The ruya (Arabic ru’yah, “sighting”) was the Shafi’ite doctrine that the commencement of each month of the Mohammedan year must be fixed by the actual observation of the new moon, not by astronomical calculation. According to this doctrine, if the month preceding the fasting month should according to the reckoning number twenty-nine days, still the following day must not be regarded as the beginning of the fast unless it was proved by witnesses, in the manner prescribed by the law, that the new moon had been actually seen on the evening following the 29th day. If this observation of the moon (ruya) was not established by proof, the month must—in spite of astronomy—be regarded as a full one of thirty days.
The conflict with calculation
Although all the Mohammedans of the Archipelago were Shafi’ites, the doctrine of the ruya was far from being universally observed. In many districts calculation (hisāb) was adhered to, though according to the teaching of the Shafi’ite school calculation should only be employed for the indifferent affairs of daily life. It was only lately, Snouck Hurgronje notes, under the influence of Mecca and Hadramaut that the ruya had been more universally accepted. The doctrine thus represented the strict, scripturally correct position of the school, which the practical convenience of calculation had in many places displaced.
The Achehnese departure
In Acheh, the calculation was the method followed from the earliest times. The ulamas overcame the difficulty of a conflicting doctrine in the books of the law by the consideration that in these parts the atmosphere was only occasionally clear enough to allow of the new moon being seen on the first day of her appearance. This was an honest practical accommodation: the cloudy, monsoon-swept skies of northern Sumatra made the sighting of the new moon on the first evening of its appearance a rare event, and to insist on the ruya would have introduced intolerable uncertainty into the calendar of religious observance.
The sultan’s regulation and its inadmissibility
In the edicts of the sultans of Acheh there was a regulation directing that the commencement of the fasting month in each year should be fixed by a council of the learned held on the last Friday of the preceding month. The date was then made known to the people by the firing of guns on the previous day. This was quite inadmissible according to the ruya doctrine, since it substituted the foreknowledge of a council for the actual observation of the faithful on the evening of the 29th of Sha’ban. The sultans’ regulation thus enshrined, in dynastic law, the Achehnese departure from the strict letter of the Shafi’ite school.
The Achehnese calendar and its tables
There were in Acheh a few ulamas who were acquainted with some of the principles of Arabic astronomy (that of the Middle Ages), which they used as the basis of their calculations. But as a rule, reference was only made to certain tables given in Malay books, without any regard to the way in which these tables were arrived at, or the necessity for correction of the errors in reckoning to which they gave rise after some lapse of time. The Achehnese calendar, with its eight-year cycle, was thus a calculated calendar, not an observed one—a practical departure from the ruya doctrine that nonetheless preserved, in form, the religious character of the months whose beginnings it predicted.
Significance for the fasting month
The ruya doctrine was of special importance for the beginning of Ramadhan, since the fasting month began, in the strict doctrine, only with the actual sighting of the new moon. The Achehnese departure from the ruya in favour of calculation had the practical effect that the beginning of Ramadhan was known in advance; and the great annual market that preceded the fasting month could therefore begin and end on fixed dates, with the Sianta or royal proclamation announcing the opening of the market on a day already determined by the council of the learned. The ruya thus stood at the centre of a tension, in Achehnese Islam, between the strict letter of the Shafi’ite school and the practical requirements of a settled agricultural and commercial society.
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.