The sawo (Achehnese, a corruption of the Arabic saḥūr) was the meal taken before the break of day during the fasting month of Ramadhan, corresponding to the suhoor of general Mohammedan practice. As the Mohammedan law did not brook the most trifling breach of the prescribed abstinence — the smallest particles of solid or liquid food, or the smoke of tobacco or opium, entering the body between earliest dawn and sunset, made the fast day null and void — the timely waking of the householders for the sawo was a matter of religious, and not merely domestic, importance.
Commendable and obligatory
As regards the breaking of the fast, each one might follow his own inclination, but it was considered sunnat (commendable) to take some food immediately after sunset, and equally so to have another meal before the break of day. The latter was called sawo by the Achehnese. The two meals thus bracketed the daily fast: the bukah, or breaking of the fast at sunset, opened the hours of refreshment, and the sawo, taken before the dawn, closed them. Both were commendable rather than obligatory, but the urgency of the sawo was the greater, since neglect of it exposed the worshipper to the risk of involuntary breach of the fast in the course of the long day.
The signal of the tambu and the sambang
That none might miss the time for preparing and eating the sawo-meal, the great drum (tambu) in the chapels was beaten at intervals from 1 to 3 A. M. In the days of the sultanate an additional warning was conveyed by means of a cannon-shot (called sambang) fired about 4 A. M. to warn the people that “a white thread might now be told from a black,” as the text of the Quran has it — that is, that the time of the sawo had come to an end. The Achehnese afterwards applied the name sambang to the morning and evening guns fired by the Dutch garrison, by a natural transfer of the old signal of the fasting month to the new signals of the occupation.
The nights of the Puasa
The sawo was the closing observance of the noisy nights of the Puasa in an Achehnese gampong. The nights were full of merriment, especially among the young men in their own particular sphere, the meunasah. After the conclusion of the traweh service, certain experts volunteered to recite passages from the Quran in the ceremony of the meudaroih, which continued till about one o’clock in the morning, when the tambu of the meunasah began to sound as a warning that the time for the sawo-meal was at hand. The sawo thus formed the nightcap of the long Achehnese evening of Ramadhan: after the prayers, the recitations, and the noisy gatherings of the young men in the meunasah, the householders withdrew to their own houses to prepare the meal that was to sustain them through the abstinence of the coming day.
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.