Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/193

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name of Salamah a word which is written (Symbol missingArabic characters) or (Symbol missingArabic characters); but the Achehnese always speak of Printaïh Salam and understand thereby the work or duties of Salam, printaih having in Achehnese the meaning of "work, management".

Hikayat peudeuëng.Hikayat peudeuëng (LXIX).

Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad was once suspected of unchastity by her husband Ali, for one day as he sat in the front balcony of his house he heard her as he supposed conversing with a man within.

Inquiry however brought it to light that the chaste woman had but addressed her husband's famous sword (peudeuëng) Dōypaka (Dul-faqār) asking it how many infidels it had helped to rid of their heads by Ali's hand. The sword had replied than these slain infidels were past counting.

The occasion of the husband's suspicion and enquiry gives the opportunity for sundry profitable admonitions to women, though not couched in the form in which are conceived the Prophet's well-known lessons to Fatimah.

The two next stories we find sometimes united as one, sometimes attached as an appendix to the history of the life of Muhammad. The same is the case with the Malay versions.

Hikayat Sòydina Usén.Hikayat sòydina Usén or tuanteu[1] Usén (LXX).

The martyrdom of Hasan and Husain the two grandsons of Muhammad, is certainly nowhere more curiously told than in this hikayat.

Asan was king at Medina; the infidel Yadib (Ach. pronunciation of Yazid) in Meusé (Egypt). Lila-majan[2], one of the two wives of Asan let herself be persuaded by Yadib to poison her husband.

Usén succeeded his brother on the throne, but was soon warned by Meuruan (Marwān) of the designs of Yadib and thereupon set off with an army of 70000 men for Kupah. He met Yadib in the plain of Akabala (Kerbela), and there Usén and most of the members of his


  1. Tuanteu = "Our Lord" is the Achehnese translation of the Arab. Sayyidunā, which. the Achehnese pronounce as sòydina.
  2. This name is evidently compounded of Laila and her lover Majnun for whom she had a desperate passion. Both Majnun and Laila are represented in the processions of the Hasan-Husain feast in South India. See Herklots Qanoon-e-islam, 2d edition p. 126–7.