1 Introduction¹

Since the founding of the English and Dutch East India Companies, which enabled direct voyages to Southeast Asia, Malay² manuscripts have never been absent from the western academy. Specifically, Malay books and letters have been present in university libraries in Leiden, Oxford, and Cambridge since the first decades of the seventeenth century. Nonetheless, it has taken a very long time for the study of manuscripts from the Malay world to move beyond a narrow philological focus on individual texts and embrace the rich insights enabled by a codicological analysis of their material aspects, such as their paper, handwriting, inks and pigments, paratexts such as annotation, ownership statements, and decorative features, and bindings. Even more recent is the scholarly interest in the social worlds within which the manuscripts were commissioned, copied, decorated, read, shared, studied, discussed, and treasured—and the company these volumes kept on shelves or in chests. For manuscripts never existed in isolation; books were always part of collections, and it is the study of the formation of these libraries in the Malay archipelago which will help cast light on the intellectual and bibliographical networks within which the manuscripts came together.

Ironically, until recently clusters of manuscripts from maritime Southeast Asia most readily available for such a study of indigenous libraries were collections seized or impounded by colonial forces. Well-known examples include Javanese manuscripts from the court library of Yogyakarta, ransacked by British troops in 1812,³ and Bugis and Makasar manuscripts seized from the palace of the Sultan of Bone in 1814,⁴ both now held in the British Library, as well as collections which even if not actually taken in battle were acquired by the heavy hand of colonial power, such as the royal library of Banten⁵ now housed in the National Library of Indonesia in Jakarta. More recently, digitisation programmes such as the Endangered Archives Programme and DREAMSEA have completely transformed understandings of the intellectual topography of Southeast Asia, revealing countless previously unknown collections still held in situ.⁶ These include the royal library of Buton,⁷ mostly still in the hands of descendants of court retainers, and theological libraries at Islamic boarding schools in Java and mosques in Sumatra.

All the collections cited above are located in present-day Indonesia, but this chapter will focus on what is the only known surviving early library from Malaysia, which was captured in Selangor, on the west coast of the Malay peninsula, by a Dutch naval expedition in 1784. To set the scene, a photograph by award-winning documentary photographer Ian Teh shows the muddy shallows at low tide of the Selangor coastline along the Straits of Melaka that considerably hampered the Dutch attack (fig. 7.1).

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Figure 7.1

Selangor coastline at Pulau Lumut, south of Kuala Selangor, by Ian Teh, from Confluence: A Malaysian Coastal Journey (2014)

Reproduced by permission of Ian Teh

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2 Selangor and the Dutch Attack of 1784

When the great Malay kingdom of Melaka fell to the Portuguese in 1511, the royal court fled southwards and eventually settled on the Johor river. From a series of new capitals at the southern tip of the Malay peninsula, the kingdom of Johor held sway over the islands of the Riau archipelago, sniping at the Portuguese, and coming in on the side of the victorious Dutch attack on Portuguese Melaka in 1641.

In 1699, the despotic Sultan Mahmud Syah—the last sultan of Johor of the Melaka line—was murdered by his nobles, and the chief minister, the Bendahara, ascended the throne as Sultan Abdul Jalil Syah. However, the Bendahara Sultan was challenged and eventually killed by Raja Kecil, a Minangkabau prince from Siak in east Sumatra, who claimed to be a posthumous son of Mahmud Syah. The throne of Johor was only recovered by Abdul Jalil Syah’s son Sulaiman in 1722 with the help of Bugis warriors, who obtained as their reward the position of Yang Dipertuan Muda or Viceroy of Johor. Thereafter, the Bugis were the entrenched power behind the Malay throne of the Johor-Riau empire, but Bugis–Siak animosity continued to play out along the Straits of Melaka throughout the eighteenth century.

The Bugis, who originated from the island of Sulawesi, were renowned seafarers and fighters who roamed and migrated over the archipelago. In some states they married into the Malay ruling families, while in others they acted as kingmakers. On the Malay peninsula, since the seventeenth century Bugis had settled on the sparsely-occupied coast of Selangor to the north of Melaka. In 1766, the Bugis ruler of Selangor, a prince from Riau named Raja Lumu, arranged to have himself elevated to the title of “sultan” by the prestigious neighbouring Malay kingdom of Perak. He reigned as Sultan Salahuddin of Selangor, and on his death in 1778 was succeeded by his son Sultan Ibrahim.

In 1783, a disagreement over the division of spoils of a captured English ship, the Betsy, led to the outbreak of hostilities between the Dutch in Melaka and the powerful Bugis Yang Dipertuan Muda of Riau, Raja Haji. In 1784, Sultan Ibrahim of Selangor launched an attack on Melaka, knowing he could rely upon the support of his uncle Raja Haji. Melaka was thus besieged by the Bugis on two sides: by Selangor forces from the north, and by Raja Haji’s Riau forces from the south, camped at Teluk Ketapang. The Bugis had the upper hand in the battle until the surprise arrival from Batavia of a fleet sent by the States General of the Netherlands, led by Admiral Jacob Pieter van Braam. An attack on Teluk Ketapang was launched by Van Braam’s squadron, and after two weeks of bombardment, Raja Haji was killed on 18 June 1784.⁸

After the death of Raja Haji, Van Braam turned his attention to Selangor, assisted by reinforcements from Siak led by the Viceroy Raja Muhammad Ali⁹ and his nephew Sayid Ali.¹⁰ The fleet arrived off Selangor on 18 July, and was at first hampered by the shallow reaches of Kuala Selangor.¹¹ When troops finally succeeded in landing at dawn on 2 August 1784, the Dutch victory was no longer in doubt, and in accordance with tried-and-tested tactics of Malay warfare, Sultan Ibrahim and his court retreated to the interior.

On 9 August, a Dutch expedition set off upriver in pursuit, and a detailed account of this expedition has been furnished by Martinus Broersma, one of the soldiers involved.¹² The following day the Dutch came upon 400 auxiliary Selangor troops, who were “Acehnese from the coast of Sumatra” (Atchunders van de kust van Sumatra). When approached by an officer and Mr Kilian, the Malay interpreter, they agreed to switch sides to the Dutch: “then the treaty was made between us and the heads of those men, and by them, in the presence of their papas or priests, they took the oath on the Alquran, swearing to leave the cause of the Salangoreese, and to cleave to ours, and assist us as auxiliaries.”¹³ Further upriver, several skirmishes with the retreating Selangor forces occurred, after one of which the Dutch came across two large burning ships “which, we learned, were loaded with opium and the king’s most precious goods, which were set on fire by them, so that they would not fall into our hands.”¹⁴ Having reached thirty-five miles upriver, the Dutch party returned downstream after ten days, and the following day “one of the Atchian princes, who had assisted us with people and vessels, was proclaimed and sworn king of Salangoor.”¹⁵ Since it was Raja Muhammad Ali of Siak who was installed by Van Braam as ruler of Selangor, this suggests that Broersma’s identification of the Sumatran troops upriver as Acehnese may not be entirely reliable. The royal Selangor party, meanwhile, escaped and travelled onwards via the valley of Bernam to Pahang, where they took refuge at the court.

In the meantime, Van Braam constructed two Dutch forts in Selangor,¹⁶ and on 26 August returned to Melaka, leaving Raja Muhammad Ali in command of Selangor. It soon became clear that rather than governing, Raja Muhammad Ali’s main aim was simply to destroy Selangor as a rival trading base to Siak, and he himself soon left Selangor and arrived in Melaka on 19 September 1784 en route to Siak with ships fully laden with pillaged goods. Sayid Ali remained in Selangor, presiding over a regime of asset-stripping, until he too departed in April 1785, leaving his equally rapacious brother Sayid Abdul Rahman in control. Having ascertained that Selangor had been left barely guarded, just one year after the Dutch victory Sultan Ibrahim mobilised his forces and retraced his steps from Pahang, retaking Selangor by force in June 1785. However, the devastation wrought by Siak coupled with a continuing Dutch blockade severely curtailed Selangor’s trade and forced up the prices of basic goods, leading Selangor to eventually sign a treaty with the Dutch in 1786.¹⁷

3 Tengku Sayid Jafar, Panglima Besar of Selangor

In 1786, the squadron arrived back in the Netherlands, and Van Braam (fig. 7.2) returned to his house in Harderwijk. There he became acquainted with Everard Scheidius¹⁸ (fig. 7.3), who was professor of Oriental languages and librarian of the local university, the Gelderse Academie.

Van Braam showed Scheidius a collection of manuscripts he had brought back from Southeast Asia, and in 1791 presented this collection to the Gelderse Academie. A note in Scheidius’s 1792 catalogue of Harderwijk manuscripts records the circumstances of acquisition:

These manuscripts (which on 22 May 1791 the honourable Van Braam bestowed upon our Academy Library) came into his Excellency’s hands in the conquest of the city and fortress of Salangoor in the straits of Malaccia on the 2nd of Aug. 1784. They were in the house of a certain Mahomedan Chief Priest, who defended it in person to the last moment, and tried to set it on fire on his flight, but was prevented from doing so.¹⁹

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Figure 7.2

Jacob Pieter van Braam (1737–1803), engraving by Reinier Vinkeles, after Schmidt

Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-62.729

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This “Mahomedan Chief Priest” can be identified from the account of the battle of Selangor found in De Jonge’s naval history,²⁰ which draws upon Van Braam’s own journal:²¹

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Figure 7.3

Everard Scheidius (1742–1794), by L. Springer, 1794

Source: Wikimedia

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The Arab priest, SAID JAPPAN, the chief counselor and confidant of the Salangorian King, there at first offered a brave opposition and fired violently at the approaching naval power; but as the troops and sailors successfully landed and approached from the side of the hill, seized the stone fortress, and began to bombard the enemy from it and from the hill, the priest lost heart; he left the batteries in haste, and set his house on fire, in order to reduce the city to ashes, if possible, but when that failed, sought refuge in flight. From this moment all opposition ceased, and the Dutch flag flew over all strongholds and batteries.²²

Van Braam’s “Said Jappan” was Sayid Jafar, the Panglima Besar or chief military commander of Selangor, who drew the attention of the Dutch for leading his troops to hold out in the battle much longer than any others.²³ He was indeed one of the closest associates of Sultan Ibrahim, and in the Hikayat Johor account of the exodus of the Selangor court in the wake of the Dutch victory, Sayid Jafar is listed in the royal entourage immediately after the Raja Muda, the heir apparent.²⁴ After capturing Selangor, Van Braam issued two proclamations in Malay urging residents of Selangor who had fled to the interior to return; the second proclamation, dated 15 August 1784, offers a reward for the capture of Selangor notables, listing Sayid Jafar alongside Sultan Ibrahim, the Raja Muda, and a Bugis noble, Arung Temujung.²⁵

Sayid Jafar was the son of Sayid Syarif Hasan, an Arab originally from Riau,²⁶ and according to the Hikayat Siak his mother was Tengku Putih, who was the daughter of Raja Kecil, the first sultan of Siak, by an unoffocial wife or concubine (gundik).²⁷ At the time of the attack on Selangor, Sayid Jafar was married to Tengku Embung, daughter of Sultan Mahmud of Siak and also a grand-daughter of Raja Kecil, by his royal Malay wife Tengku Kamariah of Johor. Tengku Embung had previously been married to her cousin, Raja Muhammad Ali, son of Raja Alam, another son of Raja Kecil by a Minangkabau wife.²⁸ Raja Ali Haji, the Bugis author of the Johor-Riau chronicle Tuḥfat al-nafīs, reported that according to the Hikayat Siak the main reason for the Siak forces joining in Van Braam’s attack on Selangor was not so much to support the Dutch but because of Raja Muhammad Ali’s personal desire for revenge on Sayid Jafar for his marriage to Tengku Embung.²⁹

Following the defeat of Selangor—and the thwarting of his attempt to burn down his house and contents—Sayid Jafar accompanied Sultan Ibrahim into exile in Pahang. He was also active in the campaign to retake Selangor the following year, and thereafter continued in his role as a senior minister to Sultan Ibrahim. In 1791, Sayid Jafar was sent by Sultan Ibrahim with a delegation of nobles to Melaka to mediate on behalf of Sultan Mahmud Syah of Johor.³⁰

There are also two Malay letters from Sayid Jafar to Francis Light held in the Light Letters collection at SOAS. In one letter dated 22 Jumadilawal [1208] (26 December 1793),³¹ “Tuan Sayyidi Jafar” apologises for his late reply as he has been extremely ill but is now a bit better, and urges Light to send a boat (kici) to Selangor this month. The other letter, dated Tuesday 10 Dhū l-Qaʿda with no indication of year,³² reflects the close business relationships that many Malay nobles had forged with Light over his two decades in the region as a country trader. In this letter Sayid Jafar is styled “Tengku Panglima Besar” in Selangor, and on the envelope he is named as “Tengku Sayid Jafar Panglima Besar Selangor.” He refers to a boat (pencalang) evidently headed for, or recently arrived in, Penang, under the command of Ismail, son of the Tuan Imam, and lists the cargo and its value. This all belongs to his wife, who has just died,³³ and Sayid Jafar grants Light immediate power of attorney (kita wakilkan mutlak), requesting him to commandeer the boat and all its contents including armaments from Ismail on the very day that he receives this letter, and informing Light that he too will set sail for Penang in this month of Dhū l-Qaʿda.

Sayid Jafar’s seal (fig. 7.4), which is impressed on the two letters to Francis Light, has the quintessentially Malay shape of an eight-petalled circle with a decorative border. The inscription reads: al-wāthiq bi-llāh al-mudabbir al-Sayyid Jaʿfar b. Ḥasan al-Munaffir Bā ʿAlawī, ‘He who trusts in God, the Administrator [of all worldly affairs], Sayid Jafar, son of Hasan al-Munaffir Bā Alawīʾ,³⁴ his family name of al-Munaffir and his Bā ʿAlawī clan name reflecting his Hadhrami antecedents, as shared by most of the sayyids in the Malay world.

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Figure 7.4

The seal of Sayid Jafar, inscribed: al-wāthiq billāh al-mudabbir al-Sayyid Jaʿfar b. Ḥasan al-Munaffir Bā ʿAlawī, from a letter to Francis Light. SOAS, MS 40320/3, f. 38

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4 The Selangor Library over the Centuries

The Selangor collection was presented to the Gelderse Academie of Harderwijk by Van Braam on 22 May 1791. The collection was accompanied by a “Catalogue made in the Indies on the order of Mr van Braam” (Catalogus op order van den Hr van Braam in Indiën gemaakt) listing 28 (unnumbered) items with very brief descriptions.³⁵ There is no indication of who was responsible for identifying the items—perhaps Mr Kilian, the Malay translator, was involved—but there is an intriguing suggestion that Van Braam may have known some Arabic. As a fifteen-year old midshipman, he was held captive for a year in Morocco in 1752, and there is a reference to a catalogue of sixteen books in Arabic in one of his later ship’s journals.³⁶ At the very least, the existence of this list suggests a degree of intellectual interest and engagement with the collection by Van Braam himself.

Within a year of the arrival of the Selangor library at the Gelderse Academie, the complete collection had been described by Everard Scheidius in the handwritten catalogue of Harderwijk manuscripts, Catalogus bibliothecæ secundum ordinem pluteorum; confectus anno 1792 (95 B 13 KL). Although the main body of the catalogue is in Latin, the Selangor collection is listed in Dutch with titles in Arabic script on five pages at the very end of the volume (fig. 7.5), followed by a page containing a copy of Van Braam’s own catalogue mentioned above. Scheidius lists thirty (unnumbered) items, comprising twenty-eight volumes followed by a collection of loose leaves in Arabic and another collection of booklets and papers in an unknown script which, with the help of William Marsden, was identified as Bugis. Only three of the manuscripts still have their original bindings today, for Scheidius appears to have organised the rebinding of twenty-four of the volumes in standard half-vellum bindings with marbled paper boards, and these are identified as such in his catalogue with the note h.h.b., elaborated in the first instances as halv. hoorn b. or half h.b. On these volumes the titles are written on the spine in Arabic script in gold ink, and a comparison with the Arabic-script elements in the catalogue confirms that Scheidius himself inscribed the titles on the bindings (fig. 7.6).

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Figure 7.5

Scheidius’ catalogue of the Harderwijk manuscript collection of 1792, with the Introduction to the Selangor collection and a note on its origins, followed by the first page of the listing with titles in Arabic. DAB 95 B 13 KL

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Figure 7.6

Typical half-vellum bindings of the Selangor volumes in the Harderwijk collection, with Arabic titles written in gold ink by Scheidius. DAB 10 M 1 KL and 10 M 3 KL

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In 1793, Scheidius left Harderwijk to take up a new post at Leiden, but, already in poor health, he died soon after in 1794. In 1818, the Gelderse Academie was closed down, and the Harderwijk library was then transferred to the Athenaeumbibliotheek of Deventer, where it is now held.³⁷ The descriptions of the Selangor manuscripts in Scheidius’s 1792 manuscript catalogue first appeared in print, with only very minor changes, in 1832 in the Catalogus Bibliothecae publicae Daventriensis³⁸ where the collection was given the overall accession number 1834, but without numbers for the individual parts. The same descriptions again appeared verbatim in the catalogue of the Athenaeumbibliotheek by van Slee,³⁹ and here the items are numbered from 1 to 30. In the meantime, a more detailed description of this collection, identifying constituent works within the volumes, had appeared in the Catalogus Codicum Orientalium by De Goeje,⁴⁰ where the system of numbering the individual manuscripts with roman numerals as 1834.I to 1834.XXX was established.

It was only in the twentieth century that the Selangor collection was inspected by specialists of the Malay world. In the early 1950s, the Malay manuscripts were described in an unpublished five-page typed handlist by Voorhoeve, “De Maleise handschriften van de Athenaeum-bibliotheek te Deventer.”⁴¹ Voorhoeve added information as necessary to supplement De Goeje.⁴² The Arabic works from Deventer were all included in Voorhoeve’s Handlist of Arabic manuscripts⁴³ (along with their De Goeje CCO numbers), with a concordance of the shelfmarks and inventory numbers.⁴⁴ The Malay components of the manuscripts were described by Teuku Iskandar,⁴⁵ drawing mainly on Voorhove’s unpublished handlist but adding some new information including codicological details. The Bugis manuscripts are described in an unpublished handlist by A.A. Cense and R.A. Kern (n.d.), undated but probably compiled ca. 1950s[?], and one Bugis manuscript is included in Kern’s Aanvulling.⁴⁶

The Selangor library thus consists of thirty manuscripts, numbered in the older published catalogues as 1834.I–XXX, but at present each identified in the Athenaeumbibliotheek by a shelfmark within the ranges 10 N 1–2 KL, 10 M 1–18 KL, 10 O 1–8 KL and 10 P 1–2 KL, which is essential for retrieval. The final two manuscripts, 1834.XXIX–XXX (shelfmark 10 O 8 KL), in fact comprise forty-four separate items, ranging from single-leaf documents and letters to small leaflets and more substantial volumes, in Arabic, Malay, and Bugis.⁴⁷ Thus in total, the Selangor collection comprises twenty-eight volumes and forty-four further items, making a total of seventy-two items. In table 7.1 below all the manuscripts are listed with inventory numbers and shelfmarks, but for ease of reference, each item has also been assigned a single running number, from 1 to 72, which will be used within this article.

As is evident from the long history of handlists and catalogues outlined above, the Selangor collection at the Athenaeumbibliotheek in Deventer is certainly not unknown or undiscovered, but scholarly interest has largely been confined to identifying the languages and contents of the individual manuscripts. The following discussion will attempt to explore the broader social codicological context of the library, starting with a thematic consideration of the contents, to see what these can reveal about the kind of books which were of interest to a Selangor audience in the eighteenth century, and what languages were associated with which types of knowledge. Next, material features will be considered alongside a collation of dates, names, and toponyms found within the manuscripts, to try to gain a clearer picture of when and where the various books were created. An attempt will then be made to “read” the non-textual artistic and graphical elements of the manuscripts, with special attention paid to the two important Qurʾan manuscripts in the library.

5 The Texts: What Was Read in Eighteenth-Century Selangor

The Selangor collection can be characterised as a small theological library, primarily comprising texts in Arabic, with fairly narrowly focussed rather than wide-ranging interests. At the heart of the library, both symbolically and physically, are two fine large Qurʾan manuscripts (1, 28), while the other manuscripts fall into several distinct categories.

The main topic of interest in the library is Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), with works on the interpretation and application of Islamic law according to the Shafiʿi school accounting for some of the largest and most substantial volumes in the collection. Yaḥyā al-Nawawī’s Minhāj al-ṭalibīn is the subject of a commentary (4), an abridgment by Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, Fatḥ al-wahhāb (2), and a gloss by Aḥmad al-Sunbatī (7). Another core text of Shafiʿi law, al-Taqrib fī l-fiqh by Abū Shujā is found (9) along with its well-known commentary al-Iqnāʿ by al-Shirbīnī (3). Also in the library is a work on inheritance law by al-Shinshawrī (11) and a schematic diagram for the division of inheritances (37), as well as other short texts on fiqh (18). Malay texts on fiqh include Bidāyat al-mubtadī (12), which focuses on the application of fiqh in daily life and prescriptions such as ritual purity.

As an Islamic library formed in a non-Arabophone region, it is hardly surprising to find that the study of the Arabic language is another key concern in the collection. There are several works on Arabic grammar, including standard texts such as al-Ājurrūmiyya, al-ʿAwāmil (14, 59) and al-Kāfiya (15, 16), with their commentaries and glosses, as well as a copy of an abdridged version of a famous Arabic dictionary, al-Qāmūs al-Muhīṭ by al-Fīrūzābādī (5).

The importance of devotional poetic works on the Prophet Muḥammad is reflected in the fact that there are three copies of Mawlid sharaf al-anām (10, 13, 17), one with an interlinear translation in Makasar in Arabic script (10) and another with interlinear translation in Malay (13). This anonymous hagiographical work on the Prophet appears to be most popular in the Indian Ocean littoral, particularly in Southeast Asia.⁴⁸ There are also three copies of Dalāʾil al-khayrāt by al-Jazūlī (20, 25, 27), the latter two of which contain schematic drawings of the tombs of the Prophet and his companions Abū Bakr and ʿUmar (fig. 7.7). This work, much-loved across the whole Islamic world, appears to have been especially close to the heart of Bugis warriors. Raja Ali Haji recounts in the Tuḥfat al-nafīs that during (his grandfather) Raja Haji’s seige of Melaka, every evening at his encampment at Teluk Ketapang he never failed to remember the word of God, or to read the Dalāʾil al-khayrāt, “Indications of virtues”:

He constantly recited devotional texts from the Koran and unceasingly read the holy work, Indications of virtues, which was never out of his hand. Nor did he fail to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) every Thursday night, just as if he were not living under difficulties.⁴⁹

When the final attack was launched, and even as Dutch soldiers were approaching Raja Haji’s stockade

he himself tried to draw profit from reading Indications of virtues⁵⁰

and at the moment just before he was fatally shot:

Yang Dipertuan Muda Raja Haji rose up, and drew his dagger, holding Indications of virtue in his other hand.⁵¹

Although Raja Haji’s own copy of Dalāʾil al-khayrāt has never been found, it is poignant to think that the exactly contemporary copies in the Selangor collection doubtless give a good indication of what it must have looked like.

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Figure 7.7

Dalāʾil al-khayrāt, from the Selangor library (27). DAB 10 O 7 KL

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A small range of theological texts includes works on ʿaqīda (faith) (18), hadith (prophetic traditions) (25, 47), mysticism (23), and Sufism, including a Shattariyya silsilah or spiritual genealogy (26), the pilgrimage (12, 26, 60), question-and-answer tracts on faith (24), and part of an eschatological work by Nūr al-Dīn al-Ranīrī, Akhbar al-akhira (57). Two Malay syair (poems with four-line stanzas, each with the same end rhyme) both concern mystical knowledge (58, 67). There are no fewer than four short works on the shahāda (creed) (8, 12, 18, 24), the first of which is contained in a volume starting with Maʿrifat al-islām wa-l-imān. Braginsky studied a theological treatise from the collection of François Valentijn (1666–1727) entitled al-Kitāb al-musamma al-kabīr [fī] Ma‘rifat al-islām, containing seven texts, the first two of which were Bāb maʿrifat al-islām wa-al-imān and a treatise on the shahāda.⁵² In the Valentijn manuscript, the work on the shahāda appears to derive from Kitāb uṣūl taḥqīq, composed by the second half of the seventeenth century by a certain Ibrahīm b. Muḥammad.

Another emphasis of the collection is on prayers and supplications (30, 34, 35, 41, 48, 49), often co-existing with texts on divination (19, 50, 66, 71) and amulets (31, 36, 40, 61), some in Malay and Bugis as well as in Arabic. There are also works on the diagnosis of disease through the magic powers of the letters of the Arabic alphabet (21) and other medical matters (63), and treatises on sexual intercourse in Malay (46) and Bugis (70).

The letters and documents are mostly in Malay (42–44, 51–54, 56), with some fragments in Bugis (29). Apart from the epistolary materials, perhaps the only manuscript in the whole collection that stands outside the Islamicate cloak encompassing all the other items is a fifty-page fragment of the Bugis creation myth La Galigo (68) (fig. 7.8). In its complete form, La Galigo has been termed the longest epic in the world, and the Selangor manuscript is the earliest dateable copy of a part of this work.⁵³

The great majority of manuscripts in this Malay collection thus comprise works in Arabic familiar from libraries throughout the Islamic world, followed by smaller numbers of texts in Malay and Bugis, with minor elements in Makasar and Javanese. The Malay texts are generally on mystical aspects of Islam, as well as catechisms on the faith and treatises on the daily obligations of Islamic law, and Malay is notably also the epistolary language. Bugis is used to a smaller extent for a wide range of religious matters ranging from information on ritual ablutions to different prayers to be performed for specific purposes, and for divination. Many of the texts in indigenous languages are presented in the form of interlinear translations from the Arabic (8, 10, 13, 25, 26), but there are also vernacular compositions (12, 57, 58, 67, 68). The manuscripts in Malay are mostly written, as usual, in Jawi script—the extended form of the Arabic alphabet used for writing the Malay language—and the Bugis ones in the Bugis/Makasar script of Indic origin, but the Selangor library also contains examples of texts in Malay and even Arabic in Bugis script (35, 70, 72), and Bugis and Makasar in Arabic/Jawi script (45).

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Figure 7.8

The earliest dateable manuscript of part of the La Galigo epic in Bugis (68). DAB 10 O 8 (41) KL

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Overall, the profile of the Selangor collection accords well with the picture of other libraries from Islamic Southeast Asia that is emerging from a study of digitised collections, constructed around a core of canonical texts in a “supraethnic, or sacral, language,” namely Arabic, while “non-functional” texts, positioned closer to the periphery of the model, tend to be written in the language of particular ethnic groups.⁵⁴ In the Selangor library, the only three literary items are in Bugis (68) and Malay (58, 67), and an interesting comparison can be made with the recently digitised library of the pesantren or madrasa at Langitan in East Java.⁵⁵ Of the 133 manuscripts, all are in Arabic save for two, one of which is the sole literary work, a copy of Cerito Ambiya, tales of the prophets, in Javanese.⁵⁶

6 Materials and Paratexts: Colophons, Seals, Owners, and Scribes

It can be estimated that 90 % of surviving manuscripts from the Malay world date from the nineteenth century. All the manuscripts in the Selangor library pre-date 1784, which in itself makes them relatively early and hence significant, as noted in the case of the La Galigo fragment above. In addition to two letters dated 1780 and 1781, eight of the manuscript volumes in the library bear dates of copying ranging from the early seventeenth century to the second half of the eighteenth century.⁵⁷

The oldest dated manuscript in the collection (16), copied in Shaʿbān 1011 (January–February 1603), is a copy of a grammatical work by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jāmī, al-Fawāʾid al-Wāfiya fī ḥall mushkilāt al-Kāfiya, a commentary on Ibn al-Ḥājib’s Kāfiyat ḍawī al-adab fī ʿilm kalām al-ʿarab (fig. 7.9a). From personal inspection, the small sloping hand is unfamiliar from Southeast Asian manuscripts, and the burnished laid paper with uneven texture does not appear to be European. An octagonal ownership seal is impressed four times on the final page facing the colophon. It is inscribed rājī luṭf al-ḥayy Muḥammad b. Shāban, “desiring the favour of God, Muḥammad, son of Shāban,”⁵⁸ finely engraved in a sweeping nastaʿlīq hand against a swirling ground of arabesques, and is certainly not of local manufacture (fig. 7.9b). All these features suggest that this manuscript was not copied in Southeast Asia, but was brought to Selangor from elsewhere in the Islamic world, perhaps from India.

This is not unusual, as many manuscript collections in Indonesia and Malaysia contain some Islamic manuscripts from outside the region, sometimes copied by Malay scribes during long stays in the Hijaz. One manuscript which makes explicit the connection between Southeast Asia and the Arabian penin sula is a commentary on the Minhāj al-ṭalibīn (4), which was copied in Mecca in Dhūl-ḥijja 1167 (September–October 1754) by a Bugis scribe named Muḥammad Ṭalḥat b. ʿAbd al-Raʿūf with the nisba al-Būqisī (Figures 7.10A–B).

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Figures 7.9a–b

The oldest dated manuscript in the library: al-Fawāʾid al-Wāfiya fī ḥall mushkilāt al-Kāfiya by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jāmī, on Arabic grammar, dated Sha‘ban 1011 (January–February 1603) (16). DAB 10 M 14 KL, images 439–440, with a detail of the top seal impression on the left-hand page

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Another seventeenth-century copy of a different commentary on al-Kāfiya held in the collection (15), al-Wāfiya fī sharḥ al-Kāfiya by Rukn al-Dīn al-Astarābādī, dated Shawwāl 1099 (July–August 1688), is certainly copied in the Malay world, as is evident from the more upright hand and the double decorated headpiece across the two initial pages (fig. 7.11). This manuscript bears an ownership note in the name of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn ʿAbd al-Shukūr b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Batāwī (i.e. from Batavia in Java), and the volume opens with a basmala prayer recited on the authorisation of al-Sayyid Ḥusayn b. Shaykh Bā ʿAlawī.⁵⁹ Two small oval seal impressions are found in this manuscript: At the beginning of the volume is one in the name of Ḥusayn,⁶⁰ and on a page in the middle in the name of Muḥammad b. Ḥusayn.⁶¹ Like the seal of Muḥammad b. Shāban described above, neither of these seals is of Malay manufacture, but it should also be recalled that there is a long tradition of Malay sojourners in the Middle East having seals made there.⁶²

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Figures 7.10A–B

Commentary on Minhāj al-ṭalibīn by Yaḥyā al-Nawawī, a standard textbook of Shafiʿi law, copied in Mecca in Dhū l-ḥijja1167 (September–October 1754) by Muḥammad Ṭalḥat b. ʿAbd al-Raʿūf al-Watuq al-Būqisī, al-Shāfiʿī, al-Ashaʿrī, al-Shaṭṭārī. DAB 10 M 2 KL, image 904, with a detail of his ex libris signature on the title page, image 12

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Figure 7.11

al-Wāfiya fī sharḥ al-Kāfiya by Rukn al-Dīn al-Astarābādī, a commentary on Arabic grammar, dated early Shawwal 1099 (July–August 1688) (15). DAB 10 M 13 KL, images 13–14

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A number of manuscripts show links to Aceh, one being a collection of seven short theological texts (18) which includes colophons for each item. The first colophon gives the name of the copyist as Encik Mualim, “Mr Scholar,” and is dated Rabiulakhir 1090 (May–June 1679). The colophon of the penultimate work, partly in Malay, identifies the writer more precisely as Encik Mualim peranakan Minangkabau, “of Minangkabau descent,” and is dated 29 Rajab 1090 (5 September 1679) fī zamān Sultan Zakiatuddin Inayat Syah berdaulat ẓill Allāh fī al-ʿālam, “in the time of Sulṭān [sic] Zakiyya al-Dīn Ināyat Shāh, the sovereign, the shadow of God on earth,” referring to the second queen of Aceh who reigned from 1675 to 1688. One of the grammatical texts (6), a gloss by Yāsīn al-Ḥimsī on Mujīb al-nidā ilā sharḥ Qaṭr al-nadā by ʿAbd Allāh al-Fākihī, bears two owners’ names on the first page: ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-Jāwī⁶³ al-Ashī, and Ḥajjī Muḥammad b. Ḥajjī Aḥmad Jāwī.

The Selangor library thus evinces wide-ranging temporal and geographic reaches. At least one of the manuscripts was already nearly two centuries old when seized by the Dutch in 1784 (16), and a considerable number of others were around a hundred years old (3, 7, 15, 18). Some of the manuscripts had travelled to Selangor from across the Indian Ocean (4, 16), while at least three volumes have links to Aceh (1, 6, 18), and one had been in the hands of a scholar from Batavia (15). Numerous others are either written in Bugis or contain notes in Bugis/Makasar, and thus could originate from any part of the south Sulawesi diaspora across the Malay world, most likely from Riau or Selangor itself.

The interconnected worlds of Selangor, Riau, Banjar and Palembang are vividly reflected in the small selection of epistles, with personal titles used within ranging from the Malay (Encik, Tuan), Bugis (Daing) and Arab (Sayyid) to Javanese titles of nobility (Pangeran) associated with Banjar or Palembang. Notably, the only occurrence of the toponym Selangor in the form Selauʾr is in a letter addressed to Tuan Sayid Hasan, perhaps the father of Sayid Jafar himself (53).

7 Reading without Words: Artistic Elements in the Manuscripts

It is often quite easy to identify the regional origin of a decorated Qurʾan manuscript from Southeast Asia, due to the highly conformist and conventionalised nature of the art form, but this is a much more difficult task in non-Qurʾanic manuscripts, where artistic tastes are given freer rein. In the Selangor collection, all that can be said about certain decorated elements—such as the double headpiece noted above in a grammatical work (15), another in a copy of the Dalāʾil al-khayrāt (20), and a monochrome foliate tailpiece around the colophon at the end of a collection of prayers, copied by a scribe named ʿAbd al-Ghanī on Tuesday 29 Rajab (no year) (24)—is that they are undoubtedly the work of Southeast Asian hands.

Occasionally, stronger hints of regional connections can be gleaned. A single leaf with a fragment of a letter in Bugis (29) contains several foliate flourishes around sketches of the most common heading (kepala surat) found on letters in the Malay world, Qawluh al-ḥaqq, “His word is the Truth.” One of these is exceptionally fine, with Qawluh al-ḥaqq set in a beautiful border of a foliate scroll reserved in white against a black ground (fig. 7.12). This recalls a number of “letter heading” seals, often inscribed with Qawluh al-ḥaqq or other popular kepala surat, which are strongly associated with Bugis milieux.⁶⁴ Quite apart from the notes in Bugis script found on this sheet of paper, the contextual function of the ornamental elements alone suggests Bugis artistry.

Some of the most unusual artistic elements in the Selangor library are found in one manuscript (2). This is the largest non-Qurʾanic volume in the library, described by Scheidius as being in folio format, with each leaf formed by folding a single sheet of European-made paper once, to give four pages. It contains two important manuals of Shafiʿi law and a primer on logic, as well as countless interleaved notes and paratexts, including various medicinal recipes in Malay.⁶⁵ At the start of the first work, Fatḥ al-wahhāb bi-sharḥ Minhāj al-ṭullāb by Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, an abridgement of Minhāj al-ṭalibīn by Yahyā al-Nawawī, an impressive roundel contains the title and name of the author inscribed in reserved white on a ground of red and black: al-awwal min kitāb Fatḥ al-wahhāb ʿalā sharḥ Minhāj al-ṭullāb tāʿlīq sayyidnā wa-mawlanā Shaykh mashāyikh al-islām Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī al-Nawāwī raḍī Allāh ‘anhu (fig. 7.13). Inscribed panels inscribed in reserved white against a black ground are certainly a feature of Sulawesi-style Qurʾans, but are also encountered in Aceh,⁶⁶ perhaps through Bugis influence. The volume also contains three decorative elements marking of the start of new chapters (bāb). In two instances the word bāb is embellished, once giving it a bird’s beak, and in the third example a decorated roundel—reminiscent of division markers in Qurʾan manuscripts—is placed alongside the start of a new bāb.

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Figure 7.12

Detail of the letter heading Qawluh al-ḥaqq set within a round foliate scroll border (29). DAB 10 O 8 (1) KL

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More unusual are three discoveries encountered loose between the pages of the volume. The first is a thin piece of paper which is clearly a template for a binding flap and fore-edge cover (fig. 7.14). The shape is unremarkable, being typical of full leather Islamic bindings with an “envelope” flap, such as those found on three manuscripts in this collection. What is of interest, though, are the patterns drawn in black ink on this template, which are typically Malay foliate and floral meander patterns, while the fore-edge strip has a plaited motif characteristic of Acehnese illumination. Full leather Islamic bindings from Southeast Asia generally have a standard pan-Islamic pattern of adornment, with stamped frame bands, corner pieces, central almond-shaped medallions, and sometimes smaller foliate or floral motifs,⁶⁷ but painted decoration on bindings is almost never seen.

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Figure 7.13

Fatḥ al-wahhāb bi-sharḥ Minhāj al-ṭullāb, an abridgement by Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī of Minhāj al-ṭalibīn (2). DAB 10 N 2 KL, images 55–56

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Figure 7.14

Template for a binding flap and foredge cover, found in (2). DAB 10 N 2 KL, image 586

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Two further illuminated elements are particularly intriguing. These are two small paper triangles, each made from a wide rectangular piece of paper exactly twice as wide as it is high, of which the two top corners have been turned down and folded, giving an isosceles triangle with a right-angled apex open along its long hypotenuse base. On one of these (A) the two corners are simply folded (fig. 7.15), but on the other (B) the two vertical edges have been glued together (fig. 7.16). Both items are beautifully illuminated with delicate foliate meander patterns, though A is coloured on one side only with monochrome decoration on the reverse, while B is coloured on both sides. B was found between the pages of the volume, but A was encountered slid snuggly around the corner of a page, leaving no doubt as to its purpose: as a bookmark. While in some Javanese palmleaf manuscripts a thin strip of palm may be knotted through the end-hole of a leaf as a place-indicator, almost no other paper bookmarks have ever been encountered before in manuscripts from the Malay world. A clue about provenance is that triangular corner pieces are a quintessential feature of Acehnese illumination, but they are hardly encountered as decorative elements in any other part of Islamic Southeast Asia.⁶⁸ Thus, although no colophons have been encountered in this volume, or any other paratexts indicating place of production, these decorative features combine to point strongly to Aceh as a likely home of this manuscript.

8 A Qurʾan from Aceh: Reading the Hands

Aceh links are also evident in one of the two Qurʾan manuscripts in the Selangor library (1). This is a complete and well-thumbed manuscript in one volume, which still retains its original full leather Islamic binding with flap, decorated with stamped medallions, corner pieces, and framebands. The text is written in black ink in a vigorous, confident hand, with red pause (waqf) marks, and with fifteen lines per page. Each page is set in a series of ruled text frames, in the following colours, from inside to out: red-black-yellow-red-black. Verse markers are black circles filled with yellow; sura headings are in red and are set in rectangular frames. The first line of each juzʾ or thirtieth part of the Qurʾan is written in red ink, but unusually, there is only one marginal juzʾ ornament in the whole volume, in an impressive sunburst design, at the start of juzʾ 10, in Sūrat al-Anfāl (Q 8:41). There are three pairs of double illuminated frames, at the beginning with the Sūrat al- Fātiḥa on the right-hand page and the beginning of Sūrat al-Baqara on the left (fig. 7.17); in the middle at the beginning the 16th juzʾ in Sūrat al-Kahf (Q 18:75); and at the end, enclosing Sūrat al-Falaq on the right-hand page and Sūrat al-Nās on the left.

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Figure 7.15

Triangular bookmark A, found in (2), showing front and back. DAB 10 N 2 KL, image 253

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Figure 7.16

Triangular bookmark B, found in (2), showing front and back. DAB 10 N 2 KL, image 220

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Having noted above that the regional origin of an illuminated Southeast Asian Qurʾan is often easily ascertained from the illuminated frames, unusually, this is not the case in this manuscript. Instead, it is the presence of a pair of illuminated frames at the textual midpoint of the Qurʾan, at the start of juzʾ 16, which is a definite indication of Acehnese origin, for in no other region in Southeast Asia is this point of the Qurʾan enhanced by decoration. Further confirmation of an Acehnese provenance is found in the binding. While the outer and inner covers are leather, the binding boards are made of plaited palm, and between these and the outer leather cover are stuffed old paper scraps of letters and notes in Malay and Arabic. Some of these fragments bear the embossed outline of the decorative cartouches, indicating that the manuscript was bound before the leather covers were stamped with decorative devices. One of the fragments reads: Syah Alam daulat Tuanku ampun beribu2 ampun … / pecel hadrat yang maha mulia Penghulu Kerkun Raja … / barang maklum kiranya ke bawah tapak duli hadrat … / yang maha mulia akan sembah … (“King of the World, begging a thousand pardons of Your Majesty … / the supplicant to Your Majesty’s presence is the Chief Royal Writer … / begging to inform beneath the soles of the exalted presence … / Your Majesty about the petition …”). The title Kerkun and the address for the ruler, Syah Alam (from the Persian Shāh ʿĀlam), are both strongly associated with Aceh.

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Figure 7.17

Opening illuminated frames of the Aceh Qurʾan (1). DAB 10 N 1 KL, images 17–18

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Through codicological features, this manuscript in Deventer can be linked with four other Acehnese Qurʾans: two in Aceh, in the Museum Aceh (07–357) and in the Yayasan Ali Hasjmy,⁶⁹ and two in Europe, in Rotterdam at the Wereldmuseum (WMR 2597) and in Vienna at the Weltmuseum Wien (18090).⁷⁰ All five Qurʾans are most clearly linked by the same distinctive hand, which can be seen most clearly in a comparison of certain letters, notably kāf in its sayfi form with a kink to its top “sword” stroke (figs. 7.18–19). Four of the five manuscripts also share identical pause markings in a tiny red hand; the Vienna manuscript, which is unfinished, does not have pause marks.

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Figure 7.18

Detail from the Aceh Qurʾan (1) showing the kink in the top arm of kāf in the words kawshar and kafirūn. DAB 10 N 1 KL, image 197

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A similarly umbilical link between the marginal ornaments in all five manuscripts can be posited, even though there is only one such medallion in the Deventer Qurʾan (figs. 7.20–7.21). The base structure of this ornament is always a series of concentric circles drawn in black ink with a compass-type aid, with three or four thick coloured bands alternating with thin reserved white borders. In the middle, the label of the particular textual division, whether juzʾ or parts thereof—niṣf or ḥizb (half), rubuʿ (quarter) and thumun (eighth)—or the letter ʿayn indicating rukuʿ or thematic partitions, is inscribed in floriated script reserved in white against a coloured ground, usually black or red, but sometimes blue or green. Delicate “petals” emanate from the perimeter of the circle, with floral buds interspersed with clusters of small dots, and from the apex of each darts a thin ray, conveying the impression of a floral sunburst. The “petals” are located at the four cardinal and midle points, and sometimes also in between.

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Figure 7.19

The same kink in the top arm of kāf in four other Aceh Qurʾans

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Figure 7.20

Marginal juzʾ marker and text frames of red-black-yellow-red-black ink in the Aceh Qurʾan (1). DAB 10 N 1 KL, image 197

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Figure 7.21

Similar marginal ornaments in four other Aceh Qurʾans

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Another distinctive feature which links all five Qurʾans is the text frames of red-black-yellow-red-black ink. It is sometimes in the smallest decorative features that regional artistic schools are found to be the most conservative, with all examples conforming to certain set patterns. In Aceh, the text frames in Qurʾan manuscripts are almost invariably in one of two formations: red-black-red-black, or, less commonly, red-red-black, but in this group of Qurʾans an extra yellow line has been incorporated into the red-black-red-black colour scheme.

Acehnese Qurʾan manuscripts almost never contain colophons with details of the name of the scribe or the place and date of copying, and so often the date of acquisition is the only firm clue to the dating of a particular manuscript. The Rotterdam Qurʾan was said to have been captured in January 1877 during the Dutch attack on Lamnga in Aceh, and was donated to the museum in 1885 by one Wijnmalen.⁷¹ This is the only one of the five Qurʾans in this group with a toponymical inscription, found at the top of the second page: inilah Qurʾan yang diwakafkan pada bandarsah Lam Badar, “this is the Qurʾan charitably endowed to the religious school of Lam Badar.” The Qurʾan now in Vienna is from the collection of František Czurda, a Czech doctor in the service of the Dutch army, and was also acquired at the battle of Lamnga in 1877 from the mosque school of Lambadak.⁷² Czurda reported that the mosque and school (bandarsah in Malay or meunasah in Acehnese, from Arabic madrasah) at Lambada (its present-day designation) was a centre for “the training of priests” and home to a very valuable library (sehr werthvolle Bibliothek zu Grunde) containing many mathematical, medical and historical works (sich in der Bibliothek dieser Moschee viele mathematische, arzneiwissenschaftliche und geschichtliche Werke befanden), all of which was destroyed by fire in the Dutch attack, save for the few items he managed to salvage later.⁷³ While the Deventer Qurʾan can be firmly dated to before 1784, since we have posited that all five manuscripts are by the same hand, this implies that the two manuscripts captured at Lambada may have been over a century old when they were seized in 1877. Thus just as in the case of the Selangor library, which contained several relatively old manuscripts when it was captured, it appears that libraries in the Malay world may yet confound long-held negative preconceptions about the ability of books to survive long in tropical climes.

9 A Monumental Selangor Qurʾan

The larger of the two Qurʾan manuscripts in the Selangor library (28) is described in Scheidius’s listing as: Een overheerlijk schoon geschreven Arabische Alcoran in groot folio formaat. II Deelen, (“An extremely beautifully written Arabic Qurʾan, in large folio format. II volumes”). This Qurʾan is indeed enormous, with each folio measuring 43.5 × 26.5 cm, of Dutch paper, watermarked “C & I Honig.” The first volume (10 P 1 KL), with chapters 1–17 (Sūrat al-Fātiḥa–Sūrat al-Isrāʾ), is unbound, with quires out of order, some in a different hand, while the second volume (10 P 2 KL), containing chapters 18–114 (Sūrat al-Kahf–Sūrat al-Nās), is bound and textually complete.

Apart from a few notable exceptions from Banten, it is quite rare to encounter multi-volume Qurʾan manuscripts from Southeast Asia. Only two other such Qurʾans planned in two volumes are known to the present writer: Rijkmuseum Volkenkunde in Leiden, 3600–453, comprising the second volume only, containing Sūrat al-Kahf–Sūrat al-Nās, from Bone, dated 1281 (1864/5 AD), and the second volume of a Qurʾan offered for sale at Christie’s in London in 2012, illuminated in a Sulawesi floral style, also containing Sūrat al-Kahf–Sūrat al-Nās.⁷⁴ Thus, the two-volume format might be seen as an indication of a Bugis scribal setting.

The completed portions of this Qurʾan—comprising the whole of the second volume, and the first part of the first volume up to the middle of Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (Q 7:146)—in fact constitute one of the most remarkable and impressive Southeast Asian Qurʾan manuscripts known. There are eleven lines per page, written in a monumental hand in black ink with a thick-nibbed pen, set within a series of six ruled frames (from inside to out) of red-black-black-thick yellow-black-black ink. Verses are marked with black circles coloured in yellow. Sūra headings are in red, often with decorative knotted tāʾ marbūṭa, set in rectangular frames of the same composition as the text frames, while above each framed sūra heading is another blank panel. The start of each juzʾ is indicated in a number of graphic ways: the end of the line of the last juzʾ is marked with an elaborate composite roundel created of between five or as many as eleven small intersecting circles similar to verse markers; the first line of the text of the new juzʾ is written in green ink; and a polychrome sunburst ornament coloured in red, green, yellow and black in placed in the margin. Smaller polychrome marginal medallions also mark parts of each juzʾ—niṣf (half), rubuʿ (quarter) and thumn (eighth)—as well as ʿayn for rukuʿ; all are inscribed with the appropriate label in white reserved against a black ground.

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Figure 7.22

Opening pages of the Selangor Qurʾan manuscript (28), with Surat al-Fatihah on the right-hand page and the beginning of Sūrat al-Baqara on the left-hand page, with wide margins originally designed to be filled with decorated frames. DAB 10 P 1 KL, images 19–20

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Even within this portion of the Qurʾan, there are still parts which are clearly unfinished. The first and last double pages of text have very small text blocks measuring 11 × 8 cm, surrounded by very wide margins, which were clearly planned to have been filled with illuminated frames (fig. 7.22), and only nine pages in the first volume have variant qiraʾāt readings inscribed in red and blue ink in the margin in intersecting diagonal lines (fig. 7.23). Most of the Qurʾanic text has clearly been carefully checked and verified, because in several places corrections have been added in a tiny hand along the vertical outer edge of the page, while within the frames the erroneous text has successfully been erased and the correct version written on top (fig. 7.24). It was evidently planned that when the book was bound, the corrections written along the outer edges of the pages would be neatly trimmed off, and would thus no longer be visible.

The second part of the first volume (10 P 1 KL) is made up of a copy of the Qurʾanic text in a completely different idiom: still using the same size of paper and 11 lines per page, it is written in a much more hurried hand, and with no decorative elements such as text frames or marginal ornaments. Even the verse markers are simply hand-drawn red loops around black dots, rather than the neat mechanically-drawn circles found in the first part and which are usually an omnipresent feature of most Southeast Asian Qurʾans. Nor does the text dovetail precisely: although the second part does start in the middle of the verse (Q 7:146) where the first part ends, it continues until the end of juzʾ 15 (Q 18:75), and is then followed by a number of quires containing earlier parts of the text (from Q 2:64–6:106).

While the incomplete nature of this manuscript could suggest an interruption of the production process due to the Dutch attack on Selangor in 1784, the first volume is in fact textually complete, and there are even additional quires covering (and hence duplicating) the earlier portions of the Qurʾan. Another interpretation might be that this Qurʾan was “completed” in Selangor by adding folios from a different manuscript, perhaps after the cessation of an overly ambitious (and expensive) earlier commission.

At present, the second volume, 10 P 2 KL, is the only manuscript in the Selangor library to have a full (rather than half) Harderwijk vellum binding, with the title inscribed in gold ink on the spine by Scheidius: al-Quʾrān al-maktūb li-Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh. The first volume, 10 P 1 KL, comprises a set of loose quires. In Scheidius’s 1792 Harderwijk catalogue, the 30 items in the Selangor library are quite carefully and logically arranged, with a Qurʾan at the top of the list, followed by the largest volumes in folio and large quarto sizes, and then moving down the list to smaller sizes. The three last items on his list are the Qurʾan “in two volumes,” a collection of loose sheets in Arabic (script), and a collection of pieces of paper and booklets in Bugis. In Van Braam’s catalogue, too, the Groot examplar van den Alcoran, (“large copy of the Qurʾan”) is placed last on the list. The placement last on both lists—after a methodical listing of the codices in descending order of size—suggests that this Qurʾan was most likely delivered by Van Braam to Scheidius in an unfinished state, probably in loose quires. At a certain stage—perhaps after the compilation of the 1792 catalogue, but before he left for Leiden in 1793—Scheidius arranged for the binding of the second volume, textually complete and copied in a single hand.

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Figure 7.23

Pages from the first volume of the monumental Selangor Qurʾan manuscript (28), with variant readings in the margins. DAB 10 P 1 KL

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Figure 7.24

Two pages from the second volume of the Selangor Qurʾan (28), showing the beginning of Surat al-Mūʾminūn (Q 23), with corrections made to the third and fourth verses according to the wording written in tiny letters vertically along the outer edge of the page. DAB 10 P 2 KL

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10 So Whose library Was It, Anyway?

In the early 1950s, Petrus Voorhoeve visited Deventer to inspect the Selangor collection and typed up his notes on the Malay manuscripts as De Maleise handschriften van de Athenaeum-bibliotheek te Deventer,⁷⁵ prefaced by some rather sceptical comments:

They all belong to the collection listed in the 1832 catalogue under no. 1834, which was seized in 1784 by J.P. van Braam at the capture of Selangore, at the home of a Mohammedan chief priest, or so says Scheidius. Perhaps Van Braam’s papers, which were donated to the State Archives by the descendants, contain more information about this. One of the Malay letters in the 1834 collection is indeed addressed to someone at Selangore. It is strange, however, that most of the manuscripts in the collections look so unused, while the majority are written on European paper. It looks more like the collection of a European who had manuscripts copied for himself than a library of a Muslim theologian. Possibly the pious man kept a bookshop, and it was more his trading stock than his precious own little library that he defended with fire and sword, according to the story of Scheidius.⁷⁶

In 1958, Voorhoeve received a letter from M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz informing him that the Van Braam papers in the Algemeen Rijksarchief⁷⁷ contained some original Malay letters. Presumably following a visit to the Rijksarchief to inspect the papers, Voorhoeve jotted down on this letter a quote from a volume (no. 59) of Van Braam’s journal: “A large packet of Malay writings and books taken by Lt. Serrurier and Mr. Kilian from a vessel. It concerns Acehnese vessels.”⁷⁸ And so while preparing for another visit to Deventer, on 29 April 1986, Voorhoeve wrote to the curator at the Athenaeumbibliotheek, Ina Kok:

My notes also contain a letter from Mrs. Meilink Roelofsz about Van Braam’s collection in the National Archives. As a result, I went to The Hague to look and found a note by Van Braam about Malay manuscripts “from an (Acehnese) vessel.” Might two collections of manuscripts have been seized, one ashore and one from a ship? Or do the Deventer manuscripts come from the ship and Van Braam later told Scheidius in a somewhat romanticized way about what he remembered? So far, my research has not been able to establish this.⁷⁹

Following his subsequent visit to Deventer on 6 May 1986, Voorhoeve substantially revised his first impression of over thirty years earlier, but could not shake off his suspicion of an Acehnese origin for part of the collection, as he reported to Ms Kok on 21 May 1986:

My comment in the description of the Malay MSS. that the collection looks more like that of a European Orientalist than that of a “Mahomedan Chief Priest” is certainly incorrect. The manuscripts are so different in nature that I now think that the Van Braam collection consists of two parts: a library of a literate Muslim scholar, seized on shore, in which are carefully preserved manuscripts partly written in Arabic, and a stack of small books and letters, taken by Van Braam’s subordinates from an Acehnese prahu, which possibly came from Borneo, because some letters originated there. In two Arabic manuscripts: (10 M 14 and one of which I did not mark the number) I saw an owner’s seal, which I could not decipher, but which someone with better eyes and more practice than I could read. Maybe that would show the name of the learned library owner.⁸⁰

The question which thus needs careful consideration is whether the Malay library now held in the Deventer Athenaeumbibliotheek consists solely of the library of Tengku Sayid Jafar, seized during the capture of Kuala Selangor by Van Braam’s forces in 1784, or comprises two separate parts, namely the collection of Tengku Sayid Jafar and the “large packet of Malay writings and books taken by Lt. Serrurier and Mr. Kilian” from an (Acehnese) vessel. If the latter scenario is correct, it is most likely that this “large packet” constitutes the 44 items in the Deventer Athenaeumbibliotheek now gathered together under the shelfmark 10 O 8 KL (1–45), previously listed under the old inventory numbers 1834.XXIX–XXX, especially since Van Braam’s original catalogue only listed 28 items. However, regarding the supposedly “Acehnese” origin of the vessel, if the vessel mentioned in Van Braam’s journal can be identified as the ship in the Selangor river carrying “Acehnese from the coast of Sumatra” which was entered by Kilian and an officer as described in Broersma’s account above, since Broersma also descibed Raja Muhammad Ali of Siak as “Atchian” or Acehnese, his use of this geo-ethnic term was clearly unreliable. What is clear is that this vessel was part of the retreating Selangor fleet, and was encountered up the Selangor river, not at sea. Moreover, compared to the clear Acehnese origin of certain items from Tengku Sayid Jafar’s library (1, 18) there is no evidence of links to Aceh in any part of 10 O 8 KL; conversely, there is almost no discernible difference in content or form between 10 O 8 KL and the Selangor manuscripts in the main part of the collection, with notes in Bugis found throughout. Thus, even if the manuscripts in 10 O 8 did not form part of Tengku Sayid Jafar’s library—and the possibility remains open that they did, for as noted above one letter in this collection (53) is addressed to Tuan Sayid Hasan in Selauʾr, perhaps Sayid Jafar’s father—the collection almost certainly originates from Selangor rather than Aceh or Borneo, as surmised by Voorhoeve.

In view of Petrus Voorhoeve’s great expertise not only in Indonesian manuscripts in various languages but also in Arabic,⁸¹ the fact that he appeared so perplexed by the variegated nature of the Selangor collection should probably best be interpreted as a reflection of how, until recently, almost no thought was given to how libraries were compiled in the Malay world, or to the social lives of books and their peregrinations. Voorhoeve was particularly dubious about how the strong Acehnese contingent within the collection could be reconciled with a Selangor origin. But while in the late eighteenth century Selangor could still be characterised as a frontier state which had only just evolved into a sultanate in the previous generation, Aceh had been a centre of Islamic scholarship for centuries, and it is entirely plausible that books could be sourced, or even commissioned, from Aceh for a patron in Selangor. Relations between Selangor and Aceh around this time were very close: During the Dutch blockade of Selangor in 1785, the Acehnese had sent help, and in 1788 Selangor returned the favour when Aceh declared war on Pedir. Raja Nala, the Yang Dipertuan Muda, was sent with sixteen ships to support the sultan of Aceh, but died there and was buried in Aceh.⁸² In short, there are no strong grounds for questioning the Selangor origins of the whole of the Deventer collection.

Despite the diverse nature of the Selangor library, the contents demonstrate certain preoccupations, with a particular emphasis on jurisprudence, Arabic grammar, and devotional poetry, alongside, as in all parts of the Malay world, a strong interest in divination and supplications for particular purposes. Some volumes certainly came from considerable distances, while others are more evidently local products. Interestingly, the only manuscript in the collection that we can firmly assign to production within Selangor itself is the great, unfinished Qurʾan, conceived on what was perhaps a more grandiose bibliographical scale than had previously been seen in the region.

Sayid Jafar was a statesman in the innermost circles of power in Selangor, as well as a distinguished military commander of notable valour. By virtue of his Hadrami Bā ʿAlawī lineage, he was accorded the respect and high status enjoyed by all sayyids in the Malay world,⁸³ but from his maternal, Minangkabau side he also bore the royal title of Tengku (Prince) befitting a grandson of Raja Kecil, first sultan of Siak. Even within aristocratic Siak circles, Sayid Jafar was clearly of high enough status to enter into marriage with Tengku Embung, who was from the most prestigious line of Raja Kecil’s descendants, through his wife Tengku Mandak, daughter of the Bendahara Sultan of Johor.⁸⁴ In the Malay chronicles—whether the Bugis-slanted Tuḥfat al-nafīs, or the Malay Hikayat Johor, or the Minangkabau Hikayat Siak—Sayid Jafar is just one of a large cast of high-born court personalities, so many of whom were sayyids that this august bloodline in itself did not necessarily imply superior ethical or moral qualities.⁸⁵ So it is of particular interest that to the Dutch, even in the heat of the battle, Sayid Jafar’s foremost appellation was that of “Arab priest” and “Mahomedan Chief Priest,” perhaps reflecting the religious and intellectual reputation he enjoyed at that time, which has not otherwise been preserved in Malay sources.

Mulaika Hijjas recently asked provocatively, “Where are all the Malay royal libraries?” In contrast to the well-documented British attacks on the palace libraries of Yogyakarta, Bone and Palembang, the devastating impact on local manuscript culture of the Dutch war on Aceh and a similar American military campaign in Mindanao, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries none of the royal courts of the Malay peninsula suffered colonial armed incursions, and yet there are no significant royal Malay libraries which are known to survive today. Instead, throughout the 1960s and in subsequent decades, a steady trickle of literary manuscripts appear to have made their way from royal Malay households into the library of the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, seemingly bearing witness to the gradual dismantling of court libraries due to social changes from within, rather than owing to brute force from without.⁸⁶

This foregrounds the conundrum of the terrible beauty of plundered collections, which can be likened to zoological specimens preserved in formaldehyde, whereby the deliberate killing of a living organism offers a unique opportunity for scientific analysis and insights which could not have been gained from a less invasive study of specimens which have died a natural death and thence slowly decayed. Thus collections of war booty manuscripts such as that captured by Van Braam in Selangor in 1784 offer a vivid snapshot of a manuscript culture at a certain moment in time, while undoubtedly bearing the heavy burden of the intellectual damage wrought by the uprooting of texts from their natural environment. In the case of literary compositions, in some cases the impact was fatal, as when unique texts were removed from circulation, thus extinguishing any possible chance for further influence or propagation, but this danger may not be so marked in the case of religious texts which often abound in multiple copies. Tengku Sayid Jafar’s manuscripts are uniquely precious in constituting the only pre-modern library known to have survived from the Malay peninsula, and in offering a glimpse of the books that were copied, read, shared, and valued in Selangor in the eighteenth century.

Van Braam’s own catalogue of the Selangor collection entitled Catalogus op order van den Hr van Braam in Indiën gemaakt (“Catalogue made in the Indies on the order of Mr van Braam”) (fig. 7.25), is found following Scheidius’s catalogue, at the back of the manuscript Catalogus bibliothecæ secundum ordinem pluteorum; confectus anno 1792 (95 B 13 KL). It is difficult to link up the items in Van Braam’s catalogue with those in Scheidius’s. Although both lists of twenty-eight items begin and end with a Qurʾan manuscript, the descriptions of most other items cannot be reconciled except in a few cases; for example alongside (4) Scheidius’s notes: “in the 1st catalogue of Mr v. Braam, this is book No. 8” (“op de l. Catalogus van den Hr. v. Braam, staat dit boek No. 8”), and for (9) he writes, “NB this is No. 3 in the 1st catal. of Mr v. Br.” (“NB. Dit is No. 3 op de l. Catal. van den Hr v, Br.”) Possible identifications are included in the “Ref.” column.

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Figure 7.25

A copy of Van Braam’s own listing of the Selangor collection. DAB 95 B 13 KL

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