The Miraj — Mohammad’s celebrated “journey to heaven” — is, in the Achehnese as in the wider Mohammedan calendar, commemorated on the night before the 27th of Rajab, the seventh month of the Islamic year. As C. Snouck Hurgronje records in his chapter on the calendar of feasts, the month of Rajab “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 miraj as it is called (Ach. meureu’et) 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.”
The Achehnese name for the recitation, meureu’et, denotes the literary form in which the miraj is commemorated. Like the maulud (the recitation of the birth of the Prophet) and the meuseukaman or other verse-lives of Mohammad, the meureu’et is a composition in rhyming prose and verse, designed for public recitation on the anniversary of the event it celebrates. The reciter, usually a leube or other person of religious learning, chants the description of the Prophet’s ascent through the seven heavens, his meeting with the prophets who preceded him, and his reception by Allah; the company present participates in the merit of the recitation, and the occasion is closed with the usual kanduri or pious meal.
The observance of the miraj in Acheh, however, is markedly less popular than in many other parts of the Mohammedan world. As Hurgronje notes, “this pious custom 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.” The miraj thus stands in contrast to the maulud of Rabiʽ al-awwal, which is observed throughout Acheh as a national festival, and to the kanduri apam of Rajab, which gives the month its Achehnese name; the miraj, although it provides the official reason for the inclusion of Rajab in the calendar of feasts, remains the devotion of the particularly pious rather than the celebration of the whole people.
The comparative obscurity of the miraj in Acheh is the more striking in that the month in which it falls is one of the richest in the Achehnese religious year. The 18th of Rajab is 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, the Aja Bseutiri; the kanduri apam of round cakes is observed on some day of the month in every house; and the miraj itself, on the night before the 27th, provides the official commemoration of the month. The three observances — saint-cult, domestic offering, and pious recitation — together make up the Achehnese Rajab; and the fact that the miraj is the least popular of the three is a measure of the Achehnese preference for those forms of devotion which are either communal (the kanduri at the saint’s tomb) or domestic (the apam-cakes of the household) over those which are simply devotional.
The miraj, in short, is one of those observances which the Achehnese have inherited from the universal tradition of Islam, but which they have not — as they have the maulud and the great feasts of the year — made emphatically their own. The meureu’et is recited by the leubes and maleins, the pious gather in the mosque or in private houses, and the anniversary of the Prophet’s ascent is duly observed; but the miraj has not, in Acheh, become the occasion of popular rejoicing, of public procession, or of communal kanduri. It remains a devotion of the few, and the month of Rajab is, in the Achehnese imagination, the month of apam-cakes and of the kanduri at the tomb of Teungku Anjong rather than the month of the Prophet’s ascent to heaven.
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.