Settlers, Saints, Kings as well as also Conversions: The Dawn of Indonesian Islam
Author of A Brief History of Indonesia, Tim Hannigan, travels back in time to explore the history of Islam in Indonesia.
The hamlet of Leran lies amidst the low fields north of Gresik in East Java, a few kilometres inland through the muddy shores of the Madura Strait. On a December day within the year 1082, a funeral party gathered there beneath leaden monsoon skies.
Leran lay within the kingdom of Kediri, a realm ruled by a raja who claimed to be an incarnation of the god Vishnu, as well as also within the surrounding countryside there were temples where shaven-headed priests oversaw Hindu worship. although there was no such priest amongst the members of the funeral party, as well as also there was no pyre of scented timber. Instead there was a hole dug into the damp soil as well as also aligned producing sure that will the corpse, bound in pale cloth as well as also laid on its side, would likely face towards the northwest. When the mourners gathered at the graveside, they cupped their hands as well as also whispered words of Arabic prayer. They were burying a Muslim. Her name, marked later in Kufic calligraphy on a carven headstone, was Fatimah binti Maimun, Fatimah daughter of Maimun.
The grave of Fatimah binti Maimun, the ‘first’ known Muslim in Indonesia
We know nothing about her – her age, her race, her place of birth or cause of death. although amongst the various flotsam as well as also jetsam of history, cast up along Indonesia’s shores, hers can be the oldest identified Muslim tomb, dating back almost 1,000 years, fully two centuries before the rise of the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit kingdom.
Indonesia can be the largest Muslim-majority nation on Earth, although the story of how exactly that will state of affairs came to be can be as murky as a cup of kopi tubruk, with myth as well as also misinformation poured in heaps. as well as also yet flickering throughout the early centuries of Islamisation, there are flashes of light: a casual comment in a Chinese chronicle; an incongruous grave marker; a fabulous folktale wrapped around an elusive fact; as well as also here as well as also there an enigmatic name – like that will of Fatimah binti Maimun.
the item was trade that will brought the first Muslims to Indonesia. Straddling the space between the Indian Ocean as well as also the South China Sea, that will has always been the ultimate international shipping junction. The river-mouth ports around the Straits of Melaka were places where you could pick up Indian pottery, Chinese silk, cloves as well as also nutmeg through Maluku, sandalwood through Timor, rice through Java – as well as also perhaps the occasional slave through Bali. Needless to say, all these heady business opportunities attracted outsiders, as well as also the earliest expats in Indonesia were vagabonding merchants through China as well as also India, based in places like Srivijaya – the fabled Buddhist trading state of southern Sumatra.
We know that will the first Muslim travellers had already reached China by the middle of the seventh century (just a couple of decades after the death of the Prophet Muhammad); the item seems more than likely that will some of their coreligionists made the item as far as Indonesia around the same time. Indeed, some of the early emissaries through Srivijaya to China seem to have been Muslims – judging by the way their names were recorded within the Chinese records. They were probably international itinerants who had offered their seafaring services to the Buddhist king, as well as also within the decades as well as also centuries that will followed there were many more like them – Muslim travellers through China, India, Persia as well as also Arabia who settled in Indonesia’s burgeoning ports, creating little communities of expat Islam within the process. Fatimah binti Maimun, whoever she was, was probably part of that will scattered although diverse population of international Islam in early Indonesia.
You’ll find a curious mirror of that will history today within the tiny Indonesian-Arab communities within the old quarters of port cities like Surabaya, traders in perfume as well as also agarwood. They are the descendants of settlers through Yemen who arrived within the last few centuries, although with their distinct identity, apart through the Indonesian mainstream, they probably bear more than a passing resemblance to their predecessors in Srivijaya.
In light of all that will, the item’s not so much the fact that will Indonesia became Muslim that will seems strange; the item’s the fact that will the item took so long to make the change. Some historians used to give much of the credit for the eventual conversion to the traders. although the fact that will there were foreign Muslims passing through – as well as also almost certainly resident in – Indonesia for hundreds of years before large-scale conversions began, suggests that will they probably didn’t have much influence with the locals. When the change genuinely did get going, the item seems to have come through the top down.
The first Muslim king in Indonesia was a man named Malik as-Saleh. He died in 1297, as well as also he ruled over a little state called Samudera Pasai within the far northeast of Sumatra (where Marco Polo reported Muslim territories at about the same time), although according to local legend he had commenced out as a “heathen” by the name of Merah Silau. His conversion to Islam wasn’t exactly conventional:
the Prophet Muhammad appeared to him in a dream as well as also spat in his mouth, as well as also when he woke he found that will he had somehow learnt to speak Arabic – as well as also had been circumcised!
There can be a very similar story of a magical dream-conversion told in Melaka on the some other side of the Straits of Melaka, as well as also throughout the archipelago local legends place miracles at the heart of the conversion process. The king of Makassar, seat of Sulawesi’s mightiest seafarers, converted after a visiting holy man magically rid the surrounding forests of wild pigs. The local penchant for pork had been a major stumbling block on the path to Islam, although once there were no more pigs there was no more resistance!
Farfetched though these legends might be, they do all involve an Indonesian king converting – as well as also that will can be how things genuinely did unfold in most places. By the 14th as well as also 15th centuries, Islam had become by far the biggest club in Asia, a unifying standard that will gave people everywhere through the Taklamakan Desert to the Coromandel Coast a shared vocabulary. For an Indonesian king presiding over an economy based on international trade, signing up made very Great sense indeed. as well as also where kings led, commoners followed. Those little communities of foreign Muslim traders dotted around Indonesia – who’d probably been viewed with benign bewilderment by the locals for generations – suddenly found themselves surrounded by coreligionists.
The Menara Mosque in Kudus on the north coast of Java includes a minaret echoing the style of the temples of Majapahit. that will region was where Islam first gained a toehold in Java.
The only place where things unfolded a little differently was – inevitably – Java. When the first Portuguese traders turned up in Southeast Asia – within the early 16th century, when the process of Islamisation was at full tilt – they noted that will inland Java was still the realm of “a great heathen king”, none some other than Brawijaya VII, Emperor of Majapahit. Along the north coast of the island, however, there were fiefdoms ruled by Muslims who were taking on Javanese manners as well as also customs, although who were descended through Chinese, Persian as well as also Indian immigrants. as well as also somewhere within the space between these incomers who had “made themselves more important in Javanese nobility as well as also state than those of the hinterland” as well as also the masters of the fading Hindu-Buddhist empire, Islam was beginning to thread its way into the fabric of Java itself, tangling with some other strands as the item did so; a mysterious process represented today by the tales of the semi-mythical Wali Songo, the “Nine Saints” credited in traditional stories with converting Java to Islam.
By the early 17th century the job was done, as well as also almost all the areas of Indonesia that will have a Muslim majority today had converted – officially, at least. On the ground the process of forging the many distinct as well as also distinctive Indonesian versions of Islam was only just beginning, of course – although that will’s another story…
although stop. Rewind for a moment: the first Muslims to visit Indonesia – as well as also in all likelihood the first Muslims to live in Indonesia, even if only temporarily – had probably arrived some 900 years earlier, as well as also in that will simple fact there’s a hidden story.
The traders, travellers, itinerants as well as also imperialists who have come to Indonesia over the centuries have overwhelmingly been male. as well as also yet many of them created little communities on the fringes of the archipelago’s ports. Communities need women, as well as also those women, naturally, were locals; they were Indonesians. The Chinese migrants who have been setting up shop in Indonesia since the First Millennium CE married local women, as well as also in doing so created the distinctive Peranakan Chinese-creole culture of maritime Southeast Asia. The Portuguese as well as also the Dutchmen who followed them also married Javanese, Sundanese as well as also Malay girls as well as also gave rise to the huge Indo-European population – at that will point largely forgotten although a prominent feature of Indonesia right to the end of the colonial period. Those early Muslim settlers would likely have done exactly the same thing – as well as also within the name of marriage their Indonesian wives would likely have usually become Muslims too.
Long before any internationally-minded king had a peculiar dream, quite possibly within a century of Islam’s Arabian emergence, a girl through Sumatra or Java opened her mouth, uttered the mellifluous syllables of the Shahada, as well as also joined the faith of her foreign husband. The first Indonesian Muslim was almost certainly a woman…
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Settlers, Saints, Kings as well as also Conversions: The Dawn of Indonesian Islam
Settlers, Saints, Kings as well as also Conversions: The Dawn of Indonesian Islam