The Prophet’s son-in-law, who narrates the seven-sleepers story in the Hikayat Tamlikha after solving theological questions Omar could not answer, and who in the Hikayat peudeueng briefly suspects his wife Fatimah of unchastity before discovering she was addressing his famous sword, Doypaka.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Ali
Ali — the fourth of the Rashidun caliphs, son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Mohammad — is, together with Abu Bakr, Omar and Uthman, one of the four Companions whose blessing is invoked in the prelude of all the sultans’ letters-patent of Acheh. The formula, which occurs in every sarakata (royal edict) sealed with the chab sikureung, runs: “with the blessing of the Prophet, the Lord of Men, and of his four companions, which be Abu Bakr, Omar, Uthman and Ali (may they be pleasing unto Allah).” The four Companions are immediately followed in the preamble by Abdul-Qadir Jilani, “the glorious Pole of the world,” and then by the universal company of the walis of God and by the deceased kings of Acheh of blessed memory.
Ali was the father of Hasan and Husain by Fatimah, the Prophet’s daughter. The Achehnese sayyids, who trace their descent from the Prophet through Husain, thus regard Ali as their ancestor in the third degree, and the universal veneration in which sayyids are held in Acheh — exceeding, in Snouck Hurgronje’s words, that paid to them in any other part of the Indian Archipelago — is in large measure a veneration of the house of Ali. Marriages of sayyid daughters with non-sayyids are almost unknown in Acheh, “as it is thought certain that the vengeance of God would overtake him even in this life.”
Ali is also the father, by his wife Khadijah bint Khuwaylid’s former husband’s daughter (or, in other accounts, by another wife), of Mohammad ibnu’l Hanafiyyah, whose romantic adventures form one of the favourite story-cycles of the Eastern Archipelago. Snouck Hurgronje classes the adventures of Mohammad ibnu’l Hanafiyyah with those of Amir Hamzah (the uncle of Mohammad), the hero Sam’un, Raja Badar and others, as stories “in conflict both with the history and the legendary tradition of the Arabs,” but widely diffused in British India and the Archipelago. The cycle of Ali’s family thus supplied popular romance to the Achehnese as well as formal religion: the figure of Ali is at once the warrior of early Islam, the father of the Imams, the progenitor of the sayyids, and one of the four Companions whose blessing hallows every act of the Achehnese Sultan’s government.
The reverence paid to Ali in Acheh is part of the general Sunnī orthodoxy of the country, which follows the Shafi’ite school; but his place in the preamble of the edicts — second only, among the Companions, to the order in which they are named — and his connection with the sayyid families, give him a prominence in the devotional life of Acheh that goes beyond what is ordinarily found in Sunnī countries.
See Also
- Abdul-Qadir Jilani
- Abu Bakr
- Amir Hamzah
- Fatimah
- Hasan
- Hasan and Husain
- Husain
- Mohammad
- Mohammad (the Prophet)
- Mohammad ibnu’l Hanafiyyah
- Omar
- Raja Bada
- Sayyid Abu Bakar bin Husain Bil-Faqih
- Tamikha
- Uthman
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
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.
The Prophet’s son-in-law, who narrates the seven-sleepers story in the Hikayat Tamlikha after solving theological questions Omar could not answer, and who in the Hikayat peudeueng briefly suspects his wife Fatimah of unchastity before discovering she was addressing his famous sword, Doypaka.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Ali
Ali — the fourth of the Rashidun caliphs, son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Mohammad — is, together with Abu Bakr, Omar and Uthman, one of the four Companions whose blessing is invoked in the prelude of all the sultans’ letters-patent of Acheh. The formula, which occurs in every sarakata (royal edict) sealed with the chab sikureung, runs: “with the blessing of the Prophet, the Lord of Men, and of his four companions, which be Abu Bakr, Omar, Uthman and Ali (may they be pleasing unto Allah).” The four Companions are immediately followed in the preamble by Abdul-Qadir Jilani, “the glorious Pole of the world,” and then by the universal company of the walis of God and by the deceased kings of Acheh of blessed memory.
Ali was the father of Hasan and Husain by Fatimah, the Prophet’s daughter. The Achehnese sayyids, who trace their descent from the Prophet through Husain, thus regard Ali as their ancestor in the third degree, and the universal veneration in which sayyids are held in Acheh — exceeding, in Snouck Hurgronje’s words, that paid to them in any other part of the Indian Archipelago — is in large measure a veneration of the house of Ali. Marriages of sayyid daughters with non-sayyids are almost unknown in Acheh, “as it is thought certain that the vengeance of God would overtake him even in this life.”
Ali is also the father, by his wife Khadijah bint Khuwaylid’s former husband’s daughter (or, in other accounts, by another wife), of Mohammad ibnu’l Hanafiyyah, whose romantic adventures form one of the favourite story-cycles of the Eastern Archipelago. Snouck Hurgronje classes the adventures of Mohammad ibnu’l Hanafiyyah with those of Amir Hamzah (the uncle of Mohammad), the hero Sam’un, Raja Badar and others, as stories “in conflict both with the history and the legendary tradition of the Arabs,” but widely diffused in British India and the Archipelago. The cycle of Ali’s family thus supplied popular romance to the Achehnese as well as formal religion: the figure of Ali is at once the warrior of early Islam, the father of the Imams, the progenitor of the sayyids, and one of the four Companions whose blessing hallows every act of the Achehnese Sultan’s government.
The reverence paid to Ali in Acheh is part of the general Sunnī orthodoxy of the country, which follows the Shafi’ite school; but his place in the preamble of the edicts — second only, among the Companions, to the order in which they are named — and his connection with the sayyid families, give him a prominence in the devotional life of Acheh that goes beyond what is ordinarily found in Sunnī countries.
See Also
- Abdul-Qadir Jilani
- Abu Bakr
- Amir Hamzah
- Fatimah
- Hasan
- Hasan and Husain
- Husain
- Mohammad
- Mohammad (the Prophet)
- Mohammad ibnu’l Hanafiyyah
- Omar
- Raja Bada
- Sayyid Abu Bakar bin Husain Bil-Faqih
- Tamikha
- Uthman
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
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.