A region of Arabia providing many of Acheh’s religious teachers, traders, and saints. ‘From far beyond the memory of man… it was chiefly moral suasion that won the day [in spreading Islam in the Archipelago]. The foreign missionaries of Islam were her fighting men… many teachers from India, Egypt, Mecca and Hadramaut.’ Sayyid Abdallah bin Tahir Ba Alawi, a Hadramite teacher who died in December 1855, wrote treatises on improving the religious condition of Hadramaut. His work is cited at length regarding the conflict between Islamic law and local custom. Also, Sayyid Abdallah Al-Haddad, the great saint of Hadramaut, is the subject of the Kisah Abdolah Hadat. His blessings given even after death from his grave at Trim (Hadramaut) are described.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Hadramaut
Hadramaut (also Hadhramaut, Hadramawt) is the region of southern Arabia whose influence, together with that of Mecca, has led to the more universal acceptance of the ruya doctrine in the East Indian Archipelago. In The Achehnese Vol. I it is one of the principal extra-Indonesian sources of Islamic reforming influence upon the practices of Acheh and of the wider Malay world.
In many districts of the East Indian Archipelago the method of hisab (calculation) is adhered to for the determination of the beginnings of the lunar months, though according to the teaching of the Shafi’ite school it should only be employed for the indifferent affairs of daily life. It is only lately, under the influence of Mekka and Hadramaut, that the ruya — the actual observation of the new moon — has been more universally accepted in place of the older computed calendar. The Achehnese had long followed the method of calculation; their ulamas overcame the difficulty of a conflicting doctrine in the books of the law by the consideration that in these books the matter was only treated in outline, and that they themselves were better acquainted with the practical computation of the calendar than the writers. Under Hadrami and Meccan influence this position has progressively given way, and the ruya has come to be accepted as the orthodox method.
The same combined influence of Hadramaut and the holy cities is visible in many other particulars of religious life. Hadrami sayyids, the descendants of the Prophet through Husain, are found throughout the East Indian Archipelago, and the very name sayyid — applied in the Indian Archipelago to descendants of Husain, while the name sharif is here and there applied to the descendants of sayyids born in the country — points to the southern Arabian origin of much of the revered religious aristocracy of the Malay world. In Acheh, some members of a family of Sayyids from Mecca are settled in Pidie and used to make occasional journeys to Keumala, where the young sultan treated them with the highest honour. TheHadrami strain in this sayyid aristocracy is part of the broader current of southern Arabian influence that has, century by century, modified the indigenous adats of the Archipelago.
Hadramaut is also cited in the comparative study of popular superstition. In the chapter on hunting and fishing, Snouck Hurgronje notes that the chase is the subject of a certain amount of heathenish lore, in which prohibitions of forms of speech play a great part; this is so even in Hadramaut, where the Mohammedan confession of faith must not be uttered in certain places for fear of disturbing the spirits of the ancient heathen kingdom. The same class of prohibitions is found in the neighbourhood of the ancient Galuh in Java, where the Mohammedan confession of faith must not be uttered while fishing. The parallel shows that the heathen substratum of popular superstition is not peculiar to the East Indian Archipelago but is found even in a region of Arabia so closely associated with the spread of orthodox Islam.
See Also
- Acheh
- Egypt
- Idi
- India
- Mecca
- Sayyid Abdallah Al-Haddad
- Sayyid Abdallah bin Tahir Ba Alawi
- Trim
- Mekka
- Medina
- Cairo
- Pidie
- Keumala
- Java
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
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.