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From acting to being: Expressions of religious individuality in Aceh, ca. 1600–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2016

David Kloos
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Abstract

This article discusses the early modern Acehnese epic tradition to demonstrate the emergence of an individualized Muslim ethics. From the late seventeenth century onwards, a protracted decline of Acehnese royal power initiated a process of political fragmentation as well as the gradual integration of rural areas in the globalizing economy. This shift coincided with the emergence of local religious teachers as a new and influential social group. Contingent upon these changes, the Acehnese epic tradition shifted from a dominant cosmological model based on ritual hierarchies to a paradigm of reflexive ethics based on individual responsibility to God.

Keywords

Acehepic literaturehikayatindividualityIslamreligious practice
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , December 2015 , pp. 437 - 461
Copyright
© 2016 Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

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Footnotes

*

David Kloos is a researcher at KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden, The Netherlands. He has carried out extensive historical and anthropological research on religious practice and authority in Aceh. His current research explores the ways in which female religious authorities in Malaysia and Indonesia make use of visual images to communicate with their audience. Research for this article was made possible by the Faculty of Arts (currently the faculty of Humanities) of the VU University Amsterdam. Final revisions were made at KITLV/Netherlands Instititute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden. I am very grateful to Heather Sutherland and Henk Schulte Nordholt for supervising my PhD research. Tom Hoogervorst, Willem van der Molen, the editors of this dossier – Jos Gommans and Carolien Stolte – and two anonymous reviewers provided generous and thoughtful comments.

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