The ratebs (Achehnese rateb, from the Arabic ratib, plural ratā’ib) were the litanies or recitations that formed so conspicuous a part of Achehnese religious life. They comprised, on the one hand, genuine litanies of the mystic orders, such as the rateb Samman, and, on the other, the quasi-secular chants known as the rateb pulet and rateb sadati, which had in common with the religious litanies only the name and the noise. The term thus covered a wide spectrum of Achehnese devotional and recreational practice, from the strictest exercises of the tariqahs to the popular pastimes of the gampong.
The rateb and the meunasah
The ratebs were so much a part of the furniture of the meunasah that the implements required for their performance were always to be found there. In addition to the tambu or great drum, the meunasah contained the rapai or kettledrums and the wooden rings known as pulet, which were employed in the various chants. The young men of the gampong delighted especially in the rateb pulet and rateb sadati, which they performed at night with great enthusiasm, and the meunasah was the natural scene of these performances. The ratebs thus occupied the same physical space as the prescribed prayers, and the same population that performed (or neglected) the one joined freely in the other.
The genuine and the imitative ratebs
Snouck Hurgronje distinguishes sharply between the genuine litanies of the mystic orders, of which the rateb Samman was the chief Achehnese example, and the imitative chants that borrowed only the name and the noise of the religious litanies. The young people of Acheh, he remarks, delighted more in the chanting of the rateb pulet and rateb sadati than in the genuine ratebs, and the popularity of these quasi-secular chants was such that the meunasah was often more truly a place of recreation than of prayer. The dancing boys called sadati, who appeared at some of the ratebs in female garb and excited the passions of the Achehnese paederasts, were a further consequence of this popular appropriation of the rateb form.
The rateb and the sadah
The sadah (sadali) — one of the dancing boys who appeared at some of the ratebs in female garb — could become the occasion of serious quarrels among the chiefs of Acheh. Snouck Hurgronje notes, in his account of the royal family, that one of the small internal wars in which the Sultan was engaged some time before originated in a quarrel about a sadali. The ratebs thus entered not only into the religious and recreational life of the gampong, but into the politics of the sagi and the court. The same institution that gave its name to the strict litanies of the tariqahs thus became, in its popular form, a source of faction and even of armed conflict.
The rateb as the framework of Achehnese enthusiasm
What the kanduri was to the feast and the traweh was to the prescribed prayer, the rateb was to the popular enthusiasm of the Achehnese. It provided a framework within which the gampong could express, in common, the emotions that the formal service of the mosque left untouched; and it admitted, by its very flexibility, the whole range of Achehnese devotional and recreational life, from the mystical transports of the Sammaniyyah to the dancing boys and the fireworks of the piasan. The rateb was, in short, the principal vehicle of that compound of religion and amusement which so markedly characterised the popular Islam of Acheh.
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.