Celebrating the Prophet's birthday in Aceh : The kings of Idi

Continuing the current series of my latest trip to Aceh end of February...

Saturday 27th 2010. After the Maulidur Rasul and tomb visit in Perlak we're back in Idi where our hotel lies. The hotel happened to be only 1 km or so from Kuala Idi, the mouth of the Idi river. So we decided to have a look around...

It was at Kuala Idi that we met some locals who told us of the existence of the tomb of the king of Idi. As the tomb is less than 5 km away, we decided to check it out next...

The king of Idi was a local ruler who served under the Sultan of Aceh. Such local rulers were called Ampon Sheikh each being overlord of their own private domains. So we were at the tomb or rather tombs of the Ampon Sheikhs of Idi (there's a number of them buried here I was told). Have a look at the article Makam (tomb of) Ampon Sheikh Idi made in the blogspot SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) just now.

Next to the tomb lies this house...

It belongs to some family members of the Ampon Sheikh of Idi. Although officially they have been stripped from their regal position the family are still respected and revered by locals.



Part of the door of this house are carvings which used to formed the old Idi palace...

The palace used to lie on this part of land behind this house. Hmm... my wife and baby seemed to be present in every shot. What can I say? I love and adore them very much.

If I'm not mistaken this is the actual site of the palace.

Further behind lies remnants of the old concrete gate that one has to go through to enter the palace grounds.

Here's the house and tomb area in perspective to the site of the palace...

And here's the wife, baby and our driver just outside the gates...

Celebrating the Prophet's birthday in Aceh : Maulidur Rasul, the Ahlul Bait Sultan and a legacy from old Perlak

Soon came the time to go to Perlak, the actual place where we intend to celebrate the Maulidur Rasul or Prophet Muhammad SAW's birthday. This place lies eight hours away by road from Banda Aceh. Continued from the article Celebrating the Prophet's birthday in Aceh : The historical sites at Banda Aceh.

In the article The Aceh connection... made more than a month ago I've shown the picture above without making any explanation. Now let me tell you all dear readers this... the carvings seen with sharp points jutting out of every corner represent something from a bygone era of Aceh. While one is hardpressed to find such carvings at any present house or building in Aceh in this modern times, it is quite common at some old wooden infrastructures in Perak, Malaysia. When I first noticed such carvings in Perak while looking up my roots which led to Aceh, my heart tells me that it did originated from Aceh. But my trips to that part of the world in January 2004, June 2009 and January 2010 failed to offer any evidence...

The funny thing is I finally found this carving in my latest trip to Aceh at the end of February 2010, a trip made to celebrate the Maulidur Rasul (Prophet Muhammad SAW's) birthday in Perlak, an area which used to be the centre of the first Islamic kingdom in the Malay Archipelago ruled by an Ahlul Bait (the Prophet's descendant) since some 1,200 years ago...

What happened was on Thursday night we left Banda Aceh for Perlak. Since Perlak is now a small 'cowboy' town, we could only find proper lodging at Idi some 25 km north of Perlak. That's where we stayed, at a hotel called Bandar Khalifah which used to be the name of the central city of old Perlak. Friday morning as we waited for our convoy to get to the celebrations in Perlak, me, wife and baby stepped out of the hotel grounds and saw the carvings. A local then told us the carvings represented an era from old Perlak where similar carvings used to grace houses and buildings just like the ones I've seen in Perak!

Anyway soon we went to Perlak and arrived at the mosque of Nurun Niswah which was newly opened for the Maulidur Rasul celebration. While this is the main reason this trip to Aceh was made I won't elaborate much. Instead you can have a look at the video clips featured in the article Maulidur Rasul di Aceh : Majlis Maulud di Masjid Nurun Niswah, Perlak made in the Malay blogspot CATATAN SI MERAH SILU.

You see, frankly I was more excited at what's to come next, a visit to a certain tomb in a Perlak rural area just about 10 km or more from the mosque. Oh, posing in the picture is our friend Haji Muzaffar (left) and the young Imam (congregational prayer leader) of Banda Aceh's Baiturrahman mosque who followed us to Perlak. Funnily, they looked like they have been superimposed... must be due to combination of colours I guess...


The tomb belongs to Sultan Sayyid Maulana Abdul Aziz Shah whom I have mentioned earlier. Here's my wife and our baby posing in front of the tomb...

As for me, I just can't resist putting my red sash around the tombstone. No prize for guessing what the red sash is meant for. Those who know would just smile in understanding. That's all regarding Perlak... :]

Celebrating the Prophet's birthday in Aceh : The historical sites at Banda Aceh

After the ship that got stranded we went back to the centre of Banda Aceh to visit some historical sites... among it were those shown here...

This is the tomb of Sultan Alauddin (or Alaiddin) Ahmad Shah Johan Berdaulat who ruled Aceh 1727-1735. The tomb lies within a ground known as the Bugis Dynasty King's tomb area. Me and wife have brought our baby Al-Rasyid in the previous visit made in January 2010. But it is only in this visit that we got it correct... by standing and touching the headstone, not the footstone as we have done before...

Our friends Puan Suzana and husband Haji Muzaffar were more intrigued with the headstone of another ruler, a grandchild (if I recall correctly) of Sultan Ahmad...

Next we visited what is said to be the tomb of Sultan Iskandar Muda. For the record this ruler of 400 years ago is touted as the best and most powerful Aceh ever had...

Nearby lies the burial ground of the most recent rulers and some family members. Have a look at the article Makam keluarga kerajaan (Tombs of the ruling families) just posted in the blogspot SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) earlier. Now it's time to put video clips of these visits at my Malay blogspot CATATAN SI MERAH SILU. Note that this is the 464th article in this blogspot...

Celebrating the Prophet's birthday in Aceh : The ship that got swept inland by the Tsunami of 2004

OK. Let's continue the Aceh stories based on the latest trip made at the end of February 2010. Continued from Celebrating the Prophet's birthday in Aceh : Enter the tomb of Syiah Kuala... .

After the tomb of Syiah Kuala we went to another part of Banda Aceh where lies this ship which was swept some 5 km (or was it 5 miles) inland by the Tsunami of 26 December 2004...

In my first trip with the wife to Banda Aceh in 2009 we went here only to see it from outside down there (refer to The Aceh trip stories... in order from ground zero until the end...). This time, as the wife took care of our then 4-month old baby I made it a point to climb up all the way to the top-most part of the ship and savour the view...

Indeed the ship offers a good view of Banda Aceh and its surroundings...

As far as I could see, Banda Aceh has very few buildings taller than 5-storeys high and this ship seemed to provide a vantage view of things from higher up!



There, our friends Kak Suzana and Haji Muzaffar getting to grips on the surroundings with explanations from one of the guys who showed the way around...

First trip back to Muar for the year 2010

OK. An excursion from our recent stories regarding Aceh...

Last weekend, me, wife and baby Al-Rasyid returned to my native hometown of Muar, Johor, our first trip there for the year 2010. This is a picture at a wedding we attended on Saturday...

We next attended another wedding at another part out of town...

As the crowd converged it was raining cats and dogs outside...

Here's my dear wife with Al-Rasyid...

If I remember correctly, this is our baby's first taste of orange and he seemed to really like it...

Sunday morning we visited a favourite stall near the mouth of the Muar river...

Next we went to the recreational area fondly known as Tanjung (the cape). That's when I realised another species of monkey have joined the local population there.

This is a hill I saw besides a school some 20 km to the east of Muar town...

Here's the part of Muar river at a place called Tanjung Olak...

We came here because I wanted to check how the place fits into a dream I had about 2-3 years ago...

Next we visited the mosque at Kampung Raja in Pagoh...

Al-Rasyid 'posing' at the pulpit...

We took the opportunity to visit the tombs beside the mosque. For the record here lies the only known tomb of a Melaka Sultan in Malaysia, that belonging to Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah who ruled Melaka 1477-1488 AD.

Celebrating the Prophet's birthday in Aceh : Enter the tomb of Syiah Kuala...

Peace be upon you all. After a lapse of 2 weeks, let's continue the new series on my latest trip to Aceh. Continued from the article Celebrating the Prophet's birthday in Aceh : A feeling of old Kedah... or rather, old Malay country before Western colonialists spoiled everything? .

Thursday 25th February 2010, after having breakfast at the hotel in Banda Aceh it's time to make a visit to a certain place...

Welcome to the tomb of the venerable saintly master scholar, Sheikh Abdul Rauf Singkil also known as Syiah Kuala. Situated some 5 km out of city centre, this is me and wife's third visit here. For our baby Muhammad Al-Aminul Rasyid this is his second visit. You can read about the Sheikh and his tomb in the old articles Makam (tomb of) Syiah Kuala made in the blogspot SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) . Have a look also at the article Views around the tomb of Syiah Kuala....



Sheikh Abdul Rauf's tomb is the one covered in white. It is only in this trip that I learned the one with the yellow-coloured tombstone belongs to his student, Teungku Pakeh Ibrahim.

One for the album. Members of our convoy posing with the religious person (centre with skull-cap) who takes care of this place. He was the one who explained about all the tombs within the enclosed area...

A sideway picture of the tombs situated in the enclosed area. For the record this picture is facing the direction of Ka'abah, the Muslims' global centre of worship in Mecca, Arabia. It is also in the this trip that I learned the uncovered tombstone seen in the centre belongs to Sheikh Abdul Rauf's brother, Sheikh Abdul Wahab. But more of interest to me is the larger tombstone to the right. For it belongs to a certan Sheikh Abdul Rahim Maharajalela, father to Sultan Ahmad Shah Johan Berdaulat who ruled Aceh in the early 18th century...

For couple Haji Muzaffar and Puan Suzana who came to Aceh for the first time, this visit to the tomb of Syiah Kuala was a big revelation.

Soon it's time to go to other places. Will continue another day...

Celebrating the Prophet's birthday in Aceh : A feeling of old Kedah... or rather, old Malay country before Western colonialists spoiled everything?

Time to continue from Celebrating the Prophet's birthday in Aceh : A sudden unexpected trip... .

A few kilometres after the airport we stopped at this restaurant.

Behind is a hall which was exclusively reserved for our entourage...

OK. There were about 20 of us who came from Malaysia joined by 10 or so of Kak Ann's staff. By the way, Kak Ann, a Malaysian staying in Aceh was our host...

She also flew some guests from Jakarta, about 6 of them if I'm not mistaken. Seen in the picture is my wife holding our then four-months and a half old baby next to Ike As Sagaf, a guest from Jakarta.

So there we were seated waiting for lunch to be served.

Writers Puan Suzana and husband Haji Muzaffar was trying to hide their immense delight. For both it was almost like a dream to have finally arrived in Aceh.

Suzana has been writing a number of books concerning the genealogy of Malay rulers and their relations with the Ahlul Bait, family of the Prophet Muhammad SAW. Her own research has lead to the discovery that a main ancestor, the venerable Bendahara Tun Sri Lanang (a major 17th century Malay palace official, writer of the famous Malay treatise Sulalatus Salatin, known also as the Malay Annals) flourished and died here after being transported from Johor to Aceh. A grandaughter (or so) of Tun Sri Lanang married a certain Sayyid (a descendant of the prophet) resulting in progenies who became later Bendaharas of Johor.

When the infamous Sultan Mahmud of Johor was murdered while being carried on the pedestal in 1699, he left no heir. So custom dictates that the Bendahara should be elevated to the throne and that's the start of the Bendahara dysnasty who ruled over Johor, Pahang, Riau, in fact wide expanses of land which used to form the glorious Melaka empire of the 15th century AD. Colonialists intervention soon saw the break-up of the empire. Suffice to say these resulted in the modern states of Johor, Pahang and Terengganu having monarchs who originated from the Bendahara line, which in turn originated from the Sayyid and Tun Sri Lanang who flourished in Aceh.

Imagine knowing all this, knowing how your main ancestors started out and where they came from. Imagine, having wrote a number of books about it but have yet to step foot on the land where it all started. Not only that, Suzana was actually in the midst of writing another book. And she happened to reach a snag when comes to a subject which concerns Aceh!

While Suzana and Muzaffar whose movement are currently constrained due to having a small child were harbouring dreams of visiting this land sometime in the near future, they never dreamt it would happen so soon. Who would have thought, because of their association with little old me, coupled with the fact that they wrote the very succesful Malay book "Ahlul Bait dan Raja-raja Melayu" (which I've translated to English. See My 5th book is out! Ahlul Bait (Family) of Rasulullah SAW and the Malay Sultanates... ) they got invited by Kak Ann with all expenses paid?

So there they were husband and wife trying to contain their delight in all civility while savouring the food and view at the restaurant. And they were only a few kilometres away after arrival from the airport. All they have seen so far were just little samples of the wonderful historical land which is Aceh.

My dear wife and baby Al-Rasyid posing downstairs. For the record this is the 3rd time my wife came to Aceh, second for our dear baby...

The wife staring at the scenery, wide open expanses of paddy fields which characterise major parts of Aceh, even at the rather urbanised capital called Banda Aceh! Yep... when we came last year and stayed at the only 4-star hotel in the whole of the land, we can't help but notice the paddy field just behind the hotel. Which brings us back to the meal we had.

While Suzana was rather composed, Muzafar reached a staged where he almost cried. "My God," he quipped."These paddy fields reminded me of my growing years staying with my Nenek (grandmother) back in Kedah more than 30 years ago!". Which is exactly my sentiments. I might be 5 years younger than him but I still remember the paddy fields which used to cool my eyes besides the stretch of road from Muar up to Negeri Sembilan.

Here in Aceh, I also found scenes from 30 years ago being enacted again with people still farming the old way, man and woman walking in the mud and such. Muzafar went one step further by declaring all the food we had tasted of the good old years of the 1960s to 1970s, a period where Malay villages were still largely undefiled.

"How come the food here tastes so good?" he asked. I answered, apart from the clean air and refreshing scenery (Aceh has no big industry with factories to pollute the air) the food were freshly taken or plucked from its sources. No sir, they hardly use preservatives here. As far as I know and have tasted, whatever you eat are taken from a close-enough locality in amounts which are sufficient for the day's need. So sir, we don't need to use artificial preservatives nor we store our fish and meat in ice for months and on. Nor do we have to pretend these are fresh when thawed or served with microwave...

Here's one with all the people gone. So on to the title of this article.

While industralisation has made people progress in a certain materialistic direction, it has also made them less-sensitive to nature, in fact more oblivous to their actual natural needs. Consumerism has created artificial longing for goods that we don't really need. The same goes for the body. It is consumerim which has made food taste less natural in Malaysia then it was, say 30 years ago.

So why did I use the words "... before Western colonialists spoiled everything?" in the title of this article? Well go figure. At the risk of sounding very insular, I dare say it is the Western colonialists who brought consumerism and its whole artifical demand thing into our once nature-centred population. Everything is spoiled since then...

Later at night we visited the orphanage built by Kak Ann in Lhoong, some 50 km south-west of Banda Aceh.

The very same night we returned to Banda Aceh. We had supper at another restaurant before checking in at our hotel in mid-town.

Here's a view outside this restaurant. Seen in the background is a stretch of land which extended into a small narrow peninsular (or was it some sort of island connected by bridges?) constituting the famous area called Ulee Lhue and its harbour. That's all...



p/s: Do excuse me for the poor quality of pictures. What happened was, the night before we flew to Aceh I've just found out my Olympus camera charger was condemned beyond simple obvious repair. I had no time to find replacement. Thus I had to proceed with a camera with less than 5 per cent power still on.

Luckily a friend brought a videocam and asked me to record our trip. It is a fairly good model and you can see the results in the latest postings at my Malay blogspot BERPETUALANG KE ACEH. However the snaps made using its camera mood leaves a lot to be desired. Either that or I don't know it well enough to operate it properly hence the pictures you see...

To Kak Zanina of The New Straits Times' Travel Times section, if you happen to read this, I suggest you go straight to the collection of articles listed under the post The Aceh trip stories... in order from ground zero until the end... . The links point to all the relevant articles posted in all my three blogspots, hence you have those in Malay, English and bi-lingual bundled together for easy reference and continous flow of understanding. That should give you some idea what sort of articles I can produce or reproduce if you decide to have some for Travel Times. Mind you all the pictures have been down-sized to 10 per cent while the original ones at 3 megapixels should be good enough for paper print.

I have more pictures in store, those I did not publish in my blogspots. Besides the Aceh trip referred to was the 8-day trip made June 2009. Since then I have been to Aceh again twice, in January and February and now I'm just starting to relate the later. Cheers! :]