Tombstones, Texts, and Typologies: Seeing Sources for the Early History of Islam in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Th is article is a case study of an iconic symbol of Indonesian Islamization: the tombstones of al-Malik al-Sālih (d.696/1297 AD), believed to be the first Muslim Sultan of the polity of Samudra in Sumatra. Th e author questions the dominance of textualist approaches in Southeast Asian historical inquiry by applying the concept of the "integral cultural product"-in which text, visual content and material are equally important and interdependent. Th is fresh analysis suggests that al-Sālih's tombstones are actually later replacements for an older grave, so raising new questions about the construction of legitimacy and ancestry in early Islamic Southeast Asia.Cette contribution étudie un symbole de l'islamisation indonésienne: les pierres tombales d'al-Malik al-Sālih (décédé en l'an 696/1297 ap. J.-C.) réputé être le premier sultan musulman du royaume de Samudra à Sumatra. L'auteur conteste la dominance de la méthode textualiste dans les recherches historiques sur l'Asie du Sud-est en utilisant le concept de "produit culturel intégral": le texte, l'aspect extérieur et la matière, interdépendants, doivent être analysés globalement. Cette approche nouvelle suggère que les pierres tombales d'al-Malik al-Sālih seraient effectivement des substituts tardifs d'un tombeau plus ancien, ce qui soulève des interrogations sur la construction de la légitimité et de l'ascendance à l'aube de l'ère islamique en Asie du Sud-est.

Commodity Flows, Diaspora Networking, and Contested Agency in the Eastern Indian Ocean c. 1000–1500

“…However, to focus exclusively on the international trade ignores the developing hinterland market networks that supplied these products to the ports, as well as the indigenous demand for imported commodities – notably iron (as segments of the Southeast Asia region had an inadequate iron supply), and textiles (especially Indian cottons produced in the Gujarat region of upper west coast India and in the multiple weaving centers of India's east coast). Ceramics, and, in the time of the early Islamic conversions, tombstones were imported from Gujarat and south China (Lambourn 2003, 2008; Hall 2012). The Southeast Asia marketplace was important enough that Indian textiles were manufactured to Southeast Asia-resident specifications, as for example the long pieces of ritual cloth that Gujarat weavers produced to the specifications (size and design) of the Toraja society of the eastern Indonesian archipelago (Wisseman Christie 1993; Hall 1996; Barnes and Kahlenberg 2010).…”

“…Similarly, following the collapse of the Gupta realm in north India during the late sixth century, and again after the surrender of northern India to Muslim warriors in the eleventh century, numerous Hindu and Buddhist clerics found alternative employment in the service of south India's kings and in Southeast Asia's courts (Lieberman 2003(Lieberman , 2011Asher and Talbot 2006). Clerical 'knowledge agents' of Islam in Southeast Asia included Java's mystically/spiritually endowed wali sanga [saints] and increasing numbers of sojourners with Middle Eastern roots who sought alternative residencies coincidental to the 1258 fall of the Abbasid dynasty in the Middle East and periodic insecurities during the era of the Delhi Sultanate in twelfth through sixteenth century northern India (Lambourn 2008;Wade 2010).…”

Towards a Re-interpretation of Early Islamisation Processes in Southeast Asia

“…20 The historical record then falls silent until the Islamic tombstone of al-Malik al-Salih's son, al-Malik al-Zahir, who died in 1326 CE. 21 In 1345 CE, Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan Muslim traveller whose sojourns took in the frontiers of India, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and West Africa, visited what he identified as the Muslim Kingdom of Pasai. 22 At Pasai, Ibn Battuta reports being received by the Muslim king al-Malik al-Zahir (grandson of al-Malik al-Salih), where he remained as a guest of the royal court.…”

A Note on the Tombstone of Master Pu and the Xishan Zazhi

“…In recent years there has been a re-evaluation of theories concerning artefacts of Chinese origin believed to have been manufactured in Southeast Asia, as well as a critical approach towards the study of ancient tombstones. Examples of these are Kalus and Guillot (2004), who maintain that four Islamic tombstones found in Leran, Java, are actually imports that arrived as ballast and were not local products; Salmon (2008), who traced the origins of a bronze gong heretofore believed to be the product of a local workshop in Muara Jambi to a Chinese workshop in the Song dynasty; and Lambourn (2008), who showed that a tombstone previously regarded as evidence of the rule of the first Muslim sultan of Samudra was instead a much later copy and indeed did not date to 1297.…”