Aceh1 has long been recognized as a major historical center of Islamicate culture in Southeast Asia, and its rich surviving source base of manuscripts, gravestones, and other standing monuments have attracted the attention of some of the leading scholars in the field for more than a century. Peter Riddell’s work has made major contributions to this body of scholarship, starting with his pioneering work to untangle the Arabic textual sources of the oldest surviving Malay-language commentaries on the Qurʾān: Ms Or. Ii.6.45 kept in the Cambridge University Library is the oldest known commentary2 and the Tarjumān al-Mustafīd by ʿAbd al-Raʾūf al-Sīngkel.3 His work on these two texts—produced near the start and the finish of the 17th century, respectively, shed considerable light on the intellectual milieu of Muslim scholarship in the Aceh Sultanate. In this contribution to Prof. Riddell’s Festschrift, we continue on in this spirit to identify some of the broader Muslim textual traditions circulating through northern Sumatra, but during an even earlier period of the 15th century. This essay focuses not on manuscripts, but on texts transmitted via the more durable support of stone on a pair of grave markers at Bireuen that have recently been systematically documented by the Maritime Asia Heritage Survey (MAHS).4 Those objects have preserved lines in both Arabic and Persian that open up a new vista onto the cultural dynamics of an early period of the history of Islam in Southeast Asia. Understanding the content and contexts of early Persian inscriptions from Sumatra both contributes to our understanding of the complexities of Islamization in the region, and opens up new questions for exploration about the range and depth of cultural engagements on the eastern frontiers of an expanding Persianate world in the 15th century.5
1 Some Persian Inscriptions in Indonesia: An Overview
Inscribed gravestones have commanded a prominent place in studies of the early history of Muslim societies in the Archipelago.6 This has particularly been the case in northern Sumatra, where studies have been made of stones from Pasai,7 Peudada,8 Pedir,9 Daya10 and Lamri,11 as well as the sultanate of Aceh.12 These materials have revealed aspects of the cosmopolitan circulations of commerce and culture that linked northern Sumatra with the broader Muslim world and beyond since the 13th century.13 In their study of Pasai inscriptions, Kalus & Guillot have, for example, called particular attention to the presence of ‘Bengali Turks’ at Pasai and their role in conveying cultural elements from the expanding Persianate world of that time to influence the development of court styles in Sumatra.14 Indeed, there are several known Persian inscriptions dating from the long 15th century in Sumatra that hint at the extent of interactions with Persianate literary culture on that Indonesian island even before the rise of Aceh sultanate at the turn of the 16th century.
1.1 In Barus
The earliest such inscriptions might be those found at Barus, on the west coast of Sumatra. One, which has been tentatively dated to 772 H./ c. 1370 CE15 (or perhaps to 972 H. /c. 1564 CE16 is from the tombstone of a Muslim woman whose name also has been given diverse readings. Kalus reads one element of the name as being the Malay word “Tuan” (sic.
جهان یادگار است و ما رفتنی؛ زمردم نماند بجز مردمی
The world is a perpetual remembrance and we all leave it in the end;People will leave nothing behind but their good deeds
We have examined various aspects of this complex inscription from Barus in a separate study.18
1.2 Geudong
An inscription found in Geudong (Aceh Province) is dated 847 H./1443–1444 CE marks the grave of a daughter of the Persian scholar Maualānā Starābādī/Estarābādī. The source of some Persian verse inscribed on that stone had not been identified in previous studies.19 It is, however, actually that of Muḥammad bin ʿAlī Ghazāʾirī (d. c. 426/1034). The quatrain presented here is often cited as evidence of Muḥammad bin ʿAlī Ghazāʾirī’s orientation and his devotion to the ahl al-bayt (‘The People of [the Prophet’s] House’) Muḥammad, ʿAlī, Fāṭima, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn) as intercessors on the Day of Judgment. The place of Shīʿism and broader manifestations of devotion to the ahl al-bayt in the early history of Islam in Indonesia have and continue to be the subject of considerable scholarly debate.20 For the purposes of the discussion in this paper, this quatrain, as well as the other Persian poetry quotations from Barus and Pasai, helps to establish something of the broader context for the inscription on the stone from Bireuen that will be discussed below.
Figure 3.1
The gravestone of Nāʾina Ḥusām al-Dīn (d. 1420)
Photograph by R. Michael Feener
1.3 In Pasai
Perhaps the most well-known Persian inscription in all of Indonesia is that on a tombstone at Candi Uleeblang in Pasai. The inscription was first published by Hendrik Karel Jan Cowan in 1940 and has since been cited in a numerous books and articles on the history of Islam in the Archipelago. The stone marks the grave of Nāʾinā Ḥusām al-Dīn (d. 823 H./1420 CE), and its inscription includes an incomplete ode (ghazal) by the Persian poet, Saʿdī on the theme of mortality. The stone itself was quarried and likely carved in Cambay.21 Here again we seem to have evidence of some admiration for celebrated works of Persian poetry in 15th-century Sumatra, albeit not necessarily a level of local engagement given the overseas origin of the object.
1.3.1 Teungku Sareh Inscription
Of a less literary nature is another Pasai tombstone (grave XVIII) from Teungku Sareh Cemetery, dated to 844 H./1440 CE. This one includes only a handful of Persian terms, rather than quotations of poetry, and is inscribed on local stone from Aceh—rather than on an object imported from Gujarat. This stone was introduced by Elizabeth Lambourn in 2004 and later studied by Guillot and Kalus as well.22 Here we propose a different reading of the Persian terms in this inscription and the deciphering of the date, indicated here in red:
-
ʿAtāʾullāh
-
bin Ismāʿīl
shab-e do- -
Shanbat nohom-e māt-e Rabīʿ al-Awwal -
sanat 844
-
ʿAtāʾullāh
-
son of Ismāʿīl,
the night of Mon- -
day the ninth of the month of Rabīʿ al-awwal -
[in] the year 844
Lambourn’s posited that the text of the inscription may have been produced or commissioned by a Persian speaker. However, the use here of a tāʾ marbūṭa (
Figure 3.2
The Teungku Meurah Cemetery (MAHS-IDN-ACH-BRN-JUA-S-001) in Bireuen
Photograph by maritime Asia Heritage Survey
This aspect of the inscription may be especially important to consider as reflecting the same calendrical conventions used in the Persian inscription from Bireuen discussed below. Both of them are located in relative proximity to each other in the present-day province of Aceh, and their calligraphic styles are similar to some extent as well.
2 A Persian Inscription from Bireuen
Not far from Pasai, in Bireuen, is the site25 of another gravestone bearing a Persian inscription that also dates to 844 H./1440 CE. The Teungku Meurah Cemetery is a plot along the eastern side of the highway, bounded on all other sides by rows of shops and homes, and continues to serve as the family cemetery of Mr. Munzir. Several new graves can be found in its southwest corner, but to the east of there are a number of older burials, including six marked with ancient tombstones. These older funerary monuments take the form of slabs reminiscent of those known from older sites in Pasai. One of the graves (MAHS-IDN-ACH-BRN-JUA-S-001-F-0005) is marked with head and footstones that feature textual inscriptions. The first known photos from this site was taken by De Vink in 1912 and reproduced in 1917.26 Those photos of what De Vink designated as Tomb 1 were used by Kalus and Guillot for their publication of the inscription and the basis of their French translation,27 as they did not visit the site themselves.28 This grave is marked with a pair of stones, oriented toward the qibla with a headstone at the north and footstone on the south. Interactive 3D models of both the head and footstone have been produced for the MAHS archive and are available online.29 These new digital renderings form the basis of the interpretation presented below.
Both of these rectangular slabs feature textual inscriptions, most of which were recognized by Guillot and Kalus as Arabic texts from the Qurʾān and ḥadīth. Those elements of the inscription are comprised of excerpts from canonical sources that are not uncommon in Muslim epigraphy of the period in Southeast Asia and beyond. The epitaph and a poetic quotation in Persian on the stones, however, are considerably rarer, and pose further challenges of identification and interpretation. Here we use the enhanced documentation of these objects produced by the Maritime Asia Heritage Survey to build upon the pioneering work of De Vink, Guillot and Kalus to suggest revised readings of those parts of the inscription, and to contextualize this source material within broader discussions of the early history of Islam in Southeast Asia.
Figure 3.3
South face of the footstone (MAHS-IDN-ACH-BRN-JUA-S-001-F-0005A)
Photograph by maritime Asia Heritage Survey
Figure 3.4
North face of the footstone (MAHS-IDN-ACH-BRN-JUA-S-001-F-0005A)
Photograph by maritime Asia Heritage Survey
The foot stone bears the epitaph. Guillot and Kalus read the name of the deceased as “tuān Mund” (
هذالقبر توهن مند نقلت من الدنیا یوم الخمیس اثنا عشر یوما من شهر ذوالحجة
This is the grave of the Tuhan-Mand35who has passed from this worldon Thursday, the 12th day of Dhū l-Ḥijjah
The reverse of this stone bears a somewhat harder-to-read Persian text. The execution of its calligraphy bears similarities to that of the stone at Teungku Sareh discussed above, and which was also inscribed in the same year (844 H). It would not be too farfetched to consider the possibility that both stones were produced within a shared milieu of material cultural production, if not indeed by the same workshop. The selection and presentation of the text of this inscription furthermore indicates a considerable familiarity with Persian literature by at least some in 15th-century Sumatra.
We propose here that the text can be transcribed and translated as:
-
سنت 36أربعَ وأربعونَ ثمانمائة -
روزت بستودم و نمیدانستم؛ شب با تو غنودم و نمیدانستم -
ظن بردا بدم بمن 37کمن من بودم؛ من جمل تو بودم و نمیدانستم
-
Sanat arbaʿa wa-arbaʿūna thamān-miʾat
-
Rūzat be-sutūdam-o na-mīdānestam; shab bā to ghonūdam-o na-mīdānestam
-
Ẓann bordā bodam be-man ke-man man-būdam; man jomla to būdam-o na-mīdānestam
-
The year eight hundred forty-four (844 H./ 1440 CE)
-
“By day I praised You, but never knew it; by night slept with You without realizing
-
Fancying myself to be myself [self]; but no, I was You and never knew it.”38
Following the date of the epitaph above is a quatrain of Persian poetry that has not been recognized in the work of scholars who have published previously on this gravestone. It is, most likely, a variant reading of lines generally ascribed to Rūmī (d. c. 1273CE) from his Kuliyyāt-e Shams,39 though it has been ascribed by some to Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī (d. c. 1238).40 In either case, however, the form of the poem inscribed on the gravestone at the Teungku Meurah Cemetery presents a slight variant of the most common wording of the third line—a reading which to our knowledge has been most widely transmitted through its inclusion in the text of the Lamaʿāt (‘Divine Flashes’) of Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (d. 1289). Fakhr al-Dīn’s collection of mystical poems was widely popular across the Persianate world of the medieval and early modern periods.41 The postulation of the transmission of this particular verse by Rūmī via its anthologization in Fakhr al-Dīn’s work is—at least—coincidental with the manuscript evidence we have of a “very old anthology of poems” from Aceh that was produced sometime after 1450 and which draws chiefly upon the work of ʿIrāqī.
Moreover, the placement of these particular lines on this gravestone is rather unusual in relation to the more common subjects of death, judgement and/or the afterlife that tend to dominate early Muslim epigraphy in Southeast Asia. Here we are presented with Persian-language expressions of Sufi metaphysics—perhaps the earliest surviving evidence for such in Southeast Asia.
Figure 3.5
Headstone (MAHS-IDN-ACH-BRN-JUA-S-001-F-0005B)
Photograph by maritime Asia Heritage Survey
3 Sufism in 15th-Century Sumatra
The Sufi cosmology reflected in the Persian poetry of the Teungku Meurah inscription is that of the ‘Unity of Being’ (waḥdat al-wujūd), Sufi interpretations of this doctrine were widespread across the medieval Muslim world, even while fiercely contested at a number of particular times and places.42 In the historiography of Islam in Southeast Asia, the earliest proponent of waḥdat al-wujūd has generally be identified as Ḥamza Fanṣūrī (16th/17th century).43 Ḥamza’s Malay-language writings drew upon, inter alia, the work of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī44 (d. 1492), including his commentary on ʿIrāqī’s Lamaʿāt: Ashiʿat al-Lamaʿāt (‘Rays of the Flashes’),45 and thence influenced subsequent developments of Sufism in Southeast Asia. Debates over waḥdat al-wujūd in Southeast Asia over the centuries that followed, and particularly those centered around the vehement critiques of Nūr al-Dīn al-Rānīrī in 17th-century Aceh46, have attracted considerable scholarly attention for decades. To date, however, little was known to modern historians of engagement with Sufi metaphysics in the region prior to the work of Ḥamza Fanṣūrī. One major exception to this may be in one of the earliest Malay Islamic manuscripts kept in Leiden University Library (Or. 7056). A recent carbon-dating report on its material suggests a “70.5 % probability that this bark was collected for processing between 1450–1521 CE,”47 dating then from not long after the Teungku Meurah inscription. It is also nearly contemporaneous as other manuscript witnesses kept in Iranian collections.48 That Malay text presents a collection of earlier Persian materials, including passages from Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (a.k.a. Hamadānī), Saʿdī, Rūmī, and others.49 The deciphering of the Persian inscription from the Teungku Meurah cemetery presented in this paper thus offers a further glimpse into the introduction of Sufism even earlier in the 15th century. It attests to the local production of textual inscription drawing on Persian literary tradition, presenting in stone a glimpse of elements of a Persianate literary culture in Southeast Asia at least a century prior to the literary career of Ḥamza Fanṣūrī.
An earlier version of this article was presented in Paris at the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS) 2022, conference.
Peter G. Riddell, Malay Court Religion, Culture and Language: Interpreting the Qurʾān in 17th century Aceh (Leiden: Brill, 2017).
Peter G. Riddell, “The Sources of ʿAbd al-Raʾuf’s Tarjuman al-Mustafid”, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 2 (247)/57 (1984): 113–118.
The MAHS is led by R. Michael Feener (PI), with Patrick Daly and Noboru Ishikawa (Co-PIs), and based at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Its open-access archive of database records, photographs, orthophotomaps, 3D models, oral history interviews, architectural drawings and digitized manuscripts is available online at: R. Michael Feener (ed), Maritime Asia Heritage Survey:
Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974); Bert G. Fragner, Die “Persophonie”: Regionalität, Identität und Sprachkontakt in der Geschichte Asiens (Berlin: Verl. Das Arab. Buch, 1999). The concepts of the “Persianate World” coined by Hodgson and of “Persophonie” coined by Fragner have recently attracted increased attention from a new generation of scholars. See, for example: Nile Green (ed.) The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca (California: University of California Press, 2019), Abbas Amanat, and Assef Ashraf (eds). The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere (Leiden: Brill, 2018); Andrew CS Peacock, and Deborah Gerber Tor (eds), Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World: Iranian Tradition and Islamic Civilisation (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017); Mana Kia, Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before Nationalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020). For a reappraisal of Persian elements in the formation of Muslim traditions in Southeast Asia in particular, see: Claude Guillot, “Persia and the Malay World; Commercial and Intellectual Exchanges,” Studia Islamika 27.3 (2020): 405–442.; Majid Daneshgar, “Persianate Aspects of the Malay-Indonesian World: Some Rare Manuscripts in the Leiden University Library” Dabir 8 (2021): 51–78.
Elizabeth Lambourn, “Tombstones, Texts, and Typologies: Seeing Sources for the Early History of Islam in Southeast Asia,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 51/2 (2008): 252–286; R. Michael Feener, Patrick Daly, E. Edwards McKinnon, Luca Lum En-Ci, Ardiansyah, Nizamuddin, Nazli Ismail, Tai Yew Seng, Jessica Rahardjo, and Kerry Sieh “Islamisation and the formation of vernacular Muslim material culture in 15th-century northern Sumatra”, Indonesia and the Malay World 49/143 (2021): 1–41.
Claude Guillot and Ludvik Kalus, Les Monuments funéraires et l’histoire du Sultanat de Pasai. Vol. 37 (Paris: Cahier d’Archipel 37, 2008).
L. Kalus and C. Guillot, “Note sur le sultanat de Peudada, fin XVe-début XVIe s.” Archipel 83 (2012), 7–15.
Claude Guillot and Ludvik Kalus, “Note sur le sultanat de Pidir. Début du XVIe siècle [Épigraphie islamique d’Aceh. 3].” Archipel 78/1 (2009): 7–18.
Ludvik Kalus and Claude Guillot, “La principauté de Daya, mi-XVe–mi-XVIe siècle [Épigraphie islamique d’Aceh 6]”, Archipel 85 (2013): 201–236.
Feener, et al. “Islamisation and the formation of vernacular Muslim material culture in 15th-century northern Sumatra”.
Ludvik Kalus and Claude Guillot, “Cimetière de Tuan di Kandang. [épigraphie islamique d’Aceh. 8],” Archipel 88 (2014): 71–147; Ludvik Kalus and Claude Guillot, “Cimetières d’Aceh, Varia I”, Archipel 91 (2016): 55–103; Ludvik Kalus and Claude Guillot, “Cimetières d’Aceh, Varia II”, Archipel 93 (2017): 31–84.
See R. Michael Feener, “The Acehnese Past and its Present State of Study”, in Mapping the Acehnese Past edited by R. Michael Feener, Patrick Daly, and Anthony Reed (Leiden: KITLV, 2011), 1–24; Riddell, Malay Court Religion, 2017.
Ludvik Kalus and Claude Guillot, Les monuments funéraires et l’histoire du sultanat de Pasai à Sumatra, XIIIe–XVIe siècles (Paris: Cahiers d’Archipel, 2008), pp. 69–74.
Ludvik Kalus (2003, 305, n° 1).
See; Tijdschrift voor Indische taal-, land-, en volkenkunde 70 (1930): 92.
Ludvik Kalus, “Les sources épigraphiques musulmanes de Barus”, dans Histoire de Barus, Sumatra. Le site de Lobu Tua. II—Etudearchéologique et Documents (Paris: Cahiers d’Archipel, 30, 2003), p. 305, n° 1.
Majid Daneshgar & R. Michael Feener, “A Rare Reading of Ferdowsi’s Shahnamah: The 15th-century Persian Inscription on the Makam Shaykh Papan Tinggi,” (forthcoming).
See, Claude Guillot and Ludvik Kalus, Les monuments funéraires et l’histoire du Sultanat de Pasai à Sumatra (XIIIe–XVIe siècles) (Paris: coll. Cahiers d’Archipel, 37, 2008), 301–302, n° TSA 21. Graves, inscriptions and manuscripts including the name of Starābādī/Estarābādī are found in Mecca as well as India, too. This issue will be addressed by Daneshgar and Feener in a forthcoming study.
For a critical overview of these debates, see: R. Michael Feener and Chiara Formichi, “Debating ‘Shiʿism’ in the History of Muslim Southeast Asia,” in Chiara Formichi and R. Michael Feener (eds) Shiʿism in South East Asia: ʿAlid Piety and Sectarian Constructions (London: Hurst & Company, 2015), pp. 3–16.
H.K.J. Cowan, “A Persian inscription in north Sumatra”, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 80/1 (1940): 15–21.
Elizabeth Lambourn, “The formation of the batu Aceh tradition in fifteenth-century Samudera-Pasai,” Indonesia and the Malay World 32/93 (2004): 211–248.; Guillot and Kalus (2008), pp. 298–299, n° 8.
Both Lambourn and Kalus read this word as “
Lambourn did not provide a reading for, “
This site (MAHS-IDN-ACH-BRN-JUA-S-001) is on Tgk. Chik Di Tiro Road (Bireuen-Takengon highway km.1), Gampong Bireuen Meunasah Tgk Di Gadong, Kota Juang District, Bireuen Regency, Aceh Province (GPS: 5.1954 / 96.702421). In September 2021, it was systematically documented by the Maritime Asia Heritage Survey Indonesia Field Team: Multia Zahara, Ahmad Zaki, Greg Kuswanta, Ario Wibhisono, Sofiani Sabarina, Fauzan Azhima, and Sari Novita.
They were included in the eleventh and twelfth list of De Vink’s photos from Aceh for the Netherlands Indies Archaeological Service. Oudheidkundig Verslag, 1917.
Ludvik Kalus & Claude Guillot, “Cimetières de Sumatra, Varia (Épigraphie islamique d’Aceh 12),” Archipel 94 (2017): 13–50.
Ibid.
Headstone:
Footstone:
Kalus & Guillot, “Cimetières de Sumatra, Varia” (2017): 13–50.
Masyarakat Peduli Sejarah Aceh (MAPESA) is a local NGO (LSM / Lembaga Swadaya Masyarakat) dedicated to the study and publica awareness of Aceh’s Islamic heritage. They regularly publish reports and studies of historical sites, artefacts, and manuscripts its website:
The results of his work were presented online in a contribution to the MAPESA website “Bireuen 600 Tahun Silam Bukan Legenda,”
Viz., Borhān-e Qātṭʿ and Dehkhoda Dictionary.
One might conjecture that
Equally, in Hindustani literature the name of
See: Johann August Vullers, Ioannis Augusti Vullers Lexicon Persico-Latinum etymologicum: cum linguis maxime cognatis Sanscrita et Zendica et Pehlevica comparatum, e lexicis persice scriptis Borhâni Qâtiu, Haft Qulzum et Bahâri agam et persico-turcico Farhangi-Shuûrî confectum, adhibitis etiam Castelli, Meninski, Richardson et aliorum operibus et auctoritate scriptorum Persicorum adauctum (Bonnae ad Rhenum: Impensis Adolphi Marci, 1864) T: II, 482–485. For names, see Abuʾl Fazl-i Mubaraki Allami, Akbar-Nāma (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1872 and 1878), I; also Khāfī Khān, The Muntakhab-al Lubāb, ed. Maulavīs Kabīr al-Dīn Aḥmad and Ghulām Qādir, Vol. II (Calcutta: The College Press, 1870).
This writing of
The version of these lines attributed to Rūmī adds here the word
Based on the English translation of Chittick: Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī, Divine Flashes, trans. and Introduction by William C. Chittick and Peter Lamborn Wilson. Preface by Seyyed Hossein Nasr (New York: Paulist Press, 1982).
Rūmī (nd. ii: no. 1424): 1333 Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Mawlavī, Kuliyyāt-e Shams-e Tabrīzī be-enḍemām-e Sharḥ-e Ḥāl-e Mawlavī, ed. Badīʿ al-Zamān Forūzānfar (Tehran: Ṣedāy-e Muʿāṣir, 2004), II: no. 1242: 1333.
Ḥāmid ibn Abī al-Fakhr Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī, Divan-e Rubāʿiyyāt, ed. Aḥmad Abū Maḥbūb with an Introduction by Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Bāstānī Pārīzī (Tehran: Surūsh, 1366/1987), no. 184: 119.
For more on ʿIrāqī and his Lamaʿāt, see: Peter Lambourn Wilson, William C. Chittick, & Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Ed. Trans.) Divine Flashes (New York: Paulist Press, 1982).
For a broad contextualization of these debates, see: A.D. Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). On proponents and critics of waḥdat al-wujūd in Southeast Asia in particular: A.H. Johns, The Gift Addressed to the Spirit of the Prophet (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1965); Syed Muhammad Naguib Al-Attas, Raniri and the Wujudiyyah of 17th Century Acheh (Singapore: Malaysian Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, 1966); Aliefya M. Santrie, “Martabat (Alam) Tujuh: Suatu Naskah Mistik Islam dari Desa Karang, Pamijahan,” in Ahmad Rifaʾi Hasan (ed), Warisan Intelektual Islam Indonesia: Telaah atlas Karya-Karya Klasik (Bandung: Mizan, 1987), 105–129; Nabilah Lubis, Seeks Yusuf Al-Taj Al-Makasari: Menyingkap Intisari Segala Rahasia (Bandung: EFEO & Penerbit Mizan, 1996); Oman Fathurahman, Tanbih al-Masyi, Menyoal Wahdatul Wujud: Kasus Abdurrauf Singkel di Aceh Abad 17 (Bandung: EFEO & Penerbit Mizan, 1999); Oman Fathurahman, “Ithaf al-dhaki by Ibrahim al-Kurani: A Commentary of Wahdat al-Wujud for Jawi Audiences”, Archipel 81 (2011), 177–198.
For debates over the dating of Ḥamza’s life, see: Claude Guillot, and Ludvik Kalus, “La stèle funéraire de Hamzah Fansuri,” Archipel 60/4 (2000), 3–24; Vladimir I. Braginsky, “On the Copy of Hamzah Fansuri’s Epitaph Published by C. Guillot & L. Kalus,” Archipel 62/1 (2001), 21–33.
Jāmī’s work served as a source for Sufi works written by Southeast Asian ulama for centuries. A 17th-century copy his al-Durrah al-Fākhirah was even made by the renowned Yūsuf al-Maqassārī, and preserved in the Sprenger Library, Berlin. For more on Jāmī and his al-Durrah al-Fākhirah: Nicholas Heer, The Precious Pearl: al-Jāmī’s al-Durrah al-Fākhirah together with his glosses and the commentary of ʿAbd al-Ghafūr al-Lārī (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979) and Heer, Nihcolas. 2013. “Two Arabic Manuscripts in the Handwriting of Shaykh Yūsuf al-Tāj,” (2013):
Vladimir I. Braginsky, “Universe-man-text: The Sufi concept of literature (with special reference to Malay Sufism)”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde 149 (2) (1993): 201–225.
Discussions of al-Rānīrī’s work, and his entanglement in Islamic scholarly debates and court power struggles have attracted the work of a considerable number of modern scholars. E.g., Gerardus W.J. Drewes, “De herkomst van Nuruddin ar-Raniri,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde 2de Afl (1955): 137–151; Wormser, Le Bustan al-Salatin de Nuruddin ar-Rānīrī: Réflexions sur le role culturel d’un étranger dans le monde Malais au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Cahiers d’Archipel, 2012). Petrus Voorhoeve, “Van en over Nuruddin ar-Raniri,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde 107/4 (1951): 353; P. Voorhoeve. ‘Short note: Nuruddin ar-Raniri,’ Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 115 (1959): 90. Muhammad Naguib Al-Attas, Rānīrī and the Wujūdiyyah of 17th century Acheh (London: Monographs of the Malaysian Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, III, 1966).
But there is also a 24.9 % chance it was collected 1586–1623 CE, which is also quite old in the terms of Malay Islamic manuscripts. See: Majid Daneshgar (2022).
One of the oldest copies is kept in the Malek Library and Museum, Tehran, n. 2055, from the 9th century AH/15th century AD. See, Fakhr al-dīn ʿIrāqī, Lamaʿāt, edited by Muhammad Khvajavi (Tehran: Mulavi, 1363/1984).
Alessandro Bausani noted that this Malay anthology includes a fragment that appears to have been lost to the standard recensions of Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī’s Masnavī, identifying lines that may “be placed somewhere in section 1: 3743 of the Masnavi”. See, Alessandro Bausani, “Note sui vocaboli Persiani in Malese-Indonesiano”, Annali dell’Ist.Univ. Orientale di Napoli 14 (1964), 1–32. Majid Daneshgar, “An Old Persian-Malay Anthology of Poems from Aceh” Dabir 7 (2020), 61–90.
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