Scholars of the archipelago and the road to Makkah (16th-18th centuries)

Part oneAceh, the Veranda of Makkah

After Melaka fell to the Portuguese in 1511, much of its trade moved to Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra. The sultanate of Aceh grew strong on pepper and on the Muslim trade that avoided the Portuguese. In the 1560s it sent envoys to the Ottoman sultan asking for help against the Portuguese, and the Ottomans sent gunners and cannon.

Aceh reached its height under Sultan Iskandar Muda, who ruled from 1607 to 1636. He controlled much of Sumatra's coast and parts of the Malay peninsula. His capital was a centre of scholarship, and Aceh came to be called Serambi Mekkah, the "Veranda of Makkah", because pilgrims from across the islands gathered there before sailing for the Hajj. After him, four queens ruled Aceh in succession, from 1641 to 1699, beginning with Sultanah Safiyyat al-Din.

Part twoStudents in the Haramayn

The Hajj was a long and dangerous voyage from the islands, and many who made it stayed for years to study. In Makkah and Madinah they formed a community of their own, known as the people of Jawi, a name the Arabs used for all the peoples of South-East Asia. They studied with the great teachers of the Haramayn, and when they returned, they brought books, chains of teaching and new standards of learning.

The best known of them was Abd al-Rauf al-Singkili, born in Aceh around 1615. He spent about nineteen years studying in Arabia, in Makkah, Madinah and Yemen, and returned to Aceh around 1661. He served as chief judge under the queens of Aceh and taught many students. He wrote works on law and Sufism in Malay, and he produced the first complete commentary on the Quran in the Malay language, the Tarjuman al-Mustafid, which was copied and printed for centuries.

Part threeShaykh Yusuf and the resistance

From the seventeenth century the Dutch East India Company took control of the spice trade and then of more and more of the islands. Muslim scholars and rulers led much of the resistance.

Shaykh Yusuf of Makassar, in Sulawesi, was born in 1626 and travelled to Makkah in 1644. He studied in Arabia for many years and returned to serve as a scholar and adviser at the court of Banten in western Java. When the Dutch moved against Banten in the 1680s, he led several thousand fighters against them until he was captured. The Dutch exiled him first to Sri Lanka and then, in 1694, to the Cape of Good Hope at the far south of Africa, where he arrived with his family and followers. There he gathered Muslim slaves and exiles together for prayer and teaching, and he is remembered as the father of Islam in South Africa. He died at the Cape in 1699.

Part fourA living tradition

By the eighteenth century most of the people of the archipelago were Muslim, and Islam had spread from the coasts deep into the countryside. Under Dutch rule many displaced Muslim nobles and teachers moved inland, and the villages turned to them. The pesantren schools of Java, the scholars of Aceh and the students who kept travelling to Makkah made the region one of the great centres of the Muslim world. Malay written in Arabic script, Jawi, carried books on law, faith and the Quran across the islands.

Today Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei together have more than a quarter of a billion Muslims, and the region sends more pilgrims to the Hajj each year than almost any other.

They sailed for months to study in Makkah, and came home to teach their islands.

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The mapWhere it happened

• Aceh
• Banten
• Makassar
• Jeddah
• Makkah
• Madinah
• Sri Lanka
• the Cape of Good Hope

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter