Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/31

 extirpate the heretics. The teacher and many of his faithful disciples set a seal to their belief by their death. [Notwithstanding this, T. Teureubuë found a successor in his disciple Teungku Gadè, also known as Teungku di Geudōng or (from the name of the gampōng where he lives) Teungku Teupin Raya. In the centre of this gampōng is the tomb of Teungku Teureubuë, surrounded by a thick and lofty wall. The village is under the control of the teacher and is mainly peopled with his disciples.]

No such violent end overtook the Habib Seunagan, who died some years ago. He derived his name from the scene of his labours on the West Coast to the South of Meulabōh. Before he had attained celebrity he was known as Teungku Peunadòʾ, after the gampōng in Pidië where he was born.

The teaching of this heretical mystic is known to me only from information furnished by his opponents, and therefore necessarily very one-sided. He is said to have disseminated the teaching of Hamzah Pansuri, but the statements made regarding his interpretation of the Qurān and the Jaw show it to have been in no special degree mystical, although greatly at variance with the official teaching. He is reported for instance to have held that one might handle the Quran even when in a state of ritual impurity, and that a man might have nine wives at once, opinions anciently upheld by the Ẓāhirites. He is also supposed to have had his own special conception of the qiblah (the direction in which the worshipper must turn his face in the daily ritual prayers), and a dissenting confession of faith, viz. "There is no God but Allah, this Habib is truly the body of the Prophet."

Pidië and some portions of the West Coast, such as Susōh and Meulabōh, are still regarded as districts where the èleumèë saléʾ flourishes. [In Seunagan one Teungku di Kruëng (ob. 1902) may be considered as the spiritual successor of Habib Seunagan.]

After this digression we must now turn back for a moment to an earlier period, not with the view of giving a complete history of Achehnese theology, but to recall attention to a remarkable Malay, whom