R.Michael Feener Michael F.

Laffan

Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean : Yemeni Hagiography and the Earliest History of Southeast Asian Islam
In: Archipel. Volume 70, 2005. pp. 185-208.

Rsum al-Jawi. Partant de son patronyme et de rfrences parses dans le Mir'at al-jinan de al-Yafi' i, les auteurs suggrent sa possible relation un commerce des pices en plein essor dans l'ocan Indien, avant d'examiner sa place dans les rseaux sufi ymnites en tant que matre de al-Yafi'i, dont les ouvrages sur les miracles de 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani sont connus pour tre d'une importance primordiale dans l'histoire de l'islam en Asie du Sud-Est.

Citer ce document / Cite this document : Feener R.Michael, Laffan Michael F. Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean : Yemeni Hagiography and the Earliest History of Southeast Asian Islam. In: Archipel. Volume 70, 2005. pp. 185-208. doi : 10.3406/arch.2005.3978 http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/arch_0044-8613_2005_num_70_1_3978

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 research es of Michael Feener into instances in Yemeni hagiographical dictionaries of the adjectival patronymic form (nisba) 'al-Jw', that is : 'the one from Jawa', which came to appear ever more relevant when Michael Laffan began tracing the origins and usages of Jwa 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-Jw, 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 peregri nations of the seminal Sumatran mystic and poet, Hamzah Fansuri (Hamza al-Fansr, 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.

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places. (2) Like the Meccan cemetery of Bab Macla, where al-Fansr's gravestone stood unmolested (and probably unnoticed) for four centuries, such places are unexpected in that their neglect by modern scholarship re veals underlying assumptions about where Southeast Asian Muslims belong in time and space. While Hamzah Fansuri's headstone was found in a database by searching for the more localized nisba Fansuri - deriving from the former Arabic name for the west coastal zone around Barus, in north Sumatra - he used the broader nisba of 'Jw' in his poetry to describe his outward identity. (3) The same term, moreover, was often used to refer to Southeast Asian scholars and pilgrims in the Middle East in the centuries after him, regardless of their more particular geographic points of origin. (4) The revised date for Hamzah Fansuri's death as proposed by Guillot and Kalus seemed all the more relevant to developing understandings of the early history of Southeast Asian Islam when Michael Feener found mention of the term Jw in a fifteenth-century collection of Sufi biographies, the Tabaqt al-khawss of Shihb al-Dn Ahmad al-Sharj (1410-ca. 1487/8). (5) The relevant biographical sketch contained therein - concerning one Abu cAbd Allah Mascd b. Muhammad al-Jw - is a short one, but revealing in a number of ways. It runs as follows : Abu cAbd Allah Mas'd b. Muhammad al-Jw, [spelt] with ajitn and kasr al-waw, was once known as a great and famous shaykh in the city of Aden and surrounding areas. He was one of the greats, a shaykh and jurist of the people of (Uwaja. He was a colleague of the great jurist Ism'l al-Hadram, who benefited all and whose turban was a blessing to their souls. He [al-Jwi] was a master of character and upbringing, from whom a great many of the greats benefited, including the shaykh cAbd Allah b. As'ad al-Yfc and others. Shaykh al-Yfi' mentioned him in his history and praised him greatly, saying in 2. Claude Guillot and Ludvik Kalus, ' La stle funraire de Hamzah Fansuri ', L'Horizon nousantarien; Mlanges en hommage Denys Lombard IV - Archipel 60 (2000) : 3-24. This notice prompted a strong reaction from Vladimir Braginsky, who had previously published an article on Hamzah's life based on earlier data in a previous volume of the same journal. See : V. Braginsky, 'Towards the Biography of Hamzah Fansuri. When did Hamzah Live? Data from His Poems and Early European Accounts', Archipel 57 (1999) : 135-175. The debate was continued in number 62 (2001) : 24-38. 3. 'Hamzah Shahrnawi zhirnya Jw', G.W.J. Drewes and L.F. Brakel, The Poems of Hamzah Fansuri. Dordrecht : Foris, 1986, 88. 4. For example, the seventeenth century Acehnese exegete Abd al-Ra'uf of Singkel is re ferred to on the title page of his monumental Tarjumn al-mustafd (Cairo : Mustafa alBbi al-Halab, 1951) as cAbd al-Ra'f b. cAli al-Fansr al-Jw. Al-Jwi is also used by a Yemeni biographer as a nisba to refer to the Sumatran scholar cAbd al-Samad alFlimbn. See cAbd al-Rahmn b. Sulaymn al-Ahdal, al-Nafas al-Yamn. San'a : Markaz al-Dirst wa'1-Abhth al-Yamaniyya, 1979, 138-43. 5. Known more fully as Shihb al-Dn Ahmad b. Ahmad b. 'Abd al-Latif al-Sharj alZabd al-Hanafi (1410- ca. 1487/8), this scholar was born and died at Zabid, Yemen, having studied at Mecca in 1431. See C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, 6 vols. Leipzig : CF. Amelangs, 1901, II, 190.

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recognition of him that the aforementioned shaykh [al-Jwi] was : 'The famous saint, he of true breaths and unprecedented miracles, exalted talents and radiant dignities '. (6) Then, at another point, he [al-Yfi(] said : ' He [al-Jw] was the first to dress me in the tattered robe (khirqa) following a sign given to him1, and he [also] said : 'I went with him to the tomb of one/some of the pious masters (qabr bacd al-slihn), and I understood from him that [the saint] spoke to him from his tomb'. Imm Yfi' did not confirm his death be cause he did not mention him in a particular year. Rather he mentioned him by way of digression (al sabl al-istitrd) on various subjects, may God Almighty have mercy on him and find pleasure in him. Amen. (7) At first glance this already appears to be presenting something quite new for its fifteenth-century Arabic-literate readers in that the compiler felt it was necessary to clarify the pronunciation of this seemingly unfamiliar word 'Jw'. Such a reading at first appeared to us to be supported by the fact that in our subsequent searches we were unable to find this nisba in earlier stan dard compendia, such as the twelfth-century work of Abi Sa'd alTammi. (8) While a primary issue concerning the use of the Jw nisba for medieval Arabic readers of this text may have been one of pronunciation, for modern historians the key concern is that of how exactly such early references to Jw as an element of a person's name is to be interpreted. First of all, we need to try and contextualize the very term figuring so prominently in this person's name and ask what is actually being conveyed through the use of this seemingly novel nisba. Despite the persistent practice of historians of Muslim societies using nisbas as indicators of a particular personage's geographic origins or ethnic identity, this does not necessarily entail that Mascd al-Jw, recorded as the father of cAbd Allah and son of Muhammad, was any more 'Southeast Asian' than the many 'al-Misris' liv ing in Indonesia in the nineteenth century were Egyptians, or that the various 'al-Azharis' of the archipelago had studied at Cairo's most famous mosqueuniversity. This is because the nisba, as a formal element in Arabic onomastics, can serve a number of functions beyond simply referring to a person's ethnic ori gins or place of birth. (9) Muslim history provides countless examples of 6. ... dhu l-anfas al-sdiqa wal-karamat al-khriqa wal-mawahib al-saniyya walmaqmt al-jaliyya. While clearly formulaic accolades, the phrase 'he of true breaths' is particularly important as it pays tribute to a mastery of all the various stages of knowledge of God. With thanks to Nasr Abu Zayd for his explanation and Nico Kaptein for asking the question. N. Kaptein, personal communication, 2 May 2005. 7. Abi l-c Abbs Ahmad b. Ahmad b. 'Abd al-Latif al-Sharj al-Zabdi, Tabaqt alkhawss : Ahl al-sdqa wal-ikhls. Beirut : al-Dr ai-Yamaniyya, 1987, 341. 8. Abu Sa'd 'Abd al-Karim b. Muhammad b. Mansr al-Tamimi al-Samcni (d. AH 562/1 166 AD), al-Ansb. Beirut : Dr al-Jinn, 1988. 9. An overview of technical aspects of the function of nisba can be found in : Leone Caetani & Guiseppe Gabrieli, Onomasticon Arabicum. Rome : Casa Editrice Italiana, 1915, 1, 222-33. For more theoretical reflections on the problematics of Arabic nomenclature, see : Jacqueline

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nisbas being used as indicators of educational experience, or even as something akin to tourist souvenirs to be flaunted as an affectation of cosmopolitanism. The Malay reformist Shaykh Muhammad Tahir bin Jalal al-Din (1869-1956), for example, was popularly known as al-Azhari because he really had spent four years studying astronomy at al-Azhar. (10) Thus while the usage of 'Jw' in this fifteenth-century Arabic text from the Yemen raises questions as to the relationship that this person may have had with Southeast Asia, definitive answers regarding his place of birth, and his ethnic and linguistic background are simply unanswerable. Even so, we feel that the very novelty of his nisba lends some weight to the strong possi bility that either he (or indeed his father) had spent some part of their lives in Southeast Asia. Perhaps he had even been born there to a local mother. Regardless of the fact that the use of the nisba in this document cannot conclusively demonstrate anything about the ' ethnic identity ' of this indi vidual, it nonetheless shows early evidence of the integration of the Indonesian archipelago into the intellectual, not to say economic, vistas of the Arabian peninsula in the medieval period. 01) Furthermore, when one looks more closely at al-Sharj's text it is clear that there is much more in this entry of relevance to the history of Islam in Southeast Asia than simply the appearance of the word 'Jwi'. For one thing, paying closer attention to the figures with whom he is linked leads one to the realization that he was no near contemporary of al-Sharj. Identifying the first figure mentioned in al-Sharj's notice, namely the ju rist (faqih) Ism'il al-Hadram, proved to be somewhat problematic due to the range of contradictory information in the literature. Al-Sharj, our initial point of reference, gives a long account of a faqih bearing the right nisba and surname cum agnomen (kunya), that is : Abu 1-Fid' Ismcl b. Muhammad b. Ismcl b. cAl b. cAbd Allah b. Ism(l b. Ahmad b. Maymn al-Hadram, whom he says died in Dh 1-Hijja 696/September Sublet, Le voile du nom : essai sur le nom propre arabe. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1991. 10. An explanation for this choice was even given in the pioneering Singaporean journal that he was associated with. See al-Imam, vol.1 no. 6, 18 December 1906. A century earlier another Southeast Asian scholar - 'Abd al-Rahmn al-Batwi 'al-Masri' - had also modif iedhis name in Cairo, based upon an even shorter visit there and his association with Egyptian shaykhs in the Hijaz. See Azyumardi Azra, The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia : Networks of Malay-Indonesian and Middle Eastern (Ulam} in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, 2004, 1 18-19. 11. Retrojected conceptions of racialized identity do not appear to have been the most promi nent concerns for those participating in the Muslim scholarly networks of the pre-modern Indian Ocean world. See, for example, R. Michael Feener, ' Palimbani/al-Jawi : The life of a Muslim scholar in the Eighteenth-century Indian Ocean Networks', in Ned Alpers and Allen F. Roberts (eds), Cultural Exchange and Transformation in the Indian Ocean World. (Forthcoming).

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1297. However, al-Sharj's predecessor Ibn al-Mulaqqin (1323-1401) has a short notice concerning a great jurist and saint of very similar name. This lat ter figure was called Ismcil b. Muhammad b. Ism'l b. cAl al-Hadram. However his death date is given as AH 676/7, i.e. 1278. 02) To complicate matters further, al-Sharj also provides a long account of a person we now believe to have been the father of Abu 1-Fid'. This was Abu cAbd Allah Muhammad b. Ism'l b. cAli b. cAbd Allah b. Ahmad b. Maymn alHadram, who is also described as a great jurist and saint by al-Sharj though no date is given for him. (13) The solution to this inconsistency was found by identifying al-Jw's adept, al-Yfi', and what al-Sharj obliquely refers to as his 'history'. The figure in question was none other than cAbd Allah b. Ascad al-Yfic (12981367), about whom we shall have much more to say below, and his ' history ' proved to be the Mir't al-jinn wa Hbrat al-yaqznf ma(rifai ma yuctabir min hawdith al-zamn (The Mirror of the gardens and advice to the wakef ul regarding a knowledge of the events of the times). O4) Completed in Mecca in, or soon after, 750 AH (1349/50), this is a chronicle of Muslim his tory from the coming of Islam until al-Yfici's own day, based on and enlarg ing histories of al-Tabari (839-923) and Ibn Khallikn (1211-82). the In his account of AH 676, al-Yfi' commences by observing that the year saw the demise, toward the end of the month of Muharram (i.e. early July 1277), of the reigning Mamluk ruler Sultan al-Malik al-Zhir. U5) This was Rukn al-Dn Baybars al-Bunduqdr (b. 1223), the former Kipchak slavesoldier who had defeated both the seventh crusade of Louis IX in 1250 and a Mongol force at cAyn Jalt in 1260 before seizing the throne and rebuilding an 'Abbasid' dynasty centred on Cairo. After noting this event and the attendant upheavals in Egypt and the struggle for the succession, al-Yfic turns to note an event of far greater per sonal concern : 12. 'Umar b. cAl Abu Hafs 'Umar b. 'All Ibn al-Mulaqqin, al-Aqd al-mudhahhab fl tabaqt hamalat al-madhhab. Beirut : Dr al-Kitb al-'Ilmiyya, 1997, 165-66. 13. See al-Sharji, Tabaqt, 95-101. Certainly others have been confused by this pairing. The later compiler al-Nabhn even conflated their names and achievements to create one Ism'l al-Hadram. See Ysuf b. Ism'l al-Nabhn, Jm karmt al-awliy', 2 vols. Cairo : Mustafa al-Bbi al-Halabi, 1906-1 1, II, 253. 14. Full details of the Mir't are : Abu Muhammad 'Abd Allah b. As'ad b. 'Ali b. Sulaymn 'Aff al-Dn al-Yfi' al-Yaman al-Makk, Mir't al-jinn wa 'ibrat alyaqzn, 4 vols. Hyderabad : Matba'at D'irat al-Ma'rif al-Nizmiyya, 1919-20, IV, 252. For al-Sharj's account of al-Yfi', see his Tabaqt al-khawss, 172-6. See also ' al-Yfi', Abu 'Abd Allah b. As'ad, Ab'l-Sa'da 'Aff al-Dn', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition (Hereafter EI2), P.J. Bearman, et al (eds.). Leiden : Brill, 2001, XI : 236. 15. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 175.

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The aforementioned year seventy-six saw the passing of the Imam of Yemen and blessing of the age, the example to the two sects and shaykh of the two paths, the great jurist and famous saint, possessor of dazzling miracles and manifest blessings, pious breaths, en dowed with talents, boons, purity, solicitude and choice selection, Abu 1-Dhabih Ismcl, son of the noble man, the celebrated saint, memorizer of the Qur'n and student of Hadith, the Imam of his time and blessing to his epoch, Muhammad b. Ism'l known as 'the Hadram'. He was the greatest of all jurists in knowledge, piety, abstention and miracles. He busied himself with knowledge of jurisprudence with his aforementioned fa ther and studied it thoroughly. He excelled in a knowledge of the [Shfi'i] madhhab and the explanation of the book of al-Muhadhdhab [d. 1230/31]. He discoursed on jurispr udence and mysticism, [and compiled] various fatwas and other writings such as the Mukhtasar sahh muslim and the Naf'is al-ar'is . . . <16) From this entry, which continues for several pages detailing his associa tions with mystics and jurists and noting that he ended his days teaching with other luminaries in the village of al-Dahi,(17) it can now be established that al-Jw, as a personal acquaintance of both Ismcl al-Hadram and al-Yfici, must have flourished over a period coincident with what may retrospectively be considered as two seminal moments in global Muslim history. First, the Mamluk ascendancy in Egypt that would vanquish the Mongols in Syria as well as the last of the crusader states, and second, the commencement of the formal Islamization of the westernmost tip of the lands of Jwa.O8) For the second reason alone we thought it worth exploring al-Yafici's history more deeply as a way of establishing broader contexts in which to situate the life of al-Jw. Beyond establishing that scholar's contemporary renown, his circle of peers, and his place within an intellectual and mystical lineage, al-Sharji's notice on al-Jw focuses our attention on two specific places. One is cUwja, a small town in the Red Sea coastal region of the Tihma that be came famous for a madrasa founded by cUmar b. Ibrahim b. Muhammad Husayn al-Bajali.(19) The other is the bustling port of Aden, some 310 kil ometers to the south. (2) Whereas the region of Hadramaut - the ancestral 16. Mir' t al-jinn, IV, 175-6. 17. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 181. According to al-Maqhafi, the modern town now called alDahay is located in the Wd Surdud, 1 8 km south of al-Zaydiyya : Ibrahim Ahmad alMaqhafi, Mu'jam al-mudun wal-qab'il al-yamaniyya. Sanca : Dr al-Kalima, 1985, 259. A further reference to this locus and connection with al-Hadrami is found in : Mir't al-jinn, IV, 361. 18. That is in the north Sumatran sultanates of Perlak and Samudra (Pasai), the further rel evance of which will be discussed below. 19. 'Uwaja is located at 15'05", 43'20". See G.R. Smith, The Ayyubids and Early RasUlids in the Yemen, 2 vols. London : Gibb Memorial Trust, 1974-78, II, 213. By the mid 1980s, it was a town of 1060 people. See al-Maqhafi, Mu'jam al-mudun, 299. Unfortunately no dates have yet been found for either al-Bajal or his madrasa. 20. For an overview of the internal and maritime trade dynamics of Aden, including remarks on its connections with India, see : R.B. Serjeant, 'The ports of Aden and Shihr (Medieval Period) ', Les grandes escales, Recueils de la Socit Jean Bodin 34 (1974), 207-24.

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homeland of Ism'l al-Hadrami and now an administrative region in the east of the modern Republic of Yemen - has been much remarked on in rela tion to significant developments in the later history of the archipelago, the port of Aden and the smaller Red Sea stations en route to the Hijaz have yet to receive the same kind of attention by modern historians. (21) Certainly this more westerly area has the potential of yielding new data on the earlier period, as Yemen, and Aden in particular, had long been a significant node in international spice trade networks linking the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. It was once suggested by Bernard Lewis that the Red Sea trade was an upshot of a late tenth century effort by the Shic Fatimid rulers of Egypt to divert as much of the Indian Ocean traf ficas possible from their Sunn Abbasid rivals operating from the Persian Gulf port of Siraf (and to thereby spread their Ism'ili propaganda fur ther). (22) Following their displacement of the Fatimids from Cairo in 1169, the new Ayyubid masters of Egypt and their Yemeni clients developed the infrastruc ture port of Aden. (23) Further, in the thirteenth century, we find docu of the mentation of a revitalized luxury trade between the Middle East, India, and China. (24) There are also some indications of a new, more direct trade in the spices and aromatics of the Indonesian archipelago coming more firmly into the hands of Muslims after several centuries of segmentary trade handled by Jewish and Indian merchants of Aden and Mangalore. Certainly this com merce expanded over the centuries that followed, and its associated port dues 21. For the state of the field on studies of the Hadrami diaspora in the Indian Ocean, see Ulrike Freitag and William Clarence-Smith (eds.), Hadhrami Traders, Scholars, and Statesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1750s-1960s. Leiden : Brill, 1997; Huub de Jonge and Nico Kaptein (eds.), Transcending Borders : Arabs, Politics, Trade, and Islam in Southeast Asia. Leiden : KITLV Press, 2002 ; and Ulrike Freitag, Indian Ocean Migrants and State Formation in Hadhramaut. Leiden : Brill, 2003. 22. Bernard Lewis, 'The Fatimids and the Route to India', Revue de la Facult des Sciences Economiques de l'Universit d'Istanbul, XI (1949-50). On the port of Siraf, which was used by the Abbasids and which had served the Sasanians before them, see David Whitehouse and Andrew Williamson, ' Sasanian maritime trade', Iran [Journal of Persian Studies], 11 (1973) : 29-49 23. Much of what was known of Aden in this period derived from such texts as those of Ibn al-Mujwir (fl. 1228) and Abu Makhrama (1465-1540) after him, in addition to the volu minous researches of S.D. Goitein on the Geniza trove of Cairo, which contains a great many documents relating to Aden and the India trade. For a fascinating recent study of the Geniza documents with special reference to the Aden-India trade before 1228, see Roxani Eleni Margariti, ' Like the place of congregation on judgement day : Maritime trade and urban or ganization in medieval Aden (ca. 1083-1229)', Doctoral Dissertation submitted to the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, June 2002. 24. Michel Jacq-Hergoualc'h, The Malay Peninsula : Crossroads of the Maritime Silk Road (100 BC- 1300 AD), trans. Victoria Hobson. Leiden : Brill, 2002. 391-99, 478-83.

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became an important source of revenue for the succeeding Rasulid dynasty (1228-1454). (25) A whiff of Jwa in Aden Laffan has recently argued that, when it first appeared in Arabic texts of the early part of the thirteenth century, the toponym Jwa represented an i sland world dominated by Java in distinction to a Malay world dominated by the old harbours of east Sumatra, previously grouped under the rubric of Zbaj.C26) It is used in this way, for example, in the Arab sailing itineraries that were produced after the Southern Song dynasty began to reroute its long-distance trade with the Middle East - and at a time when Java was pressing its claims to be regarded as a regional hegemon, or at least China's primary trading partner in the region. (27) Evidence of such a Java-China link appears to be made in the first refer ence to Java in any Arabic source, the Mu'jam al-buldn of the geographer Yqt b. cAbd Allah al-Hamawi (1179-1229), who describes it as 'one of the lands of China ' rather than the usual practice of placing Southeast Asian toponyms like Zbaj within India/28) Moreover it seems that by the thir teenth century references to Jwa were taking on recognizable valences in other forms of Arabic literature. A contemporary of Yqt, the chronicler Ibn al-Mujwir (ca. 1228), mentions Jwa in his Tartkh al-mustabsir, but in a tangential way while describing the effects of lightning on a tree near the mosque of Mucdh b. Jabal in Yemen : Mariners seek direction to the region of Java [iqlim al-jwa] simply by means of the fr equent flashes of lightning, since in the season of travel to Java [mttsim sifrat al-jwa] the rains are abundant, the sky completely overcast... and the seas very rough. ... Others have remarked that many Arar trees grow in these parts and if the resin runs from the tree, the sea appears to travellers like the flashing of lightning. <29) 25. R.B. Serjeant, 'Yemeni Merchants and Trade in Yemen, 13th-16th Centuries', in Marchands et hommes d'affaires asiatiques dans l'Ocan Indien et la Mer de Chine, 13e -20e sicles (Denys Lombard & Jean Aubin, eds.). Paris : ditions de l'EHESS, 1988, 61-82. 26. Michael Laffan, ' Finding Java : Muslim nomenclature of insular Southeast Asia, between Srivijaya and Snouck Hurgronje', forthcoming in Eric Tagliacozzo (d.), Southeast Asia and the Middle East : Islam, Movement and the Longue Dure. 27. For previous suggestions about a changing Javanese relationship with Sumatra at the ex pense of the ancient ports of Palembang and Jambi, see Oliver Wolters, The Fall of Srivijaya in Malay History. Kuala Lumpur etc. : Oxford, 1970, 42-3. 28. F. Wtistenfeld (d.), Jacut's geographisches Worterbuch. 6 vois, Leipzig, 1866-73, 1, 506. 29. Translation based on G.R. Smith, 'Ibn al-Mujawir's 7th/13th Century Arabia - the won drous and the humorous', in A.K. Irvine, R.B. Serjeant, and G. Rex Smith (eds.), Miscellany of Middle Eastern Articles in Memoriam Thomas Muir Johnstone 1924-83. Harlow, Essex : Longman, 1988, 1 1 1-24, 113. The Arabic text in brackets is inserted based upon O. Lofgren's edition of Abu 1-Fadl Ysuf b. Ya'qb b. al-Mujwir's, Sifat bild al-yaman wa-makka w a-b a' d al-hijz al-musammt trikh al-mustabsir. Leiden : Brill, 1951, 81.

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It may, however, be possible to interpret this passage a different way, given that by that time Jwa also served as a collective noun for Southeast Asians. One might thus see instead ' a region of Jwa people ' or yet con ceive of a season in which they traveled the waves to Aden. Either way, in this short excerpt we can see two elements important to contextualizing the life of Mascd al-Jw : burgeoning maritime connect ions between Yemen and Southeast Asia, and an association of the latter region with exotic aromatics. It is thus because of the relatively new impor tance of a linkage of spices to Jwness in thirteenth century Aden, that we would suggest that either Mas'd or his father could have been involved directly in a more avowedly Muslim-dominated Indian Ocean trade. It is even plausible that both could well have journeyed there. For whereas the trade may no longer have been in Jewish hands, there would still have been the same strong emphasis on the small-scale family ties that characterized ' Islamic ' trade as compared with the professional guild-like structures at tributed to what may have now been their Tamil rivals - assuming that they too were not also in the process of Islamizing their networks to link up with a Southeast Asian trade increasingly dominated by Sino-Arab Muslims. (3) Certainly significant developments in the local political and cultural his tories of Island Southeast Asia were also occurring by the latter part of the thirteenth century, as is evidenced in the earliest reports of rulers of regional port cities converting to Islam. It was also, as we have remarked above, a time marked by expanding Javanese dominance over Sumatra and other significant areas of the western half of the Indonesian archipelago. (31) But 30. Suggestions of Tamil guilds active in Southeast Asia have long been made and there has been an assumption that Muslim networks were similarly configured, or that perhaps one could talk of Sufi guilds, even though the evidence for the Mediterranean points to a different structural basis. Compare, for example, the very differently focused discussions within JacqHergoualc'h, The Malay Peninsula ; G.W.J. Drewes, ' New light on the coming of Islam to Indonesia?', Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) 124 (1968) : 433-459, and A.L. Udovitch, Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1970. For now we prefer to keep an open mind on whether one can speak of networks of either form, either religious or merely corporate, and especially given that ships crews were often multi-ethnic, as has been reiterated most powerfully in a recent study of Crete under Venetian and then Ottoman rule. See Molly Greene, A Shared World : Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2000. 31. The fourteenth-century Javanese poet Prapanca claimed that the Javanese had conquered large swathes of Sumatra around 1275, a date that was accepted by Coeds. See Mpu Prapanca, Desawarnana (Ngarakrtgama), Stuart Robson (d.). Leiden : KITLV Press, 1995 ; and G. Coeds, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. Honolulu : East West Center Press, 1968, 204. By contrast, C.C. Berg once argued that this could only have occurred after Singasari had subdued neighboring Bali (in 1284) and the Sundanese of West Java (in 1289), with the expeditions into the Straits occurring just before Marco Polo visited the region. See, for example, C.C. Berg, 'De geschiedenis van pril Majapahit', Indonsie 4 (1950) : 481-520, and ' Kartanegara, de miskende Empire-builder', Orientatie 34, 1950. With thanks to Uli Kozok.

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whereas this did not necessarily entail that the Javanese regarded their Sumatran vassals as a part of 'Java', or yet that the peoples of its ports ac cepted this designation, from the writings of Yqt and Ibn al-Mujwir it does appear that just such a politically-tinted perception may have been car ried away by outsiders. Hence, when Marco Polo described the region in 1292, he remarked that the kingdoms of Sumatra constituted Java Minora, including the port of Ferlec (Perlak), which he claimed had been recently won over to Islam by the large numbers of traders who frequented the place. (32) Ibn Battta (1304-77) also claimed to have visited the area sometime around 1345, and in his literary itinerary this North African writer referred to all the lands below the Malay Peninsula as ' Jwa ' . (33) However it must be recognized that this report originates only after his supposed return from China, which at that time recognized exclusive Javanese suzerainty in the re gion. Prior to this, or perhaps simply in the accounts that Ibn Battta drew on earlier in his text, Sumatra is referred to in other ways. These include such ascriptions as 'the island of the Jwa people', as the famous source of the incense benzoin (lubn jw) and aromatic aloes wood (ttd jwi), and as the locus of the entrept state of Samudra where a Muslim king ruled under the title al-Malik al-Zhir. (34) The short section of Ibn Battta' s travelogue describing conditions at Samudra is often cited by historians of Southeast Asia. However other pas sages scattered across his larger text can also provide important information on the context for our tabaqt entry on al-Jw. For example, this fourteenth-century observer calls particular attention to Aden's importance in trade connections between the Arabian Peninsula and India, and describes Indian ports such as Calicut on the Malabar Coast as centers where the peo ples of Yemen, Jwa, China, and others congregated. (35) Moreover he has 32. A.C. Moule and Paul Pelliot (eds.) Marco Polo - The Description of the World. London : George Routledge & Sons Limited, 1938, 1 : 371. 33. For an edited version of Gibb's translations that narrowly renders Jwa purely as a refer ence to Java, see H.A.R. Gibb and C.F. Beckingham (trans, and annot.), The Travels of Ibn Battta A.D. 1 325- 1 354, 4 vols. London : Hakluyt Society, 1994, IV, 874-87. 34. This name, which appears on a fourteenth-century gravestone discovered at Pasai, was used on the coinage of most of his successors until the fifteenth century, and points to the ways in which Southeast Asian Muslims were at one point well aware of developments in the Arab Middle East but over time assimilated the forms of Mamluk Egypt as a general form of Islamic symbolry. On the coinage struck with the regnal title al-Malik al-Zhir, see T. Ibrahim Alfian, Mata Vang Emas Kerajaan-Kerajaan di Aceh, Seri Penerbitan Museum Negeri Aceh, nomor 16, 1986-87. With thanks to Geoff Wade, personal communication, 2 May 2005. 35. Ibn Battta, Rihlat Ibn Battta al-musammt tuhfat al-nuzzr f ghar'ib al-amsr, Tall Harb (d.). Beirut : Dr ai-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya, 1987, 267 &572.

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something even more specific to offer with reference to the scholarly circles in which Mascd al-Jw had circulated. In the passages describing his visit to Mecca ca. 1325, Ibn Battta provides a sketch of one of the foremost scholars resident there at the time, describing him as being devoted in prayer day and night. As Ibn Battta depicts him, this individual would often as cend to the roof of the Muzaff ariyya madrasa in the evenings to sit and face the Kacba. Then he would retire to a small room at its top, from which he would emerge periodically during the night to renew his ritual ablutions ; all to the distress of his young wife who endured her husband's extreme piety for years until they separated. (36> This pious insomniac was none other than cAbd Allah b. Ascad al-Yafi(i, the grateful recipient of a Sufi robe from the hand of al-Jw, and author of the Mir}t al-jinn quoted in al-Sharj's Tabaqt al-khaivss. By his own account in the Mir1 at, the Aden-born al-Yfici briefly tells us that he made his first pilgrimage to Mecca in 1312, and that he returned there again in 1315 to continue his studies before marrying into the elite (and ap parently frustrated) circles of Mecca and Medina. (37) This would also seem to us to have been around the time during which the young al-Yfic may have met his teacher, al-Jw. According to al-Sharj, who claims to have quoted another passage on his life, al-Yfi' returned to Yemen on a quest to draw blessings from the ten greatest Sufis of his homeland. In these pas sages, the catalyst for this occurred at the gates of Medina, where he had a dream in which he met the Prophet who instructed him to seek out these ten paragons before entering the city to visit his tomb. (38) Of these saints, five were alive and five dead. The living were, respect ively, 'Ali al-Tawsh (d. 1347/8), preceptor of Hilla, Mansr b. Ja'dr, the master of Hard, (39) Muhammad b. cAbd Allah al-Mu'adhdhan, master of Mansura 'the attacked' (al-mahjam),(4) Faqh 'Urnar b. cAl al-Zayla% the 36. Ibn Battta, Rihlat Ibn Battta, 111. 37. al-Yfi'i, Mir't al-jinn, IV, 252. For al-Sharj's account of al-Yfic, see Tabaqt alkhawss, 172-6. 38. In the dream, Muhammad announces that ' in this world I am your prophet, in the next your intercessor, and in the garden your companion. Know that in Yemen there are ten souls, and [that] he who has visited them has visited me, and he who has shunned them has shunned me'. al-Sharj, Tabaqt al-khawss, 173-4. 39. Located in a valley to the northwest of Hajja, a large city some 127 km northwest of San'a, Hard was noted for its scholarly families and Himyarite ruins. See al-Maqhafi, Mu'jam al-mudun, 110, 116. 40. One of the villages of Salw, al-Mansra lies in the northwest part of a region to the south of Ta'izz called al-Hujarriya (formerly known as al-Macafiriyya). It was established by Tughtakin, the brother of Saladin (Salh al-Din al-Ayyb, 1138-93), and third Ayyubid governor of Yemen (r. 1 184-97). Mansra was later destroyed and abandoned for a time, explaining the specification of al-mahjam in al-Sharj's text. See al-Maqhaf, Mu(jam al-mudun, 413. See also pp. 109 & 394.

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master of Salma,(41) and Muhammad b. 'Umar al-Nahr, the master of Bur'. (42) The worthy dead, meanwhile, were Abu 1-Ghayth b. Jumayl (d. 1253), Faqh Ism'l al-Hadram (d. 1277), Faqh Ahmad b. Ms b. cUjayl (d. 1291/92), (43) Shaykh Muhammad b. Ab Bakr al-Hakami (d. 1220), and Faqh Muhammad b. Husayn al-Bajal. On his return, having visited and communicated with all ten, al-Yfic has a further dream in which he is welcomed by the Prophet, who furthermore responds to al-Yfic's query concerning Abu 1-Ghayth b. Jumayl in particular as their primus inter pares. (44) We have already seen the name of the second of the dead saints, Ismcl al-Hadram, given in connection with Mas'd al-Jw in the quote of alSharji. There is a strong chance too that al-Jw's connection to 'Uwaja imputed in that same text might entail a link to the last of the living saints of YfT's youth, Muhammad b. Husayn al-Bajal. As we shall see below there are other names in the list of greats to whom al-Jw might be connected by more unusual, not to say ' Uwaysi ' means. (45) 41. A village endowed with a well-known madrasa lying in the Nakhla Valley east of Hays, itself some 35 km south of Zabid. See al-Maqhafi, quoting al-Hajar, Mu'jam al-mudun, 209. 42. Primarily a designation for a significant peak (2000 m) located 60 km east of al-Hudayda, Burc is now a term applied to a famous coffee-producing region with a population est imated at nearly 35 000 in 1985. See al-Maqhafi, Mu'jam al-mudun, 50. 43. Al-Yfic provides his biography and gives his death date as AH 696. See Mir't aljinn, IV, 209 ff. 44. 'And He said : "Did you visit the ten?" So I said : "Yes, but you do not praise Abu 1Ghayth [above them]". And he smiled and said : "Tomorrow Abu 1-Ghayth shall be without equal". So I said : "Do you grant me permission to enter?" And He said : "Enter, for you are one of the believers'". Al-Snarji, Tabaqt al-khawss, 174. Al-Sharji, concludes his 'quo tation ' from al-Yfi' by remarking the biographies of each of the ten are to be found in his almanac. Nonetheless, given our experiences with al-SharjI, we would advise caution with the death-dates he gives for al-Hakami which, lacking corroboration by al-Yafici, we have used. For a biography of Abu 1-Ghayth, in which al-Yfic stresses his special relationship with cAbd al-Qdir al-Jln, see Mir't al-jinn, IV, 121-27. 45. Uwaysi divines have been described by Julian Baldick as ' a class of mystics who look for instruction from the spirit of a dead or physically absent person'. Such a description cer tainly seems to fit the circles described by al-Yafici. Baldick notes that Uwaysi tradition came to play an increasingly important role in Naqshbandi Sufism from the fourteenth cen tury, a milieu not too distant from that discussed here (J. Baldick, 'Uwaysiyya', EI2 1998, X : 958). Indeed, the name used to refer to these traditions is derived from that of Uways alQarani, a Yemeni mystic traditionally believed to have had a special relationship with the prophet Muhammad, even though the two men never met. Discussions of their connection began around interpretations of a tradition stating, 'The breath of the Merciful (nafas alr ah m an) comes to me from Yemen'. Such associations between sweet Sufi breezes and Southern Arabia thus became a well-established trope in Muslim literatures that was deftly manipulated in various ways over the centuries. For example, an early nineteenth-century tabaqt of Yemeni Sufis - which happens to contain an entry on a later scholar bearing the al-Jw nisba - was given the allusive title al-Nafas al-Yamn.

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After completing his Yemeni quest, al-Yfic returned to Mecca and began a lifetime of writing. His rise as a scholar earned him notice among the Shfi' jurists whose lives are recorded in the Tabaqt of al-Subki (132277). (46) However, since his death, al-Yfci has become most widely known for his compilations of biographical notices and anecdotes, not only of schol ars the Islamic religious sciences (such as his al-Shsh al-muclim), but in most especially of Sufi shaykhs, such as the Rawd al-rayhln (The garden of aromatic herbs). (47) As we have seen, Ibn Battta described al-Yfic as a pious man given to periods of withdrawal for solitary prayer and meditation. It may well have been this style of Sufism that he had embraced under the tutelage of Mascd al-Jw. Somewhat surprisingly though there is no mention of al-Jw in his Rawd al-rayhn. Rather, as the entry in the Tabaqt al-khawss tells us, reference to al-Jw comes in his history, and very much by way of digres sion.Indeed, al-Yfic at one point celebrates al-Jw's memory within the Mir' at in a long poem celebrating all the Sufi greats he had known or to whom he was connected, and with a flourish that surely connects him to con temporary Arab imaginations of Southeast Asia : Of excellent qualities, how many have been entrusted ? My sources being preceptor after preceptor Their fragrant scents were of the virtues I was granted But how many were empty souls, deniers of the manifest form ? Still in the Jw aloes, the soothing freshness I set upon the brazier There is the Jw of these men, Mas'ud, of seasoned virtue (48) The connection of sweet fragrances to piety is an old trope in religious li terature of the Middle East. As noted above, one of al-Yfic's best-known works is a hagiographical collation entitled ' the garden of the fragrant herbs'. However his use of the trope in the verses from the Mir* t al-jinn quoted above is particularly apt for the evocative way that it resonates with contemporary Arabic associations to the Jw nisba of his master : Mas'd al-Jwi was a fragrance most precious to him, and as priceless as the finest aloes (cd) available from distant Jwa. 46. Tj al-Din Abi Nasr cAbd al-Wahhab b. 'All b. cAbd al-Kfi, (Mahmd Muhammad al-Tanh and cAbd al-Fatth Muhammad al-Hulw [eds.]), Tabaqt alshfiyya al-kubra, 10 vols. Cairo : al-Bb al-Halabi, 1964-76,'X, 33. 47. The latter text is listed by Brockelmann (Geschichte II, 176) as the Ashraf al-tn afkhir or else is confused by him with the Asn l-mafkhir [fi manqb al-shaykh (Abd al-Qdir], in part using information from a Leiden manuscript (actually identifiable under the old cata logue number for the Shsh al-mu'lim, now listed as L. Or. 322 [2]). 48. wa flfdil kam minfad'il awda'at * wa surrt min murshid ba'da murshid wa rlhnunum rhnuh samahat - wa kam * nafs ma(a al-tajwf wal-zhir al-raddi, wa fi cdih al-jwi alladhi al-rutub jamartu * bi jwhim mas'd fadl mu'awwid. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 345.

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Al-Jw in the Yemeni Networks In his chronicle's account of the year 748 AH (1347/8), al-Yfic com mences by noting the passing, at some unspecified time, of two Yemeni shaykhs - one of whom was Jaml al-Dn al-Dhuhaybi, a one-time student of 'Urnar b. al-Saffr. (49) However, his recollection of an earlier dream he had had in Mecca of the passing of al-Saffr brought to mind for al-Yfic stories not only of these two shaykhs, but also of his earlier teacher Mas'ud al-Jw. As we shall see, al-Jw appears - here for the very first time in the Mir}t - by way of the sort of ' digression ' noted by al-Sharji. In this case it is within an account of a communication from beyond the grave emanating from one of the most famous jurists of the thirteenth century, Muhy al-Dn al-Nawaw (also d. 1277-8), a scholar whose works are still primary sources in Shfi' law from Lower Egypt and the Swahili Coast to Southeast Asia. The text reports that present at al-Yfi'i's side during this remarkable rel igious experience was his master, al-Jw whom he links in turn to a mysteri ous master and a certain Hadrami. As al-Yfici tells it : I have already recounted in the biography of Shaykh Muhy al-Dn al-Nawaw that he too called to me in a dream, saying : ' God has appointed you and elevated you in excel lence and fixed in you the firm word on this earthly life and the hereafter'. (5) - O God may You bring that closer to me and the remainder of my friends and loved ones ! Amen. - And he of true breaths and unprecedented miracles, exalted talents and lofty dignities was sitting [with me] at that time. [This was] our praiseworthy shaykh, the famous saint Mas'd al-Jw, one of the eminent colleagues of the shaykh and jurist of renowned virtues and great miracles, the master of Mawza(, who was mentioned previously in the biography of the jurist and imm of mighty miracles, the loftily appointed, Muhammad b. Ism'il al-Hadram. (51> While this passage refers to Muhammad b. Ismcl al-Hadram rather than Ism'l b. Muhammad, there is no biography of the former to be found elsewhere in the Mir}at. Meanwhile, in that text's biography of Ism'l b. Muhammad he is described as having connections to cAbd Allah b. Ab Bakr al-Khatb al-Yaman. This latter figure is identified as the deceased lord of Mawza', a crossroads town 80 km southwest of Tacizz that once linked Red Sea ports to the hinterland cities of the Tihma, and that was long famous for its many Sufis. (52) This same 'Abd Allah b. Abi Bakr al49. Mir'at al-jinn, IV, 308. 50. This passage occurs at the end of al-Nawaw's biography, which appears for the year AH 676, and immediately after the notice on Ism'il al-Hadram : Mir'at al-jinn, IV, 18286. 51. Mir'at al-jinn, IV, 309. 52. Mir'at al-jinn, IV, 177. On Mawza', see al-Maqhaf, Mu'jam al-mudun, 417.

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Khatib is furthermore mentioned in an appendix listing the shaykhs of Yemen geographically, at which point al-Yfici observes in a fragment of a longer poem that his sanctity was imbibed by none other than ' the shaykh of our shaykhs, Mascd al-Jw'.(53) To return, however, to al-Yfic's dream vision of al-Nawaw, the passage that immediately follows it continues to expand upon the connections be tween al-Hadrami and al-Jw : The afore-mentioned Shaykh Mas'd [al-Jw], he [i.e. al-Hadrami] and Shaykh cUmar b. al-Saffr drew great benefit and generous gains from the afore-mentioned [cAbd Allah] Ibn [Abi Bakr] al-Khatib. Shaykh Mas'd was the first to dress me in the khirqa, coming to me while I was meditating in isolation somewhere. And he [al-Jw] said to me : 'A sign befell me this night that I was to dress you in the khirqa', and he put it upon me. And he [al-Jwi] used to meet with our shaykh Jaml al-Dn [al-Dhuhayb], whom I mentioned. And we would gather with some of their friends at blessed times in Aden and on the [nearby] coast at some hours, [here] I mean the coast of Duras . . . which lies behind the coast of Huqqt. (54) Whereas al-Jw obviously spent some of his youth at the feet of the venerable Ibn al-Khatb in Mawza(, much as Ism'l al-Hadrami had also done, by the time that these events were occurring, al-Jw was clearly one of several leading figures in the Sufi gatherings held on the coast near Huqqt, which is to be identified as modern Holkat Bay in the immediate southern vicinity of Aden's outer harbour. (55) What all this now allows us to understand then is that al-Jw, already distinguished in al-Yfi''s eyes as an associate of the great Ismcl b. Muhammad al-Hadrami and Jaml al-Dn al-Dhuhayb, was the shaykh who bestowed upon al-YfV the khirqa, a symbolic cloak signifying initia tioninto a Sufi order. (56) While not explicitly stated here, it appears that the order in question was that of the Qdiriyya, which al-Yfic declares was transmitted through (past) shaykhs of Yemen, who had either obtained it di rectly from the eponymous 'founder' cAbd al-Qdir al-Jln (a.k.a. alJayln or al-Kayln, 1077-1 166) or by way of emissaries he had dispatched to their country. (57) 53. Mir' at al-jinn, IV, 356-57. 54. Mir1 at al-jinn, IV, 309. 55. Margariti, 'Like the place of congregation', 106. Somewhat complicating matters, alMaqhafi identifies al-Durs as being in the vicinity of Ibb, in the highlands, rather than as a village within the crater of Aden ; Mu'jam al-mudun, 259. 56. We should also remember that his having had the same teacher as Ism'l al-Hadram does not imply that they were of a similar age. Traditional Islamic education was not orga nized by age-groups, and given that he died in the 1270s after a long career, we can assume that he was certainly older than al-Jw. 57. Mir't al-jinn, III, 355. This is not to say that he was solely concerned with the Qdir order, as is attested, for example, by his detailing of the khirqa?, and the attendant silsilas of Najm al-Dn al-Kubr (d. 1221) : Mir't al-jinn, IV, 40-41.

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Al-Yfic's text goes on to provide details of the education of al-Jw's Sufi colleague Jaml al-Din al-Dhuhaybi. (58) After that, al-Yfic pauses to provide further information about himself, his shifts between Mecca and Medina, and his encounters with his great teachers, in a mixture of plain and rhymed prose. (59) He commences by announcing the death (also in AH 748/1347/48 CE) of another Sufi master whom he regarded as especially influential for him, namely Abu 1-Hasan Nr al-Dn cAli b. cAbd Allah alYaman al-Tawsh from the town of Hill whose name we have already met in al-Yfic's dream of the ten paragons of Yemen. (6) Al-Yfic writes that while he was a student at Mecca al-Tawsh made a pilgrimage, and that in the Holy City this shaykh was popularly regarded as 'one of the pious' (ram al-slihin). Al-Yfic himself became his disciple, and as he drew closer to al-Tawsh he was inspired to perform his first tour of Yemen in order to acquaint himself with the special mystical knowledge he so obviously lacked : Then I frequented his home where he no longer spoke of the exercises but instead of the command (al-amr) and signs (ishrt), all of which I had no knowledge. Hence I made my first journeying to Yemen where I was met on the coasts by a great many of his mend icants and associates. <61) Was al-Jw thus one of the coastal representatives of al-Tawsh ? Certainly al-Yfic speaks at length about al-Tawsh as his particular pre ceptor in Yemen, his miracles and sayings, the khirqa of his order and the stations within it - even referring to him as the 'master' (mawl). Before detailing the numerous miracles performed on the coast, al-Yfic includes a long poem full of allusions to his relationship with al-Tawsh and his fo llowers that will prove of relevance to us below. (62) Then, once he is done with cataloguing the miracles and sayings of his master al-Tawsh, al-Yfic turns to account for himself. (63) In these passages he speaks of the blessings of his faith, his aims to provide a general history of the Mamluks and of Islam, and he alludes to the many holy communications he has been granted either asleep or awake. It is also here that we find another tangential allusion 58. Mir' t al-jinn, IV, 310 ff. 59. Mir' t al-jinn, IV, 31 1-30. 60. We have not been able to precisely identify Hill, but it was clearly on the coast of the Mir' t al-jinn, IV, 319. Another long biography of al-Tawsh ships from al-Yfic is in Tihma - al-Yfic even refers at one point to its harbour and the drawn of passing pilgrims ; dicative of his importance in Yemen, and includes an account of how al-Tawsh once drove a devil away that was attempting to distract al-Yfi' during his meditation - see al-Sharj, Tabaqtal-khawss, 198-202. 61. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 312. 62. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 314-15. 63. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 324 ff.

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to al-Yfic's receipt of the khirqa from al-Jw that helps to explain al-Jw's placement within the long poem in relation to al-Tawsh. As for what I mentioned of donning the khirqa in the poem on being wrapped in pride (qasldat iktisa' al-fakhr), this was because he [al-Jw] was instructed to do so while in a state of wakefulness, a state that occurred to him when he was at the seashore. And this is what I relate in the poem : He [al-Jw] dressed me in the khirqa at the order of his lord. And I donned it. The pride of it lay in his being awake'64' Certainly al-Yfi' wrapped himself proudly in the lineage of all his masters, even if he appeared, at times, to compare some of them less than f avorably to al-Jw, the teacher who had first inducted him. As he continues : I have been dressed by them, they being other people, some also following a sign (ishra). Perhaps this was after they had received a sign awake or asleep. Still, I never witnessed in any of these others the goodness of the way of the tarlqa that I saw in the aforementioned shaykh - [that being] the fusion between the outer law (sharfa) and inner reality (haqqa), good fortune and effort, great solicitude and facility with religious prac tice (bda), meticulous following of Sunna and abstention, excess in effacement and culture and humility, great inner knowledge and disclosure, good qualities and ings (65) While it is tempting to follow al-Yafic at length on his spiritual path through the Yemen - one that he connects ever more tightly over the suc ceeding pages to the ten paragons as representatives of Qdir Sufism - we should return to the bestower of his first khirqa, al-Jw. It was he who apparently inducted al-Yfi( into the order on the instructions of his own master, al-Tawsh. The final clear mention of al-Jw that we have found in the Mir't is es pecial y significant, where al-Jw's name appears third in the list of Yfic's 36 great shaykhs of Yemen - behind Shaykh Jawhar and his predecessor Abu Hamrn. (66) Among [the shaykhs of Yemen] is our shaykh and our blessing, the great shaykh Mascd al-Jw. He was the first to dress me in the khirqa following a sign that befell him. He is among those to have met the shaykh of his age, the jurist and imm Ism'l b. Muhammad al-Hadram. We accompanied him to the tomb of one/some of the pious masters, and I understood from him that [the saint] spoke to him from his tomb. (67> 64. walbisn (an amr mawlahi khirqa * kasaytu bih fakhr al-amr yaqza. Mir'at aljinn, IV, 326-7. Cf. p. 315 where this first appears. 65. Mir3 at al-jinn, IV, 327. 66. Al-Yfi' later adds an anecdote concerning the accession of Jawhar, a former slave, to the Shaykhdom of Yemen and his investiture with the khirqa after the prophecy of Abu Hamrn was fulfilled. See Mir' t al-jinn, IV, 347. 67. Mir3 at al-jinn, IV, 348.

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Al-Jw's repeatedly reported ability to communicate with the dead ap pears to have been particularly esteemed by al-Yfc. During al-Yfic's quest for the living and dead Sufi masters of Yemen, he was able to contact the latter through the intercession of al-Tawsh. We might also wonder if help was provided by al-Jw, whom we have suggested may have served as al-Tawsh's coastal representative at Duras. al-Yfi'i and the Qdir connection with an Islamizing Southeast Asia To summarize here : we have seen above that al-Yfic claims in his history to have experienced important communications from beyond the grave, including those specific instances involving al-Nawaw and Ibn alSaffar,(68) as well as the Prophet, Abu 1-Ghayth and Ism'il al-Hadrami. (69) We have furthermore shown that he regarded al-Jw, whom he links poeti cally to the aromatics of Southeast Asia, as being a fellow recipient of such communications, if not merely present when they occured. Dream visions have certainly been important elements in many chapters of the history of Sufism, including those relevant to the ongoing develop ment Islamic religious thought in Southeast Asia. For example, a major of influence on Jw scholars in Arabia during the seventeenth century was Ibrahim al-Krn (d. 1690), who is reported to have met with the great Hanbali mystic of Baghdad, cAbd al-Qdir al-Jln in a dream just before he commenced his studies of the teachings of Ibn cArabi (d. 1240). (7) However, well before the name of al-Krn would be esteemed in Southeast Asia, al-Yfic must have been known to at least some people from the region of Jwa. The Sufi network within which al-Jw sat was tightly interconnected both within Yemen and beyond to the Holy Cities and Baghdad. Al-Yfic clearly points out that the many shaykhs of Yemen with whom he had sat traced their learning to a select group of culam} : Abu lGhayth, Muhammad b. Abi Bakr al-Hakami, ' the two Hadramis ' (the ju rist Ism'l and Abu cIbd), and Muhammad b. cUmar al-Nahri.(71) Four of these five were already identified in al-Yfici's Medinese dream, and of these only al-Nahr had been one of the living. At another point al-Yfi{i waxes poetically about the spiritual lineage linking the great shaykhs of the Yemen and their right to dispense the khirqa being based in the great majori ty of cases on a relationship to cAbd al-Qdir al-Jln. (72) 68. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 186. 69. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 126. 70. Azyumardi Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism, 19. 71. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 327. 72. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 328. Here he says that a majority of the shaykhs of Yemen (ghlib

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So pivotal was al-Yfic in the consolidation of these lines of Sufi authori ty in Yemen that Trimingham identified the emergence of a distinct ' Yafi'iyya ' branch of the Qdiriyya there. (73) More potentially relevant to the historical development of Islam in Southeast Asia, al-Yi( was a self-as cribed Qdir affiliated with the Shfi'i - rather than the Hanbali - school of Muslim jurisprudence (madhhab) who was also sympathetic to the teachings of Ibn cArabL (74) Alongside a peculiar preoccupation with the transmission of Ibn cArabi's mysticism, modern studies of Islam in Southeast Asia have long remarked on the importance of the figure of cAbd al-Qdir al-Jlni in the Sufi lineages and popular religious practices of the region. Indeed cAbd al-Qdir remains an important figure for many Indonesian Muslims to this day. (75) One major source on al-Jln that has been adapted into works in several Southeast Asian languages is one of al-Yfic's other writings, the Khulsat al-mafkhir.W In an early study of this text's adaptations into the Muslim shuykh al-yaman) drew their rights to dispense the khirqa on a relationship with cAbd alQdir. Compare the earlier statement (at III, 355), where he quotes his own Khulsat alYemen' {jumhr Nashr al-mahsin had effect the rights to his body either directly or mafkhir and the shuykh al-yaman)to thereceivedthat 'the general khirqaof the shaykhs of by way of messengers. This mention comes in the context of a limited biography of 'Abd alQdir - whom Ibn Khallikn had not deemed worthy of mention in his own chronicle. See Mir't al-jinn, III, 347-66. For an overview of the life of cAbd al-Qdir al-Jln and the development of his eponymous order, see J.S. Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam. London : Oxford University Press, 1971, 40-44, and Alexander Knysh, Islamic Mysticism : A Short History. Leiden : Brill, 2000, 179-92. In any case, the data presented in this essay ne ces itates a re-examination of accounts of the spread of the order to Southeast Asia (i.e. Knysh, 187-88), if not as an order per se. 73. Trimingham, Sufi Orders in Islam, 273. This was despite his having claimed that there was no Qdir order as such until the early fifteenth century, with major developments oc curring thereafter when it was propagated in India by Muhammad Ghawth (d. 1517) (Ibid., 43-44). Trimingham argues that the much hyped cAbd al-Qdir never even gave out the khirqa, and was more properly regarded in his own lifetime as a Hanbali preacher and model of rectitude. 74. Alexander D. Knysh, Ibn (Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition : The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam. Albany : SUNY, 1999, 1 18-20. 75. Drewes and Poerbatjaraka noted that he later came to be seen as the special protector of Jwa, and that even into the early twentieth century variants of Yfi''s anecdotes about 'Abd al-Qdir Jln were still being translated, including one text from Persian into Sundanese. See G.W.J. Drewes and R. Poerbatjaraka, De Mirakelen van Abdoelkadir Djaelani. Bandung : Nix and Co., 1938, 12 & 45. This Sundanese rendition has recently been translated into English by Julian Millie who is currently researching the continuing ritual uses of such texts in Java. See : Julian Millie, Celebration of the Desires. Queenscliff (Victoria) : Joseph Helmi, 2003 ; and Julian Millie and Syihabuddin, ' Addendum to Drewes ; the Burda of al-Bsr and the Miracles of Abdulqadir al-Jaelani in West Java', BKI, 161-1 (2005) : 98-126. 76. i.e. Khulsat al-mafkhir ft ikhtisr manqib al-shaykh (Abd al-Qdir wa jam'a mimman cazzamahu min al-shuykh al-akbir a.k.a. 'Aj'ib al-yt wal-barnln wa irdf ghar'ib rawd al-rayhn. As Voorhoeve correctly observes, this is intended as an ad-

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literatures of the archipelago, G.W.J. Drewes and R. Poerbatjaraka focused most intensely on the Javanese Hikayat Abdulkadir Jaylani, which they con sidered to be the ' most important ' link in bridging Southeast Asian devotion to cAbd al-Qdir with analogous traditions elsewhere in the Muslim world. (7?) Their study then presents summaries of the contents and reflec tions on the connections between a family of related texts, including the Javanese and Sundanese Hikayat Seh and Wawacan Seh, as well as Malay re censions. However, while they viewed the Hikayat Abdulkadir Jaylani as essentially a 'translation' of al-Yfic's Khulsat al-mafkhir, Voorhoeve more carefully argued that the Javanese text is not simply a vernacular trans lation, but rather a selective adaptation of some of its elements. (78) In framing their discussions, Drewes and Poerbatjaraka cast their descriptions of these texts within a model of Islamization that highlights the importance of India and developments in South Asian Sufism to subsequent changes in the Indonesian archipelago. While there is no denying the histori cal relevance of India (or indeed Indians) in the transmission of Islam to Southeast Asia, this should not prevent us from also appreciating the potent ial importance of other, more direct, connections between Southeast Asia and the Arab-speaking lands of Islam, such as those through Aden hinted at in the Arabic texts mentioning Mas'd al-Jw. After all, the Yemen appears to have been one of the earliest areas to which the Qdiriyya order spread, with one of the shaykh's younger contemporaries, cAli b. al-Haddd a l egedly initiating followers of the way in Yemen even during cAbd alQdir's lifetime. (79) junct to the Rawd al-rayhn. See also Trimingham, Sufi Orders, 40-41, n. 8; and P. Voorhoeve, 'Het origineel van de Hikajat Abdulkadir Djelani', Tijdschrift voor lndische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (TBG) 11 (1949), 1 10-24. As Brockelmann (Geschichte II, 176) notes, based on manuscripts in Berlin (Berl. 8804) and London (Ind. Off. 708), the Khulsat al-mafkhir consists of '200 erbauliche Geschichten von cAq al-Glni und ca. 40 andern von ihm hochgehaltenen Sufis'. In the course of the Aceh War several works linked to alYfi' by authorship, including the Rawd al-rayhn, or simply including references to him as a leading authority, were subsumed within the former collection of the Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences. See : P.S. van Ronkel, Supplement to the Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts Preserved in the Museum of the Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences. Batavia and The Hague, Albrecht and Co. and M. Nijhoff, 1913, nos. 272, 556, 557 & 849 (i and iii). 77. Drewes and Poerbatjaraka, Mirakelen, p. 31. Another possible stimulus to produce an emphasis on Java may well have been that the publication was made with the financial sup port of both the Mangkunegaran and Pakualaman houses of Surakarta and Yogyakarta. 78. Voorhoeve, ' Het origineel van de Hikajat Abdulkadir Djelani ', 1 10-1 1. A Malay version published in the Minangkabau region also proves to be a selective picking and choosing of stories, which are presented in a new order. See Muhammad Harith ibn al-marhum Muzafar Banten, Khulsat al-nazifa = Khulsat al-mafakhir pada menyatakan karamat sidi Abd alQadir. Fort De Kock : al-Matba'a al-Islamiyya, 1923. 79. 'Kdiriyya ', 72, IV, 381a. Again, this conflicts with Trimingham's assertions as to the nature of cAbd al-Qadir's teachings, though there was little to stop others formulating a sys tem around the person of their pious idol.

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Furthermore, in keeping with their focus on Java, the primary point through which Drewes and Poerbatjaraka view the reception of these texts in Southeast Asia is that of Banten in the seventeenth century when this pros perous port developed into a powerful sultanate. One sultan even adopted the royal title that appears to pay tribute to both al-Jln and al-Yfi' : Abu'lMafakhir Mahmud Abd al-Qadir (r. 1624-51). Still, Drewes and Poerbatjaraka do note other paths of transmission for Qdir elements in Southeast Asia, such as the poetry of Hamzah Fansuri, which was appreciated in many parts of Java and Sumatra in the early modern pe riod. (80) Beyond this, other instances of Qdir elements in Southeast Asian Muslim texts abound, including the evocation of the name of cAbd al-Qdir in the opening phrases of the edicts (sarakarta) issued by Acehnese sul tans. (8 1) Given the prevalence of Qdir elements in early Southeast Asian Islamic texts, and particularly in light of the revised dating for Hamzah Fansuri and our own suggestions about the early Aden-Jwa linkage, further investiga tions of the place of Yemen in the first stages of Islamization at the western end of the archipelago appear to be a potentially fruitful area for future re search. One particular avenue that deserves investigation would be a critical re-examination of Southeast Asian conversion narratives with an eye comparing them to Arabic Sufi texts of the period. In terms of the work of al-Yfi', there is one particularly noteworthy parallel in the stories of indi viduals miraculously attaining fluency in Arabic and/or knowledge of Islamic belief and practice. One of the sketches from the Khulsat almafkhir has the Persian-speaking cAbd al-Qdir transformed into an eloquent preacher in Arabic after a mystical encounter with the Prophet and cAli, who had both spat into his mouth. (82) Similarly there is the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai, which has the putative first Muslim ruler of the Sumatran port, Merah Silu, meeting the Prophet in a dream, who then spits in his mouth to make him able to recite the Qur'n upon waking. (83) While the aforementioned Malay text survives today only in nineteenthcentury manuscripts, it purports to tell of events occurring around the turn of 80. Since the publication of Drewes and Poerbatjaraka' s study, these texts have become more easily accessible in the published edition of Drewes and L.F. Brakel (op. cit.). The last lines of the first poem ilmuthis edition make the Qdiri lineage of (p. 44). ' Beroleh khilfat in yang 'li/daripada lAbd al-Qdir Jln ' Hamzah' s Sufism clear : 81. See, for example, C. Snouck Hurgronje, The Achehnese (trans. A.W.S. O' Sullivan). Leiden : Brill, 1906,1: 130. 82. See Drewes and Poerbatjaraka, Mirakelen, p. 24; Millie, Celebration, p. 51. 83. Russell Jones (d.), Hikayat Raja Pasai. Shah Alam (Selangor) : Penerbit Fajar Bakti SDN. BHD., 1987, 12-13 ; & A.H. Hill (d.), 'Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai : a revised romanised version of Raffles MS 67, together with an English translation', Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 33-2 (1961) : 56-7.

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the fourteenth century and thus roughly contemporary with the lifetimes of al-Yfic and Mas'd al-Jw. Is it really pure coincidence that Merah Silu's conversion is adjudged sound by a certain Shaykh Ismcl ? Either way, this Arab visitor is remembered in the Malay texts as an emissary from the Sharif of Mecca, while in the imaginary of the Hadram diaspora he is assumed to have been someone who would have borne their nisba al-Hadrami. In any case, by his death, the ruler of Pasai had affirmed his Islam with the title of Sultan al-Malik al-Salih (d. 1297), most likely in emulation of the royal nomenclature of the Mamluk dynasty, his distant primary customer. To date a considerable body of work has been produced tracing doctrinal affiliations between Islamic mystical texts from Southeast Asia and those of the Middle East and South Asia. (84> However, it would appear that redirecting attention from cosmological and theological abstractions toward narrative tropes of Arabic (or Persian or Tamil) hagiographie texts with an eye to comparing them to common elements in local conversion narratives from Muslim societies of the Indonesian archipelago could prove to be a more productive area in which to explore the relevance of medieval Sufi tra ditions to the early Islamization of the archipelago. Conclusions and Questions We began this essay with the observation that what we have found is not new, but simply overlooked. In fact, printed editions of Sufi hagiographical texts mentioning Mas'd al-Jwi remain in circulation in Southeast Asia today. One striking example of this can be found in the Jm karmt alawliy* compiled by Ysuf b. Ism'l al-Nabhn (1849-1932). First printed in Cairo between 1906 and 1911, and at the instigation of wealthy Hadrami Sayyids from the al-Kf clan in Tarim, this is a catalogue of the Sufi greats, including some among the living of Nabhn's day. Furthermore, the version that we examined is accompanied in the margins by yet another of al-Yfic's catalogues of the miracles of the saints, his Nashr al-mahsin al-ghliyya fi fadl al-mashaykh l l-maqmt.^) Nestled quietly among the much more extensively documented accounts of Arab masters of miracles in Nabhn's text is the undated biographical note on al-Jwi, lifted entirely from al84. An overview of earlier work of this type is included in : Peter Riddell, Islam and the Malay-Indonesian World : Transmission and Responses. Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, 2001. To a certain extent Riddell has also anticipated the potential importance of the approach we propose by noting the value attached to the power of narrative in the conversion process. 85. Ysuf b. Ism'l al-Nabhn, Jmic karmt al-awliy\ 2 vols. Cairo : Mustafa alBb al-Halab, 1906-11, II, 253. As noted above, al-Nabnni seems to have confused the sainted Ism'l with his father, Muhammad, much as the editors of the Mir't either inverted or removed an element of the former's kunya.

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Sharj, with the exception of the explanation for the pronunciation of Jw which by that time was unnecessary, particularly for readers in the Hadrami diaspora. (That this text soon circulated in the Indonesian archipelago is sug gested by the fact that the vendor's marks on the edition of the Jm karmt al-awliy* that we consulted show that it had been acquired in Java for Snouck Hurgronje). Despite ongoing reprintings of the tabaqt entry on al-Jw, this thirteenth-century Sufi has not become a figure that features anywhere in contemporary discussions of the early history of Southeast Asian Islam. Perhaps this is because his importance lies entirely in Yemen - where he was so obviously accepted as a complete equal to the shaykhs of his day, though still perhaps being recognized as 'Jwi' either by his physical features or by association with the burgeoning trade in aromatics. While it is tempting to conclude that for such reasons he was never regarded back in Jwa itself as being one of ' their ' people, one possible ex planation for the subsequent popularity and influence of al-Yfi('s works in Southeast Asia is that perhaps later 'Jwa' would be positively disposed t oward the works of a man who had been inducted into the mysteries of Islam by one with whom they could identify by name. Perhaps over time the sto ries that al-Yfic had related about cAbd al-Qdir were used to recast local narratives of conversion into Sufi tropes, much as the tombstones of the first rulers of Pasai would be replaced by more ornate versions in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries. (86) As we now see it, the strong possibility remains that there is more information on al-Jw available in Yemen, perhaps by way of an inscribed tombstone in Aden or at the site of the madrasa of cUwja, a town already famous in al-Yfic's day as the resting place of two of his paragons : Muhammad b. Abi Bakr al-Hakami, and Muhammad b. Husayn alBajal.(87) There could even be other texts that associate al-Jw with the latter place, for whereas the vast bulk of al-Sharji's entry on al-Jw was drawn from the history of al-Yfic, he made no mention of his ever being in 'Uwja - either as student or teacher. This may mean that al-Jw might have died there when al-Yfic was in the Hijaz, assuming that an already old man never ventured back to the putative homeland implied by his nisba. Today Jwa and its mystics remain very much at the margins of contem poraryglobal Muslim discourse, and not only in anti-Sufi, Salafi imaginings of Islam. In the context of contemporary cAlawi assertions that Southeast 86. See Elizabeth Lambourn, ' The Formation of the Batu Aceh Tradition in FifteenthCentury Samudera Pasai ', Indonesia and the Malay World, 33/93 (July 2004) : 21 1-48. 87. Mir't al-jinn, IV, 359-60.

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Asia was Islamized by pious Arabs, and especially those from the Hadramaut - where so many of their own ancestors had boarded steamships for verdant Jwa - there seems to be little space to acknowledge that Jawi people too were once just as intrepid in crossing the Indian Ocean. Certainly there is evidence of this in the Geniza documents, mined exhaustively by the late S. Goitein when preparing his still unpublished India Book.^%) These materials reveal to us something of the complex ways in which, for example, Jewish merchants of the eleventh and thirteenth centuries came to refer to their temporary shipboard and port accommodations using the Malay-deri ved billj (or billg - from bilik) and how similarly titled nkhuds and karnis came to be found frequenting ports from the Red Sea to the Straits of Malacca. In any case, texts such as those in the family of references to Mascd alJw and his circles discussed in this essay provide glimpses into the complexity of medieval Islamic networks that transcend the shared maritime terminologies and economic interactions apparent in the Geniza documents. In them we have tantalizing hints pointing to the lives of mystical masters associated with Southeast Asia having an established presence in scholarly circles of the Middle East during the first major wave of state-led Islamization in the archipelago. Not only do such materials open new avenues along which to enquire into the particular ways in which (Abd alQdir, the patron saint of travelers, became the de facto patron of Southeast Asian Islam, they also provide us with new resources with which to further explore broader dynamics of trade, teachers, texts, and tarqas involved in processes of the region's Islamization. (89)

88. Deaths of two Jewish merchants in Kra and Pansur, the homeland of Hamzah Fansuri, were recorded in letters from the thirteenth century. See S.D. Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1973, 227-9. More work remains to be done on the Geniza fragments, and we are both hopeful of seeing what other hints about medieval Southeast Asia may turn up there and elsewhere in the coming years. 89. We should also end by noting that the path toward integrating studies of Sufi orders into other dimensions of social and religious change in the history of Southeast Asia has been blazed for us in the work of A.H. Johns. For the most recent statement of his evolving views on this subject, see : 'Sufism in Southeast Asia : Reflections and Reconsiderations', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 26-1 (1995) : 169-83.

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