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Chapter 4: The Patani ‘Ulamâ’: Global and Regional Networks
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The Patani ‘Ulamâ’ ChaPTer 4 The Patani ‘Ulamâ’: Global and regional Networks Azyumardi Azra Geographically, the Muslim area in Southeast Asia, also conveniently called the Malay-Indonesian world, is often viewed by scholars as being at the periphery of the Islamic world centered in Mecca, Medina, and even Cairo. Situated far from the region known today as the Middle East, the area of Muslim Southeast Asia represents one of the least Arabized parts of the Islamic world. Despite this, however, the development of Islam in Southeast Asia is inseparable from that in the Arab world. Since the introduction of Islam into Southeast Asia, the development of Islam in the Middle East has affected the course of Islam in the Malay-Indonesian world. Within this context, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, international scholarly (‘ulamâ’) networks centered in the Haramayn (Mecca and Medina) played a crucial role in continually sending renewal and reform impulses to the Malay-Indonesian world. Within these networks, Patani scholars had a prominent position. There is a tendency among scholars of Islam to exclude Southeast Asian Islam in any discussion of Islam.This kind of treatment is largely based on an assumption that the area did not have single stable core of Islamic tradition in the early period to serve as a dominant focal point, in relation to which scholars can find some points of orientation. Furthermore, the evidence that survives for the arrival and development of Islam in Southeast Asia is fragmented among a large number of languages and cultural traditions. The combination of these factors has, until recent times, placed the study of Southeast Asian Islam outside of the mainstream of Islamic studies. However, recent works on Southeast Asian Islam, together with the fact that this area now contains the most populous Muslim country (Indonesia) Azyumardi Azra in the world, have brought a new impetus to the study of the nature of the relationship between Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian Islam. Strong links between Southeast Asian Muslims and their Middle Eastern counterparts have existed since the very early period of Islam in the Malay-Indonesian world. Contact between Southeast Asia and the Arab world existed even in the pre- and early Islamic period, and took place mostly by way of trade. Later, from the late 12th century, wandering Sufi teachers from the Arab world frequented the harbor-cities of Southeast Asia and introduced Islam to the native population. The increasing prosperity of the Muslim states in the Malay world in the 16th and 17th centuries due to the rise of a lucrative trade in gold, pepper, and other spices, increased these contacts and expanded relations even further. A massive penetration of Islam was carried out mainly by these wandering Sufi teachers from the Middle East and South Asia who were attracted both by the spirit to spread Islam and the prosperity of the Muslim courts in this region. As a rule, they came and lived under the patronage of the sultans. The latter provided for them not only peaceful and convenient shelters as well as a good deal of material reward, but also crucial facilities which enabled them to carry out their mission to improve Islamic life among the population.1 The prosperity of the Southeast Asian Muslim states provided opportunities for the Muslim population in this area to travel to the centers of Islam in the Arab world. Most of them, of course, went to the Hijâz or more precisely the Haramayn to make the hajj — the fifth pillar of Islam. But there were also those who stayed there and studied various Islamic sciences for years. This led to the rise of what the Meccans and Medinese called the “Jâwî” community in the Holy Land. The term ‘Ashâb al-Jâwîyyîn’ literally refers to the Javanese people, but more than that it came to signify the whole Malay-Indonesian people2 regardless of their original homelands or ethnic origins. Thus, the Javanese, Sumatranese, the 1 On the presence of scholars from the Arab world in the courts of the MalayIndonesian states during the early days of Islam in Southeast Asia, see B. Schrieke, Indonesian Sociological Studies, part 2 (The Hague and Bandung, 1957), pp. 237–67; HJ. de Graaf and TH.G.TH. Pigeaud, De eerste Moslimse vorstendommen op Java: studien over de staatkundige geschiedenis van de 15e en 16de eeuw (The Hague: KITLV, Verhandelingen 69, 1974); R.O. Winstedt, “Early Muhammadan Missionaries,” JSBRAS 81 (1920). 2 Ibn Battûta...