Rencong is not just a traditional weapon. A legend of greed and heroism is attached to the Bismillah-shaped weapon. In a folktale is told. Long ago on the mainland of Aceh lived a giant bird of a kind eagle, the Acehnese called Geureuda. The existence of the giant bird is very disturbing people's lives. All kinds of plants, fruits and terbakapnya people dilahapnya.
All kinds of pitfalls and weapons yag used to kill him is not established, even longer Geureuda is increasingly ferociously devouring the crops of people, perhaps from the legend that until now the people of Aceh mention Geureuda deuk to people - people who congok.
By the then ruling monarch, ordered a blacksmith who was also a cleric to create a powerful weapon capable of killing the Geureuda. By the blacksmith who has science maqfirat iron, after doing fasting, praying circumcision and pray new iron forge options with a mixture of several metals into rencong.
Regarding the form of rencong in the form of a bismillah sentence, as written by T. Alibasyah Talsya in his book Aceh Yang Kaya Budaya, published by Meutia Banda Aceh library 1972, explained, the curved hilt then thicken on his elbow is the Arabic Ba script, the banjuran gagangnya is the script of Sin, the tapered form that drops down on the iron base close to the handle is the Memimon script, the iron stripe from the base of the handle to the near end is the Lam character, the tapered end with the flat top plain and the lower part slightly upwards are Ha characters.
Rangkain from Ba, Sin, Lam, and Ha script that embodies Bismillah sentence. So the blacksmith who first made rencong, in addition to clever maqrifat iron also has a high calligraphy. Therefore, rencong is not used for small, unimportant things, much less to do evil, but rencong is used only to defend itself from enemy attacks and to wage the path of God.
A potent rencong is usually made of selected iron, which is coherent with gold, silver, copper, tin and poisonous substances so that when the opponent's battle is immune to iron, the person will be able to penetrate rencong.
There is a straight rencong handle and some are curved upwards. Rencong whose handle is curved upwards is called rencong Meucungkek, usually the handle is made of ivory and the horns of choice.
The form of meucungkek is meant in order to avoid the occurrence of excessive respect for fellow human beings, because the ultimate honor belongs to Allah only. That is, if rencong meucungkek insertkan section of the waist or the central part, then the person can not bow his head or bend his body to give respect to others because his stomach will be depressed with the handle meucungkek.
The handles are also meant to be, the precarious moments can be easily withdrawn from the sheath and will not easily escape from the grip. One thing that distinguishes rencong with other traditional weapons is that rencong is never sharpened because only the pointed tip is used.