Introduction

Islam, as a revealed religion, has its roots in the Hijaz, a region in the west of present-day Saudi Arabia. From there it spread to all parts of the Middle East, central and south Asia, southeast Asia, and the rest of the world. From the very beginning, translocal contact and connections within the umma (the Muslim community) was maintained and strengthened through the main centre, the common qibla or direction of prayer in Mecca, home of the Kaʿba and destination of the hajj. This contact was also strengthened and maintained through various intellectual centres that were established over time in the Middle East and other regions. Despite being centred on the Hijaz, the Muslim world has always been polycentric and highly interconnected on different spatial scales. Although ritually Mecca is considered the centre of the Muslim world, different views on Islamic space do exist.

Situated at a geographical distance of the so-called ‘central lands’ of the Islamicate civilisation in the Middle East and on the geographic extremities of the Muslim world. Indonesia is often perceived as being located on the periphery by the rest of the Muslim world; however, Indonesia is nevertheless seen as a major centre of Islamic knowledge by many Indonesian Muslims. Scattered references in Chinese court chronicles and epigraphic evidence from the region hint at the presence of Muslims in the ports of the Indonesian archipelago since the first centuries of Islamic history. However, according to Feener, only at the end of the thirteenth century, did quantitatively significant local conversions to Islam take place. From the seventeenth century onwards, various local Islamic Nusantara scholars have been known beyond present-day Indonesia and Malaysia, especially in the established centres of Islamic thought in Mecca and Cairo. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the introduction of modern steamers in the decades that followed made travel and exchange of ideas between Nusantara and the Middle East more frequent. Islamic knowledge in Indonesia is transmitted and learned in the thousands of local boarding schools (pesantren) and, similar to other parts of the Muslim world, in informal study circles and the family.

Scholars of southeast Asian studies have given some attention to the study of Islam in the region. However, many scholars share the perception that Muslim southeast Asia is located on the Muslim periphery, both geographically as well as religiously.