List of graveyards of the late Sultans of Perak
Jeragan Abdul Shukor, holding the title Stia Bijaya Di Raja, produced this field report in 1907 under direct government instruction to survey and document the burial sites of all late Sultans of Perak. Published in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Vol. 48, pp. 97–106), the document is a systematic inventory of twenty-seven royal graves, compiled during the early years of Sultan Idris’s reign and the consolidation of British administrative control over the state.
Summary
The document is a practical survey rather than a historical treatise. Abdul Shukor visited each burial site, recorded its location, the condition of the tombstones and platform, the landowner, and the distance from the Perak River. His sources were a combination of physical inspection, oral testimony from village elders, and the personal knowledge of Sultan Idris himself, who had previously visited all the royal graves after his installation. The report reveals a state of considerable neglect: numerous tombstones had disappeared entirely, others were broken beyond repair, and at least two royal graves had been lost to river erosion. Several graves sat on private land owned by Javanese or Malay individuals, raising questions of tenure and access.
A recurring theme is the fragility of Perak’s royal memory. For the earliest Sultans, the length of reign is uniformly recorded as “unknown,” and the succession is reconstructed through patronymic links and the honorific titles (e.g., “Almerhum Kota Lama Kanan,” “Almerhum Muda”) that served as local identifiers. The document also preserves a brief account of the dual-sultan crisis of the 1870s, in which both Sultan Ismail and ex-Sultan Abdullah were simultaneously proclaimed, leading to British intervention and the eventual confirmation of Abdullah as Ruler. This political history is embedded within the entry for Sultan Ismail (para. 25) and the subsequent entries, rather than treated as a separate narrative.
Abdul Shukor’s recommendations are consistently practical: where tombstones are broken but salvageable, he advises mending with cement; where they have vanished, he recommends new stones be made and inscribed with the Sultan’s name. He specifically proposes the addition of a “ganti badan” stone (a full-length slab representing the body) where one is absent, and in two cases he recommends physical relocation of graves threatened by the river.
Key Findings
- Sultan Muhammad Iskandar Shah (para. 11) is recorded as having lived to the age of 120 and reigned for 111 years, making him by far the longest-reigning Sultan in the list; his grave at Geronggong is approximately 160 yards from the Perak River.
- The graves of Sultan Allauddin Rahiat Shah (para. 12) and Sultan Muhammad Shah (para. 14) were both lost to river erosion; in the latter case, the entire kampong of Imam Kasim was washed away, leaving only the boundary ditch (parit) on the inland side.
- Sultan Yusof Sharif-el-din Mofthal Shah died at 2 a.m. on Thursday, 27 July 1887, at his Astana at Saiong, only ten months after his installation (p. 106).
- Sultan Idris was installed in the Muhammadan year 1305 (1888) and had visited England twice — once before his installation and again for the King’s Coronation in 1903 (p. 106).
- Sultan Idris ordered the removal of Sultan Abdullah Moazam Shah’s grave from Pasir Panjang to Telok Kepayang after finding it nearly washed away during his post-installation tour of royal graves (para. 20).
- Of the twenty-seven Sultans listed, at least eight graves are recorded as having no tombstones remaining at all (paras. 5, 10, 13, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26), and several more are described as broken beyond repair.
Conclusion
Abdul Shukor’s report serves as both a permanent record and a remedial brief. Its definitive historical takeaway is that the physical evidence of Perak’s royal succession was in a state of rapid decay — eroded by the river, dispersed across private holdings, and marked by vanishing inscriptions — and that without immediate intervention, the material trace of the state’s dynastic legitimacy would be irrecoverable. The document thus functions as an early act of heritage conservation, predating formal conservation policy by decades.
Context
- The author was a senior Perak court official (Stia Bijaya Di Raja) acting under explicit government instruction; the report is an administrative document as much as a historical one, and its recommendations for stone replacement and grave relocation were presumably intended for implementation by the colonial administration.
- The survey was conducted during the consolidation of the British Resident system in Perak following the 1875–76 Perak War, and the inclusion of the dual-sultan crisis narrative reflects the ongoing sensitivity around the legitimacy of the current dynasty under British confirmation.