Munkar and Nakir (Achehnese Mòngkaronwa Fangki, from the Arabic Munkar wa-Nakīr) are the two angels who, in Islamic eschatology as received in Acheh, examine the dead in their graves concerning their faith and works, and chastise those whose answers are found wanting. They are the dread ministers of the tomb, and their visit is the first ordeal to which every Achehnese looks forward after death.
Snouck Hurgronje introduces them in the chapter on mourning and burial customs of The Achehnese: “No sooner is a dead man laid in his grave, than he is visited by the angels Munkar and Nakir (Ach. Mbngkaronwafiangki), terrible of aspect and prepared if he fails to answer their questions to chastise him grievously as a foretaste of what he has to expect after the resurrection. These questions relate to the faith, and only he who has died in that true faith can reply to them”. The interrogation of the tomb is thus the test by which the truth of a man’s confession of Islam is established at the very threshold of the next world; and the dying are continually put in mind of that confession of faith which is “regarded as containing an epitome of all religious truth” — the last service rendered to man on the boundary between life and death being the peuʿetintat (“conducting” or “showing the way to”).
The Achehnese have woven a striking legend around the angels and their iron clubs. In the chapter on the kanduri apam — the round flat cakes baked in the month of Rajab for the benefit of the dead — Snouck tells how “a certain Achehnese, possessed by curiosity as to what befalls man in the tomb, and especially as to the investigations of the angels of the grave, Munkar and Nakir, and the punishments they are supposed to inflict, feigned death and was buried alive. He was soon subjected by the two angels to an enquiry as to his faith and works, and as he was found wanting in many respects, they began to smite him with their iron clubs. None of the blows, however, reached him. Something that he could not clearly distinguish in the darkness of the tomb, but which seemed to resemble the moon in its circular form, interposed itself as a shield and warded off the blows”.
When the curiosity-seeker contrived to work his way out of his narrow prison and hastened to his relatives, who received him with amazement, he discovered the cause of his merciful deliverance. At the very moment when the moon-shaped shield was giving him its shelter, the members of his family were in the act of preparing for a kanduri the apam cakes, which are in fact round like the moon. “Thus it became a certainty that apam-cakes exercise a specially favourable influence on the fortunes of the dead. Such is said to be the origin of the Achehnese custom of baking apam cakes and distributing them as kanduri in the 7th month of the year in the interest of their ancestors and deceased relatives”. The legend thus accounts, by a typical piece of folk-etymology, both for the round form of the cakes and for their peculiar efficacy against the angels of the grave.
The cult of Munkar and Nakir in Acheh is a good example of the way in which Islamic eschatology, introduced from the books of the law, took root in popular imagination and was made the centre of a whole cycle of native legend. The iron clubs of the two angels, their questioning, and the interposition of the moon-shaped shield of apam cakes between the dead man and his tormentors, all belong to a folklore at once orthodox in its framework and characteristically Achehnese in its working-out.
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.
Munkar and Nakir (Achehnese Mòngkaronwa Fangki, from the Arabic Munkar wa-Nakīr) are the two angels who, in Islamic eschatology as received in Acheh, examine the dead in their graves concerning their faith and works, and chastise those whose answers are found wanting. They are the dread ministers of the tomb, and their visit is the first ordeal to which every Achehnese looks forward after death.
Snouck Hurgronje introduces them in the chapter on mourning and burial customs of The Achehnese: “No sooner is a dead man laid in his grave, than he is visited by the angels Munkar and Nakir (Ach. Mbngkaronwafiangki), terrible of aspect and prepared if he fails to answer their questions to chastise him grievously as a foretaste of what he has to expect after the resurrection. These questions relate to the faith, and only he who has died in that true faith can reply to them”. The interrogation of the tomb is thus the test by which the truth of a man’s confession of Islam is established at the very threshold of the next world; and the dying are continually put in mind of that confession of faith which is “regarded as containing an epitome of all religious truth” — the last service rendered to man on the boundary between life and death being the peuʿetintat (“conducting” or “showing the way to”).
The Achehnese have woven a striking legend around the angels and their iron clubs. In the chapter on the kanduri apam — the round flat cakes baked in the month of Rajab for the benefit of the dead — Snouck tells how “a certain Achehnese, possessed by curiosity as to what befalls man in the tomb, and especially as to the investigations of the angels of the grave, Munkar and Nakir, and the punishments they are supposed to inflict, feigned death and was buried alive. He was soon subjected by the two angels to an enquiry as to his faith and works, and as he was found wanting in many respects, they began to smite him with their iron clubs. None of the blows, however, reached him. Something that he could not clearly distinguish in the darkness of the tomb, but which seemed to resemble the moon in its circular form, interposed itself as a shield and warded off the blows”.
When the curiosity-seeker contrived to work his way out of his narrow prison and hastened to his relatives, who received him with amazement, he discovered the cause of his merciful deliverance. At the very moment when the moon-shaped shield was giving him its shelter, the members of his family were in the act of preparing for a kanduri the apam cakes, which are in fact round like the moon. “Thus it became a certainty that apam-cakes exercise a specially favourable influence on the fortunes of the dead. Such is said to be the origin of the Achehnese custom of baking apam cakes and distributing them as kanduri in the 7th month of the year in the interest of their ancestors and deceased relatives”. The legend thus accounts, by a typical piece of folk-etymology, both for the round form of the cakes and for their peculiar efficacy against the angels of the grave.
The cult of Munkar and Nakir in Acheh is a good example of the way in which Islamic eschatology, introduced from the books of the law, took root in popular imagination and was made the centre of a whole cycle of native legend. The iron clubs of the two angels, their questioning, and the interposition of the moon-shaped shield of apam cakes between the dead man and his tormentors, all belong to a folklore at once orthodox in its framework and characteristically Achehnese in its working-out.
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.