Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-

Orient

Oman Fathurahman, Shaṭṭārīyah Silsilah in Aceh, Java, and

the Lanao area of Mindanao, Tokyo, Research Institute for

Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, University of Foreign
Studies, 2016
Martin van Bruinessen

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

van Bruinessen Martin. Oman Fathurahman, Shaṭṭārīyah Silsilah in Aceh, Java, and the Lanao area of Mindanao,
Tokyo, Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, University of Foreign Studies, 2016. In: Bulletin
de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. Tome 102, 2016. pp. 487-490;

https://www.persee.fr/doc/befeo_0336-1519_2016_num_102_1_6244_t13_0487_0000_2;

Fichier pdf généré le 23/02/2024

Comptes rendus 487

ships, but no houses were visible (p. 409). In 1819, when Raffles founded
a British base there, Singapore’s population consisted mostly of fishermen.
Miksic observes that though historical record on Singapore increases dramati-
cally after 1819, many of the details of daily life in colonial Singapore can
only be reconstructed from archaeological materials (p. 415). Artifacts from
the earliest phase of colonial Singapore include, for example, ceramic ves-
sels, glassware, clay pipes, but also gaming pieces and children toys (p. 418).
I have spotted only a few typos: Yuen on p. 132 should read Yuan, and
illustrations 7.11 e–g on page 303 are wrongly labelled. This otherwise
carefully-prepared book is not only well-researched and packed with infor-
mation; at times (particularly in chapters 5–10) it reads as a fascinating story
of the ups and downs of Southeast Asian urban archaeology and a quest to
understand the hoary past of a modern city-state. Conveniently, the book is
accompanied by many photographs, line drawings, and useful maps which
help to keep track of the sites discussed in the text. On several occasions
the author points out that for many, the words “ancient Singapore” may still
represent a kind of paradox; this book, a major achievement in the field of
Southeast Asian studies, will certainly help to disseminate appreciation of
the ancient roots of Singapore and to promote the study of the early history
of Southeast Asian urbanism.

Jiří Jákl (Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic)

Oman Fathurahman, Shaṭṭārīyah Silsilah in Aceh, Java, and the Lanao

area of Mindanao, Tokyo, Research Institute for Languages and Cultures
of Asia and Africa, University of Foreign Studies, 2016, xii + 139 pages
– ISBN 978-4-86337-225-2

The Shaṭṭārīyah is one of the great international Sufi orders; it originated

in India and reached Southeast Asia by way of Medina in the course of the
17th century. Its most important propagator in Southeast Asia was the Acehnese
ʽAbd al-Raʼūf al-Sinkilī (Abdurrauf Singkel); his slightly younger and equally
famous contemporary Yūsuf al-Maqāṣarī (Yusuf Makassar) was also initi-
ated into this order in Medina but does not appear to have propagated it after
his return. Both men had spent more than a decade studying a broad range
of Islamic sciences under the greatest scholars of their day. The Shaṭṭārīyah
became the most influential Sufi order in Sumatra and Java during the 17th and
18th centuries, and it retained some popularity in several regions even after it
had been eclipsed by more dynamic new orders such as the Ṣammāniyah, the
Qādirīyah wa-l-Naqshbandīyah, and the Naqshbandīyah Khālidīyah. Initially
it appears to have sought and found its following in elite circles such as the
courts of Aceh, Banten, Cirebon and Yogyakarta, but in later years it spread
to socially more diverse publics, and elements of its teachings were adopted
by various mystical cults and sects rooted in local spiritual traditions.
488 Comptes rendus

There are various, complementary, ways of defining what a Sufi order

(ṭarīqah, tarekat) is: as a distinctive set of spiritual techniques and devotional
practices (prayers, litanies and other recitations, meditation techniques,
retreats), as a particular type of association, or as an initiatory tradition
with a distinct chain of transmission. The chain of transmission or silsilah
is both an identity marker and a source of legitimacy; a ṭarīqah teacher’s
silsilah indicates the spiritual tradition in which he has placed himself and
authenticates his licence to teach the ṭarīqah’s methods. A typical silsilah
begins with the teacher’s own name, followed by the name of the master
under whom he trained and who gave him his teaching licence (ijāzah), then
this master’s teacher, and so on to the Prophet himself. Generally speaking,
a Sufi order does not qualify as “respected” (muʽtabar) or orthodox unless it
has a silsilah in which the successive teachers have actually met and orally
transmitted the teachings of their tradition. (In reality, however, there are
often gaps of hundreds of years and names that cannot be identified.) Some
of the masters in the chain may be known as reformers of the ṭarīqah, who
introduced additional techniques, or may be the authors of well-known
Sufi texts. An individual silsilah therefore yields some information on the
history of the order and the intellectual and spiritual influences that went
into its making. In fact, in the case of several orders, the silsilah of teachers
at different times and places constitute our major internal source for their
historical development. Compiling and comparing a large number of silsi-
lah of a single Sufi order allows us to trace and map its development and
geographical diffusion. That is a reason to welcome this little book, which
is no doubt the result of painstaking search for and perusal of Southeast
Asian manuscripts associated with the Shaṭṭārīyah.
Oman Fathurahman is Indonesia’s leading expert on Islamic manuscripts.
He wrote a dissertation on the Shaṭṭārīyah in West Sumatra, in which he
analysed almost twenty manuscripts from the region and compiled the sil-
silah of those teachers he could trace (Tarekat Syattariyah di Minangkabau,
published as a book by EFEO, PPIM and KITLV-Jakarta in 2008), and fol-
lowed this up with several other studies on the Shaṭṭārīyah, including the
annotated edition and translation of an important Arabic Sufi treatise by
Abdurrauf Singkel, Tanbīh al-Māshī. He was involved in several projects for
the preservation and digitization of Islamic manuscripts of Southeast Asia,
which resulted in annotated catalogues of two major Acehnese manuscript
holdings (Dayah Tanoh Abee and the late Ali Hasjmy’s private collection)
as well as the current book. Here he describes and analyses manuscripts
containing Shaṭṭāriyah silsilah, sixteen from Aceh, thirteen from Java
(including Batavia), and four from Mindanao.
A typical manuscript of this kind is a compilation of texts of diverse
origin, such as the Arabic and Malay manuscript from Mindanao described
on pp. 94–96, which contains nine different texts, including a talisman
(azimat) for the protection of children, texts on Islamic doctrine and theol-
ogy, three Sufi texts (including one by Yusuf Makassar), the genealogy of
the sayyid lineage to which the owner belonged, and silsilah for the two
ṭarīqah in which he was initiated, the Shaṭṭārīyah and the Naqshbandīyah.
Comptes rendus 489

As shown by this example, not all texts in such collections deal with the
Shaṭṭārīyah or even Sufism. A few of the texts in this set of manuscripts,
however, concern metaphysical doctrines that are often closely associated
with this order, such as the related concepts of waḥdat al-wujūd (unity of
being) and martabat tujuh (seven degrees of emanation). In his earlier work
on Shaṭṭārī manuscripts from West Sumatra, Oman paid more attention to
these doctrinal aspects; here the focus is on the silsilah and what can be
learned from them. His findings confirm those of earlier scholarship but
add much nuance and detail.
Two ʽulama in 17th-century Medina were the fountainhead from which
all Southeast Asian initiations in the Shaṭṭārīyah ultimately sprang, Aḥmad
al-Qūshāshī and his successor Ibrāhīm al-Kurānī. Both taught several other
ṭariqah besides the Shaṭṭārīyah. Abdurrauf received his first Shaṭṭārī initia-
tion from Qūshāshī and cultivated friendly relations with Kurānī, who also
appears to have given him a second ijāzah. Kurānī and his descendants in
Mecca had numerous other Southeast Asian disciples. Yusuf Makassar, who
received a Shaṭṭārīyah ijāzah from Ibrahim al-Kurānī, must have been one
of the first; however, his name occurs in none of the silsilah surveyed here,
although one of his Sufi writings was incorporated in a Shaṭṭārī manuscript.
After Abdurrauf, the order maintained a presence in Aceh, while two of his
disciples, Burhanuddin of Ulakan and Abdulmuhyi of Pamijahan, spread it
to West Sumatra and Java, respectively. The developments in West Sumatra,
studied in Oman’s previous work, are not covered here and the Minangkabau
Shaṭṭārīyah appears to have remained isolated from the order’s progress
elsewhere, for none of the surveyed silsilah mentions Burhanuddin. From
Abdulmuhyi and his descendants (notably his son Haji Abdullah and son
or grandson Muhyiddin) in Pamijahan, the ṭarīqah gained adherents in high
circles at the courts of Yogyakarta and Cirebon; a high proportion of later
Shaṭṭārī communities trace their silsilah through Abdulmuhyi.
Of Abdurrauf’s disciples in Aceh who adopted the Shaṭṭārīyah, only
one is known by name: Bābā Dāwūd bin Ismāʽīl, a scholar apparently of
Ottoman descent, who also collaborated in Abdurrauf’s Malay tafsīr. One
surprising finding is that most of the Acehnese silsilah do not, in fact, pass
through Abdurrauf but represent later initiations of Acehnese by descendants
of Ibrāhīm al-Kurānī in Medina. Oman concludes that the line of affiliation
introduced by Abdurrauf was practically extinct after Dāwūd’s disciple
Faqīh Jalāl al-dīn (but one manuscript lists a series of successors to Jalāl
al-dīn). Later generations of Acehnese apparently sought initiation directly
in Medina with the family of the great al-Kurānī, which must have been
far more prestigious than initiation by a local teacher. This is a well-known
phenomenon in other Sufi orders too, and it does not necessarily mean that
Abdurrauf’s line was extinct; people may in fact have had a local initiation
first but sought a second initiation that brought them closer to the Prophet.
In the silsilah from Java the same phenomenon may be observed. In
fact, whereas most Javanese silsilah including two from the Cirebon court
list Abdulmuhyi and Abdurrauf as the essential links, another silsilah from
the same sultanate bypasses them and instead connects upwards through
490 Comptes rendus

the mid-18th-century Bantenese scholar ʽAbdallāh b. ʽAbd al-Qahhār to a

third-generation successor of al-Qūshāshī in Medina, Muḥammad b. ʽAlī
al-Ṭabarī. ʽAbdallāh b. ʽAbd al-Qahhār was the most prominent scholar at
the Banten court in his day, and his name also occurs in several silsilah of
another Sufi order, the Naqshbandīyah. Interestingly, ʽAbdallāh b. ʽAbd
al-Qahhār also constitutes the link with Medina in one of the silsilah from
Mindanao (this silsilah occurs in two manuscripts). For a brief period in
the 18th century, Banten thus appears to have been a regional centre of
propagation of the Shaṭṭārīyah, not only to nearby Cirebon but also to distant
Mindanao. The other two silsilah from Mindanao reflect two independent
incursions of the order there, as local men took ijāzah directly from descend-
ants of Ibrāhīm al-Kurānī in Medina, his great-grandson Muḥammad [Saʽīd]
Ṭāhir and Muḥammad Asʽad, respectively. As already noted, most Acehnese
silsilah also indicate that people preferably sought initiation with members
of the al-Kurānī family in Medina, including these two. The last-named,
Muḥammad Asʽad, incidentally, also gave an ijāzah to the prolific scholar
Daud Patani (Dāʼūd al-Faṭānī), due to whom the Shaṭṭārīyah gained some
influence in the Malay Peninsula in the early 19th century.
Oman Fathurahman’s new book, as I hope the above has shown, is a useful
contribution to the study of Sufi orders in Southeast Asia and the complex trans-
local relations and cultural flows involved. It will also have its uses as a work of
reference due to the useful index of names (which unfortunately is incomplete).

Martin van Bruinessen (Utrecht University)

Paolo Santangelo, Materials for an Anatomy of Personality in Late

Imperial China, Leiden–Boston, Brill, 2010, xvi + 525 pages – ISBN
9789004177536, 196€

Devoted to a topic only seldom taken into consideration, this book is a wel-
come addition to the fast growing body of scholarly works on late imperial
China. The more so when one knows that it is actually the first volume in a
series titled “Emotions and States of Mind in East Asia,” co-edited by Paolo
Santangelo, the author of the present work, and Professor Cheuk Yin Lee,
of National University of Singapore, a series which has already seen the
publication of four other titles (for a total of seven volumes, all published
by Brill). In the field of Chinese cultural history, where research has been
very lively in the last decades, the approach spurred by the overseers of
the series opens interesting and innovative perspectives. Judging from the
contents of the present volume and from the presentations of the other titles
already published, it seems that the general aim of this endeavour is not
only to provide readers with detailed textual studies based on a wide array
of literary sources, but also to delineate, through a careful historical con-
textualisation of the results of these textual studies, what could be termed