Origins and Development of the Sufi Orders (tarékat) in Southeast Asia
| Martin van Bruinessen, "Origins and development of the Sufi orders (tarekat) in Southeast Asia", Studia Islamika (Jakarta), vol. I, no.1 (1994), 1-23. |
Origins and Development of the Sufi Orders (tarékat) in Southeast Asia
Martin van Bruinessen
Sufism and the islamization of the Archipelago
Any
theory of the islamization of the Malay Archipelago will have to
explain at least why the process began when it did, instead of some
centuries earlier or later. Foreign Muslims had probably been resident
in the trading ports of Sumatra and Java for many centuries, but it is
only towards the end of the 13th century that we find traces of
apparently indigenous Muslims. The first evidence is from the north
coast of Sumatra, where a few tiny Muslim kingdoms or rather harbour
states arose, Perlak and the twin kingdom of Samudra and Pasai. During
the 14th and 15th centuries, Islam gradually spread across the coasts of
Sumatra and the Malay peninsula, to the north coast of Java and to the
spice islands in the east.
The modalities of conversion are not well documented, leading to much
speculation by scholars and sometimes passionate debate.[1] The
process is unlikely to have been uniform across the Archipelago. Trade
and the political alliances of trader-kings no doubt played their parts,
as did intermarriage of rich foreign Muslim traders with the daughters
of local aristocracies. In some regions, as local sources suggest, Islam
may have been spread by the sword, but as a rule the process appears to
have been a peaceful one. It is widely assumed that Sufism and the sufi
orders played crucial parts in the process.
The
first centuries of islamization of Southeast Asia coincided with the
period of flourishing of medieval Sufism and the growth of the sufi
orders (tarékat). Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, who made moderate,
devotional sufism acceptable to the scholars of the Law, died in 1111;
Ibn al-`Arabi, whose works deeply influenced almost all later sufis,
died in 1240. `Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, around whose teaching the tarékat
Qadiriyya was organised, died in 1166 and `Abd al-Qahir al-Suhrawardi,
for whom the Suhrawardiyya is named, a year later (but it is not clear
from when on we can actually speak of tarékat in these cases). Najmuddin
al-Kubra, one of the most seminal figures of Central Asian sufism, the
founder of the Kubrawiyya order and a major influence on the later
Naqshbandiyya, died in 1221. The North African Abu'l-Hasan al-Shadhili,
founder of the Shadhiliyya, died in 1258. The Rifa`iyya was definitely
an order by 1320, when Ibn Battuta gave us his description of its
rituals; the Khalwatiyya crystallized into a tarékat between 1300 and
1450. The Naqshbandiyya was a distinct order in the lifetime of the
mystic who gave it its name, Baha'uddin Naqshband (d. 1389), and the
eponymous founder of the Shattariyya, `Abdullah al-Shattar, died in
1428-9.[2]
Islam as taught to the first Southeast Asian converts was probably
strongly coloured by sufi doctrines and practices. It has been suggested
by various scholars that this was precisely what made Islam attractive
to them or, in other words, that the development of sufism was one of
the factors making the islamisation of Southeast Asia possible. The
cosmological and metaphysical doctrines of Ibn `Arabi's sufism could
easily be assimilated to Indic and autochthonous mystical ideas
prevalent in the region. The concepts of sainthood (wilâya) and Perfect Man (insân kâmil),
as has been noted by A.C. Milner, offered local rulers a rich potential
for mystical legitimation such as they would not have found in earlier,
more egalitarian Islam.[3] In
the tiny sultanate of Buton (in Southeast Celebes), the sufi doctrine
of divine emanation in seven stages was put to use as an explanation of a
highly statified society consisting of seven caste-like strata.[4]
The Australian scholar Anthony Johns has suggested that islamization
was due to active proselytization by sufi missionaries accompanying the
foreign merchants. Sufi-type preachers are in fact mentioned in various
indigenous accounts. Johns has further speculated that there was a close
connection between trade guilds, sufi orders and these preachers, that
provided the moving force behind islamization.[5] Some
may find this an attractive hypothesis; there is, however, no evidence
supporting it. It is highly doubtful whether the foreign Muslims trading
with Southeast Asia were ever organized in anything resembling guilds,
and the earliest sources mentioning sufi orders date from the late 16th
century.
Indonesian Islam is until this day pervaded with a mystical attitude
and a fascination with the miraculous. Several of the great
international orders have a respectable following - some orders have
hundreds of thousands of practising followers - and there are numerous
local Muslim orders, besides various syncretistic mystical sects. The
past century has seen many, partially successful, reformist attempts to
purge Islam of its mystical and magical dimensions. It is tempting to
project present trends back into the past and to assume that Islam
reached Indonesia in its sufi garb, that the early centuries were, if
anything, more mystically inclined than the more recent past that we
know better, and that only in a much later stage a more "precisian"
approach associated with the study of Islamic law emerged. The fact is
that we do not know. No indigenous sources older than the late 16th
century have survived even in later copies, and the contemporary foreign
sources remain silent on the subject.
Two observations should make us cautious about attributing too
prominent a role to the sufi orders in the first wave of islamization.
Among the oldest surviving Islamic manuscripts from Java and Sumatra
(brought to Europe around 1600) we find not only mystical tracts and
miraculous tales of Persian and Indian origins but also standard manuals
of Islamic law.[6] The oldest extant religious treatises in Javanese appear to seek a balance between doctrine, law and tasawwuf.[7] It
is only in later Javanese writings that we encounter a much stronger
presence of mystical teachings. As for the sufi orders, it appears that
these did not find a mass following before the late 18th and 19th
centuries.
The Sumatran mystics
The
earliest Muslim authors whom we know by name, Hamzah Fansuri,
Syamsuddin of Pasai, Nuruddin Raniri and `Abdurra'uf of Singkel, all
flourished in Acheh in the 16th and 17th centuries. Acheh, located on
the very tip of Sumatra, was a major pepper-producing area and became,
due to international trade, one of the most splendid kingdoms of the
period. Its rulers patronized the arts and sciences and made it into the
region's chief centre of Islamic knowledge.
Hamzah Fansuri was the first of the sufi authors and the greatest poet
among them. His name indicates that he hailed from Fansur (also called
Baros) on Sumatra's west coast; he was active in the second half of the
16th century but his precise dates are unknown. He expressed
sophisticated mystical ideas in prose and subtle poetry. He may have
been the first to employ the poetic form of the sya'ir (quatrains
with a fixed number of syllables and a fixed rhyme pattern) in Malay,
and his mastery of the form has never been surpassed. The mystical ideas
he expressed are of the wahdat al-wujûd kind and easily lend
themselves to a pantheistic interpretation. Hamzah was well-travelled;
in his poems he refers to visits to Mecca, Jerusalem, Baghdad (where he
visited the shrine of `Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani) and the Thai capital of
Ayuthia, which he mentions by its Persian name of Shahr-i Naw. In the
last-named city he was apparently in contact with the substantial
Persian community, and he attributes his profoundest mystical insights
to an experience he had there. Several passages in his poems appear to
imply that he was affiliated with, and possibly even a khalîfa of,
the Qadiriyya order. However he nowhere expounds concepts or techniques
proper to this or any other order, and there are no indications that he
ever taught it (his name, for instance, does not occur in any known
Qadiriyya silsila from the Archipelago).[8]
The second famous mystic was Hamzah's disciple Syamsuddin (d. 1630),
who wrote in Arabic as well as Malay. In a less poetic but more
systematic way than his teacher, he formulated similar metaphysical
doctrines. He was the first Indonesian to expound the doctrine of the
"seven stages," martabat tujuh, an adaptation of Ibn `Arabi's theory of emanation that was to become popular throughout the Archipelago.[9] In
this he may have been emulating the Gujarati author Muhammad b. Fadl
Allah Burhanpuri, who expounded the same doctrine in his Al-Tuhfa al-Mursala ila Rûh al-Nabî, which was completed in 1590 and soon became popular among Indonesian Muslims.[10] It
is not known whether Syamsuddin travelled himself to India and Arabia
(though it is likely that he did, like all the other sufi authors); he
may have become acquainted with Burhanpuri's work at Acheh as well as in
Arabia or Gujarat. Burhanpuri was affiliated with the Shattariyya
order; again, there are no indications in Syamsuddin's work or other
sources as to whether he joined this or any other order. Not long after
his death, however, the Shattariyya was quite popular among Indonesians
returning from Arabia.
Nuruddin Raniri was born into an Arab family established in Ranir
(Rander) in Gujarat. He stayed in Acheh during the years 1637-44 and
became politically very influential as the sultan's adviser. His family
appears to have had previous Achehnese connections; an uncle, Muhammad
Jilani Raniri, had earlier established himself as a teacher in Acheh.
Nuruddin makes the interesting observation that his uncle had come to
teach the law but was forced to engage in debate on sufi doctrines; he
had to go to Mecca to acquire the requisite learning and only after his
return as a sufi teacher did he make many disciples in Acheh. Nuruddin
himself was a prolific writer but he became especially known for his
fierce polemics against Syamsuddin's disciples, whom he accused of
pantheism and some of whom, he claims himself, he had burned at the
stake. It may have been due to a backlash created by own his
high-handedness that he later had to flee from Acheh.[11] Raniri himself adhered to a more moderate variety ofwahdat al-wujûd, according to which the world has no real existence and is but an illusory mirror image of Reality.[12] He was an adept of the Rifa`iyya order, and the silsila he
gives in one of his books shows that the branch to which he belonged
had been present in Gujarat for several generations, with Hadrami Arabs
of the Al-`Aydarus family as its shaikhs. In the 19th century, the
Rifa`iyya was still present in Acheh but it remains unclear whether this
was due to Raniri's teaching or to a later incursion of the same order.[13]
Raniri represents the last documented instance of a direct Indian
influence upon the development of the orders in the Archipelago. During
the following centuries several other Indian branches of the great
orders reached Indonesia, but they did this by way of Mecca or Medina,
where Indonesians were initiated into them. This is how the originally
Indian Shattariyya order became firmly established throughout Java and
Sumatra. `Abdurra'uf of Singkel, the last of the great Achehnese sufis,
exemplifies this process. He spent no less than 19 years in Mecca and
Medina, studying the various Islamic sciences under the greatest
teachers of his day. Upon his return in 1661, he became Acheh's leading
expert of the Law as well as the recognized authority on sufi doctrine,
striking a balance between the views of his predecessors and teaching
the dhikr and wird of the Shattariyya. His disciples
spread the order from Acheh to West Sumatra and Java, where it has
remained rooted in rural society until the present day.[14]
Arabia as the centre of the Southeast Asian orders
Visits
to sacred places - mountain tops, caves, beaches and graves - in order
to acquire spiritual power have long constituted an important part of
religious life in the region. With the advent of Islam, Mecca and Medina
were added to these sacred power centres; for the self-conscious
Muslims these holy cities soon overshadowed all other centres. This may
explain why quite early already the number of people from Southeast Asia
making the pilgrimage to Mecca was surprisingly high compared with that
from other regions, especially when taking account of the greater
distance. Many of those performing the hajj stayed in Arabia for
several years, in order to obtain prestigious knowledge (or, in certain
cases, for the more mundane reason that they could not afford the
passage back).
The Southeast Asians, or Jâwah as
they were indiscriminately called in Mecca and Medina, constituted a
cohesive community, somewhat isolated from their surroundings by the
fact that most only knew rudimentary Arabic. The most learned among them
studied with the greatest scholars of the day and passed on the
knowledge and sufi affiliations they acquired to the larger Jawah
community, whence it spread to the home countries. Due to this process, a
relatively small number of ulama in Mecca and Medina have had a
disproportionate influence in Southeast Asia. In the 17th century these
were Ahmad al-Qushashi, Ibrahim al-Kurani and Ibrahim's son Muhammad
Tahir in Medina, who indeed were among the most prominent scholars and
sufis of their time. In the 18th century, the Medinan Muhammad al-Samman
acquired the same meaning for the Indonesians. By the mid-19th century a
scholar and sufi of Indonesian origin, Ahmad Khatib Sambas in Mecca was
the chief focus of attention of the Jawah, and in the second half of
the century the shaikhs of the Naqshbandiyya zâwiya on Mount Abu Qubais in Mecca overshadowed all others in popularity.[15]
Qushashi
(d. 1660) and Kurani (d. 1691) represented a synthesis of Indian and
Egyptian sufi intellectual traditions. They were heirs to the legal and
sufi scholarship of Zakariya al-Ansari and `Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha`rani on
the one hand and had initiations into a number of Indian orders, most
prominently the Shattariyya and the Naqshbandiyya, on the other. These
orders had first been introduced in Medina by the Indian shaikh
Sibghatullah, who settled there in 1605. Kurani, being a Kurd, probably
also had access to the Persian-language literature from India; besides,
he was an expert in hadith studies and took a deep interest in
metaphysics. In serious controversies, it was to him that the ulama of
India turned for an authoritative opinion. So did the Indonesians; it
was at their request that he wrote a commentary on Burhanpuri's Tuhfa, interpreting it in an orthodox vein.
Of the various orders that Qushashi and Kurani taught, their Indonesian
disciples had a strong preference for the Shattariyya, perhaps because
the appealing ideas of the Tuhfa were associated with this order.
(In the Middle East, on the other hand, these shaikhs were primarily
known as Naqshbandis). The said `Abdurra'uf of Singkel, who studied with
both and was sent back to Sumatra as a khalifa, was the best known
among their Indonesian students, but there must have been at least
dozens of others.[16] For
several generations, Indonesian seekers of knowledge in Arabia were to
study with Kurani's successors and seek initiations in the Shattariyya,
sometimes in combination with other orders. Thus we find a number of
mutually unrelated branches of this order in Java and Sumatra. The
Shattariyya relatively easily accommodated itself with local tradition;
it became the most "indigenized" of the orders. On the other hand, it
was through the Shattariyya that sufi metaphysical ideas and symbolic
classifications based on the martabat tujuh doctrine became part of Javanese popular beliefs.
One of `Abdurra'uf's contemporaries was Yusuf of Makassar, who still is
venerated as the major saint of South Celebes. He too spent around two
decades in Arabia studying under Ibrahim al-Kurani and others, and
travelling as far as Damascus. He took initiations into numerous orders.
He acquired authorizations to teach (ijâza) the Naqshbandiyya,
Qadiriyya, Shattariyya, Ba-`Alawiyya and Khalwatiyya (he gives his
silsila for all of these), and claims also to have entered the
Dasuqiyya, Shadhiliyya, Chishtiyya, `Aydarusiyya, Ahmadiyya, Madariyya,
Kubrawiyya and several less well-known orders. After his return to
Indonesia around 1670, he taught a spiritual discipline that he called
Khalwatiyya but which in fact combined the techniques of the Khalwatiyya
with a selection from those of other orders. This Khalwatiyya-Yusuf
struck root only in South Celebes, especially among the Makassarese
aristocracy.[17]
Almost
a century later, the Jawah in Arabia were strongly attracted to the
teachings of the highly charismatic Muhammad b. `Abd al-Karim al-Samman
(d. 1775) in Medina. Samman was the guardian of the Prophet's grave and
the author of several works on sufi metaphysics but it was especially as
the founder of a new order that he became influential. He combined the
Khalwatiyya, the Qadiriyya and the Naqshbandiyya with the North African
Shadhiliyya (in all of which he had ijâza), developed a new ecstatic way of dhikr and composed a râtib,
a litany consisting of invocations and Qur'anic verses. This
combination became known as the Sammaniyya. Formally a branch of the
Khalwatiyya (in the sense that Samman's silsila only acknowledges
his Khalwatiyya affiliation, through his teacher Mustafa al-Bakri), it
already became a separate order with its own lodges and local groups of
followers during the master's lifetime. Samman moreover enjoyed a great
reputation as a miracle-worker, which no doubt contributed to the rapid
spread of the order to Indonesia. A large collection of miracle tales (manâqib) was translated into Malay not long after the master's death and became very popular throughout the Archipelago.[18]
Samman's best known, and possibly most influential, Indonesian disciple
was `Abd al-Samad of Palembang (South Sumatra), a prominent member of
the Jawah community in Arabia and the author of a number of important
works in Malay. Several other `ulama from Palembang were affiliated with
the Sammaniyya, and the order appears early to have found favour in
high places in the Palembang sultanate. Within a few years of Samman's
death the sultan of Palembang paid for the construction of a Sammani
lodge (zâwiya) in Jeddah.[19] After
Samman's death, numerous Jawah studied with his khalifa Siddiq b. `Umar
Khan. They spread the order to South Borneo, Batavia, Sumbawa, South
Celebes and the Malay peninsula. Nafis al-Banjari (of South Borneo) is
the only one among them who wrote (in Malay) a substantial work on
Sufism; he was probably also the person to whom the propagation of the
order in this island was due. In South Celebes, where the Sammaniyya
encountered the earlier Khalwatiyya-Yusuf, the two orders became rivals
but also influenced one another. The Khalwatiyya-Samman, as this branch
of the Sammaniyya is locally known, has grown somewhat different in its
ritual from the other branches in Indonesia. Its membership is
practically restricted to the Bugis ethnic group.[20]
The Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya is a composite order not unlike the
Sammaniyya, of which the techniques of two tarékat in its name are the
chief but not the only ingredients. It is the only among the orthodox
orders that was founded by an Indonesian, Ahmad Khatib of Sambas (West
Borneo). Ahmad Khatib, who spent most of his adult life in Mecca, had a
reputation well beyond the Jawah community as an all-round scholar, well
versed in the law and doctrine as well in sufi practice. He acquired a
large following as a teacher of his own tarékat, which soon replaced the
Sammaniyya as the most popular one in Indonesia. Upon his death in 1873
or 1875, his khalifa `Abd al-Karim of Banten succeeded him as the
supreme shaikh of the order. Significantly, `Abd al-Karim had to return
from Banten to Mecca in order to occupy his master's place. Two other
important khalifa were Kiai Tolha in Cirebon and the Madurese Kiai Ahmad
Hasbullah. `Abd al-Karim was the last central leader of this tarékat;
since his death it has consisted of a number of mutually independent
branches, deriving from the three said khalifa of the founder.
The Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya is presently one of the two orders with
the largest following in the Archipelago. The other one is the
Naqshbandiyya Khalidiyya, which owes its propagation all over Indonesia
to thezâwiya established by Maulana Khalid's khalifa `Abdullah
al-Arzinjani on Mount Abu Qubais in Mecca. `Abdullah's successors,
Sulaiman al-Qirimi, Sulaiman al-Zuhdi and `Ali Rida, directed their
missionary efforts especially at the Jawah, who were visiting the Holy
Cities in ever greater numbers during the last decades of the 19th
century. Thousands were initiated into the order and underwent training
during a period of retreat in thiszâwiya; dozens of Indonesians received here an ijâza to teach the tarékat at home.[21]
The orders and Indonesian society
The
few indigenous sources that we have strongly suggest that the orders
found their following in court circles and only in a much later stage
filtered down to the population at large. The Sumatran sufi authors
mentioned above worked under royal patronage. Javanese chronicles from
Cirebon and Banten relate how the founder of the ruling dynasty himself
visited Arabia and was initiated into several orders (Shattariyya,
Naqshbandiyya, Kubrawiyya, Shadhiliyya). The tarékat was perceived as a
source of spiritual power, at once legitimating and supporting the
ruler's position. It was obviously not in the rulers' interest to make
the same supernatural power available to all their subjects.[22]
By the 18th century, various tarékat had acquired a dispersed following
in the Archipelago. New returnees from Mecca and Medina spread the
Shattariyya, often in combination with the Naqshbandiyya or Khalwatiyya.
Adherence to these orders may have entailed little more than the
private recitation of their dhikr and wird; there are no
indications as to whether these orders at this stage also functioned as
social associations. In the course of the century, the Rifa`iyya and
Qadiriyya also definitely spread. The former was associated with the
invulnerability cult named debus, of which remnants are still to
be found in Acheh, the peninsular states of Kedah and Perak,
Minangkabau, Banten, Cirebon and the Moluccas, and even among the Malay
community of Cape Town in South Africa. The latter may at some places
also have been associated with debus, but its most conspicuous
impact was the emergence of a cult around its founding saint, `Abd
al-Qadir al-Jilani. Communal readings of the saint'smanaqib in several regions became an important expression of popular religiosity.
The first tarékat to find a mass following in Southeast Asia that could
actually be mobilized was perhaps the Sammaniyya. Though patronized by
the sultan of Palembang (who, as observed above, even paid for the
construction of a zâwiya in Jeddah), the tarékat appears to have
found numerous followers among the common folk. A local written account
relates how it played a part in the resistance against occupation of the
town by Dutch forces in 1819: groups of men dressed in white worked
themselves into a frantic trance with the loud Sammanidhikr before fearlessly attacking the enemy, apparently believing in their own invulnerablity.[23] In
South Borneo in the 1860s the Dutch met similar resistance from a
strong popular movement engaging in sufi-type exercises namedberatip beamal, in which we may perhaps also recognize a local adaptation of the Sammaniyya.[24]
We encounter several other cases of sufi orders taking part in
anti-colonial rebellions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
One of the largest popular rebellions against Dutch rule took place in
Banten (West Java) in 1888; here it was the Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya
that was involved, even if only indirectly.[25] The
same order played a part in a large-scale and violent popular movement
on the island of Lombok in 1891, directed against the (Hindu) Balinese
who then occupied a large part of the island. We find it once again
mentioned in connection with a peasant rebellion with messianistic
overtones in East Java in 1903. Another large rebellion, triggered by a
new tobacco tax, broke out in West Sumatra in 1908. This time it was the
Shattariyya order, since long influential in this region, that played a
prominent part in the events.[26]
These tarékat-related rebellions span a period of around one century,
from the early 19th to the early 20th century. Some of them were
movements resisting the establishment of colonial authority, others
revolts against specific government measures or responses to general
economic deterioration and oppression. In the case of Lombok, the
rebellion predated, and in fact gave occasion to, the first Dutch
military intervention in the island. In none of these cases did the
initiative for rebellion come from the tarékat; but once the rebellions
broke out, the tarékat provided them with supra-local networks of
communication and mobilisation, besides spiritual techniques believed to
provide magical protection and effectiveness. It appears - but this may
simply be due to the absence of reliable historical evidence - that
before the said period there existed as yet no tarékat networks that
could be utilised. In the so-called Java war, the largest anti-Dutch
rebellion of the 19th century, led by Prince Diponegoro (1825-30), no
tarékat appears to have been involved in spite of the religious
motivation of many participants. One gathers that at that time no
tarékat network was available in Central Java that might have been put
to use by Diponegoro and his ulama advisers.
It appears - but this may simply be due to the absence of reliable
historical evidence - that before the said period there existed as yet
no tarékat networks that could be utilised. The growth of the tarékat
during the 19th century is related to the increase in numbers of
pilgrims performing the hajj, facilitated by the invention of the
steamboat and the opening of the Suez canal. Many returning hajis had
been initiated into a tarékat during their stay in Mecca, and some of
them had authorization to teach the techniques of their order. The
voyage to Mecca had also given them some knowledge of the wider world,
and many were acutely aware of the threat to Islam posed by colonial
expansion. Thus anti-colonial sentiment and the tarékat often spread in
combination, which no doubt contributed to the tarékat's occasionally
becoming vehicles of economic and political protest movements.
The two orders that experienced the most rapid growth during the late
19th and early 20th centuries were the Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya and
the Naqshbandiyya Khalidiyya. The former found its strongest support in
Madura and West Java (Banten and Cirebon), due to the fact that a few
highly charismatic ulama from those regions became khalifa of the
founder in Mecca. The Naqshbandiyya Khalidiyya spread more evenly across
the Archipelago but became especially prominent among the Minangkabau
of West Sumatra.[27] Another
tarékat that found numerous Southeast Asian adherents during this
period, mostly in the Malay Peninsula, was the Ahmadiyya, one of the
orders deriving from the Moroccan mystic Ahmad ibn Idris, about which
more below.
With the emergence of modern nationalist organisations in the 1910s and
1920s, the tarékat gradually lost this political function and one gets
the impression that the overall membership of the orders declined. A
period of increased political repression beginning in the late 1920s,
however, appears to have caused many Indonesians turn away from politics
to mysticism - a process that was to repeat itself several times during
this century. The late 1920s see the emergence of two new Muslim orders
in Java, the Tijaniyya and the Idrisiyya, besides the rise of a number
of syncretic mystical sects known as kebatinan movements.
"Neo-Sufi" Orders: the Tijaniyya, Ahmadiyya and Idrisiyya
Two
key figures in what has been called "Neo-Sufism" - a movement said to
be characterized by a rejection of the ecstatic and metaphysical side of
Sufism in favour of strict adherence to the sharî`a, and by a
striving for union with the spirit of the Prophet instead of union with
God - are the North African mystics Ahmad al-Tijani (1737-1815) and
Ahmad ibn Idris (1760-1837). It is a matter of debate whether it is
appropriate to speak of Neo-Sufism as a distinct movement,[28] but
these two sufis had a few things in common - besides many differences -
that distinguished them from most earlier founders of orders. Both were
opposed to the saint veneration of their days and sympathetic to the
reformism of the Wahhabis. Both were deeply influenced by the writings
of Ibn al-`Arabi and nurtured ambivalent attitudes towards the great
master. Both, finally, claimed to have actually met the Prophet himself
and received instruction from him - directly in the case of al-Tijani,
through the intermediary of al-Khidir in that of Ahmad ibn Idris.[29] The orders deriving from them have correspondingly short silsila,
no names intervening between the Prophet and al-Tijani, and only those
of al-Khidir, al-Dabbagh and al-Tazi in the case of Ibn Idris.
Al-Tijani organized his own order, which soon spread from the Maghrib
to West Africa, Egypt and Sudan. It did not reach Indonesia until the
late 1920s, when it was propagated in West Java by the Medina-born
wandering scholar, `Ali ibn `Abdallah al-Tayyib al-Azhari, who had
received ijâza to teach the tarékat from two different masters.[30] In the following years, several Indonesians studying in Mecca received initiations and ijâzainto
the Tijaniyya from teachers still active there. This was after the
second Wahhabi conquest of Mecca in 1924, and most other orders could no
longer function publicly. The Tijaniyya, being more reformist and
opposed to the cult of saints, was apparently still tolerated. In
Indonesia, the Tijaniyya met with strong opposition from other orders
but went on growing, with Cirebon and Garut in West Java and Madura with
Java's eastern salient as centres of gravity. During the 1980s it
experienced a period of rapid growth, especially in East Java, leading
again to conflicts with teachers of other tarékat.[31]
Ahmad ibn Idris' teachings lived on in a number of related but distinct
orders, of which the Sanusiyya, established by his student Muhammad ibn
`Ali al-Sanusi, became the most renowned. Other lines of affiliation
use the names of Ahmadiyya, Idrisiyya or Khidriyya. Through Ibn Idris'
Meccan khalifa Ibrahim al-Rashid (d. 1874) and his successor Muhammad
ibn `Ali al-Dandarawi (d. 1909), this sufi tradition first spread to
Southeast Asia. It gained a substantial following in various parts of
the Malay Peninsula. Tuan Tabal, a scholar from Kelantan, was the first
to introduce the Ahmadiyya upon his return from Mecca in the 1870s. In
the following decades, Tuk Shafi`i of Kedah and Muhammad Sa`id al-Linggi
of Negeri Sembilan followed suit. Since then, the Ahmadiyya has
retained a presence in various parts of the Peninsula.[32] The
various Ahmadiyya branches in present Malaysia and Singapore have
retained contact with the mother lodge in Dandara in Upper Egypt.
The sufi method of Ahmad ibn Idris later reached Indonesia by another
channel. In the early 1930s, the Sundanese kiai `Abd al-Fattah returned
from Mecca, where he had met Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi, the grandson of
the founder of the Sanusiyya. Ahmad al-Sharif had given him an ijâza to teach this order in Indonesia, and told him that he had earlier despatched another khalifa to South Celebes.[33] In
order to avoid problems with the colonial authorities, who were likely
to associate the Sanusiyya with the anti-Italian resistance in
Cyrenaica, Kiai `Abd al-Fattah named his tarékat Idrisiyya. It has
remained a relatively small order, now led by `Abd al-Fattah's son Kiai
Dahlan, with the centre in Pagendingan, Tasikmalaya (West Java) and a
few local branches, where the followers appear also mostly to be of
Tasikmalaya origins.[34]
The dhikr of
the Idrisiyya is performed standing, with a loud voice and violent
bodily movements, and it is common for the participants to enter trance
states. This is quite unlike the Egyptian Sanusiyya, which frowns upon
ecstasy and where the dhikr is serene and controlled, but it strongly resembles the Malaysian (and Egyptian) Ahmadiyya, which has an equally ecstatic dhikr.
(The prayers of both orders, of course, are identical; they are those
composed by Ahmad ibn Idris). This is probably due to contacts between
Kiai `Abd al-Fattah or Kiai Dahlan and their Malaysian colleagues after
the Idrisiyya was established in West Java. Kiai Dahlan acknowledges
that he introduced various other reforms in the order, such as the
prescription of distinctive dress and a ban on smoking.
Local tarékat
Besides
the large, "international" orders, several orders of purely local
character have emerged, some of them syncretic in doctrine and
practices. It is not possible to draw a sharp boundary separating local
tarékat fromkebatinan movements, apart from the former's explicit
attachment to the Islamic tradition. Most of the local orders are
considered as unorthodox by the other tarékat, either because their
teachings are suspected to deviate from thesharî`a or because they lack a sound silsila.
In order to disassociate themselves from local sects of suspect
orthodoxy, a number of large orders have united themselves in an
association of "respectable" (mu`tabar) tarékat, with silsila and sharî`a-adherence as the major criteria for membership.
One local tarékat apparently influential in the late 19th century was
the Akmaliyya (or Haqmaliyya), which had its following mostly in the
Cirebon-Banyumas zone, where the Sundanese and Javanese cultures meet.
It was suspected by the Dutch of anti-colonial agitation and is
repeatedly mentioned in intelligence reports. Three leading teachers
were arrested and exiled; after that, it was not heard of for some time.[35] It
resurfaced in Garut, where it was taught by Kiai Kahfi and his son Asep
Martawidjaja, who expounded the teachings of the order in a long
didactic text in Sundanese, Layang Muslimin jeung Muslimat. From Garut it spread to various parts of Java where survives in a number of small groups. The Akmaliyya firmly adheres to wahdat al-wujûd metaphysics and considers `Abd al-Karim al-Jili's Al-Insân al-Kâmil as the most authoritative doctrinal text. It has also a distinctive meditational technique, not found in the other orders.[36]
A number of new local orders emerged in East Java after independence,
the best known among them the Siddiqiyya and the Wahidiyya. Both seem in
part to reflect a turn from active politics to quietist mysticism and a
change from confrontation between strict and nominal Muslims to more
accommodating methods of gradually incorporating the latter into the umma.
The Siddiqiyya is led by Kiai Mukhtar Mu`ti of Ploso, Jombang (East
Java), who had previously studied various tarékat and acquired a
reputation as a magical healer. He claims that the Siddiqiyya is based
on teachings he received in the mid-1950s from a certain Syu`aib Jamali,
who hailed from Banten and was a descendant of Yusuf Makassar. The
Shiddiqiyah therefore allegedly continues Yusuf's tarékat practices, but
Kiai Mukhtar also gives a Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya silsila for
his teacher. His doctrinal teachings are presented in a form much
adapted to Javanese folk culture, and the mystical exercises taught
consist of long litanies to be recited, followed by breathing exercises.[37]
The Wahidiyya was "founded" by Kiai Abdul Madjid Ma`ruf of the pesantren (Islamic school) Kedunglo in Kediri in the early 1960s. Its major devotion consists of the recitation of a long prayer (salawât) composed by Kiai Abdul Madjid, allegedly under divine inspiration. The collective recitations of this salawât generate
an intensely emotional atmosphere, causing the devotees to weep loudly
and seemingly uncontrollably. In spite of strong reservations on the
part of other ulama, the Wahidiyya rapidly gained adherents among the
common folk of Kediri and spread all over East Java.[38]
It
is of course not only in Java that local tarékat have emerged. They are
to be found throughout the country, in various gradations of orthodoxy
and incorporating varying amounts of local pre-Islamic tradition.[39] Wahdat al-wujûd mysticism
is condemned by most present ulama as heretical, but it is still much
alive among the rural population that has not been much influenced by
reformist Muslim teaching. Time and again mystical sects teaching a
variety of wahdat al-wujûd emerge. Many are shortlived and
disappear under the pressure of the orthodox, only to re-emerge years
later under the same or another name. South Kalimantan is one region
that appears to be particularly fertile ground for the emergence of such
sects. M. Nafis al-Banjari's Al-Durr al-Nafîs constitutes the
scriptural base for various of these sects, of which presently the
best-known is the tarékat Junaidiyya, previously known as Aliran Zauq,
which was introduced a generation ago by Haji Kasyful Anwar Firdaus.[40]
Do the Tarékat Have a Future?
Tarékat
with mass following used to be a rural phenomenon, and the numbers of
followers appear to have reached peaks in times of crisis. In recent
years, the introduction of electricity, television, metalled roads and
cheap motorized transport in the villages appears to have significantly
weakened the following of previously popular tarékat in certain regions,
though by no means everywhere.
On the other hand, some of the tarékat have found a new following among
the urban population, and not only among its most traditional segments.
Certain tarékat teachers appeal to an educated public and have found
disciples among the highest social circles. Curing of problems such as
drug addiction and healing of psychosomatic disorders constitute one of
the activities through which they attract numerous new disciples to
their tarékat. Partially overlapping with this group, there are people
of Muslim modernist or secular backgrounds who, feeling dissatisfied
with the rational but unemotional religious atmosphere in which they
grew up, seek direct, emotional religious experience in a tarékat.
Some tarékat also fulfill a number of functions that are not religious
even in a loose sense. Each tarékat is also a social network, and
membership in a tarékat yields a number of potentially useful social
contacts. Especially for recent migrants to the city, the tarékat
network may prove useful in finding work, a place to live, help in
difficulties, etcetera. The tarékat is for some members also a
replacement of the family, offering the warmth and protection they do
not find elsewhere. The gradual demise of traditional society appears
not, as has at times been assumed, to cause the inevitable decline of
the tarékat but rather to give them new social functions and entire new
categories of followers.
[1] Two
articles surveying, from different perspectives, the debate and various
theories proposed are: G.W.J. Drewes, "New Light on the Coming of
Islam?", Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 124 (1968), 433-459, and Syed Farid Alatas, "Notes on Various Theories Regarding the Islamization of the Malay Archipelago", The Muslim World 75 (1985), 162-175.
[13] C. Snouck Hurgronje, De Atjèhers (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij & Leiden: Brill, 1894), vol. II, 256-264 describes Rifa`iyya-related practices (debus)
in late 19th-century Acheh which may belong to a second incursion of
the order, well after Raniri's time. The same practices became popular
in Banten (West Java) in the mid-18th century, see Martin van
Bruinessen, "Shari`a Court, Tarekat and Pesantren: Religious
Institutions in the Banten Sultanate", Archipel 47 (1994).
[16] See Anthony H. Johns, "Friends in Grace: Ibrahim Al-Kurani and `Abd Ar-Ra'uf Al-Singkeli", in: S. Udin (ed.), Spectrum: Essays Presented to Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana (Jakarta: Dian Rakyat, 1978), pp. 469-85, and the same author's articles "al-Kurani" and "al-Kushashi" in the Encyclopaedia of Islam.
[24] Described
in Helius Sjamsuddin, "Islam and Resistance in South and Central
Kalimantan in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries", in: M.C.
Ricklefs (ed.), Islam in the Indonesian Social Context (Clayton, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1991), pp. 7-17. The text of the râtib used is translated in P.J. Veth, "Het Beratip Beamal in Bandjermasin", Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië 3 no.1 (1869), 331-349.
[26] Kenneth Robert Young, The
1908 Anti-Tax Rebellion in Minangkabau (West Sumatra): A Socio-Economic
Study of an Historical Case of Political Activism Among Indonesian
Peasants (Ph.D. thesis, University College, London, 1983); Werner Kraus, Zwischen
Reform und Rebellion: Über die Entwicklung des Islams in Minangkabau
(Westsumatra) Zwischen den Beiden Reformbewegungen der Padri (1837) und
der Modernisten (1908) (Wiesbaden:Franz Steiner Verlag, 1984), pp. 170-200.
[29] Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World (London: Oxford University Press, 1965); O'Fahey,Enigmatic Saint; Trimingham, Sufi Orders,
pp. 107-116. Ibn Idris was taught one brief prayer by al-Khidir, in the
presence of the Prophet; he took other prayers and techniques from his
human teacher `Abd al-Wahhab al-Tazi, whose teacher `Abd al-`Aziz
al-Dabbagh had similarly received them from al-Khidir.
[33] I
have in vain tried to find remnants of the Sanusiyya or Idrisiyya in
South Sulawesi. The well-known Bugis `alim Muhammad As`ad (d. 1953) did
meet Ahmad al-Sharif and even became his secretary for a brief period
before returning to Sulawesi in 1928; he does not appear to have taught
the tarekat, however. See Muh. Hatta Walinga, Kiyai Haji Muhammad As'ad: hidup dan perjuangannya (Skripsi Sarjana, Fakultas Adab, IAIN Alauddin, Ujung Pandang, 1401/1980).
[37] The mystical exercises are described in Syafi'ah, Tareqat Khalwatiyyah Shiddiqiyyah di Desa Losari Kecamatan Ploso Kabupaten Jombang (Skripsi
Sarjana, Fakultas Ushuluddin, IAIN Sunan Kalijaga, Yogyakarta, 1989).
See also Qowa'id, "Tarekat Shiddiqiyyah: Antara Kekhusyukan dan
Gerakan", Pesantren IX, No.1 (1992), 89-96.
[38] Abdurrahman Wahid, "Penelitian Pesantren Kedunglo, Kodya Kediri", Bulletin Proyek Agama dan Perubahan Sosial no.4 (Jakarta: LEKNAS-LIPI, 1977), 18‑26; Moeslim Abdurrahman, "Sufisme di Kediri", in: Sufisme di Indonesia [=Dialog, edisi khusus] (Jakarta: Badan Penelitian dan Pengembangan Agama, Departemen Agama R.I., 1978), pp. 23-40.
[40] Ahmad Zaini H.M., Aliran Zauq di Kabupaten Hulu Sungai Utara (Risalah Sarjana Muda, Fakultas Ushuluddin, IAIN Antasari, Banjarmasin, 1975); H.D. Mirhan, Tarekat Junaidy di Halong Dalam Agung Harnai. Sebuah Studi Perbandingan(Skripsi Sarjana, Fakultas Ushuluddin, IAIN Antasari, Banjarmasin, 1983).
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