Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra81821920roya).pdf/15

 The Early Muhammadan Missionaries.

Since I wrote my paper on the "Advent of Muhammadanism in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago" in Journal 77, I have. come across a lecture by that greatest of authorities on things Muhammadan, Dr. Snouck Hurgronje, entitled Arabie en Oost-Indie (Leyden). From this lecture it is quite clear that while a few stray Arabs visited the Malay world ('Merveilles de l'Inde,' Leyden, 1883-86, pages 255-261), the bulk of Muhammadan missionaries came from India, and were natives of Gujerat and Malabar.

The points may be briefly summarized:—I add local corroborative evidence.

(1) The 3 Pasai grave-stones of 1407, 1408, and 1428 A.D. are of Cambay workmanship (J. P. Moquette's paper in Tijd. Bat. Gen. LIX, 1912, pages 208 and 536). So is the Grisek tomb. And two points unknown to Dr. Hurgronje: the Bruas tomb, in Perak, like the Pasai and Grisek tombs is of Indian type: and the Pengkalan Kempas tomb of 1467 A.D. has an inscription in some undeciphered Indian alphabet as well as an inscription in Malay:— here I must correct a suggestion in my previous paper; geology shows that the 'Sword' is of local stone.

(2) The 1407 Pasai tomb is that of Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Abdu'l-Kadir ibu Abdu'l-Aziz ib al-Mansur Abu Ja'far al-Abbasi al-Muntasir. Abdullah was thus of the house of Abbas, which provided Baghdad with its Khalifs from the time of the Prophet till it was destroyed by the Turks in 1258 and the last of the Abbaside Khalifs, al-Musta'sim, was killed. Al-Musta'sim had succeeded in the Khalifate al-Muntasir, who is mentioned on this tomb: aud the father of Abdullah whose tomb it is was closely related to him. Now Muhammad, the father of Abdullah, emigrated from Baghdad to India and lived in Delhi; and it must have been from Delhi that his son, the Pasai saint, went to Sumatra. So, too, probably the missionaries to Java and Bruas and the saint buried at Pengkalan Kempas came from India.

(3) The list of missionaries given in the Bustanu's-Salatin (Neimann's Ht. Acheh) contains mostly Indians, with some Syrians and Egyptians.

(4) Evidently the Arabs and Malays knew little of one another. Between 1600-1650 A.D. the Rajas of Banten and Mataram sent envoys to the Sharif of Mecca asking him to bestow on them Sultanates, although for centuries then Mecca had been under the Usmanli Sultans of Istambul! In 1688 envoys from