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I recently wrote on how to tell if a Malay manuscript is written on Chinese paper, instead of the more usual medium of European paper.  Another type of writing material sometimes used for Malay manuscripts, particularly those from Java, is Javanese paper called dluwang (or daluang), hand-made from the beaten bark of the paper mulberry tree, Broussonetia papyrifera, called pohon saeh in Indonesia.  In fact, dluwang is paper in all but name, as the technical definition of paper is a ‘matted or felted sheet, usually made of cellulose fibres, formed on a wire screen from water suspension’ (Encyclopaedia Brittanica), for dluwang is not made from fibres suspended in water and then dried in sheets.  Instead, a strip of the inner bark of the saeh tree is cut out, soaked in water, and then pounded repeatedly and polished until the surface is smooth enough to write on (Ekadjati and McGlynn 1996).

Hikayat Mesa Taman Sira Panji Jayeng Kusuma, written in Malay on dluwang, and hence almost certainly from Java. Add. 12387, ff.4v-5r.

Dluwang is easy to recognize because of its highly distinctive brown, polished surface, with the woody fibres still very visible.  When well-made, the resulting paper provides a fine smooth writing surface which should last for centuries without degeneration.  However, poorly-made sheets of dluwang may be fibrous and of uneven thickness, sometimes with evident holes and knots, and can be very susceptible to insect damage. Dluwang has been used as a writing material in insular Southeast Asia for many centuries. The oldest known example is the Tanjung Tanah Code of Law, a manuscript from Kerinci in central Sumatra in Malay in a pre-Islamic Indic script, which is written on dluwang which has been carbon-dated to the 14th century.  The oldest dluwang manuscript in the British Library is a text on Islamic jurisprudence in Arabic and Javanese from the collections of Sir Hans Sloane (Sloane 2645) dated 1623/4, which is still in excellent condition today.

The Tanjung Tanah manuscript, written on dluwang in the 14th century. Reproduced courtesy of Uli Kozok.

More recently, certainly from the 18th century onwards, there is no evidence that dluwang as a writing material was produced outside the island of Java, and so the use of dluwang in a manuscript is a very strong indication of a Javanese origin. This allows us to track the travels of manuscripts such as a copy of a Panji story (Or. 11365) which is said to have been presented by Tengku Khalid, Bendahara of Kelantan, but which must have originated in Java as it is written on dluwang. It is perhaps hardly a coincidence that most of the Malay literary manuscripts in the British Library written on dluwang contain stories from the Javanese Panji romances, popular since the 14th century. In this cycle of stories Panji, also called Raden Inu Kertapati, prince of Kuripan or Janggala, is betrothed to Princess Candra Kirana of Daha, who disappears on the eve of their wedding. Panji undergoes many adventures on his journeys while seeking his beloved.


A Panji story, probably Hikayat Cekel Waneng Pati. British Library, Or.11365, f.26r (detail).

Beginning of a Panji story, about the Maharaja of Jengolo, written in Malay in romanized script. British Library, Or.16446, f.1r (detail).

Dluwang is made through the same process as tapa or bark cloth, traditionally the main source of clothing in the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Tapa was first described in European sources by Captain James Cook, who collected samples from Tahiti in 1769 during his first voyage of exploration.

‘A girl bringing presents to Captn Cook’, wearing a ‘dress’ consisting of a large quantity of tapa cloth bound about her waist, intended as a gift for Cook.  Drawn by John Webber and engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi, from Cook’s Third Voyage (1776-1780). British Library, Add.23921 f.48.

Further reading

Edi S. Ekadjati and John H. McGlynn, ‘Daluang: traditional paper production’, in Illuminations: writing traditions of Indonesia, ed. Ann Kumar and John H. McGlynn. New York: Weatherhill; Jakarta: Lontar; 1996; pp.116-117.

Uli Kozok, Kitab undang-undang Tanjung Tanah: naskah Melayu yang tertua. Jakarta: Yayasan Naskah Nusantara, 2006.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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In a previous blog post I wrote about a Malay manuscript of the Hikayat Hang Tuah belonging to a prominent Chulia (south Indian Muslim) merchant from Kedah, Bapu Kandu, who had settled in Penang in the late 18th century. Bapu Kandu, also known as Hakim Long Fakir Kandu, was the patriarch of a family of Malay scribes whose output is well represented in the British Library. One of Kandu’s younger sons, Ibrahim, was employed by Thomas Stamford Raffles and was responsible for much of Raffles’s diplomatic correspondence in Malay. Kandu’s older son, Ahmad Rijaluddin, is primarily known for his travel account of a visit to Calcutta, a journey made in late 1810 in the company of the Penang businessman Robert Scott.  

Ahmad Rijaluddin’s narrative, which he entitled Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala, ‘An account of the state of Bengal’, is dated Ramadan 1226 (September/October 1811).  The text is known today from a unique manuscript in the British Library, Add. 12386, probably the author’s autograph, which has now been digitised and can be read online. The manuscript has been edited by Cyril Skinner (1982), whose elegant translations are quoted in the extracts below.


Opening pages of the manuscript: ‘This is a narrative of the state of Bengal as it was at the time I, Ahmad Rijaluddin, son of Hakim Long Fakir Kandu, left my homeland to visit it.  I have composed this narrative for the benefit of posterity, commiting it to writing in the year 1226, in the year dal awal, in the month of Ramadan’. (Inilah hikayat diceterakan perintah negeri Benggala tatkala masa zaman senda Ahmad Rijaluddin ibn Hakim Long Fakir Kandu belayar / membuang diri ke Benggala.  Maka dikarang hikayat ini meninggal akan zaman diperbuat surat pada sanat 1226 tahun dal awal bulan Ramadan.)  British Library, Add. 12386, ff.1v-2r.

As Skinner notes, although the content of Ahmad Rijaluddin’s account is something new in Malay writing – a descriptive eye-witness account of foreign lands – the literary conventions in which he was reared envelop and permeate the text. Just as traditional Malay narrative accounts of historical events were composed centripetally around the figure of the raja, the sovereign of the state, in Ahmad’s text the omnipresent focus of the work is the English raja in Calcutta: Lord Minto, Governor-General of Bengal (1807-1813). A great king must have a fitting abode, and Ahmad accords the already impressive three-storied Government House, Calcutta, four more levels as would befit a great palace in a Malay epic: ‘Now I shall tell you how splendid the residence of Lord Minto is. The surrounding wall, which looks most impressive, is of multicoloured stone … within which has been constructed a very handsome palace, as high as a mountain, built in seven tiers (Sebermula maka tersebutlah keelokan rumah baginda Raja Lord Minto itu. Maka diperbuatnya pagar dengan batu pancalogam terlalu amat indah2 rupanya … maka di dalam pagar itu diperbuatnya sebuah istana terlalulah indah2 rupanya dan lagi besarnya seperti sebuah gunung rupanya diperbuatnya tujuh tingkat) (Add. 12386, ff.8r-8v; Skinner, pp.40-43).


Government House in Calcutta, home of the Governor-General of Bengal, a watercolour by Edward Orme after James Moffat c. 1804. British Library, WD 476.

Ahmad Rijaluddin describes in great detail the sights seen in Calcutta – the specialist bazaars for gold, pearls, beads, cloth, metalwork and even artificial flowers made from the pith of the sola plant (bunga-bungaan diperbuat dengan kayu lampung yang bernama sola seperti kertas yang amat putih); the street entertainers (orang bermain aneka bagai) with snakes, monkeys and bears, as well as acrobats – all with the conventionalised expressions of astonishment and delight appropriate for a traditional Malay hikayat. But one of the main calls on his attention, a subject to which he is drawn over and over again, is the sheer variety of courtesans on display in brothels, of all shapes and sizes. In one winding lane near the shipyards, ‘on the ground floor live the poor and ugly whores; on the second floor live the whores who are not bad-looking, and on the third floor live the very pick of the whores, really lovely creatures, like angels from heaven’ (pada tingkat yang di bawah itu adalah jalang yang miskin dan kurang rupanya, dan tingkat yang kedua adalah tempat jalang yang pertengahan rupanya duduk pada tempat itu, adalah pada tingkat yang ketiga di situlah tempat jalang asal nuri terlalulah indah2 rupanya seperti bidadari turun dari kayangan rupanya) (Add.12386, f.14r; Skinner, pp.56-57). A particularly elegant lane called Bhatiar Kana was occupied by high-class brothels filled with captivating occupants: ‘In the afternoon the women come out on to the top-floor balcony to take the air, wearing robes of white flecked with gold … they sit there singing songs in voices as sweet as aeolian harps … anyone catching sight of them at this time – even a scholar with a beard ten cubits long – would fall madly in love with them’ (Maka adalah pada masa tatkala hari waktu asar maka keluarlah ia duduk berangin pada atas tingkat tinggi itu ada yang memakai kain putih diseram dengan air mas … maka duduklah ia bernyanyi maka suaranya terlalulah amat merdu seperti buluh perindu … maka tatkala masa itu jika alim janggut panjang sepuluh hasta sekalipun jika terpandang menjadi gila berahi) (Add.12386, f.42r; Skinner, pp.130-131).


Ahmad Rijaluddin’s descriptions of the courtesans of Bhatiar Kana. British Library, Add. 12386, f.42r (detail).

Ahmad Rijaluddin was soon torn away from the contemplation of such delights, for he appears to have joined the British expeditionary fleet which set off from Melaka in June 1811 to wrest Java out of Napoleanic hands.  Ahmad’s narrative - which may have been written up during the sea passage - ends neatly but abruptly on the brink of the attack on Batavia (which took place in August 1811).  A final pair of decorated frames in the manuscript has been left empty, and Skinner wonders if this signifies that the author did not survive the expedition.

Further reading

Ahmad Rijaluddin’s Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala. Edited and translated by C. Skinner.  The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982. (Bibliotheca Indonesica; 22).

Khoo Salma Nasution, The Chulia in Penang: patronage and place-making around the Kapitan Kling Mosque, 1786-1957. Penang: Areca Books, 2014.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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My last few posts, on documents from the Muslim sultanates of the southern Philippines, have highlighted the diverse linguistic landscape. The treaties signed by Alexander Dalrymple with the sultanate of Sulu in the early 1760s were written in English and Malay or Tausug. In Mindanao, during the visit by the British sea captain Thomas Forrest in 1775, the Raja Muda of the sultanate of Maguindanao and his father Fakih Maulana wrote to King George III and the East India Company in Malay, the letters being penned by Fakih Maulana himself. In fact, as noted by Forrest during his eight-month stay in Maguindanao, the main medium for both oral and written communication was the Maguindanao language, and Fakih Maulana consulted royal genealogies written in Maguindanao.  Presented below are two letters in Maguindanao, one of which is from Fakih Maulana, written three decades before Forrest's visit.

Map of the Philippines, from Carta Hydrographica, y Chorographica delas Yslas Filipinas, Manila, 1734. British Library, Maps.K.Top.CXVI.37.

On the basis of inscriptions in the top-left corners of the first pages, both letters are addressed to Don Pedro Zacarias Villareal, an admiral and later sergeant major, and from 1755, Governor of Zamboanga (information from R. Orlina). He  was dispatched to Zamboanga in 1731, where Maulana Jafar Sadik, sultan of Tamontaka, requested Spanish assistance in quelling a rebellion by his nephew Malinog. After Jafar Sadik was killed in an attack by Malinog's forces in 1733, Zacarias came to the aid of his son Muhammad Amiruddin Hamza (Fakih Maulana). Following Malinog’s death in 1748, Fakih Maulana emerged as paramount chief of Maguindanao, as he himself  recounted to Forrest.

The letter from Fakih Maulana, Or.15510 A, consists of four densely-written pages, and concludes with a statement of the date, 20 Rabiulawal 1159, equivalent to 12 April 1746. Although the writer is not identified in the letter itself, in the bottom left corner of the last page is impressed an eight-petalled round lampblack seal, inscribed in Arabic, al-mutawakkil `alâ Allâh huwa al-Sultan Muhammad Syah Amiruddin fî balad `âlam Mindanâwî, ‘He who entrusts himself to God, he is the Sultan Muhammad Syah Amiruddin, of the state in the land of Mindanao’, and the signature in Latin characters, Jamdsa, represents 'Hamza' in Spanish orthography. In the letter Fakih Maulana refers disparagingly to Malinog, and recounts a complex operation to recover booty that had been seized.

The last page of a four-page letter in Maguindanao in Arabic script, from Sultan Muhammad Syah Amiruddin of Maguindanao (Fakih Maulana), 1746. British Library, Or. 15510 A, f.2v.

The second letter, Or. 15510 B, is just one page long, with a final line, written in Malay, giving the year as 1159 (1746/7 AD). The octagonal seal on this letter is inscribed, al-mu'ayyad billâh Sultan Muhyiuddin ibn al-Sultan Diauddin, ‘He who is supported by God, Sultan Muhyiuddin, son of the Sultan Diauddin’. It is often difficult to link up formal regnal names given on Islamic seals from the Philippines with royal titles referred to in other historical sources, and this sultan has not yet been positively identified, as the name of the sender is not given in the text of the letter itself.  The letter does however refer to the ruler of Buayan, a realm inland from Maguindanao which was the stronghold of Malinog. 

Letter in Maguindanao and Malay from Sultan Muhyiuddin, 1159 (1746/7).  British Library, Or. 15510 B.

The two letters in Maguindanao reproduced here have just been fully digitised. In written form, Malay, Tausug and Maguindanao all use the modified form of the Arabic script called Jawi, with five additional letters representing sounds not found in Arabic.  The main difference is that while vowels are rarely indicated in Malay with diacritical marks, Tausug and Maguindanao are always fully vocalised.

One distinctive aspect of the diplomatics of both letters deserves mention. Throughout the Islamic world, in letters and documents written in Arabic script, irrespective of language, the lines of writing are generally arrayed against the left-hand edge of the paper, leaving a margin along the right-hand side – as indeed was the case in the Tausug and Malay documents discussed above. In these two letters, however, the text block is sited on the right-hand side of the paper, leaving a wide margin on the left; an exceptionally unusual arrangement for documents in Arabic script, and it is possible that Spanish influence may have led to this particular format.

For information on the contents of the two letters I would like to acknowledge the invaluable help of Roderick Orlina, Darwin Absari and Nasrudin Datucali.

Further reading:
Thomas Forrest, A voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas 1774-1776.  2nd ed., with plates.  London, 1780.
Cesar Adib Majul, Muslims in the Philippines.  Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1999.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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In my last post I wrote about the East India Company sea captain Thomas Forrest’s eight-month stay in the sultanate of Maguindanao, on the west coast of the island of Mindanao, from 5 May 1775 to 8 January 1776. During this visit, Forrest forged close relations with the Raja Muda (Viceroy) and his father Fakymolano (Fakih Maulana), the former sultan of Maguindanao. On arrival in Maguindanao, Forrest had to tread delicately due to the evident rift between the reigning Sultan Fakharuddin (r. 1755-c.1780), who was the younger brother of Fakih Maulana, and the Raja Muda. Acting on the sage advice of his Bugis guide Tuan Haji, while ensuring that he paid respects to the Sultan, Forrest allied himself with the court of the Raja Muda, and lodged in his fort.  

On his departure in January 1776, Forrest carried with him two letters: 'I then took respectful leave of Raja Moodo.  He delivered to me the two letters already mentioned; one to his Majesty, the other to the Company, with the presents.  Nobody knew what they were, but himself and his father Fakymolano, who wrote the letters' (Forrest 1780: 290).  The two letters, written in Malay, are now held in the India Office Records in the British Library. Although unpublished, their presence was not unknown: the letter to King George was exhibited (probably in the form of a colour slide) in a talk on ‘The archives of the Honourable East India Company’ by William Foster at the Royal Society of Arts in London in 1923, described as ‘a letter in Malay, from the Sultan of Mindanao (the most southerly of the Philippine Islands), to George III, offering an alliance, offensive and defensive, and promising facilities for British trade in his country’.


Letter in Malay from the Raja Muda of Maguindanao and his father Fakih Maulana to King George III of Great Britain, 5 Rabiulakhir 1189 (5 June 1775). British Library, IOR: H/128, pp.496-497.

William Foster’s summary accurates reflects the content of both letters, which are indeed essentially the same. However, Fakih Maulana’s statesmanship is evident in the difference of nuance between the two letters. That to the king is more conventional in tone and pays compliments to the renown of the British name, pre-empting Napoleon’s famous characterisation of the English as ‘a nation of shopkeepers’ by stating, ‘the Spanish are constantly interfering in our [religion] – the Dutch are all for taking over our government – but the English just want to trade.’  The epistle to the Company, on the other hand, is rather more brisk and business-like. While the letter to the king states ‘I agree to help the Company against its enemies and in return I ask the Company to assist me in Maguindanao’, that to the Company states ‘I agree to help the Company against its enemies in the land of Maguindanao, but I do not agree to help beyond Maguindanao’. 

Turning from the content to the form, the letter is not a typical royal Malay letter, not least in that it was written by Fakih Maulana himself rather than by a professional palace scribe. His erudition is alluded to in the title by which he was commonly known, the Arabic Faqīh Mawlāna, ‘Our Lord the Legal Expert’, but his handwriting is workaday rather than stylish. The opening words are fully in accordance with standard Malay protocol: Surat ini dengan tanda puti hati datang dari  …, ‘This letter comes in all sincerity from …’. Thereafter, however, the language used is colloquial rather than courtly, evoking the vocabulary of commerce and daily communication throughout the archipelago rather than of its courts, for example in the emphatic use of the possessive punya in the Raja Muda’s claim to be effective sovereign of the state: Saudarah kita Fakharuddin sultan sekarang tuah suda lapas perinta di semuanya dia punya pesisir dalam tangan Raja Muda punya tangan, ‘Our brother Fakhruddin, the sultan, is old and has relinquished his rule over all his coastal possessions into the hands of the Raja Muda’. In layout the letter is also untraditional: there is no religious letter heading or kepala surat as is commonly found at the top of most formal Malay letters. Many of the lines are presented in new paragraphs, and dashes are employed at the end of sentences, although traditional Malay in Jawi script did not employ punctuation or paragraphing. Occasionally words in Maguindanao, the local language of the state, are interspersed in the Malay text, such as labi, meaning 'especially' or 'in particular', which appears to be used here as a cognate for the Malay word lagi, 'moreover', to introduce a new clause in the letter.  At the end, both letters are dated 5 Rabiulakhir 1189, equivalent to 5 June 1775, indicating that the letters were written not long after Forrest's arrival in Maguindanano, but were only delivered to him on his departure.

Lampblack seal impression of the Raja Muda of Maguindanao, inscribed in Arabic: wa-tawakkal `alâ Allâh huwa âmîr al-umarâ` Muhammad Azimuddin, ‘And trusting to God, he is the prince of princes, Muhammad Azimuddin’. British Library, IOR: H/134, p.77.

The full names of Fakih Maulana Muhammad Amiruddin and the Raja Muda Amir al-Umara Muhammad Azimuddin Kibad Shahrial, inscribed in Arabic and Latin script at the end of their letter to the Directors of the East India Company.  British Library, IOR: H/134, p.77.

In the event, despite the warm relationship that had developed between Forrest and the Raja Muda and Fakih Maulana, the East India Company made no further overtures to Maguindanao. The Raja Muda eventually acceeded fully to the throne of Maguindanao in around 1780, and ruled until 1805 (Majul 1999: 28).

Further reading:
Thomas Forrest, A voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas 1774-1776.  2nd ed. London, 1780.
William Foster,  The archives of the Honourable East India Company.  Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, January 1924, 4: 106-113.
Majul, Cesar Adib, Muslims in the Philippines.  2nd ed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1999.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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Thomas Forrest (1729-1802) was a British sea captain who spent half a century plying the waters of the Malay archipelago, mostly in the service of the East India Company.  In 1775 Forrest undertook a voyage from his base at Bengkulu in west Sumatra to survey the north coast of New Guinea, sailing via the East India Company settlement on the island of Balambangan off the north coast of Borneo, which had been granted by the Sultan of Sulu following negotations with Alexander Dalrymple in the early 1760s.  

On the return journey Forrest spent eight months, from 5 May 1775 to 8 January 1776, in the sultanate of Maguindanao on the west coast of the island of Mindanao in the present-day southern Philippines, where he was courteously hosted by the Rajah Moodo (Raja Muda or Viceroy) and his father Fakymolano (Fakih Maulana).  By his own account Forrest spent nearly every evening with the Raja Muda and Fakih Maulana, discoursing in Malay on a wide range of subjects, and his resulting book, A voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas 1774-1776 (first published in London in 1779), includes a valuable description of the social, cultural, political and economic life of Maguindanao in the late 18th century.


Thomas Forrest, fronstispiece in Voyage from Calcutta to the Mergui archipelago (London, 1792).

While in Maguindanao, Forrest received news that the Company base at Balambangan had been sacked by the Sulus, and he therefore made good use of his time in Maguindanao to survey the coast and the land, looking out for another suitable site for a trading post.  The second, improved, edition of his book, issued in London in 1780, includes numerous maps and charts of Mindanao and other places surveyed on his voyage.

Plate 18 in Forrest’s book is a map entitled ‘Part of Magindano, from Tetyan Harbour to the Island Serangani', which includes not only coastal features surveyed by Forrest himself, but also a detailed trajectory of the great Pulangi river up to its source, with a note of settlements along its banks, extending far beyond the limit of Forrest’s own explorations.  Forrest's source of information is elucidated in the opening of Chaper II of Book II of his work, ‘Geographical Sketch of Places on the Banks of the Rivers Pelangy and Tamontakka, by Tuan Fakymolano’, in which Forrest notes that  ‘the chart of these countries and rivers, drawn by Fakymolano, is deposited in the British Museum’ (Forrest 1780: 186).  This map of the main rivers and riverine settlements of Maguindanao is now held in the British Library as Add. 4924, and is an exceptionally rare example of a map produced within the Malay world. The rivers, with tributaries and channels, were drawn in black ink and captioned in Arabic script with the names of settlements by Fakih Maulana himself, with transliterations and some comments in English in a lighter brown ink by Forrest.  The map, which must have been produced in 1775, has just been fully digitised and can be studied in high resolution here.  


Map of Maguindanao, drawn by Fakih Maulana for Thomas Forrest, 1775. British Library, Add. 4924.

Detail from Thomas Forrest's map of 'Part of Magindano' ( Forrest 1780: Plate 18), showing the river Pulangi, based on Fakih Maulana's map.

Fakih Maulana's account of riverine settlements in Maguindanao (Forrest 1780: 185, detail).

When Forrest left Maguindanao in January 1776 to sail on to Sulu and Balambangan, he carried with him two royal letters in Malay from the Raja Muda and Fakih Maulana, to the king (then George III) and the East India Company.  These letters will be discussed in my next post.

Further reading:

Thomas Forrest, A voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas 1774-1776. Dublin, 1779.

Thomas Forrest, A voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas 1774-1776. 2nd ed. with plates. London, 1780.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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When the East India Company began to look for a base in the Philippine islands in order to gain access to the China trade, attention focussed on the Sulu archipelago, lying east of the northern tip of Borneo. In January 1761, the Scottish hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808) arrived on the island of Jolo, the seat of the Sultan of Sulu, charged with the task of negotiating for a trading post for the Company. The then ruler of Sulu was Sultan Muhammad Muizzuddin, also known as Bantilan. He was the younger brother of Sultan Azimuddin I, who at the time of Dalrymple’s visit had been in exile in Manila since 1748 because of local opposition towards his policy of friendship towards Spanish Jesuit missionaries. Following the death of Muizzuddin in 1763 and the brief accession of his son, Sultan Muhammad Azimuddin II, Dalrymple was instrumental in helping Sultan Azimuddin I (usually referred to in European-language sources as ‘Alimuddin’) to return from Manila to Sulu and re-accede to the throne in 1764, where he ruled until his death in 1778.  


Alexander Dalrymple, in a painting of c.1765 attributed to John Thomas Seton (c.1735-1806). Copyright National Museums of Scotland.


A mosque in Sulu, from Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, 1844.  British Library, 10001.d vol.5, opp. p. 354.

Between 1761 and 1764 Dalrymple negotiated and signed four major treaties with successive sultans of Sulu, leading to the establishment of an East India Company trading post on the island of Balambangan in 1773. Most of the original bilingual treaty papers have survived in the India Office Records in the British Library: the first treaty of 1761 was in Malay and English; the second treaty of 1763 was also originally in Malay and English, but only the Spanish translation of the Malay has survived; and the third and fourth treaties of 1764 were in Tausug (the main language of Sulu) and English.


First Sulu Treaty of 28 January 1761, signed between Sultan Muhammad Muizzuddin of Sulu and Alexander Dalrymple for the East India Company. British Library, IOR: H/629, pp.456-457.

The English texts of the Treaties are well known, but the Malay and Tausug texts, written in Arabic script, have never been studied, and a close examination inevitably reveals a number of differences with the English text. A typical example is the English text of the first Treaty of 1761, which in clause 1 states that the British shall be granted ‘perpetual’ possession of the ground for their settlement, a word which is absent in the Malay version. But perhaps the most poignant aspect of this Treaty is the addendum found on the reverse of the Malay page: a strong rejection of the sale of opium, and a tight control on arms.  This clause – which is unnumbered and does not appear in any published English version of the treaty – appears to have been included at the request of the Sulus, judging from the detailed exposition in four lines of Malay, ‘The aforementioned trade goods prohibited by His Highness Sultan Muhammad Muizzuddin are opium, while no kinds of arms, big or small, may be sold to to anyone, even to the children and grandchildren of His Highness the Sultan, without the express permission of His Highness the Sultan; only His Highness the Sultan may buy these goods,’ compared with the laconic one-line English translation ‘Opium is contraband & arms & ammunition to any but the Sultan’.  Yet Dalrymple himself apparently strongly supported this prohibition; the culprit responsible for later developing the Sulu trade in opium and arms was the unscrupulous John Herbert, chief of the East India Company post at Balambangan, who was also responsible for a massive fraud against the Company itself which led to the financial collapse of the Balambangan settlement.


Addendum to the first Sulu Treaty of 28 January 1761, banning the sale of opium and restricting the sale of arms, in Malay with brief English translation: Maka adapun dagangan yang dilarangkan Paduka Seri Sultan Muhammad Muizzuddin yang telah tersebut itu iaitu apiun, dan demikian lagi segala alat senjata besar kecil tiada boleh dijual kepada orang lain, jikalau pada pihak anak cucu Paduka Seri Sultan sekalipun jika bukan izin daripada Paduka Seri Sultan, hanya Paduka Seri Sultan yang membeli jua adanya. Opium is contraband & arms & ammunition to any but the Sultan.  British Library, IOR: H/629, p.455.

The first Treaty is also notable for high standard of the formal Malay language used, and its proficient calligraphy. An unusual aspect of the diplomatics of the treaties is that when the various royal Sulu seals were stamped across two pages, the two sheets of paper were first folded along an inner vertical margin, with the seal applied across the folds, resulting in an impression of two halves when the paper was flattened out.  The East India Company seals on the same documents, however, are simply stamped on the flattened sheet of paper. This peculiar method of sealing is not found in any other Muslim kingdom in Southeast Asia. Interestingly, the only other Islamic seal impression known displaying the same characteristic of having been stamped across the folds of a document, yielding a two-part impression, is the iconic seal impression of the Mughal emperor Babur, found on what is possibly the oldest surviving original Mughal document, a land grant dated 1527.


A second copy of the Malay text of the first Sulu Treaty of 28 January 1761, ratified in September 1761by 24 nobles of Sulu listed on the right-hand page. British Library, IOR: H/629, pp.460-461. 

Further ratification of the first Sulu Treaty of January 1761, signed in Manila on 20 November 1761 by Sultan Muhammad Azimuddin I. This document was probably obtained by Dalrymple, who appears to have been in Manila from 9 November-1 December 1761 (pers.comm., Andrew Cook).  British Library, IOR: H/629, p.459.


Dalrymple’s third Sulu Treaty, in Tausug and English, signed between Sultan Muhammad Azimuddin I of Sulu and Alexander Dalrymple for the English East India Company, Jolo, Sulu, 2 July 1764.  British Library, IOR: H/629, p.488-489.


Dalrymple’s fourth Sulu Treaty, in Tausug and English, signed between Sultan Muhammad Azimuddin I of Sulu and Alexander Dalrymple for the English East India Company, Jolo, Sulu, 28 September 1764. British Library, IOR: H/629, p.pp. 495–502.

Further reading:
Allen, J. de V., Stockwell, A. J., and Wright, L. R., A collection of treaties and other documents affecting the states of Malaysia 1761-1963.  London: Oceana, 1980. 2 v. [The Sulu treaties are published in v.2, pp.371-388.]
Cook, Andrew S., Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808), hydrographer to the East India Company and the Admiralty, as publisher : a catalogue of books and charts.  Ph.D. thesis, University of St Andrews, 1993.
Costa, H. de la, ‘Muhammad Alimuddin I, Sultan of Sulu, 1735-1773’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1965, 38 (1):43-76.
Majul,Cesar Adib, Muslims in the Philippines.  Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1999.
Warren, James Francis, The Sulu Zone 1768-1898.  Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1981.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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How many people does it take to digitise a Malay manuscript?

In a widely-read recent blog post, Digitisation’s most wanted, Melissa Terras – Professor of Digital Humanities at University College London – investigated the most frequently downloaded or accessed items in various digital libraries.  Her blog opened with a ‘surprising’ fact: the most popular item in the National Library of Scotland’s digital collection is not the last letter of Mary Queens of Scots, not the collections of original material relating to famous Scottish writers such as Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson and even J.K. Rowling, but:  A grammar and dictionary of the Malay language : with a preliminary dissertation, by John Crawfurd, published in 1852, which is accessed by hundreds of people every month, mainly from Malaysia.  True, surprising to many people – but not to scholars of Malay, who know Crawfurd well not only for his grammar and dictionary and the Descriptive dictionary of the Indian islands of 1856, but also for his invaluable collection of Malay, Javanese and Bugis manuscripts which he sold to the British Museum in 1842, and which are now held in the British Library.  
 
John Crawfurd.  Source of image: Wikipedia

John Crawfurd (1783-1868) was a Scottish physician who joined the East India Company in 1803.  In 1808 he arrived in Penang, where he began his studies of Malay, and in 1811 he accompanied Lord Minto and Thomas Stamford Raffles on the British invasion of Java, where he served as Resident of Yogyakarta until the British withdrawal in 1816.  He later became the second Resident of Singapore from 1823 to 1826, and also led diplomatic missions to Siam, Indochina and Burma. After his final return to London in 1827 Crawfurd lived a long life, during which time he published the work which has become such a hit in the digital age.


Hikayat Carang Kulina which begins by setting out its literary credentials: 'This is a Javanese tale named Carang Kulina, a beautiful story of the type called kakawin in Javanese, canda in India, rakat in Chinese, and hikayat when rendered into Malay', Al-kisah. Inilah hikayat Jawa yang bernama Carang Kulina yang terlalu amat indah2 perkataan daripada bahasa Jawa kakawin namanya, dan kepada bahasa Keling canda namanya, kepada bahasa Cina rakat namanya, diubahkan kepada bahasa Melayu hikayat namanya. British Library, Add. 12383, ff.1v-2r

The 25 Malay manuscripts from the Crawfurd collection (Add. 12376-12399) have now all been digitised and are fully accessible online on the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts site.  They were collected by Crawfurd during his service in Southeast Asia, in Penang, Java and Singapore. The collection is rich in literary works, and many of the Malay manuscripts from Java are translations of Javanese stories, as are the two manuscripts shown here. We know that Crawfurd read and used his own Malay manuscripts because of a charming drawing evidently sketched to amuse his little daughter Flora in the margin of a Malay manuscript of  Hikayat Dewa Mandu now in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. The Malay manuscripts in the British Library certainly provided material for many of the examples of Malay reproduced in Crawfurd’s Grammar.  


A passage in the Hikayat Carang Kulina telling the story of the prince Radin Inu: sebermula maka tersebutlah perkataan Raden Inu Kertapati.  British Library, Add. 12383, f.12v


A page from Crawfurd’s Grammar (1852), p. 80, with quotations from a Malay text about Raden Inu.  National Library of Scotland.


Hikayat Naya Kusuma, beginning in time-honoured fashion: ‘This is a tale translated from Javanese into Malay, a beautiful story composed by its wise and sagacious owner, to soothe troubled and aching hearts, ' Bahwa ini suatu hikayat daripada bahasa Jawa dipindahkan kepada bahasa Melayu terlalu indah2 ceteranya dikarang oleh orang yang empunya cetera yang arif bijaksana dapat akan mengibur hati yang dendam berahi. British Library, Add. 12391, f.1v

In Melissa Terras’s blog she explored the various social media sites by which people accessed digital items.  And what about the digitised Malay manuscripts in the British Library?  Here too we know that Twitter and Facebook play a significant role, as does our blog – the post of 18 November 2013 about our digitised manuscript of Hikayat Raja Babi, ‘The Malay story of the Pig King’ has had over 5,000 views so far.  Which is YOUR favourite digitised Malay manuscript, and why?  Please let me know!  [email protected]

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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I recently wrote about how the Indonesian and Malay manuscript collections digitised through the Endangered Archives Programme are changing our perceptions of the written landscape of maritime Southeast Asia.  Today I would like to focus on one genre of Islamic manuscripts from the Malay world previously all but unrepresented in any British collection. These are manuscripts containing khutbah, or sermons, written in Arabic with occasional elements in Malay, designed to be read at the Friday congregational prayer or on special occasions such as marriages or the two great feasts of Islam: Id al-Adha, the feast of the Sacrifice, and Id al-Fitr, at the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan. The British Library holds just one khutbah manuscript from Southeast Asia, acquired in 1990 (Or.15924).  It is written in scroll form, with rather garish illuminated frames and a cloth headpiece, and is stored in a bamboo container.  The presence of a very similar example in the Mataram Museum suggests a Lombok provenance. 

Sermon in scroll form, with illuminated frames, probably from Lombok, ca.19th c.  British Library, Or. 15924.

In early Islamic states, the mention of a ruler’s name in the sermon was one of the two prerogatives of a Muslim sovereign (the other being the right to mint coins).  Elizabeth Lambourn (2008 & 2011) has recently highlighted how the offer to cite a ruler’s name in the Friday sermon could be used as a bargaining tool in negotiations between the great Islamic empires and the coastal communities that fringed the Indian Ocean: khutbah were traded for cannon.  The research project Islam, Trade and Politics across the Indian Ocean, investigating Ottoman links with Southeast Asia, has found evidence that the citation of the Ottoman sultan’s name in sermons was used by Malay rulers in the late 19th century to support claims to Ottoman overlordship and thence entitlement to protection against western colonial powers. 

The first Islamic sermons from Southeast Asia to be published originate from Sulu in the southern Philippines.  One is a Friday sermon and the other a sermon for the feast of Ramadan, copied in 1903 and citing the name of Sultan Muhammad ‘Pudhalun’ (Fadl) (r.1824-1862), son of the late Muhammad Jamalul Kiram (r.1823-1842), and asking for blessings on former sultans of Sulu. As seen from photographs published in 1905 by the Lebanese-American scholar Najib Saleeby (1973: 101-107, Plates XI-XVI), each sermon was written in book form with the first two pages set in beautiful decorative frames.

It was only with the arrival in the British Library of digitised collections of Indonesian manuscripts through the Endangered Archives Programme that large numbers of khutbah manuscripts from Southeast Asia are at last available for study.  Project EAP329: Digitising private collections of Acehnese manuscripts located in Pidie and Aceh Besar regencies, led by Dr Fakhriati M. Thahir, includes three volumes of khutbah from Aceh. 

Sermon for Ramadhan, from an illuminated compilation of khutbah texts. Unusually (but not unprecedentedly) for a MS from Aceh, this has some headings in Javanese. EAP329/1/62.

More significant, though, is project EAP276: Documentation and preservation of Ambon manuscripts, led by Prof. Titik Pudjiastuti of Universitas Indonesia, which digitised 12 private collections of 182 mostly Islamic manuscripts in Ambon and the neighbouring island of Haruku in the Moluccas, of which no fewer than 45 are sermons. Intriguingly, just like the Lombok sermon in the BL and in contrast to the Aceh sermons, all are scrolls, which is actually a very unusual format for manuscripts in the Malay world. Said to date from the 18th to the 20th centuries, many are relatively recent, with one sermon dated 2002.  Yet of the earlier sermons, it is notable that some cite the names of sultans of Ternate dating from the 17th back to the late 14th centuries, suggesting the preservation of a much older tradition, and one which will repay further study.  Reproduced below is a selection of khutbah manuscripts from Ambon.

Map of Ambon on the left-hand page, with the Banda islands on the right-hand page. Livro do Estado da India Oriental, by Pedro Barreto de Resende, 1646.  British Library, Sloane MS 197, ff.397v-398r. 

Sermon for Id al-Fitr, with pink headcloth and bamboo case, written by Rahman Ali Salampessy, late 20th c.  At the beginning, the writer has used small circles to indicate the number of times the takbir (the phrase Allah Akbar, ‘God is greatest’) should be repeated at the start of the sermon: seven times in the second line, and five times in the third line.  EAP276/8/5.


Friday sermon headed by the Indonesian state arms, also by Rahman Ali Salampessy, dated 28 August 1990. EAP276/8/4.

Colophon of a sermon on dogs written by Imam Alibi in 2002 (yang menulis ini khutba Imam Alibi Wa'ila 'alim bangsa Ripamuli pada tahun 2002 pada bulan Rabiulawal pada binatang anjing pelaku tiga naskah pada tahun jim akhir), from the Basri Ripamole Collection.  EAP276/4/1.

Sermon in Arabic with interlinear translation in Malay, 19th c., from the collection of Husain Hatuwe. EAP276/7/61.


Sermon from Ambon, citing the grandiose titles of the ruler and the names of his forebears, all sultans of Ternate (the reign dates are taken from The Royal Ark by Christopher Buyers):
ibn al-Sultan Ali Manzar Syah (this may refer to Sultan Muzafar, who ruled from 1607-1627, or to his son Sultan Mandar Syah, r.1648-1675)
ibn al-Sultan Saiduddin Syah (r.1583-1606)
ibn al-Sultan Babullah Zat Syah (r.1570-1583)
ibn al-Sultan Khair Jamil Syah (r.1535-1570)
ibn al-Sultan Bayan Sirrullah (r.1500-1522)
ibn Zainal Abidin Syah al-marhum (r.1486-1500)
ibn al-Sultan Amir al-Mu’minin Iskandar Zulkarnain Zat Syah
From the collection of Sarajudin Hatuina, Ambon.  EAP276/11/15. 

Sermon for Id al-Fitr on 1 Muharam, citing a similar chain of Ternate sultans, from the collection of Husain Hatuwe, Ambon. EAP276/7/38.

Further reading

Christopher Buyers, 'Ternate',  The Royal Ark.

Elizabeth Lambourn. ‘India from Aden – Khutba and Muslim Urban Networks in Late Thirteenth-Century India’, in Secondary Cities and Urban Networking in the Indian Ocean Realm c. 1000-1800, ed. Kenneth Hall. Lanham: Lexington, 2008, pp. 55-97.

Elizabeth Lambourn, 'Khutba and Muslim networks in the Indian Ocean (Part II) - Timurid and Ottoman engagements', in The growth of non-Western cities: primary and secondary urban networking, c. 900-1900, ed. Kenneth R. Hall.  Lanham: Lexington, 2011, pp. 127-154.

Najeeb M. Saleeby. Studies in Moro history, law and religion. Beirut: United Publishers, 1973. [Facsimile reprint of the 1905 ed.]

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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