Women, Genealogical Inheritance and Sufi Authority: The Female Saints of Seunagan, Indonesia

This article examines the case of two female saints who resided and are buried in the Indonesian region of Seunagan, in the province of Aceh. The entwined genealogy and Sufi lineage that links these women to the broader family of Sufis who constitute the major figures in Seunagan’s Syattariyah Sufi path is patrilineal. Nonetheless, some residents of Seunagan suggest that Seunagan’s two female saints are able to transmit preternatural powers to their descendants. Such suggestions reveal a genealogical imagination that recognises the descent of esoteric knowledge and authority via female, as well as male, genealogical links. This genealogical imagination mediates the ways in which the devotees of these women understand the transmission of religious and political authority. The article argues that this form of ambilineal succession – that is, succession drawing on both matrilineal and patrilineal descent – is informed by broader patterns of matrilocality common in Aceh. Nonetheless, it also depends upon latent possibilities that are present within Islamic genealogical idioms. As such, it challenges common assumptions that Islamic genealogies are inevitably and resolutely patrilineal.