Annabel Teh Gallop

The spirit of Langkasuka? Illuminated manuscripts from the East Coast of the Malay Peninsula

Introduction A survey of illuminated Islamic manuscripts from the Malay peninsula reveals a very uneven pattern of distribution. While one or two impressive manuscripts are known from Pulau Pinang, Kedah, Selangor or Pahang, only a few decorated manuscripts of mediocre quality have yet been identified from Perak. The situation on the northeast coast of the peninsula could not be more different, for some of the finest illuminated Islamic manuscripts in the whole of Southeast Asia were produced in considerable numbers in the states of Terengganu, Kelantan and Patani. It must be stressed that the chronological spread of these manuscripts is limited, with most probably dating from the 19th century and only a few from the 18th century. Nonetheless, the picture we are looking at suggests that, artistically, something special was going on in this region, rooted in a compelling sense of regional identity. This hint of ‘something special’ recalls the master woodcarver Nik Rashiddin Haji Nik Hussein’s passionate avowal of the tangible existence of the cultural legacy of this region: ‘As a craftsman, I am convinced from the point of view of craftsmanship. The existence of this civilisation is obvious in the design, form, motif’ (Farish & Khoo 2003: 12). This civilisation he identified – after all due circumspection (‘I have long thought about it and believe we cannot use any other term’) – as that of Langkasuka, a kingdom known to have flourished on the Thai-Malay isthmus until about the 15th century (Wheatley 1966: 252-67). Nik Rashiddin’s conviction arose from his long immersion in the material culture of this region, studying works of art in wood, cloth and metal. The present article can be viewed as an attempt to contribute to the evidence available for evaluation, by documenting and analysing the characteristic features of a distinctive style of illumination identified in manuscripts from Terengganu, Kelantan and Patani. Henceforth this school of illumination will be referred to as the ‘East Coast’ style. So far, 92 manuscripts illuminated in the East Coast style have been identified, 65 of which are Qur’ans. Unlike manuscripts from Aceh which are commonly encountered in institutions all over the world, remarkably few illuminated East Coast manuscripts are found outside peninsular Malaysia today. Two have been identified in the United Kingdom, one in the Netherlands and one in Indonesia, but all the others are held in Malaysian institutions. This pattern of distribution can probably be explained by the fact that illumination in manuscripts from the Malay world is predominantly found in Qur’ans and other religious works, and until the late 19th century there was little interest shown in Islam by Western collectors of Malay manuscripts, who focused instead on subjects like literature, history and law.

BUNGA SETANGKAI: ‘merely a single, withered flower’, or a clue to the antiquity of the malay letter-writing tradition?

Introduction The existence of a tradition of formal letter-writing in Malay, manifest in letters from all parts of the archipelago, has been remarked upon often enough to need no further justification. An analysis of the structure of these letters—commencing with the letter heading, followed by the opening compliments, the contents proper, the sending of a gift, and finally the closing statement with the date—was first outlined by Wilkinson (1907), since when the publication of considerable numbers of Malay letters has served to illustrate the extraordinary conformity to these norms across a considerable spatial and chronological reach. Concomitant with in-depth analyses of specific aspects of this tradition, there is also a need for further studies to identify and clarify the extent of the reach of this ‘uniform’ style, and what lies beyond its boundaries, whether social, spatial, or temporal. The ‘uniform’ tradition is most closely associated with formal letters exchanged at the highest diplomatic levels, and it was probably always the case that other classes of letters were composed according to different sets of rules. A more profound appreciation of the variety to be found in the Malay letter-writing tradition arises from studies of the considerable epistolary output of two men of letters in Riau in the nineteenth century, Raja Ali Haji (van der Putten and Al Azhar, 1995) and Haji Ibrahim, leading to a suggestion of the need for further subdivision within the genre into different classes of epistles, such as those of ‘institutional’ and ‘individual’ letters (van der Putten, 2001:3– 4). The relative rank of the correspondents was another crucial determining factor: although the complex protocol of traditional Malay letter-writing was well-equipped and, indeed, designed to reflect a wide range of nuances of social status, these ‘standard’ formal letters were not used to bridge the largest social gulfs. Thus a communication from a subject to his sovereign would normally introduce itself as a ‘petition’ (surat sembah), and would have a compositional structure quite distinct from that of a ‘standard’ letter. Similarly, a communication from a ruler to a subject or lower-ranking official or to a group of subjects often took the form of a ‘decree’ (surat titah, surat sabda, surat cap), with completely different formulaic constituent parts from those of ‘standard’ formal epistles. These different types of communications are all recorded and classified in their correct places in the Malay manuals of letter-writing, kitab terasul. The spatial boundaries of the Malay letter-writing tradition are another area yet to be explored; for example, there are hints that the art of Malay letter-writing in west Sumatra may have evolved along a very different path. Although large numbers of letters in Javanese, Bugis/Makassarese, Balinese, Lampung, and Maguindanaoan are extant, no comparative studies have yet been done on regional epistolary styles and the degree of convergence with the archipelago-wide Malay tradition. Chronological studies are also

A JAWI SOURCEBOOK FOR THE STUDY OF MALAY PALAEOGRAPHY AND ORTHOGRAPHY

This special issue of Indonesia and the Malay World was compiled by friends and colleagues as a tribute to Professor E. Ulrich Kratzs three decades of teaching Jawi and traditional Malay literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and to mark his 70th birthday on 14 October 2014. Reflecting Ulrichs deep interest in Malay manuscript texts and letters over many years (see the list of publications compiled by Helen Cordell in this issue), this Festschrift takes the rather unusual form of a compilation of reproductions of Malay manuscripts in Jawi script, accompanied by commentaries on the handwriting and spelling. Nearly all the manuscripts are dated or firmly dateable, and come from known locations. The hope is that this issue will be useful as a sourcebook for the study of the development of Jawi script, and in particular its palaeography and orthography, over the course of nearly three and a half centuries. The manuscripts presented date from the end of the 16th century to the early 20th century, and originate from all corners of the Malay world, from Aceh to Aru and from Melaka to Mindanao, as well as from Malay communities in Sri Lanka and Mecca.

Audiences and an artist: Illumination in Malay literary manuscripts

ABSTRACT Building on Amin Sweeney’s study of Authors and audiences in traditional Malay literature (1980), this article sets out to investigate the artists who created illuminated Malay literary manuscripts, and the audiences for whose visual delight they were produced, through a focus on paratexts in the volumes: scribal or authorial notes or annotations, and ornamental and other graphic details. While distinctive regional artistic schools associated with Qur’an and other Islamic books from Southeast Asia have been identified in locations such as Aceh and the east coast of the Malay peninsula, most illuminated Malay literary manuscripts were produced in the burgeoning urban centres of Penang, Melaka, Singapore and Batavia, areas without a strong tradition of religious book production. The very different artistic profiles of these two broad groupings of manuscripts may therefore be linked with their contrasting physical and social locales. A detailed study of two illuminated manuscripts from Perlis then reveals, for the first time, the name of a Malay manuscript artist – Encik Muhammad, son of Raja Indera Wangsa – and casts valuable light on the mechanics of book production in the northern Malay peninsula in the early 19th century.

ONE SEAL GOOD, TWO SEALS BETTER, THREE SEALS BEST? MULTIPLE IMPRESSIONS OF MALAY SEALS

The use of more than one impression of the same seal on Malay documents is very rare, but is known from anecdotal evidence in Kalimantan, prescriptions in a guide to Malay letter-writing probably from Riau, and a few surviving letters from Sumatra. This article describes and analyses the extant sources, and concludes that only in Minangkabau was there ever a tradition of using multiple impressions of a royal seal on a document.The use of more than one impression of the same seal on Malay documents is very rare, but is known from anecdotal evidence in Kalimantan, prescriptions in a guide to Malay letter-writing probably from Riau, and a few surviving letters from Sumatra. This article describes and analyses the extant sources, and concludes that only in Minangkabau was there ever a tradition of using multiple impressions of a royal seal on a document.

Ottoman influences in the seal of sultan alauddin riayat syah of aceh (r.1589–1604)

Introduction The close links that existed between Aceh and Turkey during the 16th century were forged mainly during the reigns of Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah al-Kahar of Aceh (r.1537?–1571) and of the Ottoman rulers Sultan Sulayman (‘the Magnificent’) (r.1520–1566) and Sultan Selim II (r.1566–1578), and were cemented by their mutual hostility to the Portuguese. The basis of the relationship was the Indian Ocean pepper trade, with direct shipments from Aceh to the Red Sea ports, while Ottoman military supplies, expertise and manpower were greatly in demand by the Acehnese. Political contact appears to have reached a peak in the 1560s, when an Acehnese embassy presented its case to the Ottoman court, and in the Ottoman archives are preserved copies of several letters from Sultan Selim of 1567 and 1568 concerning plans for a naval expedition to Sumatra (Reid 1969: 404). While the commercial contact between Aceh and Turkey was based primarily on pepper, it must have been accompanied by trade in other commodities and by gifts of the kind of luxury goods which naturally accompany diplomatic exchanges at the highest level; for example, according to Portuguese sources, an Acehnese ship captured off the coast of the Hadramaut in 1562 was carrying ‘200,000 cruzados’ worth of gold and jewelry for the Sultan of Turkey’ (Boxer 1969: 418). But there is little material evidence still extant bearing witness to this half-century of close contact between Aceh and the Ottoman empire at the height of its glory, other than a Turkish cannon which was captured by the Dutch in Aceh in 1874 and borne off to Holland. However, it will be argued in this paper that Ottoman artistic influence can be seen clearly in a royal Acehnese seal which probably dates from the last years of the 16th century, that of Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah (r.1589–1604).

ROYAL MINANGKABAU SEALS

For over three centuries, Malay seals engraved in Arabic script have functioned as symbols of the authority of the sultan and his court. In all parts of maritime Southeast Asia, there is extraordinary uniformity in the inscriptions of these Islamic seals, which generally identify the sealholder by his name and official title, as well as giving his pedigree and place of origin. Over half of all Malay seals recorded are dated, making them important primary sources for the study of Malay history and biography. Strangely enough, seals from Minangkabau in west Sumatra are at odds with the general picture on two counts. Firstly, royal Minangkabau seals do not usually designate an identifiable individual ruler but rather signify the institution of kingship itself. Secondly, there exists an entire genre of seals which can be entitled ‘Minangkabau seals of patronage’, whose inscriptions do not conform to the template for Malay seals described above. In this article both these categories of seals will be explored, in the process shedding new light on how Minangkabau authority was disseminated in the rantau, or areas of traditional Minangkabau migration in Malay borderlands, with particular reference to Negeri Sembilan.

Exceptions to the Rule Malay seals in manuscript books

Annabel Teh Gallop, The British Library, Londres ; Exceptions to the Rule: Malay Seals in Manuscript Books ; ; Si, dans les spheres culturelles arabe, turque et persane, les sceaux etaient d’un usage frequent sur les manuscrits, il en va autrement en Insulinde, ou ceux-ci apparaissent sur les lettres et documents officiels, mais rarement sur les ouvrages. Cet article analyse les quelques cas de sceaux apposes a des oeuvres malaises manuscrites ou ils denotent la «propriete», au sens le plus large. Il peut s’agir en effet du sceau du proprietaire, du copiste, de l’auteur, de l’artiste, du commanditaire, voire du donateur de l’ouvrage. Quelques exemples etudies plus en detail, renforcent encore l’impression que l’application de sceaux, sur les ouvrages, reste exceptionnelle, dans le monde malais.