Teungku Anjong

Properties3
descriptionSayyid Abu Bakar bin Husain Bil-Faqih (†1782), the most venerated saint of Acheh, whose tomb at Gampong Jawa in Banda Acheh became the site of the Three Sagis' oath of deposition of December 1822.
tagsperson, saint, religious-figure, sayyid, bilfaqih, gampong-jawa, kramat, acheh, sajet, 18th-century, religious
aliasesSayyid Abu Bakr bin Husain Bilfaqih, Sayyid Abu Bakar bin Husain Bil-Faqih, Sayyid Teungku Anjong, Teungku Anjong of Gampong Jawa, the saint of Gampong Jawa, Tunhar Anjung, Tunhar Anjung of Kampong Java, Teungku Anjung, Teungkoe Andjöng, Arab sajet of Balfaqlh family, saint of Gampöng Djawa

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Teungku Anjong — in Kreemer’s spelling Teungkoe Andjöng — was the popular Achehnese name of Sayyid Abu Bakar bin Husain Bil-Faqih, an Arab sajet (sayyid, descendant of the Prophet) of the Hadrami Bil-Faqih (Balfaqlh) family who died on the 14th of Ramadhan 1196 H (August 1782) and whose tomb (koeboe kramat), under the popular name Teungku Anjong in Gampöng Djawa (also Gampong Java) in Banda Acheh near Koeta Radja, is — at the time of Snouck Hurgronje’s writing — “the tomb at present most highly honoured in Acheh” and the most important pilgrimage site in Atjèh. His veneration had, by the close of the nineteenth century, completely outshone the more ancient tomb of Teungku di Kuala Abdora’oh (alias Abdoerraoef van Singkel), which had enjoyed the highest reputation in former times. The tomb served in 1822 as the site of the formal oath by which the chiefs of the Three Sagis — the XXII Mukims, XXV Mukims and XXVI Mukims — renounced the deposed Sultan Jauhar Alum and committed themselves, by a binding religious act, never to receive him back as their ruler.

The Sayyid’s Name and Descent

The Sayyid’s name itself reveals his descent. Abu Bakar (the Achehnese form of the Arabic Abū Bakr) was the name of the first of the four Companions; the patronymic bin Husain shows that he traced his descent through the Prophet’s grandson Husain, as all sayyids of the archipelago do; and Bil-Faqih — “of the jurist” — is the name of a celebrated Hadrami family, members of which settled in many parts of the archipelago. The Sayyid was thus an immigrant from the Hadramawt, or a descendant of recent Hadrami immigrants, who settled in Banda Acheh and there acquired, by the conjunction of his descent with the reputation of his personal piety, the supreme place in Achehnese veneration that his tomb now enjoys.

His popular name, Teungku Anjong, has a humbler origin. His real name being known to the learned, the Achehnese in general remember him only by his dwelling-place: he had lived during his lifetime in a house which was separated from the neighbouring house by an anjong (a kind of raised platform or erection between two houses), and from this circumstance he came to be universally called “Teungku Anjong.” The same saint is named Tunhar Anjung in the spelling of the Three Sagis’ letter to Penang of 4 December 1822 — a Malay rendering that reflects the orthography of the chiefs’ Malay scribe rather than Achehnese pronunciation.

The Tomb and the Displacement of the Older Saints

Snouck Hurgronje writes: “The tomb at present most highly honoured in Acheh is that of Teungku Anjong in Gampong Jawa. It is the last resting-place of a certain Sayyid Abu Bakar bin Husain Bil-Faqih, and has completely outshone the more ancient tomb of Teungku di Kuala alias Abdora’oh (Abdurra’uf of Singkel) which enjoyed the highest reputation in former times.” The displacement of the older saint by the newer is a notable fact in the religious topography of Achehnese devotion: it shows how the focus of popular veneration has shifted, in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from the great saints of the classical period to those of more recent memory. The sayyid’s reputation as the great saint of Acheh is now so universally accepted that vows may be made to him in the same manner as to the Prophet himself or to the saint Mirah Sab (who lies buried at Nagore in British India).

A curious testimony to the rapid growth of his cult is the appearance of his tomb in the so-called “laws of Meukuta Alam” — a body of Achehnese customary law traditionally ascribed to the great sultan of the early seventeenth century, but in fact containing much later material. Snouck Hurgronje remarks that “Teungku Anjong (†1782 A.D.) was not even born in the reign of Meukuta Alam (†1636 A.D.),” so that “how little reliance can be placed on Achehnese data in respect to the origin of such written laws” may be deduced from the very mention of his tomb in those laws.

The Annual Kanduris

According to the Achehnese tradition, Teungku Anjong died on the 14th of Ramadhan 1196 (August 1782). Three principal annual kanduris / kanoeri’s (religious feasts / meals) are held in the deah (prayer-house) at his tomb in Gampöng Djawa, on dates fixed by the Mohammedan calendar:

  1. On the 12th of Mo’lot (the 12th of the 3rd Muslim month) — the actual birthday of the Prophet, commemorating both Teungku Anjong’s birth and his death. One or more buffaloes are slaughtered; besides those who assemble in the deah to partake of the feast, sundry ulamas have a share therein, and the festival is one of the great Achehnese observances of the year.
  2. The kanduri Teungku Anjong, on the night before the 14th of Puasa (Ramadhan) — his death date, held on the evening before the 14th — more especially dedicated to the saint himself, being the anniversary of his death.
  3. On the 18th of Rajab — held in honour of his consort Aja Eseutiri (“my lady the consort”, also called Radja Istëri). Her real name was Fatimah bint Abdarrhaman ʿAidid, a daughter of a sayyid of the famous clan of ʿAidid; she appears to have died on the 18th of Rajab 1235 (May 1820). The kanduri Aja Eseutiri resembles exactly the two others celebrated at the sacred tomb.

The annual cycle of feasts at his deah — Mo’lot in spring, the night before the 14th of Puasa in the fasting month, and the 18th of Rajab in midsummer — gives the Achehnese ritual year three of its principal fixed points, and his cult is interwoven with the wider Achehnese observance of the Prophet’s birthday and the fast of Ramadhan.

The Cult in Achehnese Ritual Life

The rite of the kaoy / meukaöj (vow) is described by Snouck as one of the most characteristic Achehnese observances. It is a common custom for the father or mother to vow at the sick-bed of a child which has not yet been “brought down” — that is, has not yet made its first contact with the earth — that in the event of its recovery they will not merely bring it to the nearest holy tomb, but will take it on a pilgrimage to the resting-place of one of the great saints of Acheh, such as Teungku di Kuala Abdora’oh or Sayyid Teungku Anjong. In such cases the child is escorted to the sacred spot by a great procession of men and women, and cattle are slaughtered and a feast given at the tomb. Where the vow includes the expression of an intention to head the procession with geundrang, the two drums or geundrang and the flute (srune) are marched in front.

The non-fulfilment of a vow is regarded by the Achehnese as apt to be attended by disastrous consequences. If a child suffers from persistent ulcers on its head, ears, or eyes, or is slow in recovering from an illness, people say: “That child has a biinaran” — which means either that a vow has been made in its behalf and remains unfulfilled. The pilgrimage to the tomb of Sayyid Teungku Anjong is one of the most solemn of the biinaran by which a parent can discharge such a debt of gratitude.

Oath-swearing

The grave of Teungkoe Andjöng was also a traditional place for oath-swearing. Heads from outside Groot-Atjèh who offered submission to the Dutch Gouvernement had to swear loyalty oaths at this grave. Other oath-swearing sites in Atjèh included the graves of Nè’ Bati (in gampöng Lamba’ét, VI Moekim’s), Nènè’ Teukoe Tjhi’ Langsa (at Langsa), Toean di Taloe’ (at Tapa’ Toean), and the now-discredited Teungkoe Meuntröë.

The Oath of the Three Sagis, 4 December 1822

The most consequential political attestation of the saint’s cult is the oath sworn at his tomb on 4 December 1822 by the chiefs of the Three Sagis. In that year, three years after the Raffles-Coombs Acheh Commission and the Treaty of Pedir had attempted to seat Sultan Jauhar Alum firmly on the throne of Acheh, the Three Sagis addressed a letter to the Governor of Penang (W. E. Phillips) declaring that they had deposed Jauhar Alum and would never receive him back. The relevant passage runs:

“As to the old Rajah we acquaint our friend that we will never have him for our Rajah more, for we have deposed him and sworn to it on the tomb of Tunhar Anjung of Kampong Java, and we never can alter.”

The oath at the tomb of Teungku Anjong was, in other words, the Achehnese chiefs’ formal and religiously binding act of deposition. By invoking the saint’s tomb, the Three Sagis declared that they could not now, even if they wished, take back Sultan Jauhar Alum, “the old Rajah.” Van der Kemp cites the oath at Kampong Java in the broader context of the supremacy of Panglima Polim after the deposition of Jauhar Alum.

Significance

Teungku Anjong is the only named Achehnese religious figure (other than the sultans themselves) to be invoked in the documents printed by Van der Kemp; his tomb at Kampong Java is the only specifically Islamic sacred site in Banda Acheh mentioned in the 1900 article. The oath sworn there by the Three Sagis was a binding religious-political act: it placed the chiefs’ deposition of Jauhar Alum under the sanction of a saintly intercession, and made it impossible — in the chiefs’ own account — for them to retract. The same tomb that anchored the Achehnese ritual year — Mo’lot, Puasa, Rajab — and drew the vows of parents on behalf of sick children, thus also anchored, in 1822, the Achehnese political rejection of an externally-imposed sovereign. Kreemer’s account, in turn, supplies the additional detail of the oath-swearing function — heads from outside Groot-Atjèh who offered submission to the Dutch Gouvernement had to swear loyalty oaths at this grave — that places the saint’s tomb at the centre not only of the ritual year but of the colonial-administrative order as well.

See Also

Sources

The Achehnese, Vol. I and Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.

Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.

Atjèh. Algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en onderhoorigheden, door J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut. Tweede Deel. Leiden: N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill, 1923. Identifier: Delpher MMKB02B:000001798; PPN 395084288. Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

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