Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/116

 those assembled must hold in place of the Friday service an ordinary midday prayer. In places where the number of forty can never be reckoned on, no arrangements whatever are made for the Friday service; hence in the gampōng chapels in Acheh as well as other parts of the Archipelago the requisite apparatus for this service is never to be found.

On the other hand the Moslim law requires of every free male believer of full age that he should attend the Friday service if such be held within a certain distance of his abode, unless circumstances (which in their turn are clearly defined) prevent him from doing so. From this personal duty he is by no means excused on the ground that there is, for example, a full congregation of forty without him. Thus pious and influential Mohammedans must make it their object to multiply the opportunities for attending this service, and to further the erection of mosques for Friday prayer in all places where a congregation of forty or upwards can be reckoned on.

In Acheh as well as elsewhere the devotees of religion have undoubtedly laboured in this direction since the time that the creed of Islam began to take root there. Where a number of gampōngs lay sufficiently close to one another to admit of their being united into a single Friday association (if we may so term it) in accordance with the above-mentioned behests of the religious law, they constructed a mosque (meuseugit), choosing for the purpose the most central possible site. This might sometimes fall within one of the gampōngs so united, where this gampōng happened to form the central point of the union, or again a place lying without all the gampōng enclosures might be considered the most suitable position. For some of these associations the gampōngs of which are most widely dispersed and at the same time most numerous (some include from 10 to 12) "district" would be the most applicable name. Others, whose gampōngs rather resemble "wards"