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R.Michael FeenerMichael F. Laffan

Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean : Yemeni Hagiography and

the Earliest History of Southeast Asian IslamIn: Archipel. Volume 70, 2005. pp. 185-208.

Rsum

al-Jawi. Partant de son patronyme et de rfrences parses dans le Mir'at al-jinan de al-Yafi' i, les auteurs suggrent sa possible

relation un commerce des pices en plein essor dans l'ocan Indien, avant d'examiner sa place dans les rseaux sufi

ymnites en tant que matre de al-Yafi'i, dont les ouvrages sur les miracles de 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani sont connus pour tre

d'une importance primordiale dans l'histoire de l'islam en Asie du Sud-Est.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Feener R.Michael, Laffan Michael F. Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean : Yemeni Hagiography and the Earliest History of

Southeast Asian Islam. In: Archipel. Volume 70, 2005. pp. 185-208.

doi : 10.3406/arch.2005.3978

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/arch_0044-8613_2005_num_70_1_3978
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/author/auteur_arch_584http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/author/auteur_arch_531http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/arch.2005.3978http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/arch_0044-8613_2005_num_70_1_3978http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/arch_0044-8613_2005_num_70_1_3978http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/arch.2005.3978http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/author/auteur_arch_531http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/author/auteur_arch_584

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ETUDES

R. Michael Feener & Michael F LaffanSufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean :Yemeni Hagiography and the Earliest Historyof Southeast Asian Islam 0)

In this essay we would like to present some data for the history of Islamin Southeast Asia that is not so much new as newly noticed in the intersticesof our individual work. Avenues of enquiry were opened up by the researchesf Michael Feener into instances in Yemeni hagiographical dictionaries ofthe adjectival patronymic form (nisba) 'al-Jw', that is : 'the one fromJawa', which came to appear ever more relevant when Michael Laffan begantracing the origins and usages of Jwa itself in medieval texts concerning theIndonesian archipelago. Bringing our work together and examining eachother's findings in Leiden has since led us to recognize not only the earliestdating yet for a Muslim using the name al-Jw, but also some insights intoaspects of Sufism relevant to the early history of Islam's spread to theeastern end of the Indian Ocean.The publication of new details regarding the likely life-span and peregrinations of the seminal Sumatran mystic and poet, Hamzah Fansuri (Hamzaal-Fansr, d. 1527), has already demonstrated the importance of looking forinformation relevant to the history of Southeast Asian Islam in unexpected1. Primary textual research for this study was undertaken while we were both being hosted bythe International Institute for Asian Studies (HAS) in Leiden. We would like here to thankHAS both for its financial support, and for use of its extraordinary resources for facilitatingour scholarly collaboration.

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1 86 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. Laffanplaces. (2) Like th e Meccan cemetery of Bab Macla, where al-Fansr'sgravestone stood unmolested (and probably unnoticed) for four centuries,such places are unexpected in that their neglect by modern scholarship reveals underlying assumptions about where Southeast Asian Muslims belongin time and space. While Hamzah Fansuri's headstone was found in adatabase by searching for the more localized nisba Fansuri - deriving fromthe former Arabic name for the west coastal zone around Barus, in northSumatra - he used the broader nisba of 'Jw' in his poetry to describe hisoutward identity. (3) The same term, moreover, was often used to refer toSoutheast Asian scholars and pilgrims in the Middle East in the centuriesafter him, regardless of their more particular geographic points of origin. (4)The revised date for Hamzah Fansuri's death as proposed by Guillot andKalus seemed all the more relevant to developing understandings of the earlyhistory of Southeast Asian Islam when Michael Feener found mention of theterm Jw in a fifteenth-century collection of Sufi biographies, the Tabaqtal-khawss of Shihb al-Dn Ahmad al-Sharj (1410-ca. 1487/8). (5) Therelevant biographical sketch contained therein - concerning one Abu cAbdAllah Mascd b. Muhammad al-Jw - is a short one, but revealing in anumber of ways. It runs as follows :

Abu cAbd Allah Mas'd b. Muhammad al-Jw, [spelt] with ajitn and kasr al-waw,was once known as a great and famous shaykh in the city of Aden and surrounding areas.He was one of the greats, a shaykh and jurist of the people of (Uwaja. He was a colleagueof the great jurist Ism'l al-Hadram, who benefited all and whose turban was a blessingto their souls. He [al-Jwi] was a master of character and upbringing, from whom a greatmany of the greats benefited, including the shaykh cAbd Allah b. As'ad al-Yfc andothers. Shaykh al-Yfi' mentioned him in his history and praised him greatly, saying in2. Claude Guillot and Ludvik Kalus, ' La stle funraire de Hamzah Fansuri ', L'Horizon nou-santarien; Mlanges en hommage Denys Lombard IV - Archipel 60 (2000) : 3-24. Thisnotice prompted a strong reaction from Vladimir Braginsky, who had previously published anarticle on Hamzah's life based on earlier data in a previous volume of the same journal. See :V. Braginsky, 'Towards the Biography of Hamzah Fansuri. When did Hamzah Live? Datafrom His Poems and Early European Accounts', Archipel 57 (1999) : 135-175. The debatewas continued in number 62 (2001) : 24-38.3. 'Hamzah Shahrnawi zhirnya Jw', G.W.J. Drewes and L.F. Brakel, The Poems ofHamzah Fansuri. Dordrecht : Foris, 1986, 88.4. For example, the seventeenth century Acehnese exegete Abd al-Ra'uf of Singkel is referred to on the title page of his monumental Tarjumn al-mustafd (Cairo : Mustafa al-Bbi al-Halab, 1951) as cAbd al-Ra'f b. cAli al-Fansr al-Jw. Al-Jwi is also used bya Yemeni biographer as a nisba to refer to the Sumatran scholar cAbd al-Samad al-Flimbn. See cAbd al-Rahmn b. Sulaymn al-Ahdal, al-Nafas al-Yamn. San'a :Markaz al-Dirst wa'1-Abhth al-Yamaniyya, 1979, 138-43.5. Known more fully as Shihb al-Dn Ahmad b. Ahmad b. 'Abd al-Latif al-Sharj al-Zabd al-Hanafi (1410- ca. 1487/8), this scholar was born and died at Zabid, Yemen,having studied at Mecca in 1431. See C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur,6 vols. Leipzig : CF. Amelangs, 1901, II, 190.

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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 187recognition of him that the aforementioned shaykh [al-Jwi] was : 'The famous saint, heof true breaths and unprecedented miracles, exalted talents and radiant dignities . (6) Then,at another point, he [al-Yfi(] said : ' He [al-Jw] was the first to dress me in the tatteredrobe (khirqa) following a sign given to him1, and he [also] said : 'I went with him to thetomb of one/some of the pious masters (qabr bacd al-slihn), and I understood from himthat [the saint] spoke to him from his tomb'. Imm Yfi' did not confirm his death because he did not mention him in a particular year. Rather he mentioned him by way ofdigression (al sabl al-istitrd) on various subjects, may God Almighty have mercy onhim and find pleasure in him. Amen. 7)At first glance this already appears to be presenting something quite newfor its fifteenth-century Arabic-literate readers in that the compiler felt it wasnecessary to clarify the pronunciation of this seemingly unfamiliar word'Jw'. Such a reading at first appeared to us to be supported by the fact thatin our subsequent searches we were unable to find this nisba in earlier standard compendia, such as the twelfth-century work of Abi Sa'd al-Tammi. (8) While a primary issue concerning the use of the Jw nisba formedieval Arabic readers of this text may have been one of pronunciation, formodern historians th e key concern is that of how exactly such earlyreferences to Jw as an element of a person's name is to be interpreted.First of all, we need to try and contextualize the very term figuring soprominently in this person's name and ask what is actually being conveyedthrough the use of this seemingly novel nisba. Despite the persistent practiceof historians of Muslim societies using nisbas as indicators of a particularpersonage's geographic origins or ethnic identity, this does not necessarilyentail that Mascd al-Jw, recorded as the father of cAbd Allah and son ofMuhammad, was any more 'Southeast Asian' than the many 'al-Misris' living in Indonesia in the nineteenth century were Egyptians, or that the various'al-Azharis' of the archipelago had studied at Cairo's most famous mosque-university.This is because the nisba, as a formal element in Arabic onomastics, canserve a number of functions beyond simply referring to a person's ethnic ori

gins or place of birth. (9) Muslim history provides countless examples of6. ... dhu l-anfas al-sdiqa wal-karamat al-khriqa wal-mawahib al-saniyya wal-maqmt al-jaliyya. While clearly formulaic accolades, the phrase 'he of true breaths' isparticularly important as it pays tribute to a mastery of all the various stages of knowledge ofGod. With thanks to Nasr Abu Zayd for his explanation and Nico Kaptein for asking thequestion. N. Kaptein, personal communication, 2 May 2005.7. Abi l-cAbbs Ahmad b. Ahmad b. 'Abd al-Latif al-Sharj al-Zabdi, Tabaqt al-khawss : Ahl al-sdqa wal-ikhls. Beirut : al-Dr ai-Yamaniyya, 1987, 341.8. Abu Sa'd 'Abd al-Karim b. Muhammad b. Mansr al-Tamimi al-Samcni (d. AH562/1 166 AD), al-Ansb. Beirut : Dr al-Jinn, 1988.9. An overview of technical aspects of the function of nisba can be found in : Leone Caetani& Guiseppe Gabrieli, Onomasticon Arabicum. Rome : Casa Editrice Italiana, 1915, 1, 222-33.For more theoretical reflections on the problematics of Arabic nomenclature, see : Jacqueline

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1 88 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. Laffannisbas being used as indicators of educational experience, or even assomething akin to tourist souvenirs to be flaunted as an affectation ofcosmopolitanism. The Malay reformist Shaykh Muhammad Tahir bin Jalalal-Din (1869-1956), for example, was popularly known as al-Azhari becausehe really had spent four years studying astronomy at al-Azhar. (10)Thus while the usage of 'Jw' in this fifteenth-century Arabic text fromthe Yemen raises questions as to the relationship that this person may havehad with Southeast Asia, definitive answers regarding his place of birth, andhis ethnic and linguistic background are simply unanswerable. Even so, wefeel that the very novelty of his nisba lends some weight to the strong possibility that either he (or indeed his father) had spent some part of their lives inSoutheast Asia. Perhaps he had even been born there to a local mother.

Regardless of the fact that the use of the nisba in this document cannotconclusively demonstrate anything about the ' ethnic identity ' of this individual, it nonetheless shows early evidence of th e integration of th eIndonesian archipelago into the intellectual, not to say economic, vistas ofthe Arabian peninsula in the medieval period. 01) Furthermore, when onelooks more closely at al-Sharj's text it is clear that there is much more inthis entry of relevance to the history of Islam in Southeast Asia than simplythe appearance of the word 'Jwi'. For one thing, paying closer attention tothe figures with whom he is linked leads one to the realization that he was nonear contemporary of al-Sharj.Identifying the first figure mentioned in al-Sharj's notice, namely the jurist (faqih) Ism'il al-Hadram, proved to be somewhat problematic due tothe range of contradictory information in the literature. Al-Sharj, our initialpoint of reference, gives a long account of a faqih bearing the right nisbaand surname cum agnomen (kunya), that is : Abu 1-Fid' Ismcl b.Muhammad b. Ismcl b. cAl b. cAbd Allah b. Ism(l b. Ahmad b.Maymn al-Hadram, whom he says died in Dh 1-Hijja 696/September

Sublet, Le voile du nom : essai sur le nom propre arabe. Paris : Presses Universitaires deFrance, 1991.10. An explanation for this choice was even given in the pioneering Singaporean journal thathe was associated with. See al-Imam, vol.1 no. 6, 18 December 1906. A century earlieranother Southeast Asian scholar - 'Abd al-Rahmn al-Batwi 'al-Masri' - had also modified is name in Cairo, based upon an even shorter visit there and his association withEgyptian shaykhs in the Hijaz. See Azyumardi Azra, The Origins of Islamic Reformism inSoutheast Asia : Networks of Malay-Indonesian and Middle Eastern (Ulam} in theSeventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, 2004, 1 18-19.11. Retrojected conceptions of racialized identity do not appear to have been the most prominent oncerns for those participating in the Muslim scholarly networks of the pre-modernIndian Ocean world. See, for example, R. Michael Feener, ' Palimbani/al-Jawi : The life of aMuslim scholar in the Eighteenth-century Indian Ocean Networks', in Ned Alpers and AllenF. Roberts (eds), Cultural Exchange and Transformation in the Indian Ocean World.(Forthcoming).


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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 1891297. However, al-Sharj's predecessor Ibn al-Mulaqqin (1323-1401) has ashort notice concerning a great jurist and saint of very similar name. This latter figure was called Ismcil b. Muhammad b. Ism'l b. cAl al-Hadram.However his death date is given as AH 676/7, i.e. 1278. 02) To complicatematters further, al-Sharj also provides a long account of a person we nowbelieve to have been the father of Abu 1-Fid'. This was Abu cAbd AllahMuhammad b. Ism'l b. cAli b. cAbd Allah b. Ahmad b. Maymn al-Hadram, who is also described as a great jurist and saint by al-Sharjthough no date is given for him. (13)The solution to this inconsistency was found by identifying al-Jw'sadept, al-Yfi', and what al-Sharj obliquely refers to as his 'history'. Thefigure in question was none other than cAbd Allah b. Ascad al-Yfic (1298-1367), about whom we shall have much more to say below, and his ' history 'proved to be the Mir't al-jinn wa Hbrat al-yaqznf ma(rifai ma yuctabirmin hawdith al-zamn (The Mirror of the gardens and advice to the wakefulegarding a knowledge of the events of the times). O4) Completed inMecca in, or soon after, 750 AH (1349/50), this is a chronicle of Muslim history from the coming of Islam until al-Yfici's own day, based on and enlarginghe histories of al-Tabari (839-923) and Ibn Khallikn (1211-82).In his account of AH 676, al-Yfi' commences by observing that the yearsaw the demise, toward the end of the month of Muharram (i.e. early July1277), of the reigning Mamluk ruler Sultan al-Malik al-Zhir. U5) This wasRukn al-Dn Baybars al-Bunduqdr (b . 1223), the former Kipchak slave-soldier who had defeated both the seventh crusade of Louis IX in 1250 and aMongol force at cAyn Jalt in 1260 before seizing the throne and rebuildingan 'Abbasid' dynasty centred on Cairo.After noting this event and the attendant upheavals in Egypt and thestruggle for the succession, al-Yfic turns to note an event of far greater personal concern :12. 'Umar b. cAl Abu Hafs 'Umar b. 'All Ibn al-Mulaqqin, al-Aqd al-mudhahhab fltabaqt hamalat al-madhhab. Beirut : Dr al-Kitb al-'Ilmiyya, 1997, 165-66.13. See al-Sharji, Tabaqt, 95-101. Certainly others have been confused by this pairing. Thelater compiler al-Nabhn even conflated their names and achievements to create oneIsm'l al-Hadram. See Ysuf b. Ism'l al-Nabhn, Jm karmt al-awliy', 2 vols.Cairo : Mustafa al-Bbi al-Halabi, 1906-1 1, II, 253.14. Full details of the Mir't are : Abu Muhammad 'Abd Allah b. As'ad b. 'Ali b.Sulaymn 'Aff al-Dn al-Yfi' al-Yaman al-Makk, Mir't al-jinn wa 'ibrat al-yaqzn, 4 vols. Hyderabad : Matba'at D'irat al-Ma'rif al-Nizmiyya, 1919-20, IV, 252.For al-Sharj's account of al-Yfi', see his Tabaqt al-khawss, 172-6. See also ' al-Yfi',Abu 'Abd Allah b. As'ad, Ab'l-Sa'da 'Aff al-Dn', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, NewEdition (Hereafter EI2), P.J. Bearman, et al (eds.). Leiden : Brill, 2001, XI : 236.15. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 175.


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190 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. LaffanThe aforementioned year seventy-six saw the passing of the Imam of Yemen and blessingof the age, the example to the two sects and shaykh of the two paths, the great jurist andfamous saint, possessor of dazzling miracles and manifest blessings, pious breaths, endowed with talents, boons, purity, solicitude and choice selection, Abu 1-Dhabih Ismcl,son of the noble man, the celebrated saint, memorizer of the Qur'n and student ofHadith, the Imam of his time and blessing to his epoch, Muhammad b. Ism'l known as'the Hadram'. He was the greatest of all jurists in knowledge, piety, abstention andmiracles. He busied himself with knowledge of jurisprudence with his aforementioned father and studied it thoroughly. He excelled in a knowledge of the [Shfi'i] madhhab andthe explanation of the book of al-Muhadhdhab [d . 1230/31]. He discoursed on jurisprudencend mysticism, [and compiled] various fatwas and other writings such as theMukhtasar sahh muslim and the Naf'is al-ar'is . . .

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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 191homeland of Ism'l al-Hadrami and now an administrative region in theeast of the modern Republic of Yemen - has been much remarked on in relation to significant developments in the later history of the archipelago, theport of Aden and the smaller Red Sea stations en route to the Hijaz have yetto receive the same kind of attention by modern historians. (21)Certainly this more westerly area has the potential of yielding new dataon the earlier period, as Yemen, and Aden in particular, had long been asignificant node in international spice trade networks linking theMediterranean and the Indian Ocean. It was once suggested by BernardLewis that the Red Sea trade was an upshot of a late tenth century effort bythe Shic Fatimid rulers of Egypt to divert as much of the Indian Ocean traffic s possible from their Sunn Abbasid rivals operating from the PersianGulf port of Siraf (and to thereby spread their Ism'ili propaganda further). (22)Following their displacement of the Fatimids from Cairo in 1169, the newAyyubid masters of Egypt and their Yemeni clients developed the infrastructuref the port of Aden. (23) Further, in the thirteenth century, we find documentation of a revitalized luxury trade between the Middle East, India, andChina. (24) There are also some indications of a new, more direct trade in thespices and aromatics of the Indonesian archipelago coming more firmly intothe hands of Muslims after several centuries of segmentary trade handled byJewish and Indian merchants of Aden and Mangalore. Certainly this commerce expanded over the centuries that followed, and its associated port dues21. For the state of the field on studies of the Hadrami diaspora in the Indian Ocean, seeUlrike Freitag and William Clarence-Smith (eds.), Hadhrami Traders, Scholars, andStatesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1750s-1960s. Leiden : Brill, 1997; Huub de Jonge and NicoKaptein (eds.), Transcending Borders : Arabs, Politics, Trade, and Islam in Southeast Asia.Leiden : KITLV Press, 2002 ; and Ulrike Freitag, Indian Ocean Migrants and StateFormation in Hadhramaut. Leiden : Brill, 2003.22. Bernard Lewis, 'The Fatimids and the Route to India', Revue de la Facult des SciencesEconomiques de l'Universit d'Istanbul, XI (1949-50). On the port of Siraf, which was usedby the Abbasids and which had served the Sasanians before them, see David Whitehouse andAndrew Williamson, ' Sasanian maritime trade', Iran [Journal of Persian Studies], 11(1973) : 29-4923. Much of what was known of Aden in this period derived from such texts as those of Ibnal-Mujwir (fl. 1228) and Abu Makhrama (1465-1540) after him, in addition to the voluminous researches of S.D. Goitein on the Geniza trove of Cairo, which contains a great manydocuments relating to Aden and the India trade. For a fascinating recent study of the Genizadocuments with special reference to the Aden-India trade before 1228, see Roxani EleniMargariti, ' Like the place of congregation on judgement day : Maritime trade and urban organization in medieval Aden (ca. 1083-1229)', Doctoral Dissertation submitted to theDepartment of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, June 2002.24. Michel Jacq-Hergoualc'h, The Malay Peninsula : Crossroads of the Maritime Silk Road(100 BC- 1300 AD), trans. Victoria Hobson. Leiden : Brill, 2002. 391-99, 478-83.


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1 92 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. Laffanbecame an important source of revenue for the succeeding Rasulid dynasty(1228-1454). (25)A whiff of Jwa in Aden

Laffan has recently argued that, when it first appeared in Arabic texts ofthe early part of the thirteenth century, the toponym Jwa represented an island world dominated by Java in distinction to a Malay world dominated bythe old harbours of east Sumatra, previously grouped under the rubric ofZbaj.C26) It is used in this way, for example, in the Arab sailing itinerariesthat were produced after the Southern Song dynasty began to reroute itslong-distance trade with the Middle East - and at a time when Java waspressing its claims to be regarded as a regional hegemon, or at least China'sprimary trading partner in the region. (27)Evidence of such a Java-China link appears to be made in the first reference to Java in any Arabic source, the Mu'jam al-buldn of the geographerYqt b. cAbd Allah al-Hamawi (1179-1229), who describes it as 'one ofthe lands of China ' rather than the usual practice of placing Southeast Asiantoponyms like Zbaj within India/28) Moreover it seems that by the thirteenth century references to Jwa were taking on recognizable valences inother forms of Arabic literature. A contemporary of Yqt, the chroniclerIbn al-Mujwir (ca. 1228), mentions Jwa in his Tartkh al-mustabsir, but ina tangential way while describing the effects of lightning on a tree near themosque of Mucdh b. Jabal in Yemen :Mariners seek direction to the region of Java [iqlim al-jwa] simply by means of the frequent flashes of lightning, since in the season of travel to Java [mttsim sifrat al-jwa]the rains are abundant, the sky completely overcast... and the seas very rough. ... Othershave remarked that many Arar trees grow in these parts and if the resin runs from the tree,the sea appears to travellers like the flashing of lightning.

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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 193It may, however, be possible to interpret this passage a different way,given that by that time Jwa also served as a collective noun for Southeast

Asians. One might thus see instead ' a region of Jwa people or yet conceive of a season in which they traveled the waves to Aden.Either way, in this short excerpt we can see two elements important tocontextualizing the life of Mascd al-Jw : burgeoning maritime connectionsetween Yemen and Southeast Asia, and an association of the latterregion with exotic aromatics. It is thus because of the relatively new importanceof a linkage of spices to Jwness in thirteenth century Aden, that wewould suggest that either Mas'd or his father could have been involveddirectly in a more avowedly Muslim-dominated Indian Ocean trade. It iseven plausible that both could well have journeyed there. For whereas thetrade may no longer have been in Jewish hands, there would still have beenthe same strong emphasis on the small-scale family ties that characterized' Islamic ' trade as compared with the professional guild-like structures attributed to what may have now been their Tamil rivals - assuming that theytoo were not also in the process of Islamizing their networks to link up witha Southeast Asian trade increasingly dominated by Sino-Arab Muslims. (3)Certainly significant developments in the local political and cultural histories of Island Southeast Asia were also occurring by the latter part of thethirteenth century, as is evidenced in the earliest reports of rulers of regionalport cities converting to Islam. It was also, as we have remarked above, atime marked by expanding Javanese dominance over Sumatra and othersignificant areas of the western half of the Indonesian archipelago. (31) But30. Suggestions of Tamil guilds active in Southeast Asia have long been made and there hasbeen an assumption that Muslim networks were similarly configured, or that perhaps onecould talk of Sufi guilds, even though the evidence for the Mediterranean points to a differentstructural basis. Compare, for example, the very differently focused discussions within Jacq-Hergoualc'h, The Malay Peninsula ; G.W.J. Drewes, ' New light on the coming of Islam toIndonesia?', Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) 124 (1968) : 433-459, andA.L. Udovitch, Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam. Princeton : Princeton UniversityPress, 1970. For now we prefer to keep an open mind on whether one can speak of networksof either form, either religious or merely corporate, and especially given that ships crewswere often multi-ethnic, as has been reiterated most powerfully in a recent study of Creteunder Venetian and then Ottoman rule. See Molly Greene, A Shared World : Christians andMuslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2000.31. The fourteenth-century Javanese poet Prapanca claimed that the Javanese had conqueredlarge swathes of Sumatra around 1275, a date that was accepted by Coeds. See MpuPrapanca, Desawarnana (Ngarakrtgama), Stuart Robson (d.). Leiden : KITLV Press,1995 ; and G. Coeds, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. Honolulu : East West CenterPress, 1968, 204. By contrast, C.C. Berg once argued that this could only have occurred afterSingasari had subdued neighboring Bali (in 1284) and the Sundanese of West Java (in 1289),with the expeditions into the Straits occurring just before Marco Polo visited the region. See,for example, C.C. Berg, 'De geschiedenis van pril Majapahit', Indonsie 4 (1950) : 481-520,and ' Kartanegara, de miskende Empire-builder', Orientatie 34, 1950. With thanks to UliKozok.


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194 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. Laffanwhereas this did not necessarily entail that the Javanese regarded theirSumatran vassals as a part of 'Java', or yet that the peoples of its ports accepted this designation, from the writings of Yqt and Ibn al-Mujwir itdoes appear that just such a politically-tinted perception may have been carried away by outsiders. Hence, when Marco Polo described the region in1292, he remarked that the kingdoms of Sumatra constituted Java Minora,including the port of Ferlec (Perlak), which he claimed had been recentlywon over to Islam by the large numbers of traders who frequented theplace. (32)Ibn Battta (1304-77) also claimed to have visited the area sometimearound 1345, and in his literary itinerary this North African writer referred toall the lands below the Malay Peninsula as ' Jwa ' (33) However it must berecognized that this report originates only after his supposed return fromChina, which at that time recognized exclusive Javanese suzerainty in the region. Prior to this, or perhaps simply in the accounts that Ibn Battta drewon earlier in his text, Sumatra is referred to in other ways. These includesuch ascriptions as 'the island of the Jwa people', as the famous source ofthe incense benzoin (lubn jw) and aromatic aloes wood (ttd jwi), and asthe locus of the entrept state of Samudra where a Muslim king ruled underthe title al-Malik al-Zhir. (34)The short section of Ibn Battta' s travelogue describing conditions atSamudra is often cited by historians of Southeast Asia. However other passages scattered across his larger text can also provide important informationon the context for our tabaqt entry on al-Jw. For example, thisfourteenth-century observer calls particular attention to Aden's importancein trade connections between the Arabian Peninsula and India, and describesIndian ports such as Calicut on the Malabar Coast as centers where the peoples of Yemen, Jwa, China, and others congregated. (35) Moreover he has32. A.C. Moule and Paul Pelliot (eds.) Marco Polo - The Description of the World. London :George Routledge & Sons Limited, 1938, 1 : 371.33. For an edited version of Gibb's translations that narrowly renders Jwa purely as a reference to Java, see H.A.R. Gibb and C.F. Beckingham (trans, and annot.), The Travels of IbnBattta A.D. 1 325- 1354, 4 vols. London : Hakluyt Society, 1994, IV, 874-87.34. This name, which appears on a fourteenth-century gravestone discovered at Pasai, wasused on the coinage of most of his successors until the fifteenth century, and points to theways in which Southeast Asian Muslims were at one point well aware of developments in theArab Middle East but over time assimilated the forms of Mamluk Egypt as a general form ofIslamic symbolry. On the coinage struck with the regnal title al-Malik al-Zhir, see T.Ibrahim Alfian, Mata Vang Emas Kerajaan-Kerajaan di Aceh, Seri Penerbitan MuseumNegeri Aceh, nomor 16 , 1986-87. With thanks to Geoff Wade, personal communication, 2May 2005.35. Ibn Battta, Rihlat Ibn Battta al-musammt tuhfat al-nuzzr f ghar'ib al-amsr,Tall Harb (d.). Beirut : Dr ai-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya, 1987, 267 &572.


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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 195something even more specific to offer with reference to the scholarly circlesin which Mascd al-Jw had circulated. In the passages describing his visitto Mecca ca. 1325, Ibn Battta provides a sketch of one of the foremostscholars resident there at the time, describing him as being devoted in prayerday and night. As Ibn Battta depicts him, this individual would often ascend to the roof of the Muzaffariyya madrasa in the evenings to sit and facethe Kacba. Then he would retire to a small room at its top, from which hewould emerge periodically during the night to renew his ritual ablutions ; allto the distress of his young wife who endured her husband's extreme pietyfor years until they separated. (36> This pious insomniac was none other thancAbd Allah b. Ascad al-Yafi(i, the grateful recipient of a Sufi robe from thehand of al-Jw, and author of the Mir}t al-jinn quoted in al-Sharj'sTabaqt al-khaivss.By his own account in the Mir1 at, the Aden-born al-Yfici briefly tells usthat he made his first pilgrimage to Mecca in 1312, and that he returned thereagain in 1315 to continue his studies before marrying into the elite (and apparently frustrated) circles of Mecca and Medina. (37) This would also seemto us to have been around the time during which the young al-Yfic mayhave met his teacher, al-Jw. According to al-Sharj, who claims to havequoted another passage on his life, al-Yfi' returned to Yemen on a quest todraw blessings from the ten greatest Sufis of his homeland. In these passages, the catalyst for this occurred at the gates of Medina, where he had adream in which he met the Prophet who instructed him to seek out these tenparagons before entering the city to visit his tomb. (38)Of these saints, five were alive and five dead. The living were, respectively, 'Ali al-Tawsh (d . 1347/8), preceptor of Hilla, Mansr b. Ja'dr, themaster of Hard, (39) Muhammad b. cAbd Allah al-Mu'adhdhan, master ofMansura 'the attacked' (al-mahjam),(4) Faqh 'Urnar b. cAl al-Zayla% the36. Ibn Battta, Rihlat Ibn Battta, 111.37. al-Yfi'i, Mir't al-jinn, IV, 252. For al-Sharj's account of al-Yfic, see Tabaqt al-khawss, 172-6.38. In the dream, Muhammad announces that ' in this world I am your prophet, in the nextyour intercessor, and in the garden your companion. Know that in Yemen there are ten souls,and [that] he who has visited them has visited me, and he who has shunned them has shunnedme'. al-Sharj, Tabaqt al-khawss, 173-4.39. Located in a valley to the northwest of Hajja, a large city some 127 km northwest ofSan'a, Hard was noted for its scholarly families and Himyarite ruins. See al-Maqhafi,Mu'jam al-mudun, 110, 116.40. One of the villages of Salw, al-Mansra lies in the northwest part of a region to thesouth of Ta'izz called al-Hujarriya (formerly known as al-Macafiriyya). It was establishedby Tughtakin, the brother of Saladin (Salh al-Din al-Ayyb, 1138-93), and thirdAyyubid governor of Yemen (r. 1 184-97). Mansra was later destroyed and abandoned for atime, explaining the specification of al-mahjam in al-Sharj's text. See al-Maqhaf, Mu(jamal-mudun, 413. See also pp. 109 & 394.


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196 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. Laffanmaster of Salma,(41) and Muhammad b. 'Umar al-Nahr, the master ofBur'. (42) The worthy dead, meanwhile, were Abu 1-Ghayth b. Jumayl (d.1253), Faqh Ism'l al-Hadram (d. 1277), Faqh Ahmad b. Ms b.cUjayl (d. 1291/92), (43) Shaykh Muhammad b. Ab Bakr al-Hakami (d.1220), and Faqh Muhammad b. Husayn al-Bajal. On his return, havingvisited and communicated with all ten, al-Yfic has a further dream in whichhe is welcomed by the Prophet, who furthermore responds to al-Yfic'squery concerning Abu 1-Ghayth b. Jumayl in particular as their primus interpares. (44)

We have already seen the name of the second of the dead saints, Ismclal-Hadram, given in connection with Mas'd al-Jw in the quote of al-Sharji. There is a strong chance too that al-Jw's connection to 'Uwajaimputed in that same text might entail a link to the last of the living saints ofYfT's youth, Muhammad b. Husayn al-Bajal. As we shall see below thereare other names in the list of greats to whom al-Jw might be connected bymore unusual, not to say ' Uwaysi means. (45)41. A village endowed with a well-known madrasa lying in the Nakhla Valley east of Hays,itself some 35 km south of Zabid. See al-Maqhafi, quoting al-Hajar, Mu'jam al-mudun,209.42. Primarily a designation for a significant peak (2000 m) located 60 km east of al-Huday-da, Burc is now a term applied to a famous coffee-producing region with a population estimated at nearly 35 000 in 1985. See al-Maqhafi, Mu'jam al-mudun, 50.43. Al-Yfic provides his biography and gives his death date as AH 696. See Mir't al-jinn, IV, 209 ff .44. 'And He said : "Did you visit the ten?" So I said : "Yes, but you do not praise Abu 1-Ghayth [above them]". And he smiled and said : "Tomorrow Abu 1-Ghayth shall be withoutequal". So I said : "Do you grant me permission to enter?" And He said : "Enter, for you areone of the believers'". Al-Snarji, Tabaqt al-khawss, 174. Al-Sharji, concludes his 'quotation ' from al-Yfi' by remarking the biographies of each of the ten are to be found in hisalmanac. Nonetheless, given our experiences with al-SharjI, we would advise caution withthe death-dates he gives for al-Hakami which, lacking corroboration by al-Yafici, we haveused. For a biography of Abu 1-Ghayth, in which al-Yfic stresses his special relationshipwith cAbd al-Qdir al-Jln, see Mir't al-jinn, IV, 121-27.45. Uwaysi divines have been described by Julian Baldick as ' a class of mystics who lookfor instruction from the spirit of a dead or physically absent person'. Such a description certainly seems to fit the circles described by al-Yafici. Baldick notes that Uwaysi traditioncame to play an increasingly important role in Naqshbandi Sufism from the fourteenth century, a milieu not too distant from that discussed here (J. Baldick, 'Uwaysiyya', EI2 1998,X : 958). Indeed, the name used to refer to these traditions is derived from that of Uways al-Qarani, a Yemeni mystic traditionally believed to have had a special relationship with theprophet Muhammad, even though the tw o men never met. Discussions of their connectionbegan around interpretations of a tradition stating, 'The breath of the Merciful (nafas al-rah m an) comes to me from Yemen'. Such associations between sweet Sufi breezes andSouthern Arabia thus became a well-established trope in Muslim literatures that was deftlymanipulated in various ways over the centuries. For example, an early nineteenth-centurytabaqt of Yemeni Sufis - which happens to contain an entry on a later scholar bearing theal-Jw nisba - was given the allusive title al-Nafas al-Yamn.


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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 197After completing his Yemeni quest, al-Yfic returned to Mecca and begana lifetime of writing. His rise as a scholar earned him notice among the

Shfi' jurists whose lives are recorded in the Tabaqt of al-Subki (1322-77). (46) However, since his death, al-Yfci has become most widely knownfor his compilations of biographical notices and anecdotes, not only of scholarsn the Islamic religious sciences (such as his al-Shsh al-muclim), butmost especially of Sufi shaykhs, such as the Rawd al-rayhln (The garden ofaromatic herbs). (47)As we have seen, Ibn Battta described al-Yfic as a pious man given toperiods of withdrawal for solitary prayer and meditation. It may well havebeen this style of Sufism that he had embraced under the tutelage of Mascdal-Jw. Somewhat surprisingly though there is no mention of al-Jw in hisRawd al-rayhn. Rather, as the entry in the Tabaqt al-khawss tells us,reference to al-Jw comes in his history, and very much by way of digression. ndeed, al-Yfic at one point celebrates al-Jw's memory within theMir' at in a long poem celebrating all the Sufi greats he had known or towhom he was connected, and with a flourish that surely connects him to contemporary Arab imaginations of Southeast Asia :

Of excellent qualities, how many have been entrusted ?My sources being preceptor after preceptorTheir fragrant scents were of the virtues I was grantedBut how many were empty souls, deniers of the manifest form ?Still in the Jw aloes, the soothing freshness I set upon the brazierThere is the Jw of these men, Mas'ud, of seasoned virtue (48)The connection of sweet fragrances to piety is an old trope in religious literature of the Middle East. As noted above, one of al-Yfic's best-knownworks is a hagiographical collation entitled ' the garden of the fragrantherbs'. However his use of the trope in the verses from the Mir* t al-jinnquoted above is particularly apt for the evocative way that it resonates withcontemporary Arabic associations to the Jw nisba of his master : Mas'dal-Jwi was a fragrance most precious to him, and as priceless as the finestaloes (cd) available from distant Jwa.

46. Tj al-Din Abi Nasr cAbd al-Wahhab b. 'All b. cAbd al-Kfi, (MahmdMuhammad al-Tanh and cAbd al-Fatth Muhammad al-Hulw [eds.]), Tabaqt al-shfiyya al-kubra, 10 vols. Cairo : al-Bb al-Halabi, 1964-76,'X, 33.47. The latter text is listed by Brockelmann (Geschichte II, 176) as the Ashraf al-tn afkhir orelse is confused by him with the Asn l-mafkhir [fi manqb al-shaykh (Abd al-Qdir],in part using information from a Leiden manuscript (actually identifiable under the old catalogue number for the Shsh al-mu'lim, now listed as L. Or. 322 [2]).48. wa flfdil kam minfad'il awda'at * wa surrt min murshid ba'da murshid warlhnunum rhnuh samahat - wa kam * nafs ma(a al-tajwf wal-zhir al-raddi, wafi cdih al-jwi alladhi al-rutub jamartu * bi jwhim mas'd fadl mu'awwid. Mir'tal-jinn, IV, 345.


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198 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. LaffanAl-Jw in the Yemeni Networks

In his chronicle's account of the year 748 AH (1347/8), al-Yfic commences by noting the passing, at some unspecified time, of two Yemenishaykhs - one of whom was Jaml al-Dn al-Dhuhaybi, a one-time studentof 'Urnar b. al-Saffr. (49) However, his recollection of an earlier dream hehad had in Mecca of the passing of al-Saffr brought to mind for al-Yficstories not only of these two shaykhs, but also of his earlier teacher Mas'udal-Jw.As we shall see, al-Jw appears - here for the very first time in theMir}t - by way of the sort of ' digression noted by al-Sharji. In this case itis within an account of a communication from beyond the grave emanatingfrom one of the most famous jurists of the thirteenth century, Muhy al-Dnal-Nawaw (also d. 1277-8), a scholar whose works are still primary sourcesin Shfi' law from Lower Egypt and the Swahili Coast to Southeast Asia.The text reports that present at al-Yfi'i's side during this remarkable religious experience was his master, al-Jw whom he links in turn to a mysteriousaster and a certain Hadrami.

As al-Yfici tells it :I have already recounted in the biography of Shaykh Muhy al-Dn al-Nawaw that hetoo called to me in a dream, saying : ' God has appointed you and elevated you in excellence and fixed in you the firm word on this earthly life and the hereafter'. (5) - O Godmay You bring that closer to me and the remainder of my friends and loved ones ! Amen.- And he of true breaths and unprecedented miracles, exalted talents and lofty dignitieswas sitting [with me] at that time. [This was] our praiseworthy shaykh, the famous saintMas'd al-Jw, one of the eminent colleagues of the shaykh and jurist of renownedvirtues and great miracles, the master of Mawza(, who was mentioned previously in thebiography of the jurist and imm of mighty miracles, the loftily appointed, Muhammadb. Ism'il al-Hadram. (51>While this passage refers to Muhammad b. Ismcl al-Hadram ratherthan Ism'l b. Muhammad, there is no biography of the former to be foundelsewhere in the Mir}at. Meanwhile, in that text's biography of Ism'l b.Muhammad he is described as having connections to cAbd Allah b. Ab

Bakr al-Khatb al-Yaman. This latter figure is identified as the deceasedlord of Mawza', a crossroads town 80 km southwest of Tacizz that oncelinked Red Sea ports to the hinterland cities of the Tihma, and that waslong famous for its many Sufis. (52) This same 'Abd Allah b. Abi Bakr al-49. Mir'at al-jinn, IV, 308.50. This passage occurs at the end of al-Nawaw's biography, which appears for the yearAH 676, and immediately after the notice on Ism'il al-Hadram : Mir'at al-jinn, IV, 182-86.51. Mir'at al-jinn, IV, 309.52. Mir'at al-jinn, IV, 177. On Mawza', see al-Maqhaf, Mu'jam al-mudun, 417.


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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 199Khatib is furthermore mentioned in an appendix listing the shaykhs ofYemen geographically, at which point al-Yfici observes in a fragment of alonger poem that his sanctity was imbibed by none other than ' the shaykh ofour shaykhs, Mascd al-Jw'.(53)To return, however, to al-Yfic's dream vision of al-Nawaw, the passagethat immediately follows it continues to expand upon the connections between al-Hadrami and al-Jw :

The afore-mentioned Shaykh Mas'd [al-Jw], he [i.e. al-Hadrami] and Shaykh cUmarb. al-Saffr drew great benefit and generous gains from the afore-mentioned [cAbdAllah] Ibn [Abi Bakr] al-Khatib. Shaykh Mas'd was the first to dress me in the khirqa,coming to me while I was meditating in isolation somewhere. And he [al-Jw] said tome : 'A sign befell me this night that I was to dress you in the khirqa', and he put it uponme. And he [al-Jwi] used to meet with our shaykh Jaml al-Dn [al-Dhuhayb], whomI mentioned. And we would gather with some of their friends at blessed times in Adenand on the [nearby] coast at some hours, [here] I mean the coast of Duras . . . which liesbehind the coast of Huqqt. (54)Whereas al-Jw obviously spent some of his youth at the feet of thevenerable Ibn al-Khatb in Mawza(, much as Ism'l al-Hadrami had also

done, by the time that these events were occurring, al-Jw was clearly oneof several leading figures in the Sufi gatherings held on the coast nearHuqqt, which is to be identified as modern Holkat Bay in the immediatesouthern vicinity of Aden's outer harbour. (55)What all this now allows us to understand then is that al-Jw, alreadydistinguished in al-Yfi''s eyes as an associate of the great Ismcl b.Muhammad al-Hadrami and Jaml al-Dn al-Dhuhayb, was the shaykh

who bestowed upon al-YfV the khirqa, a symbolic cloak signifying initiation nto a Sufi order. (56) While not explicitly stated here, it appears that theorder in question was that of the Qdiriyya, which al-Yfic declares wastransmitted through (past) shaykhs of Yemen, who had either obtained it directly from the eponymous 'founder' cAbd al-Qdir al-Jln (a.k.a. al-Jayln or al-Kayln, 1077-1 166) or by way of emissaries he had dispatchedto their country. (57)53. Mir' at al-jinn, IV, 356-57.54. Mir1 at al-jinn, IV, 309.55. Margariti, 'Like the place of congregation', 106. Somewhat complicating matters, al-Maqhafi identifies al-Durs as being in the vicinity of Ibb, in the highlands, rather than as avillage within the crater of Aden Mu'jam al-mudun, 259.56. We should also remember that his having had the same teacher as Ism'l al-Hadramdoes not imply that they were of a similar age. Traditional Islamic education was not organized by age-groups, and given that he died in the 1270s after a long career, we can assumethat he was certainly older than al-Jw.57. Mir't al-jinn, III, 355. This is not to say that he was solely concerned with the Qdirorder, as is attested, for example, by his detailing of the khirqa?, and the attendant silsilas ofNajm al-Dn al-Kubr (d. 1221) : Mir't al-jinn, IV, 40-41.


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200 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. LaffanAl-Yfic's text goes on to provide details of the education of al-Jw'sSufi colleague Jaml al-Din al-Dhuhaybi. 58) After that, al-Yfic pauses to

provide further information about himself, his shifts between Mecca andMedina, and his encounters with his great teachers, in a mixture of plain andrhymed prose. (59) He commences by announcing the death (also in AH748/1347/48 CE) of another Sufi master whom he regarded as especiallyinfluential for him, namely Abu 1-Hasan Nr al-Dn cAli b. cAbd Allah al-Yaman al-Tawsh from the town of Hill whose name we have alreadymet in al-Yfic's dream of the ten paragons of Yemen. (6)Al-Yfic writes that while he was a student at Mecca al-Tawsh made apilgrimage, and that in the Holy City this shaykh was popularly regarded as'one of the pious' (ram al-slihin). Al-Yfic himself became his disciple,

and as he drew closer to al-Tawsh he was inspired to perform his first tourof Yemen in order to acquaint himself with the special mystical knowledgehe so obviously lacked :Then I frequented his home where he no longer spoke of the exercises but instead of thecommand (al-amr) and signs (ishrt), all of which I had no knowledge. Hence I mademy first journeying to Yemen where I was met on the coasts by a great many of his mendicants and associates.

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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 201to al-Yfic's receipt of the khirqa from al-Jw that helps to explain al-Jw'splacement within the long poem in relation to al-Tawsh.

As for what I mentioned of donning the khirqa in the poem on being wrapped in pride(qasldat iktisa' al-fakhr), this was because he [al-Jw] was instructed to do so while ina state of wakefulness, a state that occurred to him when he was at the seashore. And thisis what I relate in the poem :He [al-Jw] dressed me in the khirqa at the order of his lord.And I donned it. The pride of it lay in his being awake'64'Certainly al-Yfi' wrapped himself proudly in the lineage of all hismasters, even if he appeared, at times, to compare some of them less than f

avorably to al-Jw, the teacher who had first inducted him. As he continues :I have been dressed by them, they being other people, some also following a sign(ishra). Perhaps this was after they had received a sign awake or asleep. Still, I neverwitnessed in any of these others the goodness of the way of the tarlqa that I saw in theaforementioned shaykh - [that being] the fusion between the outer law (sharfa) and innerreality (haqqa), good fortune and effort, great solicitude and facility with religious practice (bda), meticulous following of Sunna and abstention, excess in effacement andculture and humility, great inner knowledge and disclosure, good qualities andings (65)While it is tempting to follow al-Yafic at length on his spiritual paththrough the Yemen - one that he connects ever more tightly over the succeeding pages to the ten paragons as representatives of Qdir Sufism - weshould return to the bestower of his first khirqa, al-Jw. It was he whoapparently inducted al-Yfi( into the order on the instructions of his ownmaster, al-Tawsh.The final clear mention of al-Jw that we have found in the Mir't is es

pecially significant, where al-Jw's name appears third in the list of Yfic's36 great shaykhs of Yemen - behind Shaykh Jawhar and his predecessorAbu Hamrn. (66)Among [the shaykhs of Yemen] is our shaykh and our blessing, the great shaykh Mascdal-Jw. He was the first to dress me in the khirqa following a sign that befell him. He isamong those to have met the shaykh of his age, the jurist and imm Ism'l b.Muhammad al-Hadram. We accompanied him to the tomb of one/some of the piousmasters, and I understood from him that [the saint] spoke to him from his tomb. (67>

64. walbisn (an amr mawlahi khirqa * kasaytu bih fakhr al-amr yaqza. Mir'at al-jinn, IV, 326-7. Cf. p. 315 where this first appears.65. Mir3at al-jinn, IV, 327.66. Al-Yfi' later adds an anecdote concerning the accession of Jawhar, a former slave, tothe Shaykhdom of Yemen and his investiture with the khirqa after the prophecy of AbuHamrn was fulfilled. See Mir't al-jinn, IV, 347.67. Mir3at al-jinn, IV, 348.


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202 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. LaffanAl-Jw's repeatedly reported ability to communicate with the dead appears to have been particularly esteemed by al-Yfc. During al-Yfic's

quest for the living and dead Sufi masters of Yemen, he was able to contactthe latter through the intercession of al-Tawsh. We might also wonder ifhelp was provided by al-Jw, whom we have suggested may have served asal-Tawsh's coastal representative at Duras.al-Yfi'i and the Qdir connection with an Islamizing Southeast Asia

To summarize here : we have seen above that al-Yfic claims in hishistory to have experienced important communications from beyond thegrave, including those specific instances involving al-Nawaw and Ibn al-Saffar,(68) as well as the Prophet, Abu 1-Ghayth and Ism'il al-Hadrami. (69)We have furthermore shown that he regarded al-Jw, whom he links poetically to the aromatics of Southeast Asia, as being a fellow recipient of suchcommunications, if not merely present when they occured.Dream visions have certainly been important elements in many chaptersof the history of Sufism, including those relevant to the ongoing developmentf Islamic religious thought in Southeast Asia. For example, a majorinfluence on Jw scholars in Arabia during the seventeenth century wasIbrahim al-Krn (d. 1690), who is reported to have met with the greatHanbali mystic of Baghdad, cAbd al-Qdir al-Jln in a dream just beforehe commenced his studies of the teachings of Ibn cArabi (d. 1240). (7)However, well before the name of al-Krn would be esteemed inSoutheast Asia, al-Yfic must have been known to at least some people fromthe region of Jwa. The Sufi network within which al-Jw sat was tightlyinterconnected both within Yemen and beyond to the Holy Cities andBaghdad. Al-Yfic clearly points out that the many shaykhs of Yemen withwhom he had sat traced their learning to a select group of culam} : Abu l-Ghayth, Muhammad b. Abi Bakr al-Hakami, ' the two Hadramis ' (the jurist Ism'l and Abu cIbd), and Muhammad b. cUmar al-Nahri.(71) Fourof these five were already identified in al-Yfici's Medinese dream, and ofthese only al-Nahr had been one of the living. At another point al-Yfi{iwaxes poetically about the spiritual lineage linking the great shaykhs of theYemen and their right to dispense the khirqa being based in the great majorityf cases on a relationship to cAbd al-Qdir al-Jln. (72)68. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 186.69. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 126.70. Azyumardi Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism, 19 .71. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 327.72. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 328. Here he says that a majority of the shaykhs of Yemen (ghlib


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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 203So pivotal was al-Yfic in the consolidation of these lines of Sufi authorityn Yemen that Trimingham identified the emergence of a distinct

' Yafi'iyya ' branch of the Qdiriyya there. (73) More potentially relevant tothe historical development of Islam in Southeast Asia, al-Yi( was a self-ascribedQdir affiliated with the Shfi'i - rather than the Hanbali - school ofMuslim jurisprudence (madhhab) who was also sympathetic to the teachingsof Ibn cArabL (74) Alongside a peculiar preoccupation with the transmissionof Ibn cArabi's mysticism, modern studies of Islam in Southeast Asia havelong remarked on the importance of the figure of cAbd al-Qdir al-Jlni inthe Sufi lineages and popular religious practices of the region. Indeed cAbdal-Qdir remains an important figure for many Indonesian Muslims to thisday. (75)One major source on al-Jln that has been adapted into works in severalSoutheast Asian languages is one of al-Yfic's other writings, the Khulsatal-mafkhir.W In an early study of this text's adaptations into the Muslimshuykh al-yaman) drew their rights to dispense the khirqa on a relationship with cAbd al-Qdir. Compare the earlier statement (at III, 355), where he quotes his own Khulsat al-mafkhir and the Nashr al-mahsin to the effect that 'the general body of the shaykhs ofemen' {jumhr shuykh al-yaman) had received the rights to his khirqa either directly orby way of messengers. This mention comes in the context of a limited biography of 'Abd al-Qdir - whom Ibn Khallikn had not deemed worthy of mention in his own chronicle. SeeMir't al-jinn, III, 347-66. For an overview of the life of cAbd al-Qdir al-Jln and thedevelopment of his eponymous order, see J.S. Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam.London : Oxford University Press, 1971, 40-44, and Alexander Knysh, Islamic Mysticism : AShort History. Leiden : Brill, 2000, 179-92. In any case, the data presented in this essay necessitates a re-examination of accounts of the spread of the order to Southeast Asia (i.e.Knysh, 187-88), if not as an order per se.73. Trimingham, Sufi Orders in Islam, 273. This was despite his having claimed that therewas no Qdir order as such until the early fifteenth century, with major developments occurring thereafter when it was propagated in India by Muhammad Ghawth (d. 1517) (Ibid.,43-44). Trimingham argues that the much hyped cAbd al-Qdir never even gave out thekhirqa, and was more properly regarded in his own lifetime as a Hanbali preacher and modelof rectitude.74. Alexander D. Knysh, Ibn (Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition : The Making of aPolemical Image in Medieval Islam. Albany : SUNY, 1999, 1 18-20.75. Drewes and Poerbatjaraka noted that he later came to be seen as the special protector ofJwa, and that even into the early twentieth century variants of Yfi''s anecdotes about 'Abdal-Qdir Jln were still being translated, including one text from Persian into Sundanese.See G.W.J. Drewes and R. Poerbatjaraka, De Mirakelen van Abdoelkadir Djaelani. Bandung :Nix and Co., 1938, 12 & 45. This Sundanese rendition has recently been translated intoEnglish by Julian Millie who is currently researching the continuing ritual uses of such texts inJava. See : Julian Millie, Celebration of the Desires. Queenscliff (Victoria) : Joseph Helmi,2003 ; and Julian Millie and Syihabuddin, ' Addendum to Drewes ; the Burda of al-Bsr andthe Miracles of Abdulqadir al-Jaelani in West Java', BKI, 161-1 (2005) : 98-126.76. i.e. Khulsat al-mafkhir ft ikhtisr manqib al-shaykh (Abd al-Qdir wa jam'amimman cazzamahu min al-shuykh al-akbir a.k.a. 'Aj'ib al-yt wal-barnln wairdf ghar'ib rawd al-rayhn. As Voorhoeve correctly observes, this is intended as an ad-


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204 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. Laffanliteratures of the archipelago, G.W.J. Drewes and R. Poerbatjaraka focusedmost intensely on the Javanese Hikayat Abdulkadir Jaylani, which they considered to be the ' most important ' link in bridging Southeast Asian devotionto cAbd al-Qdir with analogous traditions elsewhere in th e Muslimworld. (7?) Their study then presents summaries of the contents and reflections on the connections between a family of related texts, including theJavanese and Sundanese Hikayat Seh and Wawacan Seh, as well as Malay recensions. However, while they viewed the Hikayat Abdulkadir Jaylani asessentially a 'translation' of al-Yfic's Khulsat al-mafkhir, Voorhoevemore carefully argued that the Javanese text is not simply a vernacular translation, but rather a selective adaptation of some of its elements. (78)In framing their discussions, Drewes and Poerbatjaraka cast theirdescriptions of these texts within a model of Islamization that highlights theimportance of India and developments in South Asian Sufism to subsequentchanges in the Indonesian archipelago. While there is no denying the historicalelevance of India (or indeed Indians) in the transmission of Islam toSoutheast Asia, this should not prevent us from also appreciating the potentialmportance of other, more direct, connections between Southeast Asiaand the Arab-speaking lands of Islam, such as those through Aden hinted atin the Arabic texts mentioning Mas'd al-Jw. After all, the Yemen appearsto have been one of the earliest areas to which the Qdiriyya order spread,with one of the shaykh's younger contemporaries, cAli b. al-Haddd allegedly initiating followers of the way in Yemen even during cAbd al-Qdir's lifetime. (79)junct to the Rawd al-rayhn. See also Trimingham, Sufi Orders, 40-41, n. 8; and P.Voorhoeve, 'Het origineel van de Hikajat Abdulkadir Djelani', Tijdschrift voor lndischeTaal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (TBG) 11 (1949), 1 10-24. As Brockelmann (Geschichte II, 176)notes, based on manuscripts in Berlin (Berl. 8804) and London (Ind. Off. 708), the Khulsatal-mafkhir consists of '200 erbauliche Geschichten von cAq al-Glni un d ca. 40 andernvon ihm hochgehaltenen Sufis'. In the course of the Aceh War several works linked to al-Yfi' by authorship, including the Rawd al-rayhn, or simply including references to himas a leading authority, were subsumed within the former collection of the Batavia Society ofArts and Sciences. See : P.S. van Ronkel, Supplement to the Catalogue of ArabicManuscripts Preserved in the Museum of the Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences. Bataviaand The Hague, Albrecht and Co. and M. Nijhoff, 1913, nos. 272, 556, 557 & 849 (i and iii).77. Drewes and Poerbatjaraka, Mirakelen, p. 31. Another possible stimulus to produce anemphasis on Java may well have been that the publication was made with the financial support of both the Mangkunegaran and Pakualaman houses of Surakarta and Yogyakarta.78. Voorhoeve, ' Het origineel van de Hikajat Abdulkadir Djelani ', 1 10-1 1. A Malay versionpublished in the Minangkabau region also proves to be a selective picking and choosing ofstories, which are presented in a new order. See Muhammad Harith ibn al-marhum MuzafarBanten, Khulsat al-nazifa = Khulsat al-mafakhir pada menyatakan karamat sidi Abd al-Qadir. Fort De Kock : al-Matba'a al-Islamiyya, 1923.79. 'Kdiriyya , 72, IV, 381a. Again, this conflicts with Trimingham's assertions as to thenature of cAbd al-Qadir's teachings, though there was little to stop others formulating a system around the person of their pious idol.


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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 205Furthermore, in keeping with their focus on Java, the primary pointthrough which Drewes and Poerbatjaraka view the reception of these texts in

Southeast Asia is that of Banten in the seventeenth century when this prosperous port developed into a powerful sultanate. One sultan even adopted theroyal title that appears to pay tribute to both al-Jln and al-Yfi' : Abu'l-Mafakhir Mahmud Abd al-Qadir (r. 1624-51). Still, Drewes andPoerbatjaraka do note other paths of transmission for Qdir elements inSoutheast Asia, such as the poetry of Hamzah Fansuri, which wasappreciated in many parts of Java and Sumatra in the early modern period. (80) Beyond this, other instances of Qdir elements in Southeast AsianMuslim texts abound, including the evocation of the name of cAbd al-Qdirin the opening phrases of the edicts (sarakarta) issued by Acehnese sultans. (8 1)Given the prevalence of Qdir elements in early Southeast Asian Islamictexts, and particularly in light of the revised dating for Hamzah Fansuri andour own suggestions about the early Aden-Jwa linkage, further investigationsf the place of Yemen in the first stages of Islamization at the westernend of the archipelago appear to be a potentially fruitful area for future research. One particular avenue that deserves investigation would be a criticalre-examination of Southeast Asian conversion narratives with an eyecomparing them to Arabic Sufi texts of the period. In terms of the work ofal-Yfi', there is one particularly noteworthy parallel in the stories of individuals miraculously attaining fluency in Arabic and/or knowledge ofIslamic belief and practice. One of the sketches from the Khulsat al-mafkhir has the Persian-speaking cAbd al-Qdir transformed into aneloquent preacher in Arabic after a mystical encounter with the Prophet andcAli, who had both spat into his mouth. (82) Similarly there is the HikayatRaja-Raja Pasai, which has the putative first Muslim ruler of the Sumatranport, Merah Silu, meeting the Prophet in a dream, who then spits in hismouth to make him able to recite the Qur'n upon waking. (83)While the aforementioned Malay text survives today only in nineteenth-century manuscripts, it purports to tell of events occurring around the turn of80. Since the publication of Drewes and Poerbatjaraka' s study, these texts have become moreeasily accessible in the published edition of Drewes and L.F. Brakel (op. cit.). The last linesof the first poem in this edition make the Qdiri lineage of Hamzah' s Sufism clear :Beroleh khilfat ilmu yang 'li/daripada lAbd al-Qdir Jln (p. 44).81. See, for example, C. Snouck Hurgronje, The Achehnese (trans. A.W.S. O' Sullivan).Leiden : Brill, 1906,1: 130.82. See Drewes and Poerbatjaraka, Mirakelen, p. 24; Millie, Celebration, p. 51.83. Russell Jones (d.), Hikayat Raja Pasai. Shah Alam (Selangor) : Penerbit Fajar BaktiSDN. BHD., 1987, 12-13 ; & A.H. Hill (d.), 'Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai : a revised romanisedversion of Raffles MS 67, together with an English translation', Journal of the MalayanBranch of the Royal Asiatic Society 33-2 (1961) : 56-7.


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206 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. Laffanthe fourteenth century and thus roughly contemporary with the lifetimes ofal-Yfic and Mas'd al-Jw. Is it really pure coincidence that Merah Silu'sconversion is adjudged sound by a certain Shaykh Ismcl ? Either way, thisArab visitor is remembered in the Malay texts as an emissary from the Sharifof Mecca, while in the imaginary of the Hadram diaspora he is assumed tohave been someone who would have borne their nisba al-Hadrami. In anycase, by his death, the ruler of Pasai had affirmed his Islam with the title ofSultan al-Malik al-Salih (d. 1297), most likely in emulation of the royalnomenclature of the Mamluk dynasty, his distant primary customer.To date a considerable body of work has been produced tracing doctrinalaffiliations between Islamic mystical texts from Southeast Asia and those ofthe Middle East and South Asia. (84> However, it would appear thatredirecting attention from cosmological and theological abstractions towardnarrative tropes of Arabic (or Persian or Tamil) hagiographie texts with aneye to comparing them to common elements in local conversion narrativesfrom Muslim societies of the Indonesian archipelago could prove to be amore productive area in which to explore the relevance of medieval Sufi traditions to the early Islamization of the archipelago.Conclusions and Questions

We began this essay with the observation that what we have found is notnew, but simply overlooked. In fact, printed editions of Sufi hagiographicaltexts mentioning Mas'd al-Jwi remain in circulation in Southeast Asiatoday. One striking example of this can be found in the Jm karmt al-awliy* compiled by Ysuf b. Ism'l al-Nabhn (1849-1932). First printedin Cairo between 1906 and 1911, and at the instigation of wealthy HadramiSayyids from the al-Kf clan in Tarim, this is a catalogue of the Sufi greats,including some among the living of Nabhn's day. Furthermore, the versionthat we examined is accompanied in the margins by yet another of al-Yfic'scatalogues of the miracles of the saints, his Nashr al-mahsin al-ghliyya fifadl al-mashaykh l l-maqmt.^) Nestled quietly among the much moreextensively documented accounts of Arab masters of miracles in Nabhn'stext is the undated biographical note on al-Jwi, lifted entirely from al-84. An overview of earlier work of this type is included in : Peter Riddell, Islam and theMalay-Indonesian World : Transmission and Responses. Honolulu : University of HawaiiPress, 2001. To a certain extent Riddell has also anticipated the potential importance of theapproach we propose by noting the value attached to the power of narrative in the conversionprocess.85. Ysuf b. Ism'l al-Nabhn, Jmic karmt al-awliy\ 2 vols. Cairo : Mustafa al-Bb al-Halab, 1906-11, II, 253. As noted above, al-Nabnni seems to have confused thesainted Ism'l with his father, Muhammad, much as the editors of the Mir't eitherinverted or removed an element of the former's kunya.


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Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean 207Sharj, with the exception of the explanation for the pronunciation of Jw -which by that time was unnecessary, particularly for readers in the Hadramidiaspora. (That this text soon circulated in the Indonesian archipelago is suggested by the fact that the vendor's marks on the edition of the Jmkarmt al-awliy* that we consulted show that it had been acquired in Javafor Snouck Hurgronje).Despite ongoing reprintings of th e tabaqt entry on al-Jw, thisthirteenth-century Sufi has not become a figure that features anywhere incontemporary discussions of the early history of Southeast Asian Islam.Perhaps this is because his importance lies entirely in Yemen - where he wasso obviously accepted as a complete equal to the shaykhs of his day, thoughstill perhaps being recognized as 'Jwi' either by his physical features or byassociation with the burgeoning trade in aromatics.While it is tempting to conclude that for such reasons he was neverregarded back in Jwa itself as being one of ' their ' people, one possible explanation for the subsequent popularity and influence of al-Yfi('s works inSoutheast Asia is that perhaps later 'Jwa' would be positively disposed toward the works of a man who had been inducted into the mysteries of Islamby one with whom they could identify by name. Perhaps over time the stories that al-Yfic had related about cAbd al-Qdir were used to recast localnarratives of conversion into Sufi tropes, much as the tombstones of the firstrulers of Pasai would be replaced by more ornate versions in th e latefifteenth or early sixteenth centuries. (86)As we now see it, the strong possibility remains that there is moreinformation on al-Jw available in Yemen, perhaps by way of an inscribedtombstone in Aden or at the site of the madrasa of cUwja, a town alreadyfamous in al-Yfic's day as the resting place of two of his paragons :Muhammad b. Abi Bakr al-Hakami, and Muhammad b. Husayn al-Bajal.(87) There could even be other texts that associate al-Jw with thelatter place, for whereas the vast bulk of al-Sharji's entry on al-Jw wasdrawn from the history of al-Yfic, he made no mention of his ever being in'Uwja - either as student or teacher. This may mean that al-Jw mighthave died there when al-Yfic was in the Hijaz, assuming that an already oldman never ventured back to the putative homeland implied by his nisba.Today Jwa and its mystics remain very much at the margins of contemporaryglobal Muslim discourse, and not only in anti-Sufi, Salafi imaginingsof Islam. In the context of contemporary cAlawi assertions that Southeast86. See Elizabeth Lambourn, ' The Formation of the Batu Aceh Tradition in Fifteenth-Century Samudera Pasai ', Indonesia and the Malay World, 33/93 (July 2004) : 21 1-48.87. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 359-60.


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208 R. Michael Feener & Michael F. LaffanAsia was Islamized by pious Arabs, and especially those from theHadramaut - where so many of their own ancestors had boarded steamshipsfor verdant Jwa - there seems to be little space to acknowledge that Jawipeople too were once just as intrepid in crossing the Indian Ocean. Certainlythere is evidence of this in the Geniza documents, mined exhaustively by thelate S. Goitein when preparing his still unpublished India Book.^%) Thesematerials reveal to us something of the complex ways in which, for example,Jewish merchants of the eleventh and thirteenth centuries came to refer totheir temporary shipboard and port accommodations using the Malay-derivedillj (or billg - from bilik) and how similarly titled nkhuds andkarnis came to be found frequenting ports from the Red Sea to the Straitsof Malacca.In any case, texts such as those in the family of references to Mascd al-Jw and his circles discussed in this essay provide glimpses into thecomplexity of medieval Islamic networks that transcend the shared maritimeterminologies and economic interactions apparent in the Geniza documents.In them we have tantalizing hints pointing to the lives of mystical mastersassociated with Southeast Asia having an established presence in scholarlycircles of th e Middle East during the first major wave of state-ledIslamization in the archipelago. Not only do such materials open newavenues along which to enquire into the particular ways in which (Abd al-Qdir, the patron saint of travelers, became the de facto patron of SoutheastAsian Islam, they also provide us with new resources with which to furtherexplore broader dynamics of trade, teachers, texts, and tarqas involved inprocesses of the region's Islamization. (89)

88. Deaths of two Jewish merchants in Kra and Pansur, the homeland of Hamzah Fansuri,were recorded in letters from the thirteenth century. See S.D. Goitein, Letters of MedievalJewish Traders. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1973, 227-9. More work remains tobe done on the Geniza fragments, and we are both hopeful of seeing what other hints aboutmedieval Southeast Asia may turn up there and elsewhere in the coming years.89. We should also end by noting that the path toward integrating studies of Sufi orders intoother dimensions of social and religious change in the history of Southeast Asia has beenblazed for us in the work of A.H. Johns. For the most recent statement of his evolving viewson this subject, see : 'Sufism in Southeast Asia : Reflections and Reconsiderations', Journalof Southeast Asian Studies, 26-1 (1995) : 169-83.

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