Front Matter

Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-47718-5 — Miracles and Material Life Teren Sevea Frontmatter More Information

Miracles and Material Life

In this groundbreaking new study, Teren Sevea reveals the economic, environmental and religious significance of Islamic miracle workers (pawangs) in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Malay world. Through close textual analysis of hitherto overlooked manuscripts and personal interaction with modern pawangs, readers are introduced to a universe of miracle workers, uncovering connections between miracles and material life. Sevea demonstrates how the production and extrac- tion of natural resources, as well as the uses of technology, were inter- twined with the knowledge of charismatic religious figures in Malay society, and locates the role of the pawangs in the spiritual economy of the Indian Ocean world, across maritime connections and Sufi networks, and on the frontier of the British Empire.

teren sevea is a historian of religion in South and Southeast Asia at the Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of publications on Islamic connections of the Indian Ocean world, Suﬁsm and Suﬁs of the Malay world, Islamic reform movements and Islamic erotology.

ASIAN CONNECTIONS

Series Editors Sunil Amrith, Harvard University Tim Harper, University of Cambridge Engseng Ho, Duke University

Asian Connections is a major series of ambitious works that look beyond the traditional templates of area, regional or national studies to consider the trans-regional phenomena which have connected and inﬂuenced various parts of Asia through time. The series will focus on empirically grounded work exploring circulations, connections, conver- gences and comparisons within and beyond Asia. Themes of particular interest include transport and communication, mercantile networks and trade, migration, religious connections, urban history, environmental history, oceanic history, the spread of language and ideas, and political alliances. The series aims to build new ways of understanding funda- mental concepts, such as modernity, pluralism or capitalism, from the experience of Asian societies. It is hoped that this conceptual framework will facilitate connections across ﬁelds of knowledge and bridge historical perspectives with contemporary concerns.

A list of books in the series can be found at the end of the volume.

Miracles and Material Life Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya

Teren Sevea Harvard Divinity School

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108477185 DOI: 10.1017/9781108569781 © Teren Sevea 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sevea, Teren, 1979- author. Title: Miracles and material life : rice, ore, traps and guns in Islamic Malaya / Teren Sevea. Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2020. | Series: Asian connections | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiﬁers: LCCN 2019042008 (print) | LCCN 2019042009 (ebook) | ISBN 9781108477185 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108702126 (paperback) | ISBN 9781108569781 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Miracles (Islam) | Miracle workers–Malaysia–Malaya. Classiﬁcation: LCC BP166.65 .S48 2020 (print) | LCC BP166.65 (ebook) | DDC 297.2/114–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042008 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042009 ISBN 978-1-108-47718-5 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Dedicated with utmost humility to Wak ‘Ali Janggut

Wak ‘Ali standing by the demolished grave of Siti Maryam al-‘Aydarus (d. 1853), April 2010. Photograph by Nurul Huda Rashid

Contents

List of Maps and Figures page viii Prologue ix Acknowledgements xxii Notes on Transliteration xxvi List of Abbreviations xxvii

An Introduction: The Magic of Islam and Modern Malaya 1 1 Compendia of Forest Patois and Agrarian ‘Ilmu 42 2 Pawangs and Munshis in Muhammad’s Riceﬁelds 78 3 The Pawang’s ‘Wonderful Nose’ for Ore 111 4An‘Ilmu of Violence: The Elephant Bomohs of Modern Malaya 152 5 Gun Gurus and Suﬁ Shooters 180 Conclusion 211

Glossary 219 Bibliography 235 Index 252

vii

Maps and Figures

MAPS I.1 The Malay world and Java page 7 I.2 Malaya and Sumatra 20

FIGURES 0.1 Wak ‘Ali standing by the demolished grave of Siti Maryam al-‘Aydarus (d. 1853), April 2010 page v I.1 A village bomoh from Kelantan (1906) 12 I.2 A ‘spirit-raising’ bomoh from early twentieth-century Kelantan 13 1.1 Siti Maryam’s shrine complex, Kampung Kallang, Singapore 43 1.2 Page from KPP showing the head and foot of the dry rice plant 55 2.1 Page from ‘Chapter on the Naga’s Orbit’, SFPAB 101 3.1 Opencast tin mine in Selangor 122 4.1 Page from hemerology manual, Maxwell 15; divination from day of the month symbolised by the elephant 159 5.1 Page from Maxwell 24 including incantations and depicting location of malaikat on ﬂintlock riﬂe 201 5.2 Page from KT including incantations for guns, bullets, aiming and shooting 204

viii

Prologue

8 March 2014. Malaysian Airlines passenger flight MH370 departed as usual from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) at 12:41 a.m., only to disappear from air traffic control radar screens at 1:19 a.m. The Boeing 777-200R was heading east, en route to Beijing, when it appeared to turn around and fly west towards the Indian Ocean. Over the next three years, search operations were carried out across 46,000 square miles of the southern Indian Ocean in an attempt to find the wreckage of the aircraft or the corpses of its 239 passengers. Only a wing flap and flaperon were ever found. By August 2015, as investigations by ‘the world’s leading aviation experts’ seemed increasingly futile, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak bemoaned the fact that MH370’s ‘disappearance remained a mystery’.1 The search for flight MH370 was eventually called off on 17 January 2017. Questions about why the aircraft ‘went dark’, why it ‘veered off course’ and why it appears to have ‘tragically ended’ in the southern Indian Ocean have never been answered officially.2 Shortly after MH370 went missing, however, a miracle worker and spirit medium (bomoh, pawang) from the Malaysian state of Perak claimed to know what had happened. Ibrahim Mat Zin enjoyed multiple appellations as the Raja Bomoh (Chief Miracle Worker), Dato’ (Elder) of aSufi lineage and Mahaguru (Great Teacher) of an Islamic martial arts organisation.3 On 10 March 2014, he visited KLIA to join the search for flight MH370. While at the airport, he chanted Qur’anic verses and searched the skies for the missing aircraft with bamboo binoculars. He also used a rattan replica of the plane supplemented by coconuts, fish traps and hooks to conduct his investigation.4 He then

1 ‘Prime Minister Najib Razak Statement on MH370’. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibrahim Mat Zin had also founded and was president (pendiri) of the Malay Islamic martial arts (silat) organisation, Persatuan Seni Silat Gayung Ghaib (Association of the Fine Art of Silat tethered to the Unseen). 4 Amongst online articles on the Raja Bomoh’s rites at the KLIA, see ‘Raja Bomoh Turut Bantu Cari Pesawat MH370’, and Sevea, ‘Malaysia’s Rajah Bomoh: Throwback to an Earlier Age?’.

x Prologue

declared that the flight had been hijacked by spirits and had entered an unseen world (‘alam ghaib). The Raja Bomoh called upon the 100,000 members of his cult to read the thirty-sixth chapter of the Qur’an (Yasin), and encouraged believers to pray as he continued his search for MH370 and its spirit-hijackers using his esoteric vision and binoculars. A few days later, he claimed that the aircraft would be spotted on an island. When the flaperon was later found on the island of Réunion, he expressed disappointment with the prime minister for failing to recognise that his search operations were more effective than those of the aviation experts. The Raja Bomoh was also disturbed by what he perceived as unwarranted reactions to his assistance by Islamic jurisprudential authorities and representatives of Islamic departments of State in the federal constitutional monarchy of Malaysia. Various religious functionaries of the government had in fact condemned his ‘un-Islamic’ methods of searching and called upon the Islamic police to arrest him for ‘deviance’.5 Nevertheless, the bomoh continued to make headlines in Malaysia in September 2015 and May 2016, when he first fought a heatwave and then an air pollution crisis with recita- tions of the Qur’an, blocks of ice, watermelons and his bamboo binoculars. Ibrahim Mat Zin rose to the occasion again in February 2017, a few days after a brother of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong-nam, was assassinated at KLIA. The assassination on 13 February led to a diplomatic crisis between the otherwise friendly governments of Malaysia and DPRK. The Raja Bomoh again recited Qur’anic verses and used coconuts, sea- water, bamboo cannons and his famous pair of binoculars to forestall a North Korean invasion of Malaysia. He also claimed that he was communicating with Kim Jong-un’s spirit in an effort to soften his inner heart. A month later, while I was writing the introduction to this book, the Raja Bomoh was busy shielding Malaysia from an ‘impending’ nuclear attack.6 Videos of his activities were regularly being uploaded to the online channel Suara TV. At the time, I interacted in person or via telephone and Facebook with many of his followers and devotees seeking his intercessionary powers.

5 The jurist, Mufti, of the Federal Territories (Malaysia), Zulkiﬂi Mohd. al-Bakri, and multiple representatives of the Department of Islamic Development, Malaysia, and State Islamic religious departments (Jabatan Agama Islam), declared the Raja Bomoh’s methods were ajaran sesat (deviant teachings), haram and deplorable religious innovations (bida‘). See ‘Repent, FT Mufti Tells “Raja Bomoh”’. 6 ‘Raja Bomoh Conducts Beach Ritual to “Protect” Malaysia from North Korea’.

Prologue xi

21 April 2017. Islamic police arrested Ibrahim Mat Zin. After being incarcerated for five days, he was charged by the Shari‘a High Court of Kuala Lumpur (the capital of Malaysia) for ‘bringing Islam into contempt’.7 He was subsequently released, then displayed at a press conference organised by the Islamic Religious Department of the Federal Territories in Malaysia.8 Here, Ibrahim Mat Zin renounced his title as Raja Bomoh, pleaded with Muslims and Malaysians to accept his ‘thousand apologies’ and appeared to confess that all of his customary practices were heretical ‘innovations’ (bida‘). He stated that it would be a ‘sin’ for Muslims to continue to honour him as a miracle worker, since his rituals were ‘dramas’ that he had been ordered to perform by ‘individuals he could not name’.9 He had followed mysterious instruc- tions to scan the skies with a pair of bamboo binoculars, shake the binoculars vulgarly and hold up coconuts that ‘resembled bombs’.He defended his actions as having been naive but motivated by his ‘love for Islam’. The erstwhile bomoh was released on parole after this press conference. Some months later, though, it was apparent that Ibrahim Mat Zin had recovered his confidence after the crackdown by the authorities and his imprisonment. As I typed the last words of this Prologue in April 2018, he announced that he was putting himself forward as a candidate for a parliamentary seat in the upcoming general elections. On 17 April 2018, he organised a press conference to declare that he was contesting the elections for a parliamentary seat in Perak. He made this announcement surrounded by his followers, sitting ahead of a backdrop announcing that he was still the ‘Raja Bomoh [of] Malaysia’. Throughout the history of Islamic societies such as the Malay- Indonesian Archipelago, Muslims and non-Muslims alike have believed in the charismatic religious powers and salvific knowledge of miracle workers such as Ibrahim Mat Zin. Scholars of Islamic societies regularly remind us that miracle workers (variously referred to as pawangs, bomohs, gurus, dukuns, dato’s, pirs, keramats, shaykhs and murshids) were (and remain) prominent agents of Islam in the parts of the globe that lie on the historical and cultural continuum of what has been called the Islamic

7 The Islamic legal system in Malaysia consists of three levels of courts: the Shari‘aHigh Court, Shari‘a Lower Court and Shari‘a Appeals Court. Article 121 (1A) of the Malaysian Federal Constitution states that the civil High Courts of West and East Malaysia ‘have no jurisdiction in respect of any matter within jurisdiction’ of the Shari‘acourts. 8 The Raja Bomoh was displayed at a press conference at the Federal Territories Islamic Affairs Department’sofﬁce, on 25 April 2017. See ‘Raja Bomoh Akui Tipu’. 9 See ‘Raja Bomoh Akui Tipu’.

xii Prologue

or Persianate world or the Arabic cosmopolis.10 More recent works on Islamic cosmopolitanism, visual culture and etymology have suggested that parts of the Islamic world could be grouped together according to how much they share Arabic or Persian terms and mystical concepts, or in terms of how much they share deep-seated beliefs in charismatic religious authority (known as barkat in Malay, Persian, Punjabi and Urdu; bereket in Turkish; baraka in Arabic).11 This book takes a more microscopic and micro-historical approach to examining barkat by focus- sing on Islamic miracle workers who preceded Ibrahim Mat Zin in the Malay world by a century or more. Manuscripts from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries referred to both male and female miracle workers of the Malay Peninsula as pawangs, bomohs or gurus, but by the twenty-ﬁrst century the most common term had become ‘bomoh’. The term bomoh may be a cognate of Thai terms for healers (i.e. maw or mohr), however the living bomohs I interacted with associated it with the Persian word for earth (bum, bom) and suggested that it meant ‘expert of the earth’ or ‘herbalist’. Similarly, ‘pawang’ could be a simple cognate of Malay terms for honoured ancestor (i.e. poyang, moyang), and charismatic ‘shipmaster’ (i.e. puhawang).12 A number of miracle workers pro- posed a more complex derivation, merging a pre-Islamic term for aboriginal miracle workers (poyang), with the Persian term for father (baba, translated into bawa or pawa), the Arabic term buwan (puwan in Malay) meaning the ‘Foremost One and Pillar of the Tent’, or the title given by Tamil communities to Suﬁ elders and divinities, bawangal (translated as pawangal and derived from either a Sanskritised Tamil word for the ‘Presence’ or the Persian, baba). The miracle workers I discuss in this book assimilated and translated many pre-Islamic concepts (along with non-Muslim spirits, divinities and mantras) into their Islamic cosmologies. Most of these men and women were peripatetic miracle workers, but some of them established themselves on parts of the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra to transmit their traditions, esoteric knowledge (‘ilmu, ma‘rifa) and techniques of mediating the ‘alam ghaib to members of Malay-speaking paideias. These paideias were diverse enough to operate either as strictly organised

10 Marshall Hodgson used the term Persianate to describe historical polities where Persian literary and cultural forms deﬁned collective and individual identity in his book, Venture of Islam, pp. 293–314. Following Pollock’s(Language of the Gods) work on a widespread sociocultural order, ‘Sanskrit cosmopolis’, Eaton and Wagoner described the polities Hodgson was concerned about as belonging to a ‘Persianate cosmopolis’ in Power, Memory, Architecture. Ricci (Islam Translated) otherwise describes South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East as being connected by the translation of Arabic texts, forms and terms, and as belonging to an ‘Arabic cosmopolis’. 11 Elias, Alef Is for Allah, p. 8; Nourse, ‘Meaning of Dukun’; Ricci, ‘Citing as a Site’. 12 Manguin, ‘Shipshape Societies’, 384, 387.

Prologue xiii

fellowships and guilds, or as more informal networks. In all of their forms, paideias enabled the traditions of pawangs to be crystallised into ethical ideals that were mastered by students and lieutenants aspiring to serve as pawangs and at times imparted to children at an early age, to train them with the skills required to acquire ‘ilmu.13 These ethical ideals were also appropriated by believers or clients desiring miracles and saintly intercession in their material lives. Contrary to modern teleological perceptions, these pawangs, bomohs and gurus combined multiple roles as spirit mediums, Sufi masters (shaykhs), ritual specialists, healers (tabib), exorcists, seers, astrologers, numerologists and dispensers of talismans. Since they accepted gifts from their followers and clients, the Islamic miracle workers of the past and the present have faced the perennial dilemma of surviving as religious professionals while continuing to be perceived as ascetics (faqir)in the eyes of their followers and in their conceptions of themselves. The spiritual adeptness of individual pawangs and groups of them has been correlated with the degree to which they could be materially poor (faqir) or detached from materialism, in spite of being surrounded by it; or, with the degree to which they have prioritised the deeply esoteric aspects of reality. Islamic adepts of the past (and the present) may have typically distinguished between the interior (batin) and exterior or apparent (zahir) aspects of reality, but miracle workers have been especially reputed for transacting across the lines of this duality.14 Pawangs were most aware that the visible bodies of humans, animals and flora, as well as practices such as economic activities or technologies (from guns to aircraft) all had esoteric, unseeable (ghaib) realities and spiritual natures that were, indeed, more real than their visible forms. This realm of inner reality (kebatinan) ensured that all physical, biological, economic and technological life was tethered to the ‘alam ghaib. The Islamic manuscripts I study in this book have described humans as always operating at an interface between visible reality and spiritual reality. This was, in Qur’anic terms, the barzakh (isthmus or interface). Pawangs as such were needed in the flesh to lead humans along the path of mediating between the visible world (‘alam ajsam) and ‘alam ghaib or spiritual

13 Pawangs’ early training of skills, in my opinion, was resonant of the skills that, according to Norbert Elias, children acquired in warrior societies of medieval Europe. Elias focussed on childhood games that became more sophisticated with age and traced continuums between the childhood acquisition of skills (via games) and being adult warriors; see Elias, ‘Civilizing of Parents’, 202; also see Ali, Courtly Culture and Political Life, p. 254. For a discussion of Islamic paideia, see Ahmed, What Is Islam?, 380–1. 14 These have been described in Shahzad Bashir’s work as the ‘foundational categories’ of Suﬁsm, Suﬁ Bodies, p. 28.

xiv Prologue

world (‘alam ruhani). Pawangs of the past (and the present) have followed the path of the Andalusian Sufi, Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), to understand the Unseen and God (the Real, al-Haqq) as the ‘root’ and ultimate reality of the visible world. They strive to experience the unseen through entering diverse states of consciousness and cultivating ‘corporeous bodies’.15 Ibn ‘Arabi argued that Sufis possessed a dual corporeal reality, one physical and the other spiritual, that allowed them to interact in both the seen and the unseen worlds. The pawangs’ jasad (corporeous body), ‘within which spirits become manifest’, was unseeable and paral- leled the corporeal body; the former allowed pawangs to access an unseen ‘imaginal’ world that exists between God and the visible world and to communicate with ghaib prophets, divinities, Sufi saints and spirits.16 This book examines miracle-working traditions, knowledge and techniques of mediating the ‘alam ghaib that were recorded in Jawi (a modi- fied Arabic script used to write Malay and related languages) and translated later into other scripts. The authors of these handwritten manuscripts set down recollections of successful miracles and repro- duced some of the popular traditions (i.e. activities, formulae, geneal- ogies, rituals and techniques) of pawangs of the early modern and modern Malay world. Similar to the miracle narratives of pawangs such as Raja Bomoh broadcast on social media today, these nineteenth- and early twentieth-century manuscripts tended to under-report the failures of pawangs to perform miracles. The historian’s search for evidence of the success of pawangs’ miracles, along with dates and other aspects of an empirically verifiable reality, is thus bound to be frustrated. Moreover, such a search for empirically verifiable facts can distract us from a different and, arguably, more pressing need: to appreciate the historio- graphic value of claims made in ‘magical’ narratives, and understand the societies they were produced and embedded in. While any study of Islamic manuscripts develops from the philological roots of Islamic studies and benefits from the more recent art-historical interventions in the field, such approaches have often entailed textual or paratextual analyses of manuscripts. For instance, Farouk Yahya’s recent and admir- able book on Magic and Divination studies a number of the manuscripts I concentrate on, through an art-historical focus on how these texts were illustrated.17 In this book, I explore these manuscripts instead as rich

15 See Chittick’s discussion in Self-Disclosure of God, pp. 281–2, and Bashir’s Suﬁ Bodies, pp. 37–41. 16 Chittick, Self-Disclosure of God, p. 282. 17 Yahya, Magic and Divination.

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sources of historical evidence on socio-economic activities among the Islamic societies of the modern Indian Ocean. As such, I follow the methods of historians of societies across the globe, who seek to promote a cross-cultural analysis of miracles and material life. While this book focusses on a specific literary canon and its textual traditions, some reflexive passages betray its developments in field- work. Although I study Malay manuscripts as a historian of Islamic texts, I could not have accessed their deep esoteric content or the patois used within the incantations of the pawangs – combining multiple languages and invoking arcane spirits from diverse religious traditions – without the guidance of twenty-first-century miracle workers. Over the past decade, I have been constantly reminded that even a seeming sceptic such as myself was allowed access to understanding the textual traditions of historical pawangs, solely because their barkat had been invoked by living bomohs who blessed me with a modicum of their ‘ilmu. Before conceiving this book, I had avoided studying miracle workers and devoted years instead to examining the multilingual texts of Islamic reformers in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South and Southeast Asia. I had also interacted with reformists, intellectuals and religious scholars (‘ulama) rejecting the legitimacy of SufisinIslam,andwith reform-oriented scholars attempting to revive and modernise Sufism in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Singapore. All of my interlocutors were devoted to reviving modes of literalist Islam across the Indian Ocean, but the group was also ideologically diverse. It included scripturalistsofvariousorientations(knownasSalafis), leaders of Islamist parties like Jama‘at-i Islami and Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, secularists, liberal modernisers, reformists from global movements that had Sufi origins (such as the Tabhligi Jama‘at) and Shari‘a-minded Sufis initiated into globally salient Sufi networks or paths (tariqa)who called for a more rational and scriptural conception of Sufism. In spite of deep theological divisions and their ideological positions on Sufism, these reformers were united in condemning miracle workers and spirit mediums. Over the years, I had been warned that miracle workers were obstacles to the renewal of Islam in colonial and post-colonial modernity. They were detractors for violating the Islam practised by pious forefathers (the salaf), and they were representatives of a crude style of Sufism that was manifest in superstition, custom, shrine veneration, pomp, ostentatious ritual, indolence and privileges extracted by profit- eering miracle workers. To me, these conversations are a sign of how divided Islamic societies are in their stance to miracles, miracle workers, Sufi shrines and

xvi Prologue

‘customary Islam’.18 Miracle workers are ubiquitous in the Islamic world, but for at least the last two centuries they have been denounced for pivoting between a properly religious Islam and a nominal Islam seen as anthropolatric and polytheistic (shirk). In the face of diverse global reimaginings of Islam and Islamic pasts for the modern era, they have been berated for jumbling together the ‘superstitions’ (khurafat) and magical folklore of pagan tribes from a pre-Islamic age denigrated in the Qur’an as the time of gross ignorance (jahiliyya). They have also been accused of the cardinal sin of violating God’s oneness (tawhid) by promoting themselves along with promoting the Sufi shrines of deceased miracle workers as the intermediaries of God and the ‘alam ghaib, to exploit the credulous masses of the Islamic world. Geopolitical and cultural conditions today sustain partisan approaches to miracle workers and even to those agents of Islam broadly categorised as ‘Sufis’. None- theless, the former honorific titles bomoh and pawang have become terms of contempt in parts of the Malay world to a much greater degree than Sufi and pir have become terms of opprobrium in other parts of the contemporary Islamic world.19 This has allowed Salafis, iconoclasts called ‘Wahhabis’, Islamists, secularists, modernisers and reformists of diverse Sufi movements and networks to unite, sometimes unintention- ally, to condemn miracle workers. I witnessed such ideological attacks first-hand, soon after shifting my focus to pawang texts and traditions in 2007, when I frustrated even the most ecumenical of my reform-minded friends. I would even draw the ire of revivalists and modernisers of Sufism when I mentioned that some eminent Sufi shaykhs of the Malay world were also honoured as ‘pawangs’ in the nineteenth century. I was often counselled that this book would be documenting a history of shirk and ‘misguided innovations’ (bida‘ dalala), instead of Islam.20 I witnessed celebrations by a number of my interlocutors when they heard news of coordinated attacks on miracle workers or the landscapes that have been popular sites of their supplications, spirit intercessions, seances and animal sacrifices. Indeed, the most difficult aspect of writing this book was witnessing the places in which I had sat with bomohs being trampled by bulldozers in the name of

18 Green (Bombay Islam, pp. 19–20, 190) used the category ‘Customary Islam’ to describe an Islam of ‘saintly mediators and miracles’ and miracle-working shrines across the Indian Ocean. 19 Also see Knysh (Sufism) for a discussion of critics of Sufi sites and practices. 20 I appropriate terms used by a number of my interlocutors, including the prolific Javanese religious scholar (‘alim) and Sufi reformer, Ustad Ahmad Sonhadji (1922–2010) and the Pakistani ‘alim and Amir (president) of the Jama‘at-i Islami, Qazi Hussein Ahmad (1938–2010).

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capitalist development, or Islamic reform, or both on occasion. Readers will encounter my ruminations on the shrines, graveyards, sacred trees and small libraries that were being removed just as I was writing this book. As I shuttled between ruins and archives to conduct my research, pawangs and bomohs were deeply conscious of the role of memory in history and encouraged me to be more creative as a scholar of Islam. They suggested that I sense the spirits, imagine the Islamic pasts, remem- ber the footpaths that had once been shaded by vegetation and feel the immortal presence of earlier pawangs in the sacral landscapes that I had reduced to ruins in my mind due to cursory observation.21 By challen- ging my conceptions of ruins, they even led me to discover Jawi manuscripts buried in the graveyards of early nineteenth-century pawangs. It was perhaps growing up in the Malay world and a society replete with bomohs that had subconsciously prevented me from studying these men and women as a subject of academic inquiry. I was born into a world of relatives and village friends who had migrated from North India and Pakistan to Singapore to work as watchmen at factories. A significant number of these men and women depended on their pirs and babas (a Punjabi term for miracle worker, derived from the Persian title baba) in South Asia to bless them as they crossed the Bay of Bengal. Upon arriving in the Malay Peninsula, they sought out bomohs to intercede in their socio-economic activities that were, in their eyes, always tethered to the spirit world. These Sikh, Muslim and Hindu settlers from South Asia respected bomohs, pawangs, gurus and keramats for their supernatural powers, Sufi lineages (silsila) and esoteric knowledge of the Qur’an, astrology, numerology and the ‘alam ghaib. Others, however, dismissed them as sorcerers, black magicians, ‘conmen’ and mere salesmen of talismans, gemstones, bezoars, rings, daggers (kris) and incense in resin form to connect with the spirit world, along with bottles of water infused with Qur’anic incantations. Even when they berated the bomohs, critics seldom questioned the potency of their supernatural powers or capacity for sorcery (sihr). My initial education about the spirit world emerged from stories about bomohs who had been employed to exorcise malig- nant spirits from the bodies of my relatives, and from tales of bomohs who received gifts and sacrificial animals to cure drug addiction, or to get their clients acquitted in legal proceedings, or to render auguries (isti- khara) and prophecies of winning lottery numbers. Biomedicine was commonly perceived to be impersonal and driven by deductions that physicians made of visible symptoms. Miracle workers were regularly

21 Also refer to Manan Ahmed’s recent discussion of walking through ‘landscapes of ruin’ in Uch Sharif, Pakistan, Book of Conquest, pp. 17–18.

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approached instead, for recipes and simples to heal bodies. In addition, I had consistently witnessed family members being terrified of news of relatives in the villages of Punjab and towns of the Malay world being sickened or killed off with the recipes of more nefarious bomohs, pirs and babas. As a child and teenager, I also visited graveyards, earth mounds, anthills, trees and caves of limestone hills around the Malay Peninsula that were believed to be abodes of spirits, to sense spirits, spy on bomohs’ seances and spot clients from diverse class backgrounds. Bomohs, however, were versatile and have never been confined exclusively to such exotic locations, either in the past or the present. They operate in and circulate through diverse sites such as cemeteries, caves, offices, factories, homes and coffee shops. Bracketing bomohs off as childhood curios- ity for decades, I did not recognise the need to take them seriously or to write a history of miracles and Islamic miracle workers. As a history student, I often pacified myself with an inadequate reading of Marx, in which I dismissed the traditions of Islamic miracle workers and their miracles as vestiges of feudalism, the opiates of imprudent subalterns, and mystification. It was convenient then to ignore how Marx himself had at times opened up a space for a phenomenological experience of the supernatural (instead of subservience to a transcendental divinity) in his analysis of the heterogeneous elements of non-commodified labour and discussion of ‘real labour’ and the ‘personality of the labourer’.22 I now write about historical pawang manuscripts with a greater appreciation for the anecdotes of miracle workers, spirits, charms and auguries that I was constantly fed as a child – and later told over the phone after leaving Singapore – and study how miracles and spirits were embedded into the phenomenology of labour. I (re)turned my attention towards Islamic miracle workers rather unexpectedly in 2007 when I was commissioned by the National Univer- sity of Singapore Museum to evaluate the artworks of a celebrated painter and sculptor, Mohd. Din Mohd. (d. 2007). I have never been a connois- seur of art and was much more intrigued by how his artworks were zahir manifestations of his ‘inner life’ as a self-declared bomoh. Muhd. Din Muhd. was a spirit medium, healer, dispenser of talismans, guru of an Islamic martial arts organisation (like Raja Bomoh) and initiate of the Haqqani branch of the Naqshbandi tariqa.23 Since 2007, I have searched

22 Refer to Dipesh Chakrabarty’s discussion of ‘Marxist concept[s] of history’ and Marx’s distinguishing of homogenising ‘abstract labour’ from ‘real labour’. Marx’s real ‘must refer to different kinds of “social”, which could include gods and spirits–and hence to different orders of temporality’, Provincializing Europe, pp. 91–3. 23 For further discussion of Mohd. Din Mohd. and his community, see Farrer, Shadows of the Prophet.

Prologue xix

for and sat with more pawangs, bomohs, dukuns, gurus, pirs, shaykhs and babas in the rural and urban regions of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singa- pore, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and United States. While I have chosen to analyse the manuscripts of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century pawangs for this book, leaving most of the more global and ethnographic aspects of my research for a separate piece of writing, this book project would not have been possible without the assistance of forty-one living bomohs of the Malay-Indonesian Archipel- ago. These men and women were connected to various parts of the broader Indian Ocean, European and Islamic worlds through their diverse ethnic origins, Sufi lineages and widespread travels. Like pawangs of the past, these bomohs came from Malay, Javanese, south Indian, north Indian, Yemeni (Hadrami), creole, south Chinese or Eurasian backgrounds and from sea and riverine peoples (Orang Laut; Bajau).24 While fourteen of these miracle workers allow me to introduce them and acknowledge them in my writings, the others prefer to be acknowledged silently and continue to operate in closed circles of clients and devotees. Years of sitting with living pawangs, bomohs and gurus make me disavow any pretensions of being an omniscient observer. It has been humbling to sit with men and women who have devoted anywhere between two and seven decades of their lives towards a path of acquiring knowledge and disciplining their bodies to be able to function as Islamic miracle workers. While the manuscripts I study in this book and the pawangs’ narratives regularly portray miracle workers as friends of God (awliya’) who had been preordained with elite status and miraculous powers at the moment of Creation, bomohs dedicated years to attaining ‘ilmu. They studied at the feet of masters and senior bomohs, partook in extraordinary ascetic rites, prolonged fasting, meditation and abstinence, and indulged in regular practices of self-mortification to refine their

24 These bomohs come from diverse backgrounds and deﬁned themselves as Malay (of Acehnese, Minangkabau and Bugis origins), Boyanese (from the island of Bawean, Java), Tamil, Malayali, Hadrami, Punjabi, Pashtun, Hakka, Hainanese, and as ‘Orang Laut’, while acknowledging much more creole backgrounds. Two of the bomohs I interacted with were also proud of their Eurasian backgrounds, while one of the bomohs I met claimed to be non-Muslim even as he remained immersed in a distinctly Islamic cosmology. To protect the privacy of most of the Islamic miracle workers I sat with, I use pseudonyms and titles throughout this book, while revealing select names (albeit only with the names or titles they shared and allowed me to reproduce here). The miracle workers I sat with include: ‘Wak Ali Janggut, ‘Abas ‘Ali, Ummi, Muhd. Ahmad Ridhwan, Yunus ibn ‘Uthman (‘Dato’ Yunus’; d. 2018), Jantan Ariﬁn (d. 2011), Zainal Muhd. Atan (‘Dato’ Putih’), Sharifa Lu’lu’ (d. 2015), Nathan Renganathan, ‘Abdul Qadir Ghani, ‘Abdul Hamid ‘Nagori’, Hajji Dato’ Zhang, Muhd. Abu Bakr and Siti A’isha al-Habshi.

xx Prologue

bodies and souls. Bomohs prioritised the interior aspects of reality and esotericism but were aware that techniques of disciplining the external body (jism) were tools by which they refined their inner heart (hati) and spirit (ruh) and developed corporeous bodies.25 Most bomohs explained that they were only able to help clients mediate the ‘alam ghaib effectively after protracted periods of bodily discipline. Their extraordinary ascetic rites constituted a sort of inner alchemy enabling them to refine their inner selves (nafs). A number of these bomohs had mastered a type of firasat (physi- ognomy), that is, the ability to read someone’s character in their physical features. They claimed they could see through my external body to discern my subtle qualities and limitations. While the bomohs and their lieutenants were content to meet with me as an academic historian, they always remained conscious of what they considered my flaws, including my tendency to ask overly academic questions while missing pertinent spiritual matters, my propensity towards impartiality and willingness to lend an ear to ‘Wahhabis’ as part of my research, and finally my abject failure to sense the spirits and pawangs of the past, even though I sat through many seances and observed many rituals. My scepticism seems to have prevented me from seeing, smelling and touching spirits and only allowed me to hear them speak when they possessed the bodies of living humans. Moreover, on occasions, I was introduced to the bomohs’ ‘better’ methods of historical inquiry when I searched for biographical data of pawangs in vain. I would then witness bomohs communicating with unseeable people (rijal al-ghaib) to attain information of these pawangs. Being sceptical, I would question the historicity of this data until I verified its total veracity in the archives of the British Library months later. These Malay-, Tamil-, Hokkien-, Urdu-, Punjabi- and English-speaking bomohs throughout the Malay Peninsula not only criti- cised me for such caution, they also compared me (much to my initial discomfort) to the sympathetic British scholars of colonial Malaya who had been intimate friends (sahabat) with their predecessors. Bomohs also taught me sophisticated norms of comportment (adab) for sitting with Islamic miracle workers and reading the textual traditions of historical pawangs. Although their extraordinarily meticulous per- formances of adab varied across different groups of bomohs, they all

25 In reflecting upon this aspect of miracle workers as an academic, I often made comparisons to Michel Foucault’sinfluential concept of ‘ethics-based moralities’ and ‘subjectivation’ (History of Sexuality). Particularly relevant are his deliberations on how the body could be understood as malleable matter that could be subjected to technologies of formation and refinement; such bodily practices would, in turn, refine the inner self and soul.

Prologue xxi

agreed that they followed the codes of social etiquette, Islamic laws and taboos used by pawangs to correct and regulate the behaviours of farmers, miners and mineworkers, mahouts, hunters and shooters in the past. In the end, the bomohs I sat with provided me with an education in how the material, visible realm was connected to imagined, unseen, non-material realms in all religious systems.26 I was methodic- ally introduced to how individuals, animals, miracles, spirits, technologies and frontier traditions of the Malay world and Java are connected to larger oceanic and spiritual networks, and how Sufi ideals were and remain embedded in pawang practices. Every bomoh I listened to emphasised that the path of being a bomoh was best represented by the Arabic verbal noun, tasawwuf (path of ‘making oneself into a Sufi’). All bomohs (including a non-Muslim one) stressed that they had to adhere to Shari‘a as the first step to perform as a bomoh and had been initiated into Sufi tariqas through the hands of senior bomohs. The bomohs invoked the term, tasawwuf, to legitimise their individual and groups’ ways of being Islamic and Sufi and to chastise the practices of rivals as deviations from Sufism. In writing this book, I was reminded that it is futile to conceive of a pawang or Sufi fraternity. Pawangs and Sufis of the past and the present have always been professional rivals and have disagreed with each other over definitions of Sufism. They have debated each other’s opinions on the Islamic legitimacy of amulets, talismans, seances, trances, invocations of Hindu divinities, prophecies, lotteries, offerings to spirits and rituals of repeating religious formulae loudly. Although Miracles and Material Life focusses on a certain place and time in history, the pawangs I encountered regularly reminded me that any such study of the past could serve as a broader reflection on Islamic cosmology, ontology and Sufism and serve as a window into understanding contemporary Islamic society.

26 In Bashir’s words, ‘all religious systems are enacted materially in conjunction with imagined non-material realms’ (‘The World as a Hat’, 344).

Acknowledgements

In December 2007, the Singapore-based Javanese scholar, Ustad Ahmad Sonhadji (d. 2010), prayed that my initial forays into Islamic miracle workers would be successful, while warning me that I could easily be placing a foot in hell, in case I pursued ‘ilmu for self-conceiting purposes. I may have little hope for heaven, but I will remain humbly grateful to all my sources of knowledge, without whom this book and project would not have been possible. No words, however, will suffice to express my immense gratitude. I should begin by thanking the Islamic scholars, genealogists, Sufi masters and miracle workers who allowed me to sit with them and learn about how knowledge was embodied, preserved and transmitted, in spite of my overly academic sensibilities. A number of these men and women may often have disagreed with each other, but they equally deserve special mention (albeit with the names or titles they shared and allowed to reproduce, or pseudonyms), along with others who requested to be thanked anonymously. I remain indebted to Wak ‘Ali Janggut, ‘Abas ‘Ali, Ummi, Muhd. Ahmad Ridhwan, Yunus ibn ‘Uthman, Jantan Arifin, Zainal Muhd. Atan, Sharifah Lu’lu’, Nathan Renganathan, ‘Abdul Qadir Ghani, ‘Abdul Hamid ‘Nagori’, Hajji Dato’ Zhang, Muhd. Abu Bakr, Siti A’isha al-Habshi, Habib Hasan al-‘Attas, Habib Hussein Fiqri al-‘Aydarus, Tengku Fahmi, Ustad Ghouse Khan and Ustad Sonhadji I owe a special debt of gratitude to another ustad of sorts and dear friend, Nile Green, for reading an earlier draft of this book and helping me strengthen many a tentative formulation of thoughts. He was my primary doctoral advisor and has been enormously generous with advice and criticism throughout the process of this research project and its later translation into a book. I am also indebted to Barbara W. Andaya for being an indefatigable source of guidance. Her invalu- able suggestions and criticisms have been essential in transforming callow drafts of this book into its current form. I treasure every conver- sation and email exchange with Nile Green and Barbara Andaya, as they have helped me reconsider the micro- and macro-historical

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Acknowledgements xxiii

significance of studying Islamic manuscripts, Malay Sufism and Islamic cosmology and the oceanic connections of Malay spirituality. Many thanks are also due to a co-conspirator of studying the unseen and spirituality, Scott S. Reese, who read through an earlier draft of this book and offered essential criticism for revising its argument(s), content and organisation. Conversations with all three of them have been crucial in shaping the argument(s) of this book and enabling it to achieve much greater intelligibility and clarity than I was able to muster initially. This book had its birth in a PhD dissertation at the University of California. I was privileged there to be guided by advisors, beyond Nile Green, including Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Geoffrey Robinson and George Dutton, all of whom were extremely generous with suggestions for converting the dissertation into a book or rewriting parts of it. I chose to put the dissertation aside and undertake the task of rewriting it as a book of greater socio-historical implications. I was privileged in this process to receive the support of a group of scholars who, through discussions and debates, motivated me to think more deeply about the complexities of history-writing and religious cosmology, and the historicity and materiality of narratives, while encouraging me to re-evaluate my approach to writing religious and cultural history. For this, I remain grateful to Daud Ali, Shahzad Bashir, Jamal J. Elias, David Gilmartin, Michael F. Laffan, Sumit K. Mandal, Farina Mir, Erin Pettigrew, Samira Sheikh, Ramya Sreenivasan, Tony Stewart and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Ramya Sreenivasan was especially generous with her criticism of the Prologue, Introduction and Conclusion of this book, while Sanjay Sub- rahmanyam and Jamal Elias deserve special mention for being constant sources of support and advice. It is difficult to determine how much this book has been informed and shaped by conversations I have had over the years with scholars who have responded to presentations of facets of my research on Islamic miracle workers and Sufi manuscripts. I deeply appreciate their opinions, criticisms and advice, and thank them collectively here. For this, I thank Syed Farid Alatas, Ismail Farjie Alatas, Leonard Y. Andaya, Anthea Butler, James Caron, Andrew Carruthers, Indrani Chatterjee, Max Dugan, Johan Elverskog, Emma Flatt, Stewart Gordon, Greg Goulding, Tim Harper, Lynn Hollen Lees, Ronald Inden, Irving Chan Johnson, Salma Khoo Nasution, David Kloos, Sri Margana, Justin McDaniel, Lisa Mitchell, Projit B. Mukherji, Ulrike Niklas, Suhaili Osman, Oona Par- edes, Deven Patel, Margrit Pernau, Jan van der Putten, Bhavani Raman, John T. Sidel, Vineeta Sinha, Pushkar Sohoni, Davesh Soneji, Jim Sykes, Eric Tagliacozzo, Torsten Tschacher, Wan Mohd. Dasuki Wan

xxiv Acknowledgements

Hasbullah, Edwin Wieringa, Mark Woodward, Farouk Yahya and Ines Zupanov. Marieke Bloembergen, Michael Feener, Michael Laffan, Thomas Patton, Erin Pettigrew, Tony Stewart, SherAli Tareen, along with Shahzad Bashir, George Dutton and Jamal J. Elias, had moreover invited me to present parts of my research at various venues and this book has been certainly improved by the critical responses I have received from a wider audience. Significant parts of this book were written in the Malay world. The erstwhile Nalanda-Sriwajaya Centre supported a productive visiting fel- lowship in Singapore, where this book greatly benefited from the daily conversations I had with Terence Chong, Lee Hock Guan and Helene Njoto at the Centre. I was also privileged to receive the support of the South Asia Studies department of the University of Pennsylvania, along with the criticisms of colleagues and graduate students and assistance provided by the SAS Research Opportunity Grant, School of Arts and Sciences. In bringing this book to fruition, I was supported by Lucy Rhymer, Stephanie Taylor and other members of Cambridge University Press who were sympathetic to the extenuating circumstances in which parts of this book were submitted for publication, as well as Jaida Samudra. In addition to this, the staff of various libraries and archives made the task of tracing the primary sources of this book less onerous. I remain indebted to the staff of the Perpustakaan Nasional Indonesia, the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, the Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the British Library (Oriental and India Office Collections), the Royal Asiatic Society, the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, the Wellcome Library and Leiden University Librar- ies. I am especially grateful to Kamariah Abu Samah, Will Greenacre, Matthijs H. Holwerda, Erich J. Kesse, Kathy Lazenbatt, Mazfarina Marzuki, Marije Plomp, Helen Porter, Nikolai Serikoff and Edward Weech. It is perhaps redundant to claim that any student of Malayan, Sumatran and Bugis manuscripts is indebted to Merle C. Ricklefs, Petrus Voorhoeve, Edwin Wieringa, Teuku Iskandar and Annabel T. Gallop, and other exemplary scholars, who painstakingly catalogued manuscripts for the benefit of their peers. I have, unfortunately, been unable to express my deep gratitude to all of these scholars in person. In the long course of research and writing this book, companions, friends and family members passed away and I was never able to thank them in person for their contributions. Beyond the deaths of Falak Sufi (d. 2008) and Julie Romain (d. 2016), both of whom had discussed this research project with me at a nascent stage, the last words of this book were written sitting by the deathbed of my grandmother who was one of my first teachers of the material reality of the unseen, who verified the

Acknowledgements xxv

stories of spirits that I heard from my Malay gurus as a child. My grandmother, Behbeh, took pride in her grandson being a ‘professor’ and I failed to thank her for how she contributed to my intellectual development. It is often convenient to ignore how family members and friends support your work in various forms on a daily basis, and this was most apparent when I underwent a major surgery that delayed this book. No thanks are enough for my bone of emotional and intellectual support, and my ﬁnest teachers, my parents, Ami and Daddy. I am everlastingly indebted to them for motivating and supporting their children to pursue the path of acquiring ‘ilmu. My brother deserves particularly special mention; since I began to think, Iqbal has been my ﬁrst recourse for an intellectual discussion, advice and debate. In writing this book, I was also kept well fed and engaged in conversations by a number of relatives and friends in Singapore, London, Leiden, Jakarta, Philadelphia, Kuala Lumpur, Naples, Los Angeles, and for this, I thank Sugra Bibi, Jit and Sohan Brar, Shoeb Burhanuddin, Abraham and Preethy Cherian, Pino Coppola, Assunta Costagliola, Jyoti Gulati, Shireen Khanalim, Mehrin Masud, Brandon Reilly, Nayna Sanathara, Sukhbeer and Gurdip San- ghera, Dahlia Setiyawan, Melvinder Singh and Amit Virring. I am also indebted to a list of friends and comrades across the globe, who have regularly engaged me in fun and exceptionally fruitful conversations about this project; thank you Nurul Huda Rashid, Beeta Baghoolizadeh, Ali Karjoo-Ravary, Suvir Kaul, Kalyan Kemburi, Ania Loomba, Kartik Nair and Vinay Kumar Pathak. I will remain most indebted to my wife, Manuela Coppola, for how she has been indefatigable in supporting me as I wrote this book and bal- anced it with teaching and departmental responsibilities, while troubling her with worries about my health and my woes about academic pressure. She is also my lifeline of intellectual support and has tediously read versions of this book. Her role in making this book possible should be accredited with a dedication, but I had once promised to dedicate it to the miracle worker who had extracted manuscripts for me and blessed me with talismans.

Notes on Transliteration

I have omitted diacritical marks in the text in order to facilitate the reading of those unfamiliar with them. I have also distinguished ‘Muhammad’ from ‘Muhd.’; this will allow readers to differentiate the name of the Prophet Muhammad from the various other historical individuals named ‘Muhd.’. To simplify reading, I have chosen to adopt the spellings commonly used by scholars of Islamic societies for most Islamic terms and titles, while preserving Malay spellings for certain Islamic terms, designations and titles. For example, I have used ‘ilmu and kera- mat instead of ‘ilm and karamat, and adopted the popular Malay-Indo- nesian spelling of bomoh and bomoh kecil instead of bomor and bomor kecik (which corresponds to the spelling used in Jawi texts). At the same time, I have retained older spellings for certain titles, terms and translations such as dato’, tuha, ayer and bijeh, which are often spelt today as datuk, tua, air and biji. In preserving spellings such as ‘bijeh’, I stay faithful to spellings used in romanised Malay documents of the period of study. In transliterating Jawi letters, I have used ‘q’ for the letter qaf (in terms such as tariqa and Qadiri) that is often transliterated as ‘k’ in romanised Malay, and used ‘o’ and ‘u’ for the letter wa. I have, however, used both ‘c’ and ‘ch’ for the letter ca that is most commonly transliterated today as ‘c’; I felt compelled to use ‘ch’ on occasions, for terms such as cherita, chincha and chucha to abide by the romanised Malay titles and commen- taries that were attached to the Jawi manuscripts. All translations are mine unless indicated otherwise.

xxvi

Abbreviations

BCP Book of Charms formerly belonging to a Sultan Muda of Perak BF Buffalo-Fighting and Other Ceremonies Connected with Padi-Planting CHS Cherita Hantu Shetan DP Darihal Pawang FMMI Fatwa Menembak Meriam Istinggar HKJ Hikayat Kapitan Joncor IB ‘Ilmu Bedil IPM ‘Ilmu Pawang Melombong JMBRAS Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society JSBRAS Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society KCB Kelantan charm book KPP Kitab Perintah Pawang KT Kitab Tibb MDC Malay Demonology and Charms MG ‘Mantra Gajah’ (1907) MM Mantra Menembak MS 46945 Surat Tuan Shaykh Hussein of Pulau Tiga NM-I Notes on Matters Connected with Malacca and the Malay Peninsula, Book I NM-II Notes on Matters Connected with the Malay Peninsula, Book II NM-III Notes on Matters Connected with the Malay Peninsula and Far East, Book III NM-IV Notes on Matters Connected with the Malay Peninsula and the Far East, Book IV OG Opening of Goldmine Or. 7230 (III) Peututong Anak Bedil Or. 7961(I) Hikayat Asay Padi

xxvii

xxviii List of Abbreviations Or. 8127 (XVIII) Do‘a’ Rijal al-Ghaib PB Pkerja’an Bersawah di Malaka PMB Pawang Menyemah Bijeh PMT “Pawang” Melumbung Timah PRPM Peraturan Resam Pawang Melayu Rafﬂes 34 Undang-undang Negeri Mengkasar dan Bugis RECR Reports furnished by Order of His Excellency upon the Best Means of Encouraging the Cultivation of Rice SFPAB Surat Fasal Pertahunan Artinya Bertanam SIA Surat Imam ‘Abdullah SMG Surat Mantra Gajah TMG Teyib Mantra Gajah