Article

New light on the life of Hamzah Fansuri

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New light on the life of Hamzah Fansuri

Syed Naguib al-Attas published this philological study in 1967, challenging the long-accepted assumption that the Sufi poet Hamzah Fansuri was born in Barus (Fansur) on the west coast of North Sumatra. Drawing on close readings of Hamzah’s own verses and Sufi cosmological terminology, al-Attas argues that Hamzah was in fact born in Shahr Nawi (Ayutthaya, Siam), while Barus was merely his ancestral home, and that he lived and flourished in the period preceding and during the reign of Sultan ‘Ala’ud-Din Ri’ayat Shah of Aceh (1588–1604), dying before 1607.

Summary

The article addresses two interrelated problems in Hamzah Fansuri studies: the question of his birthplace and the dating of his life. The birthplace question had been considered settled since the early twentieth century, with scholars accepting that the toponymic suffix “Fansuri” in his name indicated Barus as his place of origin. Al-Attas reopens this question by demonstrating that Hamzah’s self-designations in his poetry are more nuanced than previously recognised. Hamzah consistently refers to himself as belonging to both Barus and Shahr Nawi, and in the Sharabu’l-‘Ashiqin he calls himself al-Mudunayn (“of the two cities”), a sobriquet that Doorenbos had misread as a garbled reference to the two holy cities of Islam. Al-Attas shows that the distinction between asal (ancestral origin) and mendapat wujud (acquiring existence) in Hamzah’s verses is deliberate: Barus is his family’s origin, while Shahr Nawi is where he was physically born. The argument is reinforced by Hamzah’s repeated use of gharib (stranger/emigre), which in its non-mystical sense connotes one whose native country is foreign to him—consistent with a man born abroad who later settled in his ancestral home.

On the dating question, al-Attas identifies a poem, Ikat-ikatan ‘ilmu’l-nisa’, in which Hamzah addresses Sultan ‘Ala’ud-Din Ri’ayat Shah by his title Shah ‘Alam and the honorific Sayyid al-Mukammal, placing the composition during that sultan’s reign (1588–1604). The poem also mentions Iskandar Muda by his title Mahkota ‘Alam, which would seem to push Hamzah’s life into the early 1600s. Al-Attas resolves this apparent anachronism by demonstrating that the line referencing Mahkota ‘Alam is a later interpolation, identifiable by its incoherent syntax when read in context and its restoration to meaningful form once the interpolated phrase is excised. He supports this method by citing parallel cases of interpolation in the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai, the Sejarah Melayu, and Raniri’s Bustanu’l-Salatin.

A final section provides numismatic evidence for the Persian character of Shahr Nawi’s Muslim trading community. Hamzah’s Sharabu’l-‘Ashiqin contains an analogy using the Ashrafi dinar, a gold coin originally struck in Mamluk Egypt in 1425 that became the standard gold coin in Persian trade. Al-Attas argues that Hamzah’s familiarity with this specific coin type could not have been acquired in Barus or Aceh, where the Egyptian Ashrafi would no longer have been in circulation by his time, but points instead to Persian merchants operating in Shahr Nawi.

Key Findings

  • Hamzah’s self-designation al-Mudunayn in the Sharabu’l-‘Ashiqin (Cod. Or. 7291 (ii), p. 110) refers to Barus and Shahr Nawi, not to Makkah and Madinah as Doorenbos had conjectured (p. 43).
  • The verse “Mendapat wujud ditanah Shahr Nawi” (Cod. Or. 3374, p. 13) is interpreted as a statement of physical birth in Shahr Nawi, distinct from “asalnya Fansuri” which denotes ancestral origin (pp. 46–47).
  • The poem Ikat-ikatan ‘ilmu’l-nisa’ (Cod. Or. 2016, pp. 93–97) is dated to the reign of Sultan ‘Ala’ud-Din Ri’ayat Shah (1588–1604) on the basis of the titles Shah ‘Alam and Sayyid al-Mukammal (pp. 48–49).
  • The reference to Mahkota ‘Alam (Iskandar Muda, r. 1607–1636) in the same poem is identified as a later interpolation; excising the bracketed phrase “ada ia khabar ditanah Jawa, dari Aceh marhum Mahkota ‘Alam dihimpunkan” restores the stanza’s coherence (pp. 49–50).
  • The Ashrafi dinar, first struck in Mamluk Egypt on 28 December 1425 by al-Malik al-Ashraf Barsbay, serves as numismatic evidence for Persian commercial dominance in Shahr Nawi’s Muslim trading community (pp. 50–51).

Conclusion

Al-Attas concludes that Hamzah Fansuri was born in Shahr Nawi (Ayutthaya) to a family originally from Barus, that he lived and flourished during the reign of Shah ‘Alam (1588–1604), and that he was most likely dead before Iskandar Muda’s accession in 1607. The study repositions Hamzah within a Persianate commercial and intellectual milieu in Siam rather than the Sumatran coast, with implications for understanding the transmission of Sufi learning in the Malay world.

Context

  • The primary textual evidence consists of three Leiden manuscripts: Cod. Or. 2016, Cod. Or. 3374, and Cod. Or. 7291 (i and ii), held in the Bibliotheca Academiae Lugduno-Batavae.
  • The article represents an early example of al-Attas’s method of combining Sufi metaphysical exegesis with philological textual criticism to resolve biographical questions in classical Malay literature, a approach that would become characteristic of his later work on Hamzah and the Malay Sufi tradition.

References