Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/306

 class of "priests" that enjoys most of the advantages of the zakat, owing to their original position as official administrators of the tax. From being its managers they have come to be practically its monopolizers.

It becomes thus quite easy to understand how the Achehnese ulamas succeeded in the course of the last few years in collecting as the share for the holy war (prang sabi) not merely the seventh part or as much more as was set free by the absence of the other classes, but the major part of the whole tax, and in founding with this war fund a priestly imperium in imperio.

The jakeuët of other objects liable to taxation under the law has never been contributed with anything approaching to regularity, though much more in later times under the powerful incentive of the ulamas, than was formerly the case.

Very few among the Achehnese are content to keep a considerable sum of gold or silver unproductive for a whole year at a time, out of respect for the prohibition of usury in the Mohammedan law. There are various devices for evading the spirit of the prohibition while outwardly conforming to its letter; but there are besides no small number of people in Acheh, as well as in Arabia, who are ready to neglect the letter also.

Some are however constrained by circumstances to retain sums of gold or silver money in their chests for as long as a year at a time. These sums should properly be liable to a jakeuët of 2½%. Persons of means always have considerable quantities of gold and silver ornaments in their possession, which are also subject to the jakeuët. Not all of these by any means pay even a fraction of the tax, while those whose conscience is less elastic content themselves with disbursing a yearly sum which is far from representing the amount due.

Payment of the jakeuët on merchandize is just as rare as on gold and silver, while the tax on cattle is entirely disregarded in practice.

The stamping or threshing of the padi generally takes place in Acheh directly after the harvest. Thus we do not find here as in Java, padi-barns with piled-up sheaves, but little store houses under or close