Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/42

 power and impede his actions. Besides (and this is a most important factor) the supporters of the sacred law have in such countries no inconsiderable influence over the people, so that it might be dangerous for the princes and chiefs to disregard their wishes and requirements. This is fully understood by these potentates, most of whom, while they follow their own devices in the actual administration of government, are wont outwardly to show all possible honour to the upholders of religion, to declare verbally that they set the highest value on their wisdom, and now and then, merely as a matter of form, to grant them access to their councils.

Such has been the system of the Achehnese sovereigns. Ulamas and other more or less sacred persons enjoyed considerable distinction in their country and at their court. They used even to "give orders" for the compiling of manuals of theology and law, which in plain language meant that they made a money payment to the writer of such a book. They would even allow themselves occasionally to be persuaded by some person of unusual influence to undertake a persecution of heretics, which however generally proved quite abortive. In their legislative edicts, which are almost all devoted to questions of trade and court affairs, they have in a fashion of their own rendered unto God the things that are God's, and so far as these ordinances confine themselves to what we should call a purely religious sphere, we have no reason to doubt the good intentions of the law-givers. Though their fleshly weakness was apparent from their irreligious life, their spirit was willing enough to remember the life hereafter, when the question came up of the building of mosques, the apportioning of money for religious purposes, the dispensing of admonitions or even the threatening of punishment for neglect of religious duties. But of any effort to introduce a system of government and administration of justice in harmony with the Mohammedan law we can gather nothing from the language of the edicts. They render in a purely formal manner due homage to the institutions ordained of Allah, which are everywhere as sincerely received in theory as they are ill-observed in practice.