The Ramadhan fasts—the obligation of all adult Mohammedans to abstain from food, drink and other specified gratifications between dawn and sunset during the month of Ramadhan—were, in Acheh, the subject of distinctive enforcement both by the uleëbalangs and (in the dynastic ideal) by the Sultan. The duty was recognised as one of the chief obligations of the creed of Islam; and the sultans’ letters of appointment (the sarakatas with the chab sikureu’èng, or ninefold seal) explicitly imposed on the uleëbalang the duty of compelling his subjects to perform the public prayers and especially the Friday service, and to observe the fasts in the month appointed.
The sarakata and the duties of the uleëbalang
To restore mosques which had fallen into disrepair, to build new ones, to compel his subjects to perform the public prayers and especially the Friday service, and to observe the fasts in the month appointed—such were the chief duties of an uleëbalang according to the sarakatas with the chab sikureu’èng. From this it was abundantly clear, Snouck Hurgronje observes, that the sultans under whom the original models were composed had them drafted by ulamas who stood high in their favour, and whose influence in the country was not inconsiderable. The fast of Ramadhan was thus enshrined in the dynastic ideal of the Achehnese sultanate as one of the principal religious duties whose enforcement the sultan delegated to his uleëbalangs.
Arbitrary punishment of transgressors
In Acheh and its dependencies, just as in other Mohammedan countries, arbitrary punishments were often elaborated and inflicted by the chiefs. The present chief of Teunom, for instance, used often to cause adulterous lovers to be deprived of their virility by the objects of their passion. He also punished many transgressors of the law as to fasts by having them led about the country on all fours for some days, with rings in their noses like buffaloes, and forcing them to eat grass. This extraordinary punishment—visited upon those who broke the fast of Ramadhan—vividly illustrates the seriousness with which the obligation was regarded, and the drastic devices to which chiefs would resort in order to enforce it when the formal sanctions of Mohammedan law proved insufficient.
The contradiction between law and practice
The application of the formal Mohammedan law as to fasts (and other religious obligations) was extremely rare in Acheh, although its provisions were pretty generally known. This was undoubtedly due to some extent to the great difficulty of proving illicit intercourse according to the requirements of the Mohammedan law of evidence; but the same practical difficulty arose with the fasts: it was not permissible to apply a punishment ordained of Allah to a crime which, clear though it be to human insight, was insufficiently proved in accordance with the rules of evidence prescribed by Allah’s law. Hence the chief’s arbitrary punishments—like that of the chief of Teunom—filled the gap left by the formal law, although they had no sanction in the jurisprudence of Islam.
The place of the fasts in the religious year
The fasts of Ramadhan were the principal religious obligation of the Achehnese year, and their approach was marked by the great pre-Puasa fair opened by the Sianta or royal proclamation, by the great slaughter known as the ma meugang, and by the ceremonial commencement of the fast itself, signalled in the capital by the firing of seven guns from the Dalam. Their completion was celebrated by one of the two great Mohammedan feasts—the ‘Īd al-Fitr, or feast at the end of the fasting month. The fasts were thus both a personal religious obligation and a public, communal event whose observance defined the rhythm of the Achehnese 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.