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Mystic orders.Next to the sayyids we mentioned the mystics as having borrowed a certain degree of authority from religion.
In Acheh, as well as in other parts of the Archipelago, much reverence is paid to the memory of the founders of mystic orders. We have seen how the help of these holy men and especially of Abdul-Qādir Jīlānī is invoked in the prelude of all the sultans' edicts. This sacred name also appears in the curious proceedings which in Acheh are included under the terms liké and ratèb (the equivalents of the Arabic ḍikr and rātib), in the sadati-pantōns etc., and also at the performances called Rapaʾi[1]. At these last Aḥmad Rifāʿi, that master of mysticism from whom they derive their name, is of course always invoked.
The spiritual successors of these founders, who at present teach mystic practices and formulas, also enjoy much respect, but are not very numerous. The tarīqahs so popular in other parts of Sumatra do not flourish in Acheh, though sundry Achehnese hajis have enrolled themselves as members of a tarīqah in Mecca. We can thus here overlook three mystic associations which form so weighty a factor in the religion of other parts of the Archipelago.
Walis, saints of sundry descriptions, known in Acheh as wali or more usually òëlia[2], are exceedingly numerous in that country. We shall meet with them again in reviewing more closely the religious life of the Achehnese. In matters political these departed saints only play a part in so far as they are invoked by the living.
The ulamas.The ulamas, the representatives of learning in the law are of much greater weight in political life than either departed saints or living mystics. We have already touched on their position in our account of "the Habib," who was himself numbered among their guild and owed to that fact a considerable portion of his prestige.
We shall deal in a later chapter with the influence which is in ordinary times exercised by the ulamas over the spiritual life of the Achehnese people, as well as with their lore and the method of their
- ↑ These are religious performances, wherein the performers wound themselves with knives, sear their bodies with red-hot chains etc. while the bystanders chant religious formulas. The wounds are supposed to be immediately healed by the mystic influence of the holy personage whose litanies are being recited.
- ↑ This word is properly the plural of wali in the Arabic, aulia, with an Achehnese pronunciation; but it is also used as a singular both in Achehnese and kindred languages, in the same way as ulama, also a plural in Arabic.
