Putting Habib Abdurrahim in His Place: Genealogy, Scale, and Islamization in Seunagan, Indonesia. 2015. Comparative Studies in Society and History 57(2): 497-527

Putting Habib Abdurrahim in His Place:Genealogy, Scale, and Islamizationin Seunagan, IndonesiaDANIEL ANDREW BIRCHOK

Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Sometime in the late 1950s, according to oral narratives that circulate widely inthe Indonesian region of Seunagan, province of Aceh, a charismatic mysticnamed Habib Muda (d. 1972) traveled to the island of Java. On this journeyto Indonesia’s political and cultural center, Habib Muda met the Indonesianpresident, Sukarno. He counseled the president regarding the most humaneway to bring an end to the Acehnese branch of an armed rebellion, known asDarul Islam, which had been ongoing in Aceh since 1953. He then requestedleave of the president in order to visit the graves of the famous Nine Saintsof Java (I., wali songo), widely believed to have converted Java to Islam inthe fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Florida 1995: 319–51; Laffan 2011:7–10; Rinkes 1996).1 Claiming these saints as his ancestors, Habib Muda

Acknowledgments: I first explored the scales of space and time latent in Habib Abdurrahim’s ge-nealogy as part of a conference presentation, which became a chapter in a forthcoming volume ex-amining ‘Alid piety in Southeast Asia (Birchok n.d.). I thank Chiara Formichi and R. MichaelFeener for providing the opportunity to begin to develop these themes. Ismail Alatas, NancyFlorida, Webb Keane, Michael Laffan, Andrew Shryock, and Natalie Smolenski offered timelyand insightful interventions at critical points in this essay’s development. I also received invaluablefeedback from audiences at Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, the University ofMichigan, and the University of Pittsburgh. The comments of the anonymous CSSH reviewerswere especially helpful in refining my arguments and placing them more fully in comparative con-texts. I am indebted to David Akin for helping me improve the essay’s quality and clarity. To themany others who contributed to the ideas and arguments in what follows, too many to list here,I offer deep gratitude.

1 I distinguish Indonesian and Acehnese terms by marking them with “I.” or “Aceh.,” respective-ly. For Islamic terms, I follow standard Indonesian orthography, and mark them as Indonesian ratherthan offering an Arabic transliteration. This is consistent with the archival and ethnographic sourceson which I base my analysis. For those familiar with Arabic-derived Islamic technical vocabulary,the Arabic versions of these terms should be apparent. For those unfamiliar with them, the contextand analysis should make clear that such terms circulate translocally among Islamic practitioners.I hope that seeing these terms as Indonesians have transliterated them will remind readers of thedual character of vernacular Islamic practice, which partakes broadly in the Islamic traditionwhile remaining a particular instantiation of it.

Comparative Studies in Society and History 2015;57(2):497–527.0010-4175/15 # Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2015doi:10.1017/S0010417515000110

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conducted, over a period of several days, ritual visitations (I., ziarah) at each oftheir graves, as well as at the grand mosque that the Nine Saints constructed inthe town of Demak. On his return to Seunagan, Habib Muda brought with himtwo gifts, a Land Rover from President Sukarno and a Javanese dagger (I., kris)that had belonged to one of the Nine Saints.2 He also began to espouse a versionof his patrilineal genealogy that emphasized an unusual constellation of fivefigures: himself, his grandfather Habib Abdurrahim, the aforementionedNine Saints of Java, the great eleventh- and twelfth-century mystic ‘AbdulQadir Jilani, and the Prophet Muhammad (see figure 1).

This article explores the ways in which, since the period of Habib Muda’sjourney to Java, this configuration of Habib Muda’s genealogy has been centralto practices through which people in Seunagan emplace themselves withinIslamic history. At the time I conducted archival and field research in Seunaganin the late 2000s, this genealogical configuration served as a primary meansthrough which Muslims in the region linked themselves to several interconnec-ted Islamic pasts. Habib Muda’s relatives, his devotees, and even some of hisenemies all cultivated relationships to one or more of the five figures empha-sized in Habib Muda’s version of his patriline. In the process, they connectedthemselves to, among other times and places, the Islamization of Seunagan, therise of the modern Indonesian nation, and the Islamic cosmos. I argue thatHabib Muda’s version of his patriline enabled Muslims in Seunagan to takethemselves as active participants in the unfolding of Islamic history and,further, that this was because of the specific configuration of spatial-temporalscales his genealogy made manifest.

Scale is central to the workings of the “genealogical imagination”(Shryock 1997). It is vital to, for example, E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s classicmodels of Nuer segmentary lineage, which describe genealogical idioms orga-nized in terms of progressively more (or less) incorporative segments of patri-lineal descent (1940). Nonetheless, the treatment of particular genealogies’scalar features has remained implicit in many analyses, which often focusmore intently on the “persons, events, and landscapes” that a genealogybrings into relief (Shaery-Eisenlohr 2009: 534).3 Such persons, events, andlandscapes always exist in constellations underpinned by specific logics andconfigurations of scale. These logics and configurations of scale contributeas much to a genealogy’s effects as do the specific content of its links.

When taken together, the five nodes in Habib Muda’s patriline underpin anarrative of the unfolding of Islamic history that links the locality of Seunagan,

2 All details of Habib Muda’s journey to Java are drawn from oral histories that I collected inSeunagan between 2006 and 2009, and from the recently published biography of Habib Muda(Daud 2009). I have located no independent evidence, aside from these sources, confirmingeither the occurrence or the details of Habib Muda’s journey.

3 See, for example, DeWeese 1994; Ho 2006; Irvine 1978; and Shaery-Eisenlohr 2009.

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the space and time of the Indonesian nation, and the Islamic cosmos. Muslimsin Seunagan have placed themselves within this narrative through ritual andnarrative acts that establish positions vis-à-vis Habib Muda’s patriline, oftenemphasizing specific links within the genealogy. Engaging individual nodesshifts emphases of scale within the genealogy’s overall configuration. It thussupports segmentary processes whereby social ties and cleavages are expressedin moments of scalar transformation.4 Such shifts affirm that the power thatinheres more widely to transformations of scale, a power to make andremake human relationships through amplifying existing qualities and bringinginto being emergent ones (Stiner et al. 2011), extends to the genealogicalimagination.

The patriline espoused by Habib Muda following his journey to Java en-twined multiple modes of descent: biological issue, inheritance of mysticalpowers, transmission of mystical knowledge, the bequeathing of custom, themediation of divinity, and simple temporal progression.5 Each of thesemodes came to be inscribed in different moments in everyday social relationsin Seunagan, as well as on Seunagan’s landscape and across the territory of theIndonesian nation, giving rise to powerful social and spatial hierarchies.6 Yetwhat has made the patriline espoused by Habib Muda so compelling for

FIGURE 1. Major figures in the patriline of Habib Abdurrahim

4 I follow Paul Dresch (1988) in taking segmentation and genealogy to be separate, if oftencoupled phenomena.

5 For accounts that treat similarly entwined modes of genealogical descent, see Bernstein 2012;Bowen 1989a; DeWeese 1994; Ho 2006; and Siegel 1979: 1–31.

6 For accounts that treat the inscription of social and spatial hierarchies through genealogicalidioms, see Bernstein 2012; Bowen 1989a; Evans-Pritchard 1940; Sangren 1988; Shaery-Eisenlohr2009; and Shryock 1997.

P U T T I N G H A B I B A B D U R R A H I M I N H I S P L A C E 499

Muslims in Seunagan has not been simply these entwined modes of descent ortheir social and spatial inscriptions. It has been the manner in which thesemodes and inscriptions, along with the five genealogical nodes on whichthey depend, emphasize a specific graduated series of interlocking scales oftime and space. This configuration of scale is what allows Muslims in Seuna-gan to take themselves not as simply heirs to, but also protagonists in the un-folding of Islamic history. This is because Habib Muda’s genealogy links alocal arena of practice to national and cosmic scales of history.

T E U K U A ZMAN ’ S R E P O RT

The earliest extant example of the genealogical configuration Habib Muda es-poused following his trip to Java is found in a 1962 yearly report authored bythe head administrator of the sub-regency of Seunagan (Azman 1962). Thisreport offers a bureaucratic snapshot of the regency, including populationstatistics, data on land use, information on infrastructural projects, and lists of indi-cators of economic development. It almost certainly was passed up a bureaucraticchain, from the sub-regency to the regency-level government, and perhaps further.

If the report seemson its surface rather unremarkable, the identity of its authorand the year it was filed suggest otherwise. Its author was Habib Muda’sson-in-law, TeukuAzman,who served as the head of the sub-regency of Seunaganfrom 1953 until themid-1960s. Azmanwas the descendant of hereditary territorialchiefs (Aceh., oelèëbalang) of the nearbymountain district ofBeutong, andhe hadrisen to prominence in part because of this ancestry, clearly helping himself furtherbymarrying HabibMuda’s daughter. By the timeAzman became head of the sub-regency of Seunagan, Habib Muda was already established as a charismatic mys-tical figure with a substantial group of followers. He had inherited the mysticalpowers associated with several of his ancestors, and was well known forhealing the sick, arbitrating local disputes, and leading underground resistanceto Dutch colonial rule in the early twentieth century (Daud 2009; Njaksih 1970).

The year 1962 was the same year in which the Acehnese branch of DarulIslam, the Indonesian-wide rebellion about which Habib Muda is said to haveadvised President Sukarno while visiting Java, ended. The rebellion had begunbefore the Indonesian Revolution (1945–1949) had secured Indonesia’s politicalindependence, and its leaders wanted to overthrow the nascent Indonesian Repub-lic in order to foundwhat they called the “Indonesian Islamic State” (Negara IslamIndonesia) (Formichi 2012; vanDijk1981).Acehnese guerillas joinedDarul Islamin 1953 following a series of nationally imposed political and administrativereforms that left many Acehnese officials and religious teachers feeling marginal-ized in the new republic (Sjamsuddin 1985; van Dijk 1981: 269–339).7

7 I describe Darul Islam as an “Indonesian-wide rebellion” in order to convey the ideologicalscope of Darul Islam’s most ambitious goal, namely, to turn the Indonesian Republic into the Indo-nesian Islamic State, but armed resistance by the guerillas was concentrated in Aceh, West Java,


Darul Islam was popular in Aceh, but Teuku Azman, in partnership withHabib Muda, opposed the rebellion. Habib Muda was one of three prominentfigures in a coalition of Acehnese Islamic leaders who challenged the rebel-lion’s ideological foundations. This coalition forwarded an interpretation ofIslamic jurisprudence that declared Darul Islam an illicit revolt against a legit-imate Muslim leader, Sukarno (Daud 2009: 57–62; Waly 1993: 115–31).

Teuku Azman’s report clearly expressed its author’s opposition to DarulIslam. It also included a few unusual indicators of the security situationin the region. This was most evident in its general overview, which describedthe followers of Habib Muda as loyal Indonesian citizens who constituted thepolitical majority in the sub-regency. Azman positively contrasted HabibMuda’s followers to a handful of Darul Islam activists in the region and attrib-uted their loyalty to the “leadership and direction” (I., pimpinan dan asuhan) ofHabib Abdurrahim, Habib Muda’s grandfather. By the time Teuku Azman filedhis report, Habib Abdurrahim had been the central figure in a complex ofpopular mysticism and ritual for at least eight decades, first as a livingteacher and following his death as an object of devotional practices centeredon his grave in Pulo Ie (Controleur 1935: 8–10; Snouck Hurgronje 1906, II:14; see figure 2). These mystical and devotional practices involved collectiverecitations of the names of God (Aceh., ziké or dike; I., zikir), praises to theProphet Muhammad (Aceh., seulaweuët; I., selawat), and various other lita-nies. There were also periodic retreats for those wishing to more seriouslyseek esoteric knowledge and blessings.8 By the mid-twentieth century, such ac-tivities were carried out under the institutional auspices of the Syattariyah Sufiorder (I., tarekat syattariyah), and thousands of Muslims were participating.9

Teuku Azman in his report identified Habib Abdurrahim as the descendantof “the saints who built the mosque of Demak on the island of Java,” the very

South Sulawesi, and South Kalimantan. Local issues—for example, demobilization of irregularmilitary units and administrative reforms following the revolution—undoubtedly motivated localcadres to join the movement, although Chiara Formichi has recently argued that such concernsshould not be overemphasized vis-à-vis Darul Islam’s religio-political vision (2012).

8 Colonial-era sources tend to focus on this practice’s ecstatic nature and propensity to inciteanti-colonial violence (Controleur 1935: 8–10), or on its allegedly unorthodox features (SnouckHurgronje 1906, II: 14; van Langen 1888). However, apart from a few eccentricities, the basic prac-tices of Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants and their devotees express common styles of popularIslamic religiosity associated with mystical adepts usually known as the “friends of God”(I., wali) (Chodkiewicz 1993; Cornell 1998; Gilsenan 1973; Ho 2006; Werbner 2003).

9 I use the adjective “Sufi” to refer to people and things associated with the mystical practices ofthe Islamic tradition, whether carried out under the auspices of institutionalized mystical orders (I.,tarekat) or by Muslims in less formal settings. While I was in Aceh, descendants of Habib Abdur-rahim claimed Syattariyah affiliation, but I was unable to obtain, or hear recited, any mystical ped-igree (I., silsilah) linking the descendants of Habib Abdurrahim to the Syattariyah Sufi order.Nonetheless, Werner Kraus suggests that Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants likely claimed this af-filiation in the colonial period, given colonial-era descriptions of their practice (2010: 219–24).


same saints whose graves Habib Muda had visited just a few years earlier. Healso referred to Habib Abdurrahim using the title “Pole of the Universe”(I., Qoethubul Udjud), the most perfect mystical adept of an age who, inmuch popular Sufi thought, mediates the relationship between humans andthe divine (Chodkiewicz 1993: 47–102; al-Hujw’iri 1997). Finally, Azmannamed Habib Abdurrahim the “Promoter of Religion” (I., Pemuka Agama)and described him as the bestower of Seunagan’s “local customary practice”(I., adat), which “had its origins in Islam” (I., bersumbur pada Islam).Azman thus linked the Islamization of Seunagan and the origins of Seunagan’slocal customary practice to Habib Abdurrahim.10

Teuku Azman undoubtedly intended his report to laud the accomplish-ments of his great-grandfather-in-law, whom he credited with providing themoral foundations for the widespread loyalty to the Indonesian Republic thathe claimed was evident in Seunagan. Yet the inclusion of these descriptionsand titles in an otherwise ordinary regency-level report raises a question.What did drawing attention to Habib Abdurrahim’s descent from the Nine

FIGURE 2. Shelter for reciting litanies on Habib Abdurrahim’s grave complex, Pulo Ie. Author’s photo.

10 Throughout this essay, I use “Islamicize,” from which I form the noun “Islamization,” as arough equivalent to mengislamkan (I.), one of the terms that my interlocutors in Seunagan mostoften used to describe Habib Abdurrahim’s promotion of Islam. Mengislamkan might be glossedas either “to convert someone or something to Islam” or “to deepen Islamic qualities in someoneor something.” This ambiguity inhered in the ways in which people in Seunagan spoke of HabibAbdurrahim. While they usually identified him as the figure that first brought Islam to theregion, people at times suggested to me that he simply strengthened a process of Islamizationthat was already in motion.


Saints of Java, his role as the Promoter of Islam and founder of Seunagan’slocal customary practice, and his status of Pole of the Universe contribute toTeuku Azman’s narrative of Habib Muda’s loyalty to the Indonesian republic?Part of the answer lies in how each of these titles and descriptions evoked oneor more of the five main links in the configuration of genealogy espoused byHabib Muda.

D E S C E N D AN T O F “ T H E S A I N T S WHO B U I LT T H E MO S Q U E O F D EMAK O N

T H E I S L A N D O F J AVA ”

I cannot say for certain when the Nine Saints of Java became an important linkin the genealogy of Habib Abdurrahim and his descendants, and TeukuAzman’s report is the earliest document to make this link. What is clear isthat ever since Habib Muda’s purported trip to Java in the late 1950s thisjourney has remained the key to understanding the significance of HabibAbdurrahim and Habib Muda’s ties to the Nine Saints. Of the many episodesof Habib Muda’s life that his descendants and devotees told me about, it wasnarratives of this fateful trip that I heard most often.

Oral histories and the recently published biography of Habib Muda allagree that President Sukarno, in a gesture of gratitude for Habib Muda’s enthu-siastic loyalty to the Republic, invited Habib Muda to the national capital ofJakarta on the island of Java (Daud 2009).11 Habib Muda’s published biogra-phy describes the ensuing meeting between Sukarno and Habib Muda insentimental terms, noting that it was “full of intimacy, harmony, and … the at-mosphere of Islamic brotherhood [I., ukhuwah Islamiyah]” (ibid.: 65–66).After moving the president to tears with gifts and advice that blended filialand patriotic sentiment, Habib Muda forwarded his wish to visit the gravesof his ancestors, “the Saints of the land of Java” (ibid.: 66–68).

Who were these Nine Saints? On Java, the political and population centerof the modern Indonesian nation, they have long been recognized as powerfulSufis and the converters of the island to Islam (Florida 1995: 319–51; Laffan2011: 7–10; Rinkes 1996), and their graves have served as pilgrimagecenters (Ruslan and Nugroho 2007). Major political figures—for example,Indonesia’s first democratically elected president, Abdurrahman Wahid (inoffice 1999–2001)—visit their tombs and mosques at key moments in theirpublic careers. While such prominent devotees suggest the Saints’ place inpopular imaginaries of Indonesia’s Islamic past, the Saints’ political resonancesvary widely. This is especially so outside of Java, where some Indonesiansidentify them with an exclusively Javanese-style of Islam and in some cases

11 The biography of Habib Muda cited throughout this essay was authored with the support of agroup of Habib Muda’s descendants, including his matrilineal grandchildren via his daughter, whomarried Teuku Azman.


denigrate them as less-than-orthodox Muslims. Others attribute the Saints’ na-tional prominence to Javanese cultural imperialism.

Habib Muda’s visits to the graves of the Nine Saints were key events innarrative accounts of his journey to Java. Islamic ritual visitations at gravesites(ziarah) can be carried out by unrelated devotees of a deceased figure, but areoften acts of filial devotion. Published and oral narratives of Habib Muda’s tripto Java clearly mark his visits as the latter, and as a moment in which HabibMuda (re)established his patriline’s genealogical ties to the Nine Saints.

Precisely which of the Nine Saints was Habib Muda’s ancestor is not en-tirely clear. His biography identifies Sunan Giri as the ancestor from whom hispatriline descends (Daud 2009: 90). Yet some junior members of the family, aswell as several devotees of Habib Muda, suggest that Habib Abdurrahim wasmost likely in the lineage of another of the Saints, Sunan Kalijaga.12 Moreoften, though, people narrating this history simply refer to the Saints as a col-lective entity. For instance, Teuku Azman’s 1962 report did not name any oneof the Nine Saints specifically. Even the 2009 biography of Habib Muda, whichnames Sunan Giri as the ancestor of Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline, often iden-tifies the Nine Saints as a collective.

This suggests that more important than questions of individual lineagewere broader effects of Habib Muda’s cultivation of his genealogical ties tothe Nine Saints. In the 1950s, Darul Islam supporters frequently vilifiedSukarno and described the Indonesian central government as anti-Islamicand Javanese-dominated (Saleh 1956; Tiro 1958; van Dijk 1981: 269–339).Against this, Habib Muda cultivated genealogical ties to the Nine Saintswhile aligning himself with Sukarno. Placing himself in the patriline of theSaints nicely bundled Habib Muda’s political and religious sensibilities, bothof which challenged the position of Darul Islam activists. These political andreligious implications would have been immediately apparent to most Indone-sians, since Sukarno similarly cultivated associations between himself, theNine Saints, and a Javanese Islamic heritage and made his own public visitsto sites associated with the Saints (Presiden Soekarno di Demak 1958).

A Javanese dagger that anchors narratives of Habib Muda’s journey to Javain the Seunagan landscape confirms that the significance of descent from the NineSaints continues to trump any that might come from identifying Habib Abdurra-him’s patriline with any particular Saint. Habib Muda brought this dagger homewith him from Java. Oral histories usually indicate that this dagger was a gift fromSukarno while the published biography claims instead that it was given to him byreligious officials at the mosque of Demak (Daud 2009: 80–82). In all of these

12 Such disagreements have implicit consequences, of which some of my interlocutors seemedunaware. Sunan Kalijaga, for example, has widely been taken as a native Javanese (Florida 1995:328–30; Geertz 1968: 25–29). Those who claim Sunan Kalijaga as Habib Muda’s ancestor thus un-dermine the assertion that Habib Abdurrahim’s ancestors issued from the Prophet Muhammad.


narratives, it is understood to have originally belonged to one of the Nine Saints.Today it is displayed inside the main pillar of the mosque on the complex whereHabib Muda was buried (see figure 3). It serves as a potent emblem of thefamily’s ties to the Nine Saints, as both an index of Habib Muda’s trip to Javaand an icon of the family’s Javanese descent. Most people who told me aboutHabib Muda’s journey to Java closed their narrative by encouraging me to goand see the knife.

“ T H E P R OMO T E R O F R E L I G I O N ”

The connections between Habib Muda’s patriline and the Nine Saints of Javaresonate deeply for many in Seunagan because of how they buttress HabibAbdurrahim’s status as, in the words of Teuku Azman’s report, “the promoterof religion.” Being in the lineage of the Nine Saints supports claims that HabibAbdurrahim Islamicized Seunagan by inserting him into genealogical narra-tives of the Islamization of the Indonesian archipelago that began to becomecommon just after Indonesian independence. It does so, however, with anironic twist.

FIGURE 3. Javanese dagger in main pillar of mosque at the grave complex of Habib Muda,Peuleukung. Author’s photo.


In Indonesia’s colonial period, Dutch scholars and officials had authorednarratives of the archipelago’s Islamization that presented Islam as a relativelyrecent and not very influential addition to Indonesia’s social, political, and re-ligious life (Benda 1958; Florida 1997; Snouck Hurgronje 1906). Colonial of-ficials made administrative policy based on these narratives. For example, theycodified family law differently in different parts of the archipelago dependingon their understandings of the extent Islam had been adopted in each region(Benda 1958; Lev 1985; van Vollenhoven 1981).

After independence, an influential group of Islamic intellectuals and activ-ists, among them some of the new nation’s most important public figures (e.g.,the public intellectual HAMKA), began to assert Islam’s deep roots in the ar-chipelago. This was an act of decolonization aimed at reversing the Dutch co-lonial emphasis on Islam’s alleged lack of influence among most Indonesians(Bowen 1989a; Hasymy 1989). It also rhetorically integrated the far-flung ar-chipelago into a coherent whole, deemphasizing cultural and political divisionsbetween Indonesians by laying stress on an allegedly shared history of Islam-ization.13 The narrative projects of these intellectuals took Islamization to bethe destiny of the nation and implicitly projected the beginnings of nationalawakening to the archipelago’s earliest Islamic enclaves. They took the pro-gressive movement of Islam through the space and time of the archipelagoas their primary narrative device. John Bowen, employing the theoreticallanguage of Mikhail Bakhtin, has identified Islamization’s progressive spatial-temporal movement as a new “chronotope,” a model of space-time underpin-ning a narrative type (Bakhtin 1981; Bowen 1989a).

The chronotope of Islamization was particularly powerful, tied as it was tothe narration of Islamic and national histories as interwoven. Further, such ac-counts often described chains of conversion that resembled, and at times wereidentical with, chains of genealogical descent. In some of them an Islamizingfigure moved from place to place, leaving converted regions behind him. Inothers it was chains of descendants who carried out the conversion process, in-scribing their genealogy through lineages of converted territories. In somecases, the genealogies in these histories represented successive rulers ofIslamic kingdoms whose serial rise marked the transformation of theirregions into Islamic realms. In all of these scenarios, genealogical idiomswere rhetorically central to descriptions of Islam’s progressive movementthrough the archipelago, as well as Aceh’s place in this progression.

13 I thank Michael Laffan for emphasizing this point to me. Such dynamics of integration werealso at work in provinces like Aceh, which was rife with its own social divisions (Bowen 1989a).While such efforts are not addressed in this essay, to the extent that they depend upon narratives ofIslamization they unite the archipelago in a manner that ignores or is antagonistic to the fact that notall Indonesian people are Muslims, and that not all Indonesian regions are Islamic.


While the authors of postcolonial narratives of Islamization tried to distin-guish their histories from colonial ones, they inherited certain features fromthem. Most importantly, both Dutch and postcolonial narratives of Islamizationinscribed value-laden geographies that marked some regions of the archipelagoas having been more intensely Islamicized than others. Indeed, the postcolonialnarratives made explicit what was at times only implied in earlier Dutch ver-sions—that such different degrees of Islamization were the result of someregions having been Islamicized earlier than others. Narratives of this kindtended to describe Islam as moving from west to east through the archipelago.As Indonesia’s westernmost point, Aceh came to be inscribed as the font ofIslam for the rest, a position further supported by Aceh’s status as the site ofthe archipelago’s oldest Islamic kingdoms.14

There was much at stake in Aceh’s place in these narratives of Islamiza-tion. Already in the 1950s, Acehnese intellectuals, most notably the scholar-official Ali Hasjmy, went to great lengths to ensure that Aceh’s primacy inthe history of Indonesia’s Islamization was enshrined in nationalist historiesof the coming of Islam (Bowen 1989a). Given widespread support in Acehfor Darul Islam, and considering Darul Islam’s portrayal of the Indonesiancentral government as both anti-Islamic and Javanese-dominated, many Acehn-ese found especially attractive the ways in which common histories of Islami-zation asserted Aceh’s primacy over Java. In 1957, as part of an effort to end theDarul Islam rebellion, the cabinet of the Indonesian Prime Minister DjuandaKartawidjaja reinstated Aceh’s provincial status, which it had lost at the endof the Indonesian Revolution. In 1959, Aceh was granted special autonomyin three areas: education, religion, and customary practice. Scholar-officialslike Ali Hasjmy defended the new political arrangement in part by arguingthat Aceh’s deep historical roots to Islam had allowed the province’s peopleto make unique contributions to the Indonesian nation, for which its people de-served special recognition and administrative autonomy.15

Habib Abdurrahim’s status as the agent of Seunagan’s Islamization and adescendant of the Nine Saints has important consequences in the context ofthese narratives, which were being popularized during the period that HabibMuda embarked on his journey to Java. According to the postcolonial narra-tives of Islamization that underpinned Aceh’s special autonomy, Aceh hadbeen Islamicized by the early thirteenth century. The Nine Saints, however,

14 See, for example, Panitia Penyelenggara Musabaqah Tilawatil Qur’an (1981), a collection ofessays on Acehnese history from prehistoric times to the twentieth century grouped under the In-donesian title Dari Sini Ia Bersemi (“From here it spread”). See also the collection in Hasymy(1989).

15 John Bowen’s account of these narratives and their widespread adoption in Aceh focuses on arelated set of dynamics, namely the ways in which their Acehnese authors intended to inspire unityamong antagonistic political factions within Acehnese society following decades of violent strifecaused by the Indonesian Revolution and Darul Islam (1989a).


had lived on Java in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. If Habib Abdurrahimis the descendant of the Nine Saints, this suggests that Java was Islamicizedbefore Seunagan, which seems to challenge Aceh’s place as the font fromwhich Islam spread.

In Seunagan, it is common knowledge that Islam arrived in the regionfrom a Javanese source, as a result of the labors of Habib Abdurrahim,whose patriline is traceable to the Nine Saints. Yet Aceh’s primacy in the archi-pelago’s Islamization has become shared wisdom across the province. HabibAbdurrahim’s descendants and their devotees reconcile this apparent contradic-tion by suggesting that Aceh’s north coast had indeed been Islamicized beforeany other region of the archipelago. The grand arc of Islamization, they argue,then moved to Java, before Habib Abdurrahim’s ancestors returned to Aceh’swest coast in order to Islamicize Seunagan. While this reconciles an apparentcontradiction, it entails an instance of Islamization from Java to Aceh, reversingIslam’s eastward movement, and inverting the relationship of Aceh and Javafound in more common narratives of Islamization (see figure 4).

The counterintuitive resonances of this narrative of Islamization’s west-ward return to Aceh cannot be overstated. Habib Abdurrahim’s descent from

FIGURE 4. Two versions of Islamization. Image created by Daniel Birchok and Nicole Scholtzusing ArcGIS software and several open-source databases.


the Nine Saints of Java inserted him into the history of the archipelago’s con-version to Islam in a manner that adhered to the spatial and temporal progres-sion of narratives of Islamization while simultaneously flouting one of thesenarratives’ most fundamental political and religious valences: the spatial andtemporal primacy of Aceh over Java. The narrative thus buttressed the politicalties Habib Muda fostered to President Sukarno and Java, inscribing these tiesmetonymically through the history of the archipelago’s Islamization.16

The unusual resonances of this version of Islamization grew only stronger,and more counterintuitive, as time passed. When an Acehnese nationalistmovement calling itself the Free Acheh Movement broke out in 1976, its adher-ents were even more resentful toward Javanese dominance of Indonesian polit-ical and social life than Darul Islam guerrillas had been (Aspinall 2009: 70–74,193–219; Tiro 1984).17 “Java” became the alterity against which Acehnese na-tionalists constructed their political project, defining Indonesia as synonymouswith Java in a manner that made it difficult to claim both Acehnese and Indo-nesian identities (Aspinall 2009: 70–74). Yet throughout the period of the FreeAcheh Movement, which did not end until 2005, the descendants of HabibAbdurrahim continued to cultivate their links to the Nine Saints, Java, andthe Indonesian central government. Today, important symbols of these relation-ships hang in the homes of senior members of Habib Abdurrahim’s patrilineand at the grave complexes of deceased members of the family. Theseinclude the dagger Habib Muda brought back from Java, photographs offamily members with military officers in the field, and a framed copy of thenational service star posthumously awarded to Habib Muda by the Indonesiangovernment in 1999. More than any of these individual objects, though, it is thefamily’s genealogy, as a synecdoche for narratives of Seunagan’s Islamization,which links the members of Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline to the history of theIndonesian nation.

P O L E O F T H E U N I V E R S E

For Muslims in Seunagan, as for many other Indonesians, Islamization as thehistory of the nation is a compelling narrative frame, in part because narrativesof the Islamization of the archipelago articulate well with other types and scalesof Islamic history. One of the strangest links in the genealogy espoused byHabib Muda, but also the key in understanding how this genealogy resonatesfor Muslims in Seunagan at scales beyond that of Seunagan and the nation,is the eleventh- and twelfth-century Baghdad-based Sufi ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani.

Throughout the world, Sufis revere ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani for his mysticalprowess and esoteric knowledge. Believed to be the founder of the Sufi

16 See Bowen (1989a) for a related example from Aceh’s Gayo highlands.17 The movement referred to itself using a nineteenth-century English spelling of “Acheh,”

which I retain here.


order that bears his name, the Qadiriya, he is among the most paradigmatic offigures in Islamic mystical circles. Many Sufis consider him without equal(Braune 2010; Kumar 1985; van Bruinessen 1989). In Aceh, mystically in-clined Muslims, including both adepts and occasional mystical practitioners,regularly tell didactic stories in which ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani is the main protag-onist. All of these Sufis represent him as a primary example to be emulated andas a mediator between humans and God.

Habib Abdurrahim’s links to ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani are well known in Seu-nagan. I once asked a young man who had introduced himself to me as a de-scendant of Habib Abdurrahim what his family name (I., marga) was. Thedescendants of Habib Abdurrahim have no documented genealogy linkingthem to broader branches of the Prophet Muhammad’s family, and thus haveno way to determine their family name. Prominent members of Habib Abdur-rahim’s patriline frequently respond to inquiries about this lack by noting,“Habib is our family name” (I., Habib marga kami), referring to the Arabictitle used in Indonesia as a marker of respect before the names of descendantsof the Prophet Muhammad. But this young man quickly responded “al-Qadiri,”identifying himself not by a recognized patriline linking him to the ProphetMuhammad, but as the descendant of ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani.

‘Abdul Qadir Jilani’s presence in Habib Abdurrahim’s genealogy is ex-tremely suggestive in ways that I will describe, but it is also problematic. Bythe late nineteenth century, genealogical histories of the Nine Saints linkedthem to the patrilines of leading families from among the descendants of theProphet Muhammad (Laffan 2011: 8–9).18 Yet none of these histories explicitlytie the Nine Saints to ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani, who, although a descendant of theProphet Muhammad, is not a link in any of the major genealogies of theProphet’s descendants in Southeast Asia.19 Claiming ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani asan ancestor of Habib Abdurrahim thus posits a line of descent that is inconsis-tent with the genealogies of other Southeast Asians who have claimed the NineSaints as ancestors.

Nonetheless, in Seunagan, ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani’s presence in the patrilineof Habib Abdurrahim augments the latter’s status as “Pole of the Universe,”one of the titles Teuku Azman attributed to him in his 1962 report. This titleis drawn from Sufi discourses traceable to at the latest the eleventh-centurywork of ‘Ali bin ‘Uthman al-Hijwiri (Chodkiewicz 1993: 47–102; al-Hujw’iri1997). In Southeast Asia, these discourses have been most influential in ver-sions introduced by the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century figure ‘Abd

18 For one visually striking example of such a history, see the figure in Ho (2002: 227).19 Ronit Ricci (2011: 210–12) suggests that the Malay-language narrative history Hikayat Tuan

Gusti, a manuscript inscribed in Sri Lanka in 1897, implies such a link. My thanks to Julian Millieand Ronit Ricci for stimulating exchanges we had about ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani’s position in relation togenealogies of the Nine Saints.


al-Karim al-Jili, who himself was influenced by the great twelfth- andthirteenth-century Andalusian Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi (Florida 1995: 95, 156–57;Hodgson 1974, II: 227–30; Nicholson 1921: 77–142). For those Muslimswho orient their practice within cosmologies derived from this type of mysti-cism, the “axial pole” (I., qutub) represents the single most important humanfigure in the world at any one point in time—the “perfect man” (I., insankamil). He mediates between humans and God, and is thought to intervenewith God on behalf of devotees. For many Sufis, the well being of creationdepends upon the existence of such a figure in each and every age. Withouthim, the universe would serve no purpose, and would break asunder.

For centuries, devotees have assumed ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani to be the mostlikely candidate to have filled the position of axial pole in his own age. Simi-larly, in some local versions of this mystical cosmology the Nine Saints are in-scribed as axial poles or high-ranking members of the saintly hierarchy thatsurround him (Florida 1995: 95, 156–57). Habib Abdurrahim’s genealogicallinks to both ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani and the Nine Saints, along with his ownstatus as Pole of the Universe, therefore draws attention to the multiple gener-ations of figures in his patriline who, according to his devotees, have sat at thecosmological center of the universe.

There was a second way in which the patriline Habib Muda cultivated be-ginning in the 1950s is tied to Habib Abdurrahim’s status as the Pole of theUniverse. Most residents of Seunagan depict the Islamization of their regionas having been the work of not only Habib Abdurrahim but also a hierarchyof “assistants” (I., pembantu) with whom the great Sufi worked. In narrativesof Seunagan’s Islamization dating to at least Teuku Azman’s report, these assis-tants have been identified using a system of mystical titles. In the cosmologiesjust described, these titles refer to a mystical hierarchy of figures who surroundand support the axial pole in his esoteric work (Chodkiewicz 1993: 47–102;Hodgson 1974, II: 227–30). In Seunagan these titles have been bequeathedalong the patrilines of families who can trace their lineage to one of HabibAbdurrahim’s assistants (Bowen 1989b: 602–4).

Among the most prominent of the figures thus titled were Habib Abdur-rahim’s four immediate partners, identified as “pegs” (I., autad). TeukuAzman’s report references these four pegs using an evocative mix of mysticaland bureaucratic language: “The growth of the people of the Subregency ofSeunagan… was directly under the Leadership and direction of [Habib Abdur-rahim] and his staff members [I., staf2], who were called pegs [autad]” (Azman1962).20 Beyond these four pegs, there were several levels of titles associatedwith a hierarchy of lesser assistants. It is unclear how many people in Seunagantoday know the full range of these titles or whose patrilines possess them. What

20 “Staff members” is rendered with a reduplicated noun, staf-staf, indicating a plural. Azmanused the orthographic convention of placing a “2” after a word to indicate its reduplication.


is apparent, though, is that at least some of the titles associated with this mys-tical cosmology continue to be bequeathed to the patrilineal descendants ofthose who can trace their ancestry to the period of Seunagan’s Islamization.This means that a potentially large number of people can be associated withsuch titles. One of the most prominent patrilines in Seunagan, which I willdiscuss presently, descends from one of Habib Abdurrahim’s pegs, and manypeople in the region know that members of this patriline can claim this mysticaltitle.

Habib Abdurrahim’s status as Pole of the Universe and his genealogicalties to ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani has two effects. On one hand, they place HabibAbdurrahim’s patriline at the center of Islam’s cosmic history, something re-flected in the illustrious figures from the Islamic past who reside in HabibAbdurrahim’s genealogy and are presumed to be axial poles of their owneras (i.e., ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani, the Nine Saints of Java). But the title of Poleof the Universe also inextricably grounds Habib Abdurrahim in the localityof Seunagan, where people still recognize the mystical hierarchy of titlesused to identify the figures that assisted Habib Abdurrahim in Islamicizing Seu-nagan. These two scales of Islamic space and time—the cosmic and the local—are related. At least one of my interlocutors in Seunagan indicated that thesystem of titles derived from the Sufi cosmology maintains their mystical sig-nificance when applied to the descendants of those figures who had participatedin Seunagan’s Islamization, and suggested further that the holders of these titlescould lose them if they failed to exhibit the appropriate esoteric qualities. Thisimbrication of Islam’s universal mystical past with the local past of Islam inSeunagan is evoked explicitly in the last of Teuku Azman’s four descriptionsof Habib Abdurrahim, as the founder of Seunagan’s local customary practice.

“ A LO CA L C U S TOMA RY P R A C T I C E … HAV I N G I T S O R I G I N S I N I S L AM ”

Teuku Azman’s report credits Habib Abdurrahim not simply with the act ofIslamicizing Seunagan, but also with the bestowing of “a local customary prac-tice” to the people of the region. He provided few details as to what he tookSeunagan’s customary practice to be, aside from noting that it has “origins inIslam,” and that, as a result of this customary practice the people of Seunaganhave “superior personality traits [I., tjiri2 kepribadian jang tinggi] … consis-tent with the Indonesian personality” (1962).

While Teuku Azman left unstated precisely what he meant by Seunagan’scustomary practice, one might infer what he had in mind based on categories ofpractice identified as local custom in Seunagan in more recent years. Severalsuch practices, having clear antecedents in previous decades, are linked insuggestive ways to Habib Abdurrahim and his patriline. The way in whichthe cosmological hierarchy surrounding Habib Abdurrahim is inscribed gene-alogically through the bequeathing of titles along patrilines is one example.People in Seunagan recognize titles such as “pole” and “peg” as part of a


local customary practice explicitly tied to Habib Abdurrahim and his acts ofIslamization.

Similarly, sessions of ritual recitations accompanied by shared mealsknown as kandoeri (Aceh.; I., khenduri) serve as a primary instance of alocal customary practice linked to Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline. Kandoeridenotes a range of ritual feasts involving the exchange of food and recitationof prayers. They are part of a complex of ritual meals common in SoutheastAsia and the broader Islamic world that includes the well-studied Javanese sla-metan (I.) (Woodward 1988). Social and ritual life in Seunagan revolves aroundsuch feasts. They come in many forms, depending on the occasion and the re-ligious sensibilities of those holding and attending them. The feasts are held foryearly cyclical occasions such as major holidays, to mark seasonal transitionssuch as the opening of fields or the collection of the harvest, and life passagerituals ranging from birth and death to the buying or building of a house(Bowen 1993; Snouck Hurgronje 1906, I: 202–29, 408–34). Kandoeriare the most commonly cited examples of Seunagan’s robust customary prac-tice (adat), which Acehnese in Seunagan and elsewhere frequently identified tome as among the most authentic in the province.

From the 1930s through the 1960s, the holding of kandoeri had beenan issue of bitter debate in Aceh (Bowen 1993: 21–32; Feener 2013).Mid-twentieth-century Islamic reformers criticized kandoeri as instances oflocal customary practice at odds with Islamic orthopraxy, and suggested thatthe practice encouraged idolatry through traffic in spirits and an overemphasison ritual form. Indonesian Muslims (and earlier, Dutch colonial officials)argued over whether or not, and under what circumstances, instances of localcustomary practice (adat) were consistent with Islam (Benda 1958; Bowen2003: 1–63; Lev 1972; Snouck Hurgronje 1906; van Vollenhoven 1981).21

Yet, for those who embrace the practice kandoeri represent some of Islam’smost noble qualities. For example, the majority of my interlocutors attendedkandoeri regularly, and pointed to the role these feasts play in fostering“cordial social relations” (I., silaturahmi) between Muslims. In fact, kandoeriare such a central part of social life in Seunagan that to refuse to be presentat them means isolating oneself from the ritual and social life of one’s neigh-bors, behavior widely taken to be anti-social and un-Islamic. Further, the spon-soring and attending of kandoeri signals one’s capacity and intent to participatein networks of social reciprocity and patronage.

21 In classical Islamic jurisprudence, adat, and the related concept of ‘urf, can be understood as acategory of local practice that, when it is consistent with Islamic legal principles, is itself legallybinding. In this sense, adat is a category used to bring local norms and practices into the Islamiclegal tradition (Stewart 2012). However, in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Indonesia thegeneral assumption has been that adat includes things that are resolutely local and that standagainst or outside of Islamic practice.


Teuku Azman’s claim that Seunagan’s customary practice has its “origins inIslam” presumably was targeted at Islamic reformers who criticized practices suchas kandoeri. This would have buttressed the ways in which Habib Abdurrahim’sgenealogy expressed opposition to Darul Islam, since in Aceh Darul Islam waswidely taken to be ideologically aligned with reformist Islam. Indeed, much ofDarul Islam’s leadership in the province was drawn from well-known reformerswho had campaigned against popular forms of kandoeri in the past (Abdurrahmanet al. 1948). Kandoeri also have allowed Habib Muda, and the descendants ofHabib Abdurrahim generally, to illustrate their central place in the networks ofreciprocity and patronage these feasts enact. This is because rituals at thegraves of Habib Abdurrahim and Habib Muda are taken to be kandoeri.

Most people who partake in the mystical and devotional practices associat-ed with Habib Abdurrahim and his descendants do so through joining in collec-tive recitations of the names of God (Aceh. ziké or dike; I., zikir), praises to theProphet Muhammad (Aceh., seulaweuët; I., selawat), and various other litanies.These recitations occur at the graves of Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants, dozensof which dot the Seunagan landscape. At small grave complexes, semi-weeklygatherings are attended exclusively by women, most of them from the villagewhere the ritual takes place. Comparatively larger gatherings at the grave com-plexes of Habib Abdurrahim and Habib Muda are sponsored by their descen-dants and devotees. These events, attended by thousands of men and women,occur on the anniversaries of Habib Abdurrahim and Habib Muda’s deaths, onthe two major Islamic holidays Idul Adha and Idul Fitri, and at other timesduring the year. When I asked residents of Seunagan about the mystical practicesassociated with Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline, they frequently invited me to theselarge events, which they identified as kandoeri.22

Consider the comments of Sayyid Bas, a university-educated descendent ofHabib Muda, still in his twenties.23 He identified “three foundations” (Aceh.,lhèē bòh dasar) of his patriline’s “community” (I., komuniti). The first was theremembrance of God through the litanies recited by the members of the Syattar-iyah Sufi order. The second and third were the kandoeri that the descendants ofHabib Abdurrahim sponsor and the cordial social relations these kandoeri foster:

Now to cordial social relations [silaturahmi]. Abu Habib Muda Seunagan [i.e., HabibMuda], he had a hobby, to go fishing. So he would go to the villages, go to the villageswith his followers. Then, after he went to the place to fish, they would all eat together .…Until today, on the [anniversary of his death] there are still people from various regionswho come. They are welcome.… He died maybe twenty or thirty years ago… but none-theless to this day … many people come to his grave. And it is a routine, every year,handed down from generation to generation.

22 Here I focus on these larger gatherings; a future publication will treat the smaller sessions at-tended exclusively by women.

23 Sayyid Bas is a pseudonym. While I have not changed the names of public figures or thosefrom the archival record, I employ pseudonyms for of all of my ethnographic interlocutors.


In May of 2009, I attended the yearly commemoration of the anniversary ofHabib Muda’s death Sayyid Bas described. Just after sunset prayers, flatbedtrucks made their way slowly down the road that leads past Habib Muda’sgrave complex, each hauling groups of fifteen to fifty people from Seunaganand other parts of Aceh. By the time the recitations began soon after nightfall,two thousand people were sitting in groups (I., rombongan) in or near a largebuilding across the street from the grave complex (see figure 5). This was ashelter for reciting litanies (Aceh., déah) where Habib Muda had led ritual prac-tices. The floors of the two-story building were crammed with attendees, as wasthe small courtyard outside.

Each group of attendees recited litanies in unison, jerking their bodiesback-and-forth with every syllable. Recitations were drawn largely from acorpus of praises to the Prophet Muhammad and the ninety-nine namesof God (I., asmaul husna). Groups did not attempt to choreograph theirlitanies or bodily movements with other groups, although each group didperiodically pause following crescendos that slowly built in speed andvolume in their recitations. When one group would stop, others continuedaround them. The result was overpowering, especially for anyone who tooka few moments to walk around the courtyard, battered by a cacophony ofsacred syllables.

As thousands of Habib Muda’s devotees recited litanies, Habib Muda’sdescendants conspicuously performed the generosity and reciprocity associatedwith the ideal of cordial social relations (silaturahmi). Behind the shelter andcourtyard in which attendees were reciting litanies there was a large cooking

FIGURE 5. Kandoeri outside Habib Muda’s grave complex, 2009, Peuleukung. Author’s photo.


area. Men prepared what seemed a never-ending banquet of rice, fish, eggs,vegetables, and meat, which they served all night and free of charge to thosein attendance. The food was sponsored by Habib Muda’s descendants and afew collateral relatives. In the days before the event, these men missed no op-portunity to remind neighbors of the copious amounts of food that would beavailable. The men who prepared this food, most of whom were distant rela-tives and neighbors, took this role as a great honor. During the feast, seniormembers of Habib Muda’s descendants remained stationed at various pointson the grounds receiving visitors. In fact they received guests at the complexthe day before the feast and well into the morning that followed it.

Those attending this kandoeri enthusiastically partook of this generosity,contributing in their own ways to the networks of material and spiritual reci-procity displayed in the event. Devotees came for a variety of reasons—toexpress personal devotion to the deceased, join in a festive bounty of goatand water buffalo curry, fulfill vows previously made to Habib Muda, seek su-pernatural help in meeting challenges in their occupational and personal lives,and advance their mystical knowledge.

While consistent with wider patterns of Islamic mystical and devotionalpractice (Cornell 1998; Gilsenan 1973; Hoffman 1995; Werbner 2003), the rec-itations and commensality that occur at Habib Abdurrahim’s grave are under-stood in Seunagan as essential features of local customary practice. Theyembed ritual practitioners in networks of material and spiritual reciprocityframed by the genealogy of Habib Abdurrahim. At such events, the deep im-brications of the patriline of Habib Abdurrahim and the “local customary prac-tice … having its origins in Islam” described by Teuku Azman are everywhereevident, in conspicuous displays of generosity by Habib Abdurrahim’s livingdescendants and in the grave complexes that inscribe the genealogy of hisdescendants on the Seunagan landscape.

T H E PA S T S O F I S L AM I Z AT I O N A N D T H E U N F O L D I N G O F I S L AM I C

H I S T O RY

Habib Muda’s version of Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline evokes multiple,linked, and mutually reinforcing significances that derive from the ways inwhich the genealogy integrates different scales of space and time. At leastthree different Islamic pasts congeal in this patriline: the Indonesian nation ex-pressed in terms of progressive Islamization; a mystical Islamic cosmos gov-erned by a hierarchy of Sufi adepts; and Seunagan’s realm of localcustomary practice. These pasts appear in different combinations in each ofthe patriline’s five major links. How doMuslims in Seunagan locate themselvesvis-à-vis the spatial-temporal resonances of Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline?What kinds of relationships to these interconnected pasts do ritual and socialpractice in the region enable?


Over a period of two and a half weeks in June 2009 I traveled to nearlytwenty graves of Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants with Sayyid Amril, oneof his great-great grandsons. On the mornings we had chosen to, in hiswords, “go to the field” (Aceh., dja’ oe lapangan) he met me at my home.There he listed several graves and their occupants: our itinerary for the day.As we worked our way from grave to grave on the back of my motorbike,we traced ties between fathers, sons, nephews, and cousins, all in ascendingand descending genealogical patrilines linked to Habib Abdurrahim. At eachsite we paused, sometimes for extended periods, so that Sayyid Amril couldrelate colorful tales of the “superiority” (I., kelebihan) of each of these figures:

The child of Sayyid Abdulrasyid, he was Teungku Putik, buried here. He also had mys-tical powers [I., keramat]. And the child of Sayyid Muhammad Yasin, Habib Muda, healso had mystical powers. Habib Muda killed Dutch intelligence officers. Whoever wasa Dutch intelligence officer, shhhhh, he was dead. Finished! With a knife. Cut down witha knife [full of] knowledge [Aceh., èleumèë]. Shh-shh-shh-shh-shh.24 [Cut down] like abanana tree.… If there was a disagreement among villagers, and Teungku Putik said itshould not be like this, it should be like that, there was silence!25 Later we will stop for acouple of minutes, about one kilometer in from here. Get your motorbike, and I will tellyou more.

It was clear that Sayyid Amril deeply enjoyed these stories. They nearly alwaysentailed extrasensory perception or other miraculous abilities that his ancestorsand uncles had used to teach their devotees esoteric truths or outsmart unsus-pecting Dutch soldiers and officials.

Unlike Sayyid Amril, most people in Seunagan did not have the time orknowledge to accompany me on guided tours of these gravesites, but manywere aware that these graves could be pieced together as Sayyid Amril did.Some of them could tell me stories about the person in a particular grave,usually one located in their own village. Sometimes they claimed exclusiveknowledge of a locally buried figure, and identified that figure’s relatives bygesturing toward their final resting places in other villages, pointing to differentdirections on the horizon.

The graves of Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants thus inscribe a web of ge-nealogy on the Seunagan landscape. They fit a pattern common among mysti-cally inclined Muslims for whom genealogies become recognizable throughgraves and funerary sites that serve as charters of collective identity or other-wise inscribe social significance on geographic landscapes (Frank 1996;Gladney 1987; Green 2012; Ho 2006). As at these other sites, it was not

24 Sayyid Amril mimicked the sound of the knife blade cutting through the air. His suggestionthat the knife was full of “knowledge” implied that it was the knife’s esoteric qualities that led toHabib Muda’s victories against the Dutch.

25 Here Sayyid Amril suggested that Teungku Putik commanded such respect among villagersthat his opinions were instantly followed. There may have been an esoteric element to this claim aswell. Elsewhere, Sayyid Amril described Teungku Putik as able to make himself invisible duringbattle.


simply the graves themselves that constitute these webs, but the activity ofregular ritual practices at them.

In the case of the network of graves Sayyid Amril showed me in the Seu-nagan countryside, the webs of relationality recruit practitioners to the multi-scalar history of Seunagan’s Islamization. Villagers encounter the descendantsof Habib Abdurrahim, both the dead and the living, during rituals at thesegraves. On the holiday of the Greater Feast (I., Idul Adha) in December of2008, for instance, groups of devotees attending the kandoeri at HabibMuda’s grave faced the shelter under which he and several of his immediatefamily members are buried. Inside this shelter were the most senior of hisliving descendants, including Habib Muda’s last surviving son, Abu Kodrat,and some of his cousins. After several hours of recitations, Abu Kodrat andhis relatives came out from the grave complex. They slowly worked theirway through the crowd of thousands, ritually greeting everyone in attendanceby reaching out their hands to devotees, one-by-one. Each person thus greetedresponded by taking the hand offered to him or her, leaning over it, and sniffingits backside in a common display of respect and affection offered to parents andreligious teachers. Abu Kodrat then led the devotees assembled in circumam-bulating Habib Muda’s grave.

The graves and their associated rituals link Muslims in Seunagan toIslamic pasts by providing opportunities to encounter the entwined scales ofspace and time that inhere in Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline. Devotees withwhom I spoke at the kandoeri to mark the anniversary of Habib Muda’sdeath, for example, described to me Habib Muda’s “superiority” (kelebihan)in terms of his place in national, cosmic, and local histories of Islam. Theytold of his national heroism as a defender of the Indonesian Republic, his vir-tuoso feats of ritual recitation, the mystical qualities that make him an ideal in-tercessor through which to seek divine favors, his position as a champion oflocal customary practice, and his generous contributions to networks of reci-procity at events similar to the kandoeri at which we spoke. Typical of theways in which such descriptions link Habib Muda to local, national, andcosmic pasts is the following story, related to me by his matrilineal grandson:

During the second Dutch aggression [of the Indonesian Revolution] Lieutenant AbdulRasani was fighting in North Sumatra, near Medan. Lieutenant Abdul Rasani was acompanion of Abu [Habib Muda]. They were very close. He [Abdul Rasani] waskilled one night, at three o’clock. Habib Muda woke up very upset. He told his wifethat Abdul Rasani had come to visit him. He had asked permission to go to God. Itwas his soul [I., roh] reporting [I., melapor] to Abu before he went to God. That wasbefore there were cellular phones.

Stories such as these emphasize Habib Muda’s place in local, national, andcosmic Islamic pasts, and congeal different scales of space and time inHabib Muda’s node of Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline. The constellation ofIslamic pasts more generally latent in this patriline frame acts through which


Muslims in Seunagan place themselves within the unfolding of Islamic history.This is not simply a matter of claiming descent from Habib Abdurrahim, andmost who attend such ritual activities are not in fact his descendants. Still,they place themselves in relationship to figures such as Habib Abdurrahimand Habib Muda as devotees who engage in ritual reciprocity with the patriline,allowing Habib Abdurrahim’s living descendants to play the role of generouscultivators of customary practice, guarantors of cosmic blessing, and upholdersof local and national unity. The lateral quality of these relationships, along withthe ways in which they can be taken as echoes of previous relationships thatoccurred at different points in the multi-scalar histories of Habib Abdurrahim’sgenealogy, are key to how they serve as entry points into an unfolding Islamichistory.

Of particular importance are the ways in which local, national, and cosmicpasts inhere in Habib Abdurrahim’s seminal act of Islamization. As I have de-scribed, Islamization has been a central trope of postcolonial Indonesian narra-tive discourse. One of its crucial features has been the emphasis placed onIslamization as an ongoing process involving not simply the initial conversionof a person or region to Islam but the progressive deepening of his, her, or itsIslamic qualities. The Indonesian term mengislamkan can denote either thebringing about of an initial conversion or the deepening of Islam in someoneor something. Even when expressed in language that is less equivocal, forexample when speaking of the “coming” or “entrance” (I., masuknya) ofIslam into a region, descriptions of Islamization often imply continuing pro-cesses of deepening commitment to Islam. Precisely what such deepening com-mitment entails varies depending on who circulates a particular narrative andwhat he or she takes as the proper end of Islamization (Feener 2013; Laffan2011; Ricklefs 2012). In all cases, however, the circulation of such discoursesprovides an impetus for Muslims to position themselves within narratives ofIslam’s unfolding history, framed in terms of Islamization.

The ways in which narratives of Islamization imply the ongoing participa-tion of Muslims in Islamic history casts Teuku Azman’s description of HabibAbdurrahim in a revealing light. Habib Abdurrahim was not simply the presti-gious ancestor of Habib Muda, or only a Sufi of great renown whose gravebecame a focal point of ritual practice. The conjoined local, national, andcosmic Islamic pasts that inhere in Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline are pasts ofIslamization, which meet in Habib Abdurrahim’s genealogical person. Estab-lishing links to Habib Abdurrahim, therefore, is a way of staking one’s placewithin the history of Islamization.

Consider Nur. One evening in November 2008, he presented me with afive-page computer-generated copy of his genealogy, which includes amongits links one Teungku Tjik di Kila. This Teungku Tjik di Kila is none otherthan one of Habib Abdurrahim’s four “pegs” (autad) in the Islamization of Seu-nagan. He is also Nur’s patrilineal ancestor. Nur’s document traces Teungku


Tjik di Kila’s patriline backward in time through twelve generations to anunnamed “King of Syria” (I., Raja Syam). This establishes Teungku Tjik diKila’s Arab origins, while simultaneously suggesting that he descends fromroyalty. More important than these Arab and royal origins are the ways inwhich the genealogy stresses Teungku Tjik di Kila as the central link inNur’s patriline. Although Nur’s copy of this genealogy extends twelve gener-ations before Teungku Tjik di Kila and five generations after him, it is titled“The Family Lineage … of Teungku Tjik di Kila from Beginning to End”(I., Silsilah Keluarga … Tgk. Chik Dikila dari Atas ke Bawah). To my knowl-edge, this is the title that Nur himself had given it. He did not suggest that hehad based the title on any earlier version, nor did he cite any earlier version assupporting his own.

By focusing this genealogy on the figure of Teungku Tjik di Kila, Nurdraws attention to the period of Seunagan’s initial Islamization, his own ances-tor’s role in it, and his patriline’s enduring ties to the patriline of Habib Abdur-rahim. All of this is foreshadowed on the genealogy’s first page, which recordsthe marriage of one “Banta Sultan” of Baghdad to the daughter of the King ofSyria.26 This marriage portends future marriages between the two patrilines.27

Further, a note attached to this link explains that this union resulted in sevenchildren, one of whom “went to Iran and is the ancestor of the Habib Seunagan[i.e., Habib Abdurrahim] via Syekh Abdul Qadir Jailani.”

Notice how Nur’s genealogy establishes ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani as an ances-tor of Habib Abdurrahim. In some respects, it is surprising that Nur emphasizesthis point. Teungku Tjik di Kila’s descendants are numerous, and include aprominent branch of the family that in the twentieth century produced someof the most influential critics of Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants. Nurhimself is a descendant of the best known of these critics, Zakaria Yunus(1906–1996), who criticized the mystical practice of Habib Abdurrahim’s de-scendants and was a field commander for the Darul Islam rebellion onAceh’s southwest coast. Along with his siblings, Nur openly embracesYunus’ reformist legacy. He is clearly uncomfortable with many of the mysticalpractices associated with Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants and skeptical of themystical implications that inhere in the use of titles such as “pole” and “peg.”One might thus expect that he would be eager to divorce his family line from itsentanglements with the descendants of Habib Abdurrahim, but Nur’s cultiva-tion of his genealogy suggests otherwise.

26 The Acehnese title “Banta” can be used in reference to the (usually matrilineal) descendants ofhereditary territorial chiefs. Thus, the name “Banta Sultan” implies (matrilineal?) descent from aMuslim ruler.

27 For example, Nur’s grandfather (Teungku Tjik di Kila’s grandson) married Habib Muda’saunt (Habib Abdurrahim’s daughter).


There are many reasons why Nur might want to continue to acknowledgehis genealogical links to Teungku Tjik di Kila and thus Habib Abdurrahim.While Nur himself had not run for office, at least two of the candidates forthe position of regency head in the 2006 provincial elections were descendantsof Teungku Tjik di Kila. Two others were descendants of Habib Abdurrahim,including the eventual winner, who is also the son of Teuku Azman.28 Voterswere aware of candidates’ genealogical pedigrees, which clearly bestowedelectoral advantages on some of them (Clark and Palmer 2008: 24).29 Addition-ally, as the heirs to a tradition of Islamic reformism that self-consciously worksto deepen what they take to be Islam’s most fundamental qualities, Nur’s em-phasis on his patriline’s early engagement with Islamization harmonizes withwhat seems to be his most deeply-felt assumptions about his family’s placein Islamic history, assumptions shared by his siblings and other close relatives.Ironically, their particular attachment to Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline isperhaps best illustrated in the ways in which they attempt to distance them-selves from Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants. Nur’s brother, Teungku Fudin,for instance, once de-emphasized the mystical resonances of his title of“peg” in a conversation with me, saying, “Teungku Tjik di Kila was like theassistant head of the Office of Islamization (I., Kantor Islamisasi). That is allthe title ‘peg’ means.” This playing down of the mystical significance of hispatriline’s title simultaneously affirmed his patriline’s links to Seunagan’speriod of Islamization, in a bureaucratic idiom that echoed Teuku Azman’s1962 reference to Seunagan’s four pegs as “staff members” (staf2). Moreover,Teungku Fudin made this comment at the regency-level bureaucratic officewhere he worked, which is part of one of Aceh’s several bureaucraciescharged with the administration of Islam and involved in projects framed ex-plicitly in terms of ongoing Islamization. The implicit parallel betweenTeungku Fudin’s present occupation and that of Teungku Tjik di Kila wasabundantly clear.

Nur and Teungku Fudin are striking examples of how members of HabibAbdurrahim’s patriline continue to link people to the pasts of Islamization.They are particularly illustrative because both men remain invested in their pat-riline’s place in the history of Islamization even though they are prominentcritics of Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants and their practices. What is more,their relationship to Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline is not one of descent; theydescend from a line that is involved in lateral relationships with Habib Abdur-rahim’s patriline. Their lines were intermarried at several points in history, and

28 This same candidate, Teuku Zulkarnaini, was reelected in 2012.29 In many respects this was consistent with what some scholars have described as a resurgence

of the authority of “traditional” elites in Indonesian politics following the 1998 fall of the NewOrder regime (Bubandt 2001; 2009; van Klinken 2007). Unlike in the contexts described inthese accounts, however, in Seunagan the influence of those who descend from figures such asHabib Abdurrahim and Teungku Tjik di Kila waxed and waned throughout the postcolonial period.


Teungku Tjik di Kila had been Habib Abdurrahim’s “peg.” By emphasizingthis genealogical position vis-à-vis the history of Seunagan’s Islamic history,Nur and Teungku Fudin could inscribe their own activities, such as TeungkuFudin’s work in his bureaucratic office, as part of a continuing history ofIslamization tied to networks centering on Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline.Even as he attempted to distance himself from what he saw as the misguidedpractice of Habib Abdurrahim’s descendants, Teungku Fudin continued toidentify himself in terms of his relationship to Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline,his gateway to participation in the history of Islamization.

Not everyone in Seunagan can claim such an elevated title as “peg” via thegenealogical patriline of Teungku Tjik di Kila. But those who want to can es-tablish relationships of reciprocity and patronage with Habib Abdurrahim’s pat-riline through participating in ritual meals at the graves of his descendants. Theways in which participants at kandoeri emphasize the multi-scalar aspects ofHabib Muda’s persona—as guardian of customary practice, national hero,and Islamic mystic—show that they are at least aware of the entangled historiesof the patriline toward which they orient their practice. Indeed, their descrip-tions sound quite similar to those Teuku Azman offered of Habib Abdurrahimin his report. Their participation establishes their position within networks ofmaterial and spiritual reciprocity, linking them to Habib Abdurrahim’s patrilineand the spaces and times it brings together. Local customary practice, grandmystical cosmology, and the telos of the Indonesian nation are all conjoinedin the genealogy of Habib Abdurrahim, the pasts of Islamization he inhabits,and the moments in which his devotees place themselves in relation to him,his descendants, and his ancestors.

C O N C L U S I O N : E N TW I N E D PA S T S A N D T H E S C A L I N G E F F E C T S O F

G E N E A L O G Y

The bringing together of people, places, and events separated in space and timeis a fundamental capacity of genealogical idioms (Azra 2004; Bowen 1989a;DeWeese 1994; Evans-Pritchard 1940; Henige 1974; Ho 2006; Irvine 1978;Shaery-Eisenlohr 2009; Shryock 1997). Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline, as ithas come to be widely espoused in Seunagan since the late 1950s, suggeststhat an important effect of such constellations is their capacity to give rise toconfigurations of spatial-temporal scale that enable novel relationships withthe past. Habib Muda’s version of Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline is a primaryidiom through which people in Seunagan describe and assert social connectionsand cleavages. Habib Muda’s emphasis on his Javanese ancestors during DarulIslam, for example, put him in opposition to Darul Islam fighters who wished toassert Acehnese primacy and autonomy vis-à-vis Java. All of this took placewithin a narrative framing that is dependent on the ways Habib Muda’sversion of his genealogy reconfigured scales of space and time.


For Muslims in Seunagan, putting oneself in relationship with HabibAbdurrahim’s patriline enables ways in which to participate in the ongoinghistory of Islamization. Habib Muda’s genealogy inextricably ties HabibAbdurrahim to the Islamization of the Seunagan countryside, and the variousfigures in his patriline all look in some way to this seminal act. This act isalso tied to the telos of the Indonesian nation, while it simultaneously reflectsHabib Abdurrahim’s (and his patriline’s) status as Pole of the Universe. SomeMuslims in Seunagan trace their genealogy to Habib Abdurrahim and his asso-ciates, drawing attention to parallels between historic ancestors and present-daybureaucratic efforts at Islamization. Others seek esoteric knowledge and spiri-tual and mystical reciprocity at kandoeri. All of these instances can be con-strued as participation in the ongoing history of Islamization because HabibAbdurrahim’s genealogy offers a narrative that congeals local, national, andcosmic scales. In short, his patriline fashions the very space and time of Islam-ization. It not only provides an accessible model of what John Bowen describesas the “chronotope of Islamization” (Bowen 1989a), but through its genealog-ical idiom also enables Muslims to write themselves into the story. Thisdepends not simply on the nodes within the genealogy, but also on the wayin which together these nodes constitute a scalar configuration that connectsthe space and time of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Seunaganto the history of Islamization writ large.

Because figures such as Habib Muda often lack verifiable genealogicalchains to ancestors such as the Prophet Muhammad, scholars have oftentaken them to be categorically local (Kraus 2010; Sila 2001). Yet genealogiessuch as Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline provide powerful ways through whichMuslims dispense with dichotomies of local and global Islam. Emphasizingconfigurations of graduated and interlocking spatial-temporal scales, HabibMuda’s genealogy becomes convincing because it provides an entry pointinto a history that various groups and factions within Seunagan find compellingand are equipped to join. This makes it an ideal idiom to support a variety ofcross-cutting segmentary processes, which allow the descendants of TeungkuTjik di Kila, for instance, to both assert themselves as the anti-mystical propo-nents of a reformed Islamic practice and to embrace their position as HabibAbdurrahim’s “peg.” The scalar logic of the genealogy is central to thiseffect. Not only do particular, scalar configurations provide spatial-temporalnodes at which social actors such as Habib Muda and Nur can claim affinityor opposition to other groups, but the configuration of scale manifest inHabib Muda’s genealogy constitutes a local ground through which Muslimsin Seunagan can take up a place in the cosmic history of Islam, making partic-ipation in Islamization a conceptual possibility.

Habib Muda’s version of Habib Abdurrahim’s patriline, as an idiom ofsocial relations in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Seunagan, illus-trates how scale is vital to ways of relating to the past that involve inscribing


oneself in the continual flow of historical processes. Transformations of scaleentail transformations in not just the specific people, places, and eventsbrought into relationship in a genealogy (or any other historically orientedidiom), but also the kinds of relationships possible within such a constellation.The pasts that have most interested me in this essay are embodied and inhabitedby people who understand themselves to be taking up places within unfoldinghistorical narratives. The ways in which Muslims in Seunagan join histories ofIslamization are dependent on not simply the pasts, presents, and futures thatthey seek to enter, but also on the scalar logics and relationships that bringthese pasts, presents, and futures into meaningful constellations.

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Abstract: In this paper I argue that the ways in which a genealogical idiom bringstogether multiple scales of space and time is as important to its social, political, orreligious efficacy as the particular people, places, and events it incorporates. Toillustrate this point, I turn to the unusual patrilineal genealogy of Habib Abdurra-him, a nineteenth-century descendant of the Prophet Muhammad buried in theIndonesian region of Seunagan. Since the late 1950s, Habib Abdurrahim’s de-scendants have cultivated a version of his patriline emphasizing five prominentfigures. This constellation of figures, together with the relationships Muslimsin Seunagan foster with each of the five, produce configurations of spatial-temporal scale through which local Muslims inscribe themselves as participantsin several Islamic pasts: the establishment of Seunagan’s customary practice, theIslamization of the Indonesian nation, and Islam’s cosmic history. Narrative,social, and ritual practices surrounding Habib Abdurahim’s patriline linkMuslims in Seunagan to the multiple scales that inhere in the genealogy, encour-aging them to see themselves as actors within entwined and unfolding histories ofIslamization.


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Documents

Putting Habib Abdurrahim in His Place: Genealogy, Scale, and Islamization in Seunagan, Indonesia. 2015. Comparative Studies in Society and History 57(2): 497-527