Acehnese Religion
ACEHNESE RELIGION. Aceh, a province of Indonesia on the northern tip of Sumatra, is a predominantly Muslim region. More than 90 percent of the people are Acehnese speaking; other languages include Gayo, the language of people living in the central mountains, and Alas, a Batak dialect spoken by a people living south of the Gayo. Most Acehnese are currently bilingual, also speaking Indonesian, the national language. Malay was spoken by some in the coastal areas in the nineteenth century and was also the language of the Acehnese court and of the literature produced there. Acehnese, however, was both the everyday and the literary language of the countryside; religious texts are found in both Acehnese and Malay.
Aceh was once an Islamic kingdom. When Ibn Baṭṭūṭah visited Pasè, on the east coast, in 1345 CE he found Islam well established. Aceh served as a source of Islamic conversion for other parts of the Indonesian archipelago. It was also host to visiting Islamic scholars from India, Syria, and Egypt.
Aceh's early history shows marked influences from the Indian subcontinent. This, perhaps, is the source of the heterodox mysticism expounded by Ḥamzah Fanṣūrī and his successor Shams al-Dīn al-Samatrāʾ (d. 1630).
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