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clergy as the keepers of the faith, and the ruling elites, the umara. In this
regard it is understandable why Sultan Agung (1613-1646), the ruler of
Mataram, was not satisfied just to carry the name and the title of Sultan
Abdul Muhammad Maulana Matarani of Mecca. He also deliberately
17
called himself Sayiddin Kalifatullah Panatagama and with this title he was
not only a worldly king but also a “caliph” who governed religious life. But
was he also not still recognized as the “husband” of Nyai Loro Kidul, the
immortal queen of the southern ocean? In this way he wanted to base his
integrated order on the “tradition of dialogue”. The “tradition of dialogue”,
which was derived from the dynamics of Islamization in an atmosphere of
political competition, would at any time present itself. In this tradition we
can understand that Amangkurat I, the Mataram ruler who was reluctant
to use the title of Sultan, preferred to call himself Susuhunan, did so
because he was loath to continue the integrative efforts of his father,
Sultan Agung. As Rijklof van Goens reported, Amangkurat I just killed
about two thousand scholars. He saw this group as a threat to his royal
power. In fact, says Van Goens, so many got killed that after many days
many bodies had still not been buried. Amangkurat I’s political notion and
behavior show that the process of Islamization occurred in an atmosphere
of political competition.
Interesting is also the statement of Kyai Maja, a scholar and chief of a
perdikan village who faithfully accompanied Pangeran Diponegoro. But
eventually he decided to leave the ranks of the resistance. He was forced to
do this, he said, because he saw that the prince had made himself a “ratu”
(lit. king), a ruler within the resistance group. Kyai Maja was still distrusted
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by the Dutch. Kyai Maja, his family and his followers were banished to the
Minahasa. Apparently the Dutch could not trust him, was not the ulama the
chief assistant of Prince Diponegoro the enemy of the Dutch.
“The tradition of dialogue” between rulers and scholars which almost always
oscillated between “romance” and “conflict” was trapped in the vicissitudes
of history. Sometimes the moments of intimate peace occurred but the trap
of the historical character of the “dialogue” was just too reluctant to resign.
In addition to their traditional social institutions, “the perdikan villages”,
which were controlled by priests and later by ulama, the continuation of “the
tradition of dialogue” was rooted also in the critical events at the beginning
of the Islamization process. Historical memory did not forget the fact that the
kingdom had been defeated and that “Islam had conquered the state”. After
all Majapahit lose its power because it had been defeated by the Islamic
sultanate of Demak.
17. Ricklefs, Mystic Synthesis in Java, 51.
18. Peter Carey, “The Cultural Ecology of Early Nineteenth Century Java: Pangeran
Dipanagara, a case study”, Occasional Paper no.24. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,
Singapore, 1974.
12 Indonesian Islamic Culture in Historical Perspectives
From the trajectory of the stories on the Islamization process it is apparent
that the spread of Islam was actually local and started with a single point of
“dismissal” and then moved on to places inhabited by other communities.
These initially isolated local communities became the beachheads for
a temporary halt in the process of spreading Islam. Subsequently, the
propagators departed from the “beach dismissal” each in his own style to
continue to share the received sacred messages. Either through the living
oral tradition or in traditional historiography the “receiving areas” did not
forget the services rendered to it by the “sending areas”. On the contrary,
because political passion might come into play, the “source areas” usually
did not remember and did not even know that this had happened. The
services were not only forgotten when political power came into play. So it
was narrated that the twin kingdom of Goa-Tallo came to aid a prince from
Bima to regain the throne his uncle had taken away from him. When these
expectations were met, Goa-Tallo also sent religious scholars, who came
from Minangkabau, to deliver the message of Islam. 19
Since the fall of Majapahit (although local information says 1478, historical
records tends to place its fall in the early years of the 1520s), the extension
of Islamic territory did not only continue, it did so even more extensively. It
was extensive despite the fact that in 1511 Malacca, one of the world trade
centers and the center of the spread of Islam, had fallen into the hands of
the Portuguese, who acted in a spirit of vengeful “conquest”. After these
two political events in which two great powers had bent their knees, the
Nusantara world experienced an atmosphere of “stable instability”. Great
kingdoms constantly presented themselves and competed incessantly, while
small power centers were too busy looking for ways to escape the dangers
posed by the major central powers. From a cultural point of view, however,
it appeared to be a time of flowing political power in which various literary
works were written and Islamic thinking and scholarship began to sail
through cultural life and creative thinking.
IV
Examining the theological messages written on the inscription on Sultan
Malikus Saleh’s tombstone, it seems that the text simply conveys the
creatures’ recognition of their relationship with God. It also states implicitly
that from then on Pasai had become part of the “Muslim world”. But it seems
that the religious life that radiates from the tombstone’s text is as if it was left
alone in isolation. Thence, the tombstone exudes a monologue.
This historical source relates the story of the Sultan’s activities to expand
19. M. Hilir Ismail, Peran Kesultanan Bima dalam perjalanan Sejarah Nusantara, Mataram:
Lengge, 2004, also Henri Chambert-Loir & Siti Maryam R. Salahuddin, Bo’ Sangaji Kai:
catatan Kerajaan Bima, Jakarta: École francaise d’Extrême Orient & Yayasan Obor Indonesia,
1999.
Indonesian Islamic Culture in Historical Perspectives 13