Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society/Volume 81/The Early Muhammadan Missionaries
The Early Muhammadan Missionaries.
By R. O. Winstedt.
Since I wrote my paper on the "Advent of Muhammadanism in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago" in Journal 77, I have. come across a lecture by that greatest of authorities on things Muhammadan, Dr. Snouck Hurgronje, entitled Arabie en Oost-Indie (Leyden). From this lecture it is quite clear that while a few stray Arabs visited the Malay world ('Merveilles de l'Inde,' Leyden, 1883-86, pages 255-261), the bulk of Muhammadan missionaries came from India, and were natives of Gujerat and Malabar.
The points may be briefly summarized:—I add local corroborative evidence.
(1) The 3 Pasai grave-stones of 1407, 1408, and 1428 A.D. are of Cambay workmanship (J. P. Moquette's paper in Tijd. Bat. Gen. LIX, 1912, pages 208 and 536). So is the Grisek tomb. And two points unknown to Dr. Hurgronje: the Bruas tomb, in Perak, like the Pasai and Grisek tombs is of Indian type: and the Pengkalan Kempas tomb of 1467 A.D. has an inscription in some undeciphered Indian alphabet as well as an inscription in Malay:— here I must correct a suggestion in my previous paper; geology shows that the 'Sword' is of local stone.
(2) The 1407 Pasai tomb is that of Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Abdu'l-Kadir ibu Abdu'l-Aziz ib al-Mansur Abu Ja'far al-Abbasi al-Muntasir. Abdullah was thus of the house of Abbas, which provided Baghdad with its Khalifs from the time of the Prophet till it was destroyed by the Turks in 1258 and the last of the Abbaside Khalifs, al-Musta'sim, was killed. Al-Musta'sim had succeeded in the Khalifate al-Muntasir, who is mentioned on this tomb: aud the father of Abdullah whose tomb it is was closely related to him. Now Muhammad, the father of Abdullah, emigrated from Baghdad to India and lived in Delhi; and it must have been from Delhi that his son, the Pasai saint, went to Sumatra. So, too, probably the missionaries to Java and Bruas and the saint buried at Pengkalan Kempas came from India.
(3) The list of missionaries given in the Bustanu's-Salatin (Neimann's Ht. Acheh) contains mostly Indians, with some Syrians and Egyptians.
(4) Evidently the Arabs and Malays knew little of one another. Between 1600-1650 A.D. the Rajas of Banten and Mataram sent envoys to the Sharif of Mecca asking him to bestow on them Sultanates, although for centuries then Mecca had been under the Usmanli Sultans of Istambul! In 1688 envoys from the Sharif of Mecca went to India to remind the Great Mogul of tithes due to the Holy City: and they learnt for the first time from Indian friends that Acheen was a Muhammadan kingdom and it was likely they could collect funds in Sumatra! [One may add as another instance of Malay ignorance lines like Serban Kashmiri warna hijau, Buatan Arab di-negeri Makkah.]
(5) The Malay alphabet is not Arabic but Perso-Hindustani,
(6) Many early books were translated from the Persian or oftener from Indian versions of Persian originals. [E.g. the Ht. Iskandar Dzu'l-Karnain, the Bustanu's-Salatin, the Taju's-Salatin, Ht. Muhammad Hanafiah, Ht. Amir Hamza, the Ht. Bayan Budiman. Shaikh Nuru'd-din of Gujerat translated the first two (Journal 77, page 174 and Bustanu's-Salatin Vol. II, page 26 Singapore 1900); and Brandes and van Ronkel have discussed the origin of the two last. But there is much more to be done in this line of research. There is no evidence of direct Persian influence on the Malays: it came through Indian channels.]
(7) Malay religious literature, discussed in Vol. II of Snouck Hurgronje's 'The Achinese,' is often repulsive to Arab ideas, and is infected with that popular pantheism which India borrowed from Persia. [The charms collected by Skeat in his "Malay Magic" often exhibit this popular pantheism.]
(8) The first Arabs proper came from the Hadthramaut (vide Journal 77, page 174 and Journal 79, page 49). And the Hadthramaut family of Sayids got the throne of Pontianak in Borneo as well as that of Siak.
Direct Arab influence made itself felt strongly only after the invention of steam-ships had made voyages easy.