Pitrah

The pitrah (Achehnese, from the Arabic zakāt al-fiṭr) is the tax payable at the end of the fasting month by all whose means allow of it, on behalf of themselves and all who are dependent on them for support. The payment is made in kind — that is to say, in grain of the sort which forms the staple foodstuff of the country — and its special object is to make it easier for the indigent to participate in the feast which succeeds the fast. The Arabic legal measure has been fixed in Achehnese dry measure at two ares of rice per head, heaped up so as to rise in a cone at the top.

Hardly a single duty prescribed by the law is so faithfully observed throughout the whole Mohammedan world as this. Even those who are really hard pressed by its fulfilment are loath to neglect the contribution. Persons of distinction in Acheh send the pitrah for themselves and their dependents in the form of padi to the teungku of their meunasah, while the poor bring their smaller portions to the same official. The customary preliminary breakfast of the last day of the fast — a porridge (kanji) made from rice and various leaves pounded fine — is cooked by some poor old man of the gampong, who gets from the teungku a share of the pitrah for his pains.

In strict law the teungku, as collector and distributor, should receive no fixed share but merely a fair recompense for his trouble; the surplus should be distributed among the eight classes of recipients shared with the jakeuet. In Acheh, however, the institution has undergone a characteristic degeneration. The pitrah is virtually appropriated by the teungku as recompense for performing the traweh prayers throughout the fasting month — a service which the householders regard as the teungku’s chief obligation to them. The connexion between the two institutions is openly acknowledged: when one ulama, exasperated by the noise with which the young householders corrupted the traweh, threatened to cease his ministrations, the boldest of them replied that if he did so he would receive no pitrah from them on the feast-day at the end of the fasting month.

The pitrah is paid on the last day of Ramadhan, in time for distribution before the leubè raya or feast-day which concludes the fast. The diversion of the tax from the poor to the teungku is one of Snouck Hurgronje’s examples of how Mohammedan institutions in Acheh have degenerated into unrecognisable forms; another is the popular over-estimation of the traweh itself, which the pitrah has come to recompense.

Additional account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Pitrah

The pitrah (Achehnese, from the Arabic zakāt al-fiṭr) was the alms-tax payable in kind at the end of the fasting month, and was the model for a wider category of grain-doles distributed to the poor in Achehnese practice. In its primary sense it has been treated elsewhere in this wiki; the present article treats the pitrah as a model and a measure of certain compensatory payments prescribed by some Shafi’ite teachers in discharge of debts to Allah left unpaid at death. Snouck Hurgronje draws particular attention to this custom, which he describes as very prevalent in Java, and as not having been mentioned in any extant work prior to his own.

The neglected salat as a debt to Allah

There were, Snouck Hurgronje observes, comparatively few Mohammedans who did not leave at their death a considerable deficit of neglected salat (Achehnese seumayang), the five daily prayers which every full-grown man was bound to perform. The ruling doctrine of the Shafi’ite school was that this arrear could only be cleared off by penance and punishment in hell, or by the merciful forgiveness of Allah, and that neglect to perform this purely “bodily” obligation could not be made good by gifts to the poor. In opposition to this, however, there were some Shafi’ite teachers of authority who held that the latter method might be availed of. They directed that the salat neglected by the deceased should be counted up as carefully as possible, and that for every one of these a mudd of the grain of the country — rice in Sumatra and Java — should be given to the poor, the burden being borne by the inheritance.

The pitrah as the measure of compensation

Those who held this view expressly required that the distribution of the dole should be made in the staple grain of the country, “just as is prescribed in the case of the pitrah.” The pitrah thus served not merely as one observance among many, but as the canonical model of the grain-dole: its measure (the mudd or its Achehnese equivalent the are) and its form (the staple grain of the country) being borrowed for the compensation of neglected prayers. The Hanafites, who were also in favour of the doctrine of the distribution of food among the poor, raised no objection to the grain being replaced by its value in money, but the stricter Shafi’ite usage adhered to distribution in kind, following the precedent of the pitrah.

The padiah and the wider debt to Allah

The compensation of neglected salat was one branch of the wider Achehnese institution of the padiah or fidyah — the discharge, by gifts made on behalf of the deceased, of those debts to Allah which the Shafi’ite school more strictly held to be irredeemable by vicarious payment. The duty of discharging such debts extended to the cost of a deputy haji (baday), where the deceased had been in a position to perform the pilgrimage during his lifetime but had availed himself of the permission given by the Shafi’ite school to postpone it indefinitely. The debt of the neglected salat, measured by the pitrah and borne by the inheritance, thus took its place beside the padiah for neglected prayers and fasts, and the cost of the deputy haji, as part of the account that the Achehnese dead were supposed to settle with their Maker through the agency of their heirs.

Additional account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Pitrah (Zakat al-Fitr)

The pitrah (Achehnese, from the Arabic zakāt al-fiṭr) was the tax payable at the end of the fasting month by all whose means allowed of it, on behalf of themselves and all who were dependent on them for support. Its general character and canonical distribution are described above; the present entry treats the pitrah in its relation to the revenues of the uleebalangs of Acheh, a feature noted by Snouck Hurgronje in his account of the emoluments of the territorial chiefs.

The uleebalang’s sources of profit

Besides the regular revenues of his office, the uleebalangs laid claim to a number of other sources of profit which varied with the locality. These included imposts on the sale of firewood, bricks, cocoanuts, and cocoanut oil, a share of all jungle-produce or plants felled in the forests, gifts of the rice or fruits that first ripen, a portion of all cattle slaughtered, fees for the right to collect turtles’ eggs, a share of the profits of gambling, and a portion of the pitrah and jakeuet. The uleebalang was also paid for the certificates required for the issue of ordinary passports and those for the hajj. Where pepper was grown, the chief received so much a pikul as tasi’. The pitrah thus took its place among the miscellaneous perquisites by which the Achehnese territorial chief added to the income of his office.

The diversion of the pitrah

The claim of the uleebalang to a portion of the pitrah must be read in connexion with the more general diversion of the tax from the poor to the religious officials of the gampong. In strict law the teungku, as collector and distributor, should receive no fixed share but merely a fair recompense for his trouble; the surplus should be distributed among the eight classes of recipients shared with the jakeuet. In Acheh, however, the institution had undergone a characteristic degeneration: the pitrah was virtually appropriated by the teungku as recompense for performing the traweh prayers throughout the fasting month. The uleebalang’s claim to a portion of the pitrah, mentioned among his emoluments, was thus one stage in a wider process by which the canonical poor-due was converted, in Achehnese practice, into a perquisite of the local authorities.

The pitrah and the jakeuet

The coupling of the pitrah with the jakeuet in the uleebalang’s revenue is significant. Both were zakāt payments of canonical prescription, the pitrah being the alms of the end of the fast and the jakeuet the alms of property. Both, in strict law, were to be distributed to the eight classes of recipients named in the Quran; both, in Achehnese practice, had come to be reckoned among the sources of profit of the territorial chief. The mention of the two together by Snouck Hurgronje indicates the extent to which the canonical law of zakāt had been modified, in actual Achehnese usage, by the customary claims of the uleebalang and the teungku.

Sources

Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), pp. 86 and 91 (chapter De invloed van den Islam door Prof. Dr. W. J. A. Kernkamp).

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.

tags	event, religious, ceremony, festival, legal, padiah, uleebalang, revenue, concept, islamic, achehnese
aliases	Zakat fitrah, Zakat al-fitr, Fitrah, Fitr tax, Zakat al-fitr in Acheh, Padiah for neglected prayers, Pitrah and padiah, Pitrah as uleebalang's due, Uleebalang's share of pitrah, Pitrah and jakeuet, Atjeh pitrah, Atjehnese pitrah collection

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