The stimulus for the joint venture of which the present book is the visible result was provided by the discovery of a Malay manuscript of the long lost Hikayat Patani by one of the authors, and the publication, quite independently, of a Thai version of the same text by the other. The authors, who were not acquainted with one another before this, "found" each other at the suggestion of Professor O. W. Wolters, to whom they are grateful for the idea. The preparation of the book took place on both sides of the Atlantic, with a frequent exchange of letters containing the results of the work of each author. In August, 1969, Teeuw was given the opportunity to visit Cornell University, where in a fortnight's most intensive contact and concentrated research all the drafts were checked, supplemented, rewritten and improved, and the definitive arrangement of the book decided on. The work on the manuscript was completed in the following four months, again in geographically separated spheres. The actual manuscript was rounded off at the beginning of 1970.
The portion of the Malay Peninsula where the Thai Buddhist civilization of Thailand gives way to the Malay Muslim civilization of Malaysia is characterized by multiple forms of pluralism. This book examines a broad range of issues relating to the turmoil afflicting the region.
This monumental series, acclaimed as a "masterpiece of comprehensive scholarship" in the New York Times Book Review, reveals the impact of Asia's high civilizations on the development of modern Western society. The authors examine the ways in which European encounters with Asia have altered the development of Western society, art, literature, science, and religion since the Renaissance. In Volume III: A Century of Advance, the authors have researched seventeenth-century European writings on Asia in an effort to understand how contemporaries saw Asian societies and peoples.
Forging Islamic Power and Place charts the nineteenth-century rise of a vast network of Islamic scholars stretching across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean to Arabia. Following the political and military collapse of the tiny Sultanate of Patani in what is now southern Thailand and northern Malaysia, a displaced community of scholars led by Shaykh Dā’ūd bin ‘Abd Allāh al-Faṭānī regrouped in Mecca. In the years that followed, al-Faṭānī composed more than forty works that came to form the basis for a new, text-based type of Islamic practice. Via a network of scholars, students, and scribes, al-Faṭānī’s writings made their way back to Southeast Asia, becoming the core texts of emerging pondok (Islamic schools) throughout the region. Islamic scholars thus came to be the primary power brokers in the construction of a new moral community, setting forth an intellectual wave that spurred cultural identity, literacy, and a religious practice that grew ever more central to daily life. In Forging Islamic Power and Place, Francis R. Bradley analyzes the important role of this vibrant Patani knowledge network in the formation of Islamic institutions of learning in Southeast Asia. He makes use of an impressive range of sources, including official colonial documents, traveler accounts, missionary writings, and above all a trove of handwritten manuscripts in Malay and Arabic, what remains of one of the most fertile zones of knowledge production anywhere in the Islamic world at the time. Writing against prevailing notions of Southeast Asia as the passive recipient of the Islamic traditions of the Middle East, Bradley shows how a politically marginalized community engineered its own cultural renaissance via the moral virility of the Islamic scholarly tradition and the power of the written word. He highlights how, in an age of rising colonial power, these knowledge producers moved largely unnoticed and unhindered between Southeast Asia and the Middle East carrying out sweeping cultural and religious change. His focus on Thailand’s so-called “deep south,” which has been marginalized in scholarly studies until recent times, helps lay the groundwork for a new generation of scholarship on the region and furthers our understanding of the present-day crisis in southern Thailand. The study of Islam in Southeast Asia has been most often relegated to the realm of religious studies, and historians have considered the development of the nation as the single-most important historiographical problem in the region. By focusing on the role of human agency and the logistics of knowledge transmission, this book transforms our understanding of the long and complex history of the flow of religious knowledge between the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Mak yong, the ancient Malay dance theatre form, is associated principally with the southern Thai Patani province and the Malaysian state of Kelantan on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula. It is also active in Terengganu and in the Riau islands of Indonesia where it is staged in a significantly variant form. Mak yong comprises the elements of story, formal and informal spoken text, stylized dance and acting, vocal and instrumental music, as well as ritual. It is performed both for entertainment as well as for healing specific types of emotional and psychological ailments. Mak yong is undoubtedly the most important of all traditional Malay theatre forms in terms of its content as well as performance style. Following an effort to revive this near- extinct art from 1969 onwards, it went through considerable changes as it shifted away from its rural base to urban centres, particularly Kuala Lumpur. The changes essentially attempted to “cleanse” Mak yong of some of the objectionable folk elements with a view to transform it into a sophisticated one intended for modern audiences, including tourists. Mak yong, was designated by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Mankind in 2005. The listing was based on the Candidature File prepared by the present author, Ghulam–Sarwar Yousof, a leading specialist in traditional Southeast Asian theatre. He was the first person in the world to work on a doctorate on traditional Malay theatre with a dissertation on Mak yong submitted to the University of Hawaii in 1976. The present volume comprise a selection of his essays on various aspects of Mak yong presented at local and international seminars as well as published in several journals. The papers provide original and vital insghts into the history, aesthetics and functions of Mak yong as well as controversies surrounding it. The papers also touch upon issues connected with the survival of mak yong and the need for efforts to preserve what the author regards as the most unique of traditional Malay performing arts.
The book probes and examines traditional sources of royal power and control, as well as indigenous socio-political systems in the Malay world. It is focused on the north-western Malaysian Sultanate of Kedah which is acknowledged as the oldest unbroken independent kingship line in the 'Malay and Islamic world' with 1,000 years of history. Little scholarly attention has been paid to its pre-modern history, society, religion, system of government and unique geographic situation, potentially controlling both land and sea lines of communication into the remainder of Southeast Asia. It will thus provide the first comprehensive treatment in English, or other languages, on Kedah's pre-modern and nineteenth century historiography and can provide a foundation for comparative studies of the various Malay states which is presently lacking. The proposed book also sheds much needed light on a range of important topics in Malay history including: Kedah and the northern Melaka Straits history, colonial expansion and rivalry, Southeast Asian history and politics, interregional migration and the influence of the sea peoples or orang laut, traditional Malay socio-political and economic life, Islamic influences and the course of Thai-Malay relations. The book attempts to offer a new understanding, not only of Kedah, but of the political and cultural development of the entire Malay world and of its relationships with the broader forces in both its continental and maritime settings. It argues that Kedah does not seem to follow, and in fact, often seems to contradict what has been commonly been accepted as the "typical model" of the traditional Malay state. Thus it concludes that the ruling dynasty has historically exploited a wide range of unique environmental conditions, local traditions, global spiritual trends and economic forces to preserve and strengthen its political position.
This book surveys the growth and development of Islam in Malaysia from the eleventh to the twenty-first century, investigating how Islam has shaped the social lives, languages, cultures and politics of both Muslims and non-Muslims in one of the most populous Muslim regions in the world. Khairudin Aljunied shows how Muslims in Malaysia built upon the legacy of their pre-Islamic past while benefiting from Islamic ideas, values, and networks to found flourishing states and societies that have played an influential role in a globalizing world. He examines the movement of ideas, peoples, goods, technologies, arts, and cultures across into and out of Malaysia over the centuries. Interactions between Muslims and the local Malay population began as early as the eighth century, sustained by trade and the agency of Sufi as well as Arab, Indian, Persian, and Chinese scholars and missionaries. Aljunied looks at how Malay states and societies survived under colonial regimes that heightened racial and religious divisions, and how Muslims responded through violence as well as reformist movements. Although there have been tensions and skirmishes between Muslims and non-Muslims in Malaysia, they have learned in the main to co-exist harmoniously, creating a society comprising of a variety of distinct populations. This is the first book to provide a seamless account of the millennium-old venture of Islam in Malaysia.
This volume provides an ethnographic description of Muslim merit-making rhetoric, rituals and rationales in Thailand’s Malay far-south. This study is situated in Cabetigo, one of Pattani’s oldest and most important Malay communities that has been subjected to a range of Thai and Islamic influences over the last hundred years. The volume describes religious rhetoric related to merit-making being conducted in both Thai and Malay, that the spiritual currency of merit is generated through the performance of locally occurring Malay adat, and globally normative amal 'ibadat. Concerning the rationale for merit-making, merit-makers are motivated by both a desire to ensure their own comfort in the grave and personal vindication at judgment, as well as to transfer merit for those already in the grave, who are known to the merit-maker. While the rhetoric elements of Muslim merit-making reveal Thai influence, its ritual elements confirm the local impact of reformist activism.
Jerryson offers an exntensive examination of one of the least known but longest-running conflicts of Southeast Asia. Part of this conflict, based primarily in Thailand's southernmost provinces, is fueled by religious divisions.
This publication brings together current scholarship that focuses on the significance of performing arts heritage of royal courts in Southeast Asia. Royal courts have long been sites for the creation, exchange, maintenance, and development of myriad forms of performing arts and other distinctive cultural expressions. The first volume, Pusaka as Documented Heritage, consists of historical case studies, contexts and developments of royal court traditions, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
