Article

Aspects of Sufi thought in India and Indonesia in the first half of the 17th century

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Aspects of Sufi thought in India and Indonesia in the first half of the 17th century

A.H. Johns (1955) examines the transmission and transformation of Sufi metaphysical thought between the Mughal Empire and the Malay Archipelago in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, arguing that Indonesian mystical speculation was not a passive reception of Islamic doctrine but an active, creative engagement shaped by direct contact with Indian and Middle Eastern sources.

Summary

The article traces the development of Islamic mysticism in North Sumatra from its earliest remains in the thirteenth century through the period of Malacca’s commercial and religious supremacy, the Portuguese conquest of 1511, and the subsequent rise of Aceh as the new centre of Muslim trade and learning. Johns identifies four key Malay-language mystical authors active around the turn of the seventeenth century — Hamzah, Shamsu ‘l-Din, ‘Abdul ‘l-Ra’uf, and al-Raniri — and uses their works to map a spectrum from heterodox pantheism to orthodox theism. The central philosophical divergence he identifies is between the Wujudiyya (pantheists), who held that each emanation in the Neo-Platonic chain was an aspect of God Himself, and the orthodox position, exemplified by al-Raniri, which maintained that emanations were merely reflections of the divine essence cast into non-being, illustrated by the analogy of a single candle reflected in multiple mirrors (pp. 73–74).

Johns demonstrates that the formal pattern of mystical teaching that spread through the Archipelago was taken in detail from an Indian source — Fadlu’llah’s Tuhfa al-mursala ila’l-nabi (d. 1620) — which established a seven-stage emanationist cosmology replacing the earlier, more open-ended system of ibn al-‘Arabi and al-Jili. He also draws a parallel between the political fortunes of heterodox mysticism in the Mughal Empire under Akbar and Jahangir and its corresponding rise and fall in Aceh under Iskandar Muda, showing how the execution of Dara Shikoh in 1658 and the demolition of Hindu temples from 1633 mirrored the persecution of pantheist Sufis in Aceh after Iskandar Muda’s death (p. 73).

Key Findings

  • The earliest Islamic remains in North Sumatra date from the end of the thirteenth century; Sultan Mansur of Malacca in the first half of the fifteenth century sent an embassy to Pasai to discuss eschatological questions, showing early engagement with Sufi speculative thought (p. 70).
  • The Portuguese capture of Malacca in 1511 redirected Muslim trade to Aceh, which received mercenaries from Gujerat, Abyssinia, Arabia, and Turkey, and 500 cannon from the Sultan of Turkey (p. 71).
  • Al-Raniri (writing 1628–1670) was a Gujerati-born polemicist who called the Wujudiyya “arch-heretics,” had their books burnt, and their followers executed; ‘Abdul ‘l-Ra’uf (d. c. 1690), by contrast, urged tolerance, warning that false accusations of heresy would “come back on ourselves” (pp. 73–74).
  • Fadlu’llah’s Tuhfa al-mursala ila’l-nabi (d. 1620), preserved in Leiden Cod. Or. 5690, provided the seven-stage emanationist framework (Ahadiyya, Wahda, Wahidiyya, ‘Alam al-Arwah, ‘Alam al-Mithal, ‘Alam al-Ajsam, ‘Alam al-Insan Kamil) that became the standard Indonesian system after Hamzah (pp. 75–76).
  • In the Mughal Empire, the demolition of Hindu temples was decreed in 1633, intermarriage with Hindus forbidden in 1634, and Dara Shikoh executed in 1658 — a pattern of orthodoxy that found its echo in Aceh after the death of Iskandar Muda, when pantheist Sufis were put to death and their books burnt (p. 73).
  • ‘Abdul ‘l-Ra’uf spent 16 years in Mecca, studying under Ahmad Qushashi (d. 1660) and Mulla Ibrahim (d. 1697) of the Shattariyya order, from the latter receiving a permit to found a branch in Aceh that expanded rapidly, especially in Java (p. 72).

Conclusion

Johns’ definitive takeaway is that Indonesian Sufi speculation was neither a passive import nor a syncretic distortion of Islamic doctrine but a creative, textually grounded engagement with Indian and Middle Eastern sources, mediated through Malay as a cultural language of the Muslim world. The study of Indonesian manuscripts, he argues, can illuminate the shifting patterns of Sufi thought in India itself, and the close cultural contacts between the two regions make it probable that Indonesians travelled to India for religious knowledge just as they had done centuries earlier as Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims (p. 77).

Context

  • Primary archival sources: Marsden Collection manuscripts at S.O.A.S. (Ms. 12151 for al-Raniri; Ms. 11648 for the Wujudiyya text) and Leiden Cod. Or. 5690 for Fadlu’llah’s Tuhfa al-mursala.
  • Historiographical contribution: The article builds on the Leiden dissertation tradition (Rinkes 1909, Kraemer 1921, Drewes 1925, Zoetmulder 1935, van Nieuwenhuijze 1945) and positions itself as a bridge between Dutch Indological scholarship and the study of Indian Sufi sources, with Johns announcing planned editions of ‘Abdul ‘l-Ra’uf’s Daka’ik al-Huruf and Fadlu’llah’s text (p. 77).

References