Ensiklopedi Pemikiran Ulama Aceh (2004)Ensiklopedi Pemikiran Ulama Aceh (2004): Encyclopaedia of the Thought of Acehnese Ulama

Ensiklopedi Pemikiran Ulama Aceh was compiled by the IAIN Ar-Raniry Writing Team and published by Ar-Raniry Press in Banda Aceh in 2004. It contains narratives on 26 Acehnese ulama who lived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most of its authors were young lecturers at IAIN Ar-Raniry from the faculties of Adab, Sharia, Dakwah and Tarbiyah. They include Nur Chalis Sofyan, Azman Ismail, Misri A. Muchsin, M. Hasbi Amiruddin, Hasanuddin Yusuf Adan, Aslam Nur, Muhammad AR, Nurjannah Ismail and Mutiara Fahmi. The book is therefore also a portrait of a generation of Ar-Raniry academics who later became professors, faculty leaders and figures in Islamic preaching in Aceh.

The book appeared amid efforts to give content to the concept of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam and to implement Islamic law, a few months before the tsunami of December 2004. T. H. Ibrahim Alfian, in his foreword, links the encyclopaedia to that challenge. In his view, implementing sharia required deeper study of the thought of earlier ulama, a task that fell above all on the scholars of IAIN Ar-Raniry. He also notes a paradox: the names of the ulama are attached to many institutions, yet their thought is rarely known as a whole.

Two forewords frame the book. Azyumardi Azra, writing from the UIN Jakarta campus on 17 August 2004, places Acehnese ulama within the networks of the Haramayn and the Indian Ocean. He argues that Aceh was the first region of the archipelago where that network took root, and recounts the careers of Nuruddin ar-Raniri and Abdurrauf as-Singkili. He then maps the layers of ulama the book covers: leaders of jihad, dayah scholars, educational reformers, academics of Islamic law, and figures in preaching, literature, exegesis and historical writing. T. H. Ibrahim Alfian, writing from Yogyakarta on 31 August 2004, reads Acehnese ulama as intellectuals and political actors. He draws on Gramsci, Said and Mannheim, and interprets the Hikayat Prang Sabi as cognitive resistance to colonialism.

According to Azra's list, the figures covered include Teungku Chik Pante Kulu, Teungku Fakinah, Teungku Chik di Tiro, Teungku Chik Kuta Karang, Teungku Muhammad Hasan Krueng Kalee, Teungku Abu Lam U, Teungku Haji Ahmad Hasballah Indrapuri, Teungku Chik di Simpang, Teungku Shaykh Muhammad Muda Waly al-Khalidy, Teungku Muhammad Dawud Beureueh, Teungku Abdurrahman Meunasah Meucap, Teungku A. Hasjmy, Teungku M. Hasbi Ash-Shiddieqy, Teungku Ali Muhammad, Teungku Araby Ahmad, Teungku Haji Ismuha, Teungku M. Latief Rousydiy, Teungku Muhammad Ali Irsyad, Teungku Abdussalam Meuraxa, Teungku Ismail Yakub, Ustadz Muhammad Nur Hayyi, Teungku M. Yunus Jamil, Teungku Abdullah Arif, Teungku Abdurrahim Daudy, Haji Abubakar Aceh and Teungku Abdullah Ujong Rimba. The opening chapter, by Nur Chalis Sofyan on Teungku Chik Pante Kulu, reads the Hikayat Prang Sabi stanza by stanza through a hermeneutic approach.

For Aceh studies the encyclopaedia matters for three reasons. First, it is one of the first systematic attempts from within IAIN Ar-Raniry to document the thought of modern Acehnese ulama. Second, its two forewords sum up two major frameworks for reading Acehnese ulama: the global scholarly network, and the intellectual and political functions of ulama in society. Third, its list of figures shows which ulama were considered representative at the start of the twenty-first century, including who was left out. Alfian himself notes that Teungku H. Djakfar Hanafiah is not in the encyclopaedia. The volume, both forewords and the chapter on Pante Kulu are held in the KBA13 Academy Pustaka.