A REVERBERATING ECHO FROM THE FAR PAST THE ROLE OF THE ASMARAKANDHI IN JAVA’S ISLAMIZATION PROCESS

Edwin P Wieringa

Abstract


The Asmarakandhi, which is a Javanese translation of an Arabic book entitled Bayān ‘Aqīdat al-Uṣūl by Abū’l Laith Naṣr b. Muḥammad al-Samarqandī (d. 373/983), is to be discussed in this study. Abū’l Laith’s text belongs to the earliest theological primers in Java, possibly first introduced on Java’s North Coast by Chinese merchants from the Ḥanafī legal school. For many centuries, Asmarakandhi was an authoritative source for new students of Islam before it fell into general disuse during the course of the twentieth century. Contrary to common belief, Abū’l Laith’s text is not as simple as it seems, containing several controversial issues. 


Keywords


interlinear translation; Javanese; Arabic; principles of Islamic theology; early Islamic history of Indonesia; Ḥanafī; al-Mātūrīdī

Full Text:

PDF

References


Amalia, A. 2020. Nilai-nilai akidah dalam manuskrip Asmarakandi karya Abu Al-Laits Al-Samarqandi tahun 1071 H (kajian filologis). Purwokerto: IAIN Purwokerto.

Amiq. 2015. Islamic manuscript culture in the pondok pesantren of East Java in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Leiden: PhD thesis, University of Leiden. https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A2889689/view

Behrend, Timothy E. 1988. “Small collections of Javanese manuscripts in Indonesia,” Archipel 35: 23-42.

Behrend, T.E. (ed.) 1990. Katalog induk naskah-naskah Nusantara. Jilid 1: Museum Sonobudoyo. Jakarta: Penerbit Djambatan.

Behrend, T.E. (ed.). 1998. Katalog induk naskah-naskah Nusantara. Jilid 4: Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia (Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia and École française d’Extrême-Orient.

Behrend, T.E. and Titik Pudjiastuti (eds). 1997. Katalog induk naskah-naskah Nusantara jilid 3-A: Fakultas Sastra Universitas Indonesia. Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia and École française dʼExtrême-Orient.

Berg, L.W.C. van den. 1887. “Het Mohammedaansche godsdienstonderwijs op Java en Madoera en de daarbij gebruikte Arabische boeken,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 31: 518-555.

Berkey, Jonathan P. 2016. “Textual aspects of religious authority in premodern Islam”, Léon Buskens and Annemarie van Sandwijk (eds), Islamic studies in the twenty-first century (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press), 47-66.

Bruinessen, Martin van. 1990. “Kitab kuning: Books in Arabic script used in the pesantren milieu”. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 146: 226-269.

Ess, J. van. 1983. “ABU’L-LAYṮ SAMARQANDĪ,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/3, pp. 332-333; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abul-lay-nasr-b (accessed on 17 August 2022).

Fahmi, Muhammad Nabil and Muqowim. 2021. “Kitab Asmarakandi sebagai sumber belajar pendidikan Islam awal di Nusantara,” Jurnal SMaRT Studi Masyarakat, Religi dan Tradisi 7: 242-252.

Feener, R. Michael. 2019. “Islam in Southeast Asia to c. 1800”. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. 26 Mar. 2019; Accessed 2 Mar. 2022. https://oxfordre.com/asianhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277727-e-40.

Gallop, Annabel Teh. 2016. “From Samarkand to Batavia: a popular Islamic catechism in Malay”, https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2016/01/from-samarkand-to-batavia-a-popular-islamic-catechism-in-malay.html.

Gallop, Annabel Teh. 2020. “Shifting landscapes: Remapping the writing traditions of Islamic Southeast Asia through digitisation,” Humaniora 32: 97-109.

Haron, Muhammad. 1999. “The Samarqand-Cape Town connection: Revisiting a 10th-century theological text”, A. Fodor (ed.), Proceedings of the Arabic and Islamic sections of the 35th international Congress of Asian and North African Studies (ICANAS). Part two (Budapest), in The Arabist; Budapest Studies in Arabic 21-22 (1999), 73-88.

Islam, M. Adib Misbachul. 2016. Puisi perlawanan dar pesantren: Nazam tarekat karya KH. Ahmad Ar-Rifai Kalisalak. Tangerang: Transpustaka.

Jamaluddin. 2018. “Kitab Jawan sebagai pelestari bahasa Jawa: Studi kasus kitab terbitan Menara Kudus, 1952-1990-an”, Pangadereng 4: 399-413.

Jandra, Mifedwil. 1985-1986. Asmarakandi (Sebuah tinjauan dari aspek tasawuf). [Yogyakarta:] Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan; Direktorat Jendral Kebudayaan; Proyek Penelitian dan Pengkajian Kebudayaan Nusantara (Javanologi).

Juynboll, A.W.T. 1881. “Een Moslimsche catechismus in het Arabisch met eene Javaansche interlineaire vertaling in pegonschrift uitgegeven en in het Nederlandsch vertaald”. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 29: 215-227; 229-231; 279-284.

Krstić, Tijana. 2017. “From shahāda to ‘aqīda: Conversion to Islam, catechization, and Sunnitisation in sixteenth-century Ottoman Rumeli,” A.C.S. Peacock (ed.), Islamisation: Comparative perspectives from history (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 296-314.

Lhost, Elizabeth. 2020. “To flower and fructify: Rational religion and the seeds of Islam in Nazir Ahmad’s (1830-1912) late-career non-fiction”, Journal of Islamic Studies 31: 31-69.

Madelung, Wilferd. 2016. Studies in medieval Muslim thought and history (Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Mobini-Kesheh, Natalie. 1999. The Hadrami awakening. Community and identity in the Netherlands East Indies, 1900-1942. Ithaca: New York: Cornell University.

Peacock, A.C.S. 2019. “Arabic manuscripts from Buton, Southeast Sulawesi, and the literary activities of Sultan Muḥammad ‘Aydarūs (1824-1851),” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 10: 44-83.

Pigeaud, Theodore G.Th. 1967-1980. Literature of Java. Vols I-IV. The Hague: Nijhoff; Leiden: Leiden University Library.

Ricci, Ronit. 2011. islam translated: Literature, conversion, and the Arabic cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Riddell, Peter G. 2002. “Literal translation, sacred scripture, and Kitab Malay,” Studia Islamika 9: 1-26.

Rudolph, Ulrich. 2015. Al-Māturīdī and the development of Sunnī theology in Samarqand. Leiden, Boston: Brill.

Schacht, Joseph. 1953. “New sources for the history of Muhammadan theology,” Studia Islamica 1: 23-42.

Soebardi. 1971. “Santri-religious elements as reflected in the Book of Tjĕnṭini”. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 127: 331-349.

Umam, Saiful. 2011. “Localizing Islamic orthodoxy in Northern Coastal Java in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries: A study of Pegon Islamic texts.” Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Hawai’i. Available at https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/9853ae9d-c8ad-48b0-ab6a-cb9a5aed1804.

Voorhoeve, P. 1980. Handlist of Arabic manuscripts in the Library of the University of Leiden and other collections in the Netherlands. The Hague, Boston, London: Leiden University Press. URL http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:110696.

Wahyuni, Sri and Rustam Ibrahim. 2017. “Pemaknaan Jawa Pegon dalam memahami kitab kuning di pesantren,” Jurnal Ilmiah Studi Islam 17: 4-21.

Wain, Alexander David Robert. 2015. “Chinese Muslims and the conversion of the Nusantara to Islam.” Oxford: Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Oxford.

Wieringa, Edwin P. 2016. “The heron and the snail: A visual pun in a Javanese manuscript of the Jawharat al-Tawḥīd”. Laila Prager, Michael Prager, Guido Sprenger (eds), Parts and wholes. Essays on social morphology, cosmology, and exchange in honor of J.D.M. Platenkamp (Lit Verlag), 475-484.

Wieringa, Edwin P. 2017. “The story of Yusuf and Indonesia’s Islamisation: A work of literature plus,” A.C.S. Peacock (ed.), Islamisation: Comparative perspectives from history (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 444-471.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.15408/iu.v9i2.29315 Abstract - 0 PDF - 0

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

PUBLISHER

PEMINAT ILMU USHULUDDIN
in collaboration with the Faculty of Ushuluddin of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta

Gedung Fakultas Ushuluddin UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta,
Jl. Ir. H. Juanda No. 95 Ciputat 15412, Indonesia
Phone: (62-21) 7463977
Fax: (62-21) 7493577
Email: jiu.fu@apps.uinjkt.ac.id