Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/233



To those well versed in the lore of Islam and not trained up to Achehnese prejudices and customs, the ratébs of the Achehnese present the appearance of a kind of parody on certain form of worship.

In the connection in which we here employ it, the word ratéb (Arab. rātib) signifies a form of prayer consisting of the repeated chanting in chorus of certain religious formulas, such as the confession of faith, a number of different epithets applied to God, or praises of Allah and his Apostle. These ratébs are not strictly enjoined by the religious law, but some of them are recommended to all believers by the sacred tradition, while others appertain to the systems established by the founders of certain tarīqahs or schools of mysticism.

One rātib, which was introduced at Medina in the first half of the eighteenth century by a teacher of mysticism called Sammān whom the people revered as a saint, enjoys a high degree of popularity in the Eastern Archipelago. The same holy city was also the sphere of the teaching of another saint, Aḥmad Qushāshī, who flourished full half a century early (A. D. 1661), and whose Malay and Javanese disciples were the means of spreading so widely in the far East a certain form of the Shaṭṭārite tarīqah or form of mysticism. The latter teacher's influence was more extensive and had a greater effect on the religious life of the individual. The teaching conveyed by this Satariah to the majority of its votaries is indeed confined to the repetition of certain formulas at fixed seasons, generally after the performance of the prescribed prayers (sěmbahyang); but many derive from it also a peculiar mystic lore with a colour of pantheism, which satisfies their cravings for the esoteric and abstruse.

It was not the intention of Muḥammad Sammān any more than of Aḥmad Qushāshī to introduce any really new element into the sphere