Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/190

 pers and spreaders of the knowledge of the holy law, they have a claim to universal reverence. Contempt for their word passes almost as unbelief. There are among them some whose prayers of mediation are invoked during their life time and whose tombs are honoured as holy places after their death. Mysticism has so completely pervaded more recent Mohammedanism that most of the learned in the law are also the representatives of this deeper, more intimate and secret aspect of religious life.

As regards Acheh in particular, there is nothing special to be said as to the reverence paid to Mohammed. Here as in all other Mohammedan countries, it rises to the highest pitch permitted by the creed of Islam, which in the beginning zealously set its face against the deification of human beings.

The sayyids occupy as high a position in Acheh as in any other country of the Archipelago. This may be partly due to their not experiencing here the counterpoise of a European government, which elsewhere keeps a strict watch on such influential persons: the fact remains that they command a deeply-rooted respect and fear.

Their number is not very great in Acheh, and comprises some who, enticed perhaps by the great advantages of sayyidship, parade a false genealogy, a trick which would meet with no success in most other parts of the Archipelago.

Native-born descendants of sayyids quickly assume the character inherited from their mothers. They lose their knowledge of the Arabic tongue, and though they continue in spite of occasional opposition to belong to the dreaded and respected religious nobility, they cannot in the long run compete with their kinsmen who come over from Arabia.

Their title in earlier times was Teungku Sayét (= Sayyid). The celebrated Sayyid Abdurrahman Zahir introduced the custom of substituting for these two words the title Habib (literally "beloved") used in Arabia as an honorific designation of Sayyids. In conversation the word habib is at present used in Acheh to express acquiescence in or obedience to the word of the Sayyid, just as dèëlat is used to the sultan. Sometimes the expression pangulèë (a variation borrowed from