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Sufism in Southeast Asia: Reflections and Reconsiderations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Anthony H. Johns
Anthony H. Johns
Affiliation:
The Australian National University
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Extract

In 1961 I published in this Journal a paper on the Islamization of peninsular and insular Southeast Asia. It was a paper I had presented to the first meeting of the conference of historians of Southeast Asia organized in January of that year at the University of Malaya in Singapore by the then Raffles Professor of History, K.G. Tregonning. It was a paper often referred to in discussions concerning the coming of Islam to the Malay world, and attracted its share of approbation and criticism.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 26 , 25th Anniversary Special Issue 1: Perspectives on Southeast Asian Studies , March 1995 , pp. 169 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1995

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References

Earlier versions of this paper were prepared during my tenure of a Special Foreign Professorship at Chiba University, Japan, 1 Oct. to 31 Dec. 1991, sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, and presented in the seminars held at the Institute of Asian Culture, Sophia University, Tokyo; Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, International University of Japan, Urasa, Niigata Prefecture, and Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my colleagues at these institutions for their fruitful discussions.

1 “Sufism as a Category in Indonesian Literature and History”, Journal of Southeast Asian History 2, 2 (1961): 10–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Gibb, H.A.R. and Bowen, Harold, Islamic Society and the West Volume I Islamic Society in the Eighteenth Century Part II (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 76.Google Scholar

3 Published as “Malay Sufism as Illustrated in a Collection of Anonymous Malay Tracts”, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 30, 2 (1957).Google Scholar

4 Hitti, Philip K., History of the Arabs [London: Macmillan (Papermac), 1979], p. 474.Google Scholar

5 Hall, D.G.E., A History of Southeast Asia (London: Macmillan, 1955), p. 177.Google Scholar

6 See Jones, Russell, “Ten Indonesian Conversion Myths”, in Conversion to Islam, ed. Levtzion, N. (London: Holmes and Meier, 1979), pp. 129–58.Google Scholar

7 Fatimi, S.Q., Islam Comes to Malaysia [Singapore: Malaysian Sociological Research Institute Ltd. (MSRI), 1963], p. 11.Google Scholar

8 Hitti, History, p. 656.

9 Hitti, History, p. 678. Fatimi's summary and interpretation of these events should be read against the information given in Hitti, pp. 655–56 & 677–78.

10 See Drewes, G.W.J. and Brakel, L.F., The Poems of Hamzah Fansuri, Bibliotheca Indonesica 26 (Dordrecht: Floris Publications, 1986). The specific verse reference is p. 143 v. 13.Google Scholar

11 Van Nieuwenhuijze, C.A.O., Shamsu'l-Din van Pasai (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1945), pp. 6–21.Google Scholar

12 Iskandar, Teuku, De Hikajat Atjeh, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, vol. 26, The Hague (1958), p. 67.Google Scholar

13 An English rendering of the lines in question is:

We were lofty sounds unuttered held in the highest peaks of the hills
I am you in Him, and we are you and you are He
All is He in Him – ask those who have attained.

For a Malay commentary on these lines by the Achehnese ‘Abd al-Ra'uf see Johns, A.H., “Dakā'ik al Hurūf’ by Abd al-Ra'uf of Singkel”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain (1955): 55–73, 139–58.Google Scholar

14 Johns, A.H., The Gift Addressed to the Spirit of the Prophet, Oriental Monograph Series No. 1, (Canberra: Australian National University, 1965), pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

15 Drewes, G.W.J., The Admonitions of Seh Bari, Bibliotheca Indonesica 4 (The Hague, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Een Javaanse Primbon uit de Zestiende Eeuw (Leiden: E.H. Brill, 1954).Google Scholar

16 Yūsuf al-Maqãsīri (1626–99), a major religious-political figure in Java in the middle years of the 17th century. See Heer, Nicholas L., The Precious Pearl (Albany: SUNY Press, 1979), p. 15.Google Scholar

17 Johns, A.H., “Islam in Southeast Asia: Reflections and New Directions”, Indonesia 19 (1975): 33–55. See in particular pp. 48–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 These passages are summarized from my draft translation of the Itḥrāf al-dhakī based on the Leiden Ms. Cod. Or. 7050.

19 al-Afrani al-Marakishi, Ṭabaqāt al-sulaḥrā' (Lithograph, no place, no date), pp. 210–11.

20 For a general survey of tafsīr in the region see Johns, A.H., “Qur'anic Exegesis in the Malay World: in Search of a Profile”, in Towards a History of the Interpretation of the Qur'an, ed. Rippin, A (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 257–87.Google Scholar

21 See Voorhoeve, P., “Bayan Tadjalli”, Tijdschrift Bataviaasch Genootschap voor Indisch Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde, no. 1 (1952), pp. 109–115.Google Scholar

22 Drewes, G.W.J., Directions for Travellers on the Mystic Path, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde (VKI) 81 (The Hague, 1977), pp. 219–20.Google Scholar

23 Drewes, Directions, pp. 36–37.

24 Hurgronje, Snouck, Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th century (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1931), pp. 268–72.Google Scholar

25 Cairo: Halabi, 1965.

26 For a more detailed study of Nawawi see my “On Qur'anic exegetes and exegesis: A case study in the transmission of Islamic learning” in P. Riddell and T. Street (eds.). Islam: Transmissions and Encounters (Leiden: E.J. Brill), in press.

27 Lapidus, Ira M., A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 259.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., pp. 102–103.