Uthman — Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the four Rāshidūn caliphs and one of the four companions (khulafāʾ al-rāshidūn) of the Prophet Mohammad — is invoked, together with Abu Bakr, Omar, and Ali, in the formal letters patent (sarakata) issued by the Sultan of Acheh to his officers. The four companions, as the immediate successors of the Prophet in the leadership of the Muslim community, occupy in Achehnese political theology a place analogous to that which they hold in the rest of the Sunni world; their blessing is sought at the head of every royal instrument of appointment, in order that the act of the Sultan may be placed under the protection of the earliest and most exemplary generation of Islam.
The Invocation in the Sarakata
The model of the Achehnese letters patent given by Snouck Hurgronje opens with the date — “In the year of the Hijrah of the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) one thousand three hundred and seven, on the 4th day of the month Rabīʿ al-Awwal, being Monday, with the help of Allah the omniscient King” — and continues: “and 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 invocation then proceeds to call down the blessing of the “glorious Pole of the world and the brilliant framework of the skies, the immutable knower, the true Beloved, the lord Shaik Abdul Qadir Jilani.” The form is composed in a mixture of Malay and bad Arabic; the same template, with minor variations, was used for all the formal letters patent of the sultanate, including those given to the Panglima Meusigit Raya and other high officers.
The Four Companions in Achehnese Devotion
The naming of the four companions at the head of the sarakata is more than a conventional piety. It anchors the authority of the Sultan in the foundation-narrative of Islam itself, and it ensures that every act of investiture carries with it the cumulative barakah of the Prophet’s immediate circle. Uthman, in this sequence, is the third name: he comes after Abu Bakr and Omar and before Ali, in the standard Sunni order. His inclusion, together with that of Ali — whose memory was particularly cherished by the Achehnese, as by other Malay Muslims, on account of his kinship with the Prophet — marks the determination of the sultans’ chancery to make explicit the Sunni orthodoxy of the Achehnese state. The same four names recur in the Achehnese devotional literature and in the formulas of popular religion, and their appearance in the sarakata is one of the clearest tokens of the way in which the political theology of the sultanate was framed by the inherited categories of Sunni Islam.
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.
Uthman — Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the four Rāshidūn caliphs and one of the four companions (khulafāʾ al-rāshidūn) of the Prophet Mohammad — is invoked, together with Abu Bakr, Omar, and Ali, in the formal letters patent (sarakata) issued by the Sultan of Acheh to his officers. The four companions, as the immediate successors of the Prophet in the leadership of the Muslim community, occupy in Achehnese political theology a place analogous to that which they hold in the rest of the Sunni world; their blessing is sought at the head of every royal instrument of appointment, in order that the act of the Sultan may be placed under the protection of the earliest and most exemplary generation of Islam.
The Invocation in the Sarakata
The model of the Achehnese letters patent given by Snouck Hurgronje opens with the date — “In the year of the Hijrah of the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) one thousand three hundred and seven, on the 4th day of the month Rabīʿ al-Awwal, being Monday, with the help of Allah the omniscient King” — and continues: “and 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 invocation then proceeds to call down the blessing of the “glorious Pole of the world and the brilliant framework of the skies, the immutable knower, the true Beloved, the lord Shaik Abdul Qadir Jilani.” The form is composed in a mixture of Malay and bad Arabic; the same template, with minor variations, was used for all the formal letters patent of the sultanate, including those given to the Panglima Meusigit Raya and other high officers.
The Four Companions in Achehnese Devotion
The naming of the four companions at the head of the sarakata is more than a conventional piety. It anchors the authority of the Sultan in the foundation-narrative of Islam itself, and it ensures that every act of investiture carries with it the cumulative barakah of the Prophet’s immediate circle. Uthman, in this sequence, is the third name: he comes after Abu Bakr and Omar and before Ali, in the standard Sunni order. His inclusion, together with that of Ali — whose memory was particularly cherished by the Achehnese, as by other Malay Muslims, on account of his kinship with the Prophet — marks the determination of the sultans’ chancery to make explicit the Sunni orthodoxy of the Achehnese state. The same four names recur in the Achehnese devotional literature and in the formulas of popular religion, and their appearance in the sarakata is one of the clearest tokens of the way in which the political theology of the sultanate was framed by the inherited categories of Sunni Islam.
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.