Transmitting and Translating a Timbuktu Theological Poem in Aceh

April 2024

Zacky Khairul Umam

 

Private collections of manuscripts that have been digitized often contain non-major texts studied in specific settings where histories of translation and transmission could be retold in many ways. The Teungku Mukhlis Collection in Aceh, for instance, possesses manuscripts of religious texts some of which remain unidentified and little known until today. One amongst this collection, manuscript EAP329-1-95 contains various translations into Malay of texts on tajwīd (the art of Quranic recitation), law, the Quranic Verse of Light (Q. 24:35), and theology. This blogpost will highlight the final part of the manuscript: a versified theological text written by a Timbuktu scholar. This text provides an example of an interlinear translation from the Indonesian-Malay world.

How did a text from Timbuktu, a poetical rarity in the manuscript libraries of Southeast Asia, end up in Aceh?  The text, namely ʿAqīdat al-Wangarī (“The Creed of Wangarī”), often written in its Arabicized version as al-Wankarī, is a hitherto single-known copy of this text in Sumatra, lacking a colophon and the name of its scribe. Considered as a text within the long tradition of Ashʿarīsm—the major theological Sunni school in the Muslim world and in Southeast Asia in particular—ʿAqīdat al-Wangarī is a poetic explanation on the minor creed of Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (d. 1490). Umm al-barāhīn (“The Foundational Proofs”), al-Sanūsī’s work, was probably transmitted from the early seventeenth century onwards and became extremely popular because of its Malay translation and commentary, namely Bidāyat al-hidāyah (“The Beginning of the Guidance”) authored by Muḥammad Zayn b. Fāqih Jalāl al-Dīn al-Āshī (d. 1757). Al-Sanūsī’s strategy for popularizing Ashʿarīsm by writing diverse theological texts (Bruckmayr 2017; Caitlyn Olson 2020) was probably adapted in the early modern period by various scholars, including al-Wangarī and Muḥammad Zayn.

Figure 1. Wangarī’s Creed. EAP329-1-95, the British Library, image 80.

Who was al-Wangarī? In the beginning of ʿAqīdat al-Wangarī, the author’s name is mentioned as Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Wangarī (see Figure 1). Several manuscripts in the National Library of France in Paris bear his full name (see Figure 2; cf. Figure 3) before the beginning of this work: qāla al-shaykh al-faqīh al-muḥaqqiq al-mudaqqiq al-naḥwī al-uṣūlī Abū ʿAbdillāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Maḥmūd b. Abī Bakr Baghyugh. This scholar, known as a jurist, grammarian and theologian, is most likely the descendant of a well-known Timbuktu scholar who originally came from Djenné, in present-day Mali, Muḥammad al-Wangarī al-Timbuktī al-Jinnawī (d. 1594), known as Baghayogho, whose manuscript library was cited by the celebrated Timbuktu historian Aḥmad Baba (d. 1627) (see Jappie & Diagne 2008).

      

Figure 2. Wangarī’s Creed in Maghrebi script. BnF Paris, Arabe 5602 ff. 402b-403a.

 

 Figure 3. Wangarī’s Creed in Maghrebi script. BnF Paris, Arabe 5484 f. 143a.

 

The transmission of Sanūsī’s works in Timbuktu can be well understood due to its geographical proximity to North Africa. But how did Timbuktu’s commentary on al-Sanūsī travel to Sumatra? Lebe Bandar, an unknown scholar and scribe in the early eighteenth century in the Sultanate of Aceh, wrote a prose commentary based on ʿAqīdat al-Wangarī, namely Al-Laṭāʾif al-nafsiyyah ʿalā naẓm al-ʿaqīdah al-sanūsiyyah (“The Psychic Subtlety Commenting on the Minor Creed of Sanūsī”). He noted that he learned of Wangarī’s text when he was in Medina at the end of the seventeenth century. This historical note corroborates the fact that the Hijāz was the most important transmission site of intellectual traditions to the Malay world. If we accept Lebe Bandar’s note, ʿAqīdat al-Wangarī very likely came to Aceh at this time, if not earlier, and this milieu encouraged the scholars in the  Sultanate of Aceh to study it closely, leading Muḥammad Zayn to compose his Bidāyat al-hidāyah in ‘the tongue of Jāwī/Malay” (lisān al-Jāwī). Bidāyat al-hidāyah was able to complement or even replace in popularity the theological works of earlier scholars such as Nūr al-Dīn al-Rānirī (d. 1658) and ʿAbd al-Raʾūf al-Jāwī al-Fansūrī (d. 1693).

Despite the popularity of Muḥammad Zayn’s commentary on al-Sānūsī’s work, ʿAqīdat al-Wangari continued to be recited, perhaps because the credal poem possessed a mnemonic function and was memorized up to the first half of the of the nineteenth century when the manuscript EAP329-1-95 was compiled. The single copy of this Arabic text with its Malay interlinear translation does not mean that it was not popular earlier, prior to the Dutch-Aceh War (1873-1904). It nevertheless at least testifies to an intellectual and textual connection between distant corners of the Islamic world at the time: Timbuktu, the Islamic learned culture far to the west, and Southeast Asia, the Islamic region far to the east.

Comparing three manuscripts—one from Aceh and the other two from the Maghreb  - which are currently kept in the National Library of France—the Acehnese manuscript lacks the indication of Wangarī’s full name at the beginning of the text as well as book divisions such as ‘introduction’ (muqaddimah), the ‘absolute attributes of God’ (mā yajib fī haqq mawlānā tabāraka wa taʿālā), and other Ashʿarī theological doctrines. The function of such subdivisions makes it easier for the readers to distinguish between the sections, thus they can skip from one to the other for subsequent perusal. The Acehnese manuscript differs from the two Maghrebi copies in the way in which the scribe copied it from other older manuscripts. Although the three manuscripts date back to ca. 1750-1850, they certainly have different stories. The history of texts and books is always fascinating when one considers their variants and translations. The Malay interlinear translation of ʿAqīdah al-Wangarī, as can be seen in Figure 1, itself attests to two types of interlinear translation: one is literal, word for word, and can be read throughout the text. The second is an irregular translation, which can be recognized already in the first line of the text:

Yaḥmadu rabbahu bi-khayri al-aḥmadi          al-Wangarī ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmadi

Sentiasa memuji oleh Wangari itu akan Tuhannya dengan sebaik-baik puji….

(“Always praised by the Wangari is his Lord with the best of praises”)

At the time when the translator wrote her/his translation, other explanatory elements were added above the words or in marginalia. While the Acehnese manuscript lacks Wangarī’s full name, for instance, the translator/scribe added the meaning of the word ‘al-Wankarī’ in the upper position or copied it from another text in Arabic and Malay: ayy al-mandūb [sic!; al-mansūb] ilā al-Wankarī, artinya dibangsakan negeri Wankari (i.e., “it refers to the territory of Wangarī”). An intriguing question that requires  further study  is how and why some  Arabic theological terms were partly translated  into Malay while others were left untranslated. This text opens a window to the rich tradition of Malay interlinear translation as practiced in Aceh and as found in the EAP Aceh collection, the books of which were used as part of an Islamic curriculum in the region. 

 

References:

Bruckmayr, Philipp. “The šarḥ/ḥāshiya Phenomenon in Southeast Asia: From al-Sanūsī’s Umm al-Barāhīn to Malay Sifat Dua Puluh Literature.” Mélange of IDEO 32 (2017).

Jeppie, Shamil and Souleymane Bachir Diagne (eds.). The Meanings of Timbuktu. Cape Town: South Africa (2008).

Olson, Caitlyn. “Beyond the Avicennian Turn: The Creeds of Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (d. 895/1490).” Studia Islamica 115, no. 1 (2020): 101-140.

Zacky Khairul Umam was a postdoctoral researcher at “Mapping Sumatra’s Manuscript Cultures” project, SOAS University of London and is currently a lecturer at Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia.