The plain of Kerbela in Iraq. In the Hikayat Soydina Usen (the martyrdom of Hasan and Husain): ‘Usen succeeded his brother on the throne… and thereupon set off with an army of 70,000 men for Kupah. He met Yadib in the plain of Akabala (Kerbela), and there Usen and most of the members of his family died for the faith.’ Similarly in the Hikayat Muhamat Napiah: ‘he assembled his hosts in the plain of Akabala (Kerbela).’ The Achehnese pronuced this as Akabala.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Kerbela
Kerbela (also spelled Karbala) is the plain in Iraq on which Husain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, perished in battle against the Umayyads on the day of Ashura. In The Achehnese Vol. I, Snouck Hurgronje cites Kerbela as the historical and emotional centre of the Muharram (Asan-Usen) commemorations, whose observance in the Eastern Archipelago he treats at length in connection with the Hasan-Husain feasts.
The Martyrdom
In Shi’ite countries, Snouck observes, the first ten days of Muharram are “devoted to all manner of ceremonies, processions, discourses and theatrical representations, purporting to commemorate the conflict between Mohammad’s grandson Husain and the Umayyads.” These festivities “culminate in the Ashura, on which day he perished on the plains of Kerbela,” and even on this climax “a number of ceremonies follow, extending over the next three days and consecrated to the memory of his burial etc.” The “dances and bonfires, the dikrs with their mourning” and the symbolic coffin (tabut) carried about in processions are the public face of the commemoration.
Connection with the East Indies
Snouck is at pains to point out that the Absurd tales related of Husain and his companions, the martyrs of Kerbela, are also of the same character as those current in British India and consequently in the Archipelago as well. There too, Hasan — innocent as he was of all martyrdom — has been enrolled in this band of saints, “and the Ashura-festival bears the names of both brothers.” The 17th-century wave of Achehnese seaborne power carried these commemorations, along with the more orthodox Shafi’ite law, throughout the Archipelago; Snouck notes that “in Acheh the month is called Asan-Usen,” and that in Java the day Ashura has given the name Sura to the month Muharram.
Snouck places the noisy celebration of these festivals — processions, mourning, dikrs and the like — as belonging “especially to Persia and the Shi’ite portions of British India and need not occupy our attention here” so far as Acheh proper is concerned. In Acheh itself the native Achehnese act only as spectators of the tabut processions at Kuta Raja, which are organised by Padang settlers and joined by Klings and Hindus.
See Also
- Acheh
- Hikayat Soydina Usen
- Kupah
- British India
- Hasan and Husain
- Husain
- Java
- Kuta Raja
- Persia
- Prophet Muhammad
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.