Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/188

 plandōʾ, till they came to a spot where Allah had created for her a pavilion with a well of water and a pomegranate tree beside it. There she took up her abode and led a life of prayer.

Meantime Abdōlah had returned from his journey and on arriving at Éntakiah he heard of the strategem which had robbed him of his wife.

He sallied forth through the world to seek for Peureukisōn accompanied by a whole army of followers, who gradually dwindled down to five. Finally the two are united once more by the intervention of the sacred dove. The long-suffering Peureukisōn restrained her husband from wreaking vengeance on his former favourites who had caused all their woes. He sent back his five companions to Éntakiah with the news that he had forsaken his royal state for good and all. Accompanied by his wife and child, he sought out a quiet abode where he could surrender himself entirely to godly exercises, prayer and fasting. When the pious pair died, the whole creation mourned and Allah took them up to Paradise.

This didactic tale, in which both the princess and the dove constantly give long disquisitions on the Mohammedan teaching, is said to be a tradition handed down by Kaʾb al-Aḥbar, an ancient to whom are ascribed many of the Jewish stories in the oldest Mohammedan literature.

The foregoing hikayats have given us some notion of the popular conceptions in Acheh in regard to pre-Mohammedan sacred history, while those that follow relate to the earlier period of the Mohammedan era itself.

From what we have already said, it may be gathered that these writings differ in details, but not in subject and essence, from the legends of the same kind which enjoy popularity among the Malays and Javanese.

Hikayat nubuët or Nubuët nabi (LXII).

The first hikayat of this series deals principally with the miracles connected with the birth of Mohammad, and his life up to his being called forth as the Apostle of God.