The peutamat daroh (also written peutamat daroih) was a festive Achehnese celebration marking the conclusion of a session of meudaroih—the chanted recitation of the Qur’an in the meunasah during the nights of the fasting month. Held in every meunasah on one of the nights of the fasting month subsequent to the fifteenth, the feast took its name from tamat (conclusion) and daroh (from the meudaroih recitation itself), and combined special prayers, dikrs, ratibs, and a communal meal shared by the gampong’s inhabitants.
The recitation that the feast concluded
During the nights of Ramadhan, the traweh service in the meunasah was followed by the meudaroih, in which certain experts—usually maléms and leubes—volunteered to recite passages from the Qur’an, endeavouring if possible to bring to a conclusion (tamat) once or oftener during the month the thirty subdivisions of the Book. The recitation was conducted as a public performance: one chanter recited while the assembled congregation listened in silence (a practice known as simà’ from the Arabic sima’, “hearkening”), those seated before the reciter holding copies of the Qur’an to prompt and correct him as he went along. The meudaroih continued till about one o’clock in the morning, when the tambu of the meunasah began to sound as a warning that the time for the sawo (the pre-dawn sahur meal) was at hand.
The occasion of the feast
The peutamat daroh was not, strictly, the night on which the thirtieth juz’ of the Qur’an was completed. In fixing the night, the people of the gampong considered not so much whether the thirty parts had been exactly finished, as whether the date would suit the people of the gampong and their guests. The feast was not, like the kanduri Maulèot, open to the entire mukim: only the inhabitants of the gampongs in the immediate neighbourhood were invited. Some days beforehand, the authorities of the gampong began collecting the money contributions; goats were slaughtered, and the rice with its accessories was of course provided. The viands served not only to break the fast but to satisfy the appetite, so that on this evening the people did not go home for their supper.
The rateb Saman and its Achehnese form
On this occasion the traweh was succeeded not by the usual meudaroih but by an excessively noisy ratib—the rateb Saman, so called from Samman, the founder of a tarīqah or mystic order, who died at Medina in 1152 Hijrah. Especially popular among all native Mohammedans of the old stamp, the rateb Saman had given rise in various places to sundry variations and additions, all of which served to accentuate the appalling noisiness of the exercise. In Acheh the form it took was the rateb meusa or kululèë: first, certain formulas in praise of Allah were chanted in measured time by the assembled company; then the tempo grew gradually faster and faster; the incessantly repeated formulas became shorter (e.g. lā ilāha illa ‘Llāh! huwa ‘Llāh!); the voices rose to a shrill scream; and the yelling fanatics, sweating with the violence of their transport, rose up, sat down, leapt, danced, and often fell down at last in sheer exhaustion from the ecstasy—called dō’ by the Achehnese—which they deemed to arise from their contemplation of the divine.
Social enforcement
Any of those present who betrayed a manifest reluctance to share in the general excitement was sure to be forced to join the crowd in a manner not too pleasant for himself, and serious disturbances sometimes arose from the annoyance felt at such indifference. For this reason, the authorities both of the gampong which was performing the peutamat daroh and of the others whose inhabitants had come as guests made a point of attending on such occasions.
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
- Ramadhan fasts
- Rateb pulet and rateb sadati
- Peutamat
- Meunasah
- Samman
- Peutamat Daroh
- Kanduri Mo’lot
- Maulid sharaful ‘anam
- Kanduri
- Tahlil
- Ramadhan
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.