The rebuilding of the Meuseugit Raya — the principal mosque of Acheh, known also as the Meuseugit Raya of the capital — was the great collective undertaking of the Achehnese in the matter of religious architecture, and an exception to the general rule that the Achehnese took little interest in the public worship of the mosque. The work was carried out in the prime of the activity of Habib Abdurrahman, and was always quoted, by Snouck Hurgronje and by the Achehnese themselves, as the outstanding example of what could be accomplished in Acheh by a personality at once revered and dreaded.
The general indifference to the mosque
The rebuilding was remarkable precisely because the ordinary condition of the mosques of Acheh was one of neglect. The officials of the mosque were usually ignorant men, and whenever they could find others more devout and learned in the law they gladly made over their duties to them. Should such be wanting, the personnel of the mosque was often insufficient, and it rested on chance from week to week whether the Friday service should be held or replaced by an ordinary midday prayer. Sometimes the congregation of forty males fell short, and sometimes no one could be found who was able to read a sermon. Complaints of ulamas and other pious persons as to the lack of interest in public worship were universal.
The difficulty of restoration
Should a mosque fall into disrepair, the greatest difficulty was experienced in collecting the necessary funds and building materials for its restoration. The true Achehnese, if he did not entirely neglect the calls of his creed, took part with more zeal in the religious or quasi-religious gatherings in the meunasah than in the assemblages at the mosque, where he felt himself but half at home. Kanduris he gave and attended with pleasure; at ratebs or recitations, whether real or only imitative, he could excite himself to the highest pitch; but the ritual prescribed by the law failed to rouse his enthusiasm. The rebuilding of the Meuseugit Raya thus stood alone, against the whole current of Achehnese indifference to the mosque.
The role of Habib Abdurrahman
The general co-operation for the rebuilding of the Meuseugit Raya, which took place in the prime of Habib Abdurrahman’s activity, was always quoted as an exception to the rule. Such an unusual personality, revered by many and dreaded by the rest, was required in order that even the most moderate demands of religion might be satisfied. The Habib — an Arab of sayyid descent, whose influence in Acheh was due in part to his descent and in part to his personal asceticism — was able to command what no uleebalang and no sultan could command: the voluntary co-operation of the Achehnese in a work of public religion. The rebuilding of the mosque was the monument of that influence, and its constant quotation as an exception was itself a measure of how rare such an undertaking had been.
Significance
The rebuilding of the Meuseugit Raya illustrates, by its very singularity, the structure of Achehnese religious life. The mosque, in the canonical sense, was a foreign institution, weakly rooted in the gampong; the meunasah, the kanduri, and the rateb were the native forms of Achehnese devotion. The rebuilding of the great mosque was possible only when a personality of exceptional authority supplied, by his personal reverence and dread, the deficiency of institutional religion. After the death or the decline of the Habib, the mosques of Acheh returned to their ordinary condition of neglect, and the Meuseugit Raya itself again stood in need of the care that had once, in his prime, been so abundantly given.
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.