu’at
- Puasa
- Kanji Ashura
- Hasan and Husain
- Teungku
- Gampong
- Kanduri
- Bukah
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.