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Abstract
This article examines the case of two female saints who resided and are buried in the Indonesian region of Seunagan, in the province of Aceh. The entwined genealogy and Sufi lineage that links these women to the broader family of Sufis who constitute the major figures in Seunagan’s Syattariyah Sufi path is patrilineal. Nonetheless, some residents of Seunagan suggest that Seunagan’s two female saints are able to transmit preternatural powers to their descendants. Such suggestions reveal a genealogical imagination that recognises the descent of esoteric knowledge and authority via female, as well as male, genealogical links. This genealogical imagination mediates the ways in which the devotees of these women understand the transmission of religious and political authority. The article argues that this form of ambilineal succession – that is, succession drawing on both matrilineal and patrilineal descent – is informed by broader patterns of matrilocality common in Aceh. Nonetheless, it also depends upon latent possibilities that are present within Islamic genealogical idioms. As such, it challenges common assumptions that Islamic genealogies are inevitably and resolutely patrilineal.
Artikel ini membahas kasus dua orang wali perempuan yang berasal dari wilayah Seunagan, propinsi Aceh. Mereka lahir, menetap, dan dimakamkan di Seunagan. Silsilah perempuan-perempuan ini memadukan garis keturunan keluarga mereka dengan garis keturunan tarekat Syattariyah yang dipraktikkan secara umum di Seunagan. Biasanya silsilah terpadu ini dilacak dengan cara melihat garis keturunan laki-laki, yaitu secara patrilineal. Walaupun demikian, beberapa penduduk Seunagan mununjukkan bahwa kelebihan yang dimiliki oleh kedua wali perempuan tersebut bisa diturunkan kepada anak mereka. Petunjuk ini mengungkapkan suatu imaginasi kesilsilahan akan pengakuan ilmu dan otoritas dalam kebatinan yang bisa diturunkan melalui garis perempuan, bukan hanya garis laki-laki. Ini merupakan semacam imaginasi keturunan ambilineal, di mana keturunan bisa dilacak melalui garis perempuan atau laki-laki. Keturunan ambilineal ini dipengaruhi oleh salah satu pola pernikahan yang umum di Aceh, yaitu, berpindahnya laki-laki ke kampung istri setelah menikah. Bahkan demikian, keturunan ambilineal ini juga bisa ditemukan dalam tradisi Islam. Dengan demikian, assumsi bahwa silsilah Islam adalah selalu patrilineal bisa dipertanyakan kembali.
Acknowledgments
I would like to first thank the descendants and devotees of Habib Abdurrahim who shared with me their speculations and reflections on the topic of this essay. David Kloos and Mirjam Künkler provided the initial opportunity to draft this essay. Cindy Chapman is deserving of mention for inspiring me to begin to analyse this material. R. Michael Feener first suggested thinking about the essay in terms of subjunctive ritual. The encouragement, advice and critiques of Shane Barter, Nancy Florida, Geoffrey Hughes, Nor Ismah, Annemarie Samuels, Samira Sheikh, Nelly van Doorn-Harder and two anonymous reviewers helped to develop and clarify the arguments in the essay. Anne Platt’s editorial eye was invaluable to its clarity. Pamela Waxman provided assistance with the figure. Finally, I am indebted to the many other colleagues who engaged with this work as part of panels and workshops at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Vanderbilt University and the 2015 Association for Asian Studies meetings. Even with all of this generous engagement, there are undoubtedly shortcomings, and I take full responsibility for them.
Notes
1. I use the term “Sufi” to refer to an Islamic tradition of ritual, epistemological and social practices oriented towards God’s qualities and relationship to the world, whether carried out under the auspices of an institutionalised “path” (I., tarekat; Ar., ṭarīqa) or in less formal settings.
2. I mark Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) terms with “I.” in parenthesis at a term’s first use, and Acehnese terms with “Ac.” When offering Arabic equivalents of terms in Indonesian or Acehnese that are drawn from Islamic vocabularies, I mark these with “Ar.”. I caution, however, that readers should not assume that such cognates are exact equivalents. In keeping with the usage of my interlocutors, I use Indonesian and Acehnese forms and orthographies for these terms, unless I specifically intend to highlight a non-Indonesian form or usage. For institutional terms of Arabic derivation – for example, “Syattariyah” – I follow local orthographic conventions.
3. I use the term “saint” as a gloss for the category “friend of God” (I., wali; Ar., walīy). I do this primarily for ease of reading, while acknowledging its risks (Kugle, Citation2006, pp. 31–33).
4. I have been conducting ethnographic research in Seunagan since 2006, including a year from 2008 to 2009, and two visits of several weeks each in 2006 and 2015.
5. The descendants of Habib Abdurrahim are not themselves ‘Alawi Sayyids; nor do they have a documentable genealogy linking them to the Prophet’s daughter and son-in-law. For an account of the major nodes in the genealogy of the descendants of Habib Abdurrahim, along with a discussion of the social and political context in which these nodes crystalised, see Birchok (Citation2015b).
6. I should note that none of the positions taken on these disagreements represents the official position or teachings of Seunagan’s Syattariyah path, led by Abu Kudrat, whom I discuss below.
7. I take the notion of “genealogical imagination” from Shryock (Citation1997).
8. Matrilocality involves the residence of a male-female couple on or near the homestead of the female partner’s natal family.
9. For a parallel approach, see McGilvray (Citation2014).
10. “Rasyidi” is a pseudonym, as are the names of all other people I describe in this article, unless they are prominent public figures.
11. According to a recently published official biography, he was born in 1860, putting him at the ripe old age of 112 at the time of his death (Daud, Citation2009).
12. I base this observation on discussions that I had with Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants and devotees, during which I found mention of the preternatural powers of Habib Muda’s male children rare.
13. Given that both of the genealogies that I discovered in 2015 were produced recently by descendants of Habib Abdurrahim, I suspect that they are tied to continuing anticipation of the death of Abu Kudrat. Ironically, in 2015 Abu Kudrat was as healthy as I had ever seen him.
14. This is according to their relatives. I have not personally visited the graves of these women on their death anniversaries.
15. The seeking of intercession often involves a vow in which a devotee promises to carry out an act of sacrifice if a desired result is achieved (Ac., ka’ōj; I., nazar).
16. There is one other saintly female descendant of Habib Abdurrahim buried on Aceh’s west coast, a daughter of Habib Abdurrahim. She, however, is buried outside Seunagan, near the town of Blang Pidie, and, unlike Maknih and Wan Doneh, is not remembered as possessing her own preternatural abilities. She instead features in narratives in which her body is used to illustrate the saintliness of her father.
17. Since this article was accepted for publication, a second official biography of Habib Muda has appeared, similarly facilitated by the support of TR Keumangan. See Shadiqin, Ilyas, & Ardiansyah (Citation2015).
18. See Clark and Palmer (Citation2008, p. 24) for a description of how candidates in the election benefited from their genealogical pedigrees. While Teuku Zulkarnaini’s descent from local territorial chiefs was probably a bigger electoral draw than his descent from Habib Muda, nearly everyone in Seunagan is aware of his dual pedigree. See also Zulkarnaini (Citation2010). This is not to say that Teuku Zulkarnaini’s descent singularly resulted in his electoral victory, or even that it was the main factor; nor is it to deny that some voters found his claims problematic or irrelevant. Indeed, allegations of corruption, electoral fraud and voter intimidation marred Teuku Zulkarnaini’s political success and suggest other factors that may have helped him to victory (Clark & Palmer, Citation2008, pp. 19–22; pp. 36–45).