ETUDES
R. Michael Feener & Michael F Laffan
Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean : Yemeni Hagiography and the Earliest History of Southeast Asian Islam 0)
In this essay we would like to present some data for the history of Islam in Southeast Asia that is not so much new as newly noticed in the interstices of our individual work. Avenues of enquiry were opened up by the researches of Michael Feener into instances in Yemeni hagiographical dictionaries of the adjectival patronymic form (nisba) 'al-Jâwï', that is : 'the one from Jawa', which came to appear ever more relevant when Michael Laffan began tracing the origins and usages of Jâwa itself in medieval texts concerning the Indonesian archipelago. Bringing our work together and examining each other's findings in Leiden has since led us to recognize not only the earliest dating yet for a Muslim using the name al-Jâwï, but also some insights into aspects of Sufism relevant to the early history of Islam's spread to the eastern end of the Indian Ocean.
The publication of new details regarding the likely life-span and peregrinations of the seminal Sumatran mystic and poet, Hamzah Fansuri (Hamza al-Fansùrï, d. 1527), has already demonstrated the importance of looking for information relevant to the history of Southeast Asian Islam in unexpected
1. Primary textual research for this study was undertaken while we were both being hosted by the International Institute for Asian Studies (HAS) in Leiden. We would like here to thank HAS both for its financial support, and for use of its extraordinary resources for facilitating our scholarly collaboration.
Archipel 70, Paris, 2005, pp. 185-208
