Islamic law in 17th Century Aceh (original) (raw)

In 1999 Aceh province (renamed Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam), in the north of Sumatra, was granted the exceptional authorization to apply sharia on its territory. The process, however, is slow, difficult and conflictive. In such a context the highlighting of compendiums of Islamic law (fiqh) written in Malay at the time of the sultanate tends to confirm the idea, much widespread for a long time, that sharia has always been implemented in Aceh. It happens that a local publisher has released in 2015 two ancient texts: the Mir’at al-Tullab by Abdurrauf al-Singkili (1672) and the Safinat al-Hukkam by Jalaluddin al-Tarusani (1740). The article examines to what extent historical sources—especially about the law in force and more generally the observance of Islam in Aceh in the 17th century—allow us to evaluate in what conditions and to what purpose those two texts were written.