Download Workshop update 11 - Ottoman South East Asia

International Workshop:
FROM ANATOLIA TO ACEH: OTTOMANS, TURKS AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
Banda Aceh, 11-12 January 2012
Abstracts of Papers
(Note: papers not presented at the International Workshop are indicated with an asterisk*)
Azyumardi Azra, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta,
[email protected]
The ‘Benua Ruhum’ and Nusantara: The Origins of the Ottoman, Turkish and Indonesian
Connections
The religious, political, intellectual and educational connections between the ‘Benua Ruhum’ or
‘Rum’ and the Nusantara, or Indonesia or Southeast Asia as a whole have had a long history.
But, there is no doubt that the connections initially existed in the religious and political spheres.
The rise of the Ottoman to political triumph in Mediterranean world led the Nusantara Muslims
to associate themselves with the ‘Benua Ruhum’; this is the first stage of the connections that
lasted roughly till the 17th century which was dominated by political and military relations.
The second stage of the connections gained momentum in the late 19th century, which
was again colored by political motives that had a lot to do with the modern pan-Islamic
sentiments. These began with the sending of envoys and letters by the Acehnese Sultan Daud
Shah to the Ottoman Sultan Hamid II. The crisis of the Ottoman ‘Caliphate’ led the formation of
the ‘Komite Khilafat’ in Indonesia. Furthermore, the rise of the Young Turks inspired
intellectual debates among Indonesian thinkers and leaders such as Soekarno and Mohammad
Natsir on the relevance or irrelevance of Turkish secularism to Indonesia.
The last stage of connections are taking place in the contemporary times. Since the the
early 2000s Turkish groups have been increasingly attracted to forge a new connections in
Indonesia. These new connections take place mostly in the intellectual, humanitarian and
educational fields. In this regards, a number of conferences have been conducted related to such
themes as the Said Nursi (Nurculuk) and Gulen Movements; and number of ‘elite’ schools under
aupicies and management of the Gulen Movement have also been established in various cities in
Indonesia. The Turkish goverment and institution were also significantly present in the postTsunami Aceh reconstruction.
This paper will dicuss only the first stage of the connections. The paper attempts to trace
earliest connections between the ‘Benua Ruhum’ and various segments of the Nusantara and
how the connections influenced the dynamics of Indonesian Islam.
Anthony Reid, Australian National University; [email protected]
Rum and Jawa: The Vicissitudes of Documenting a Long-distance Relationship
The relationship between Istanbul (Rum) and the peoples of Nusantara (Jawa) is an ancient one,
its imaginings stretching as far back as Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire. But only in
three periods has there been an effective relationship historians could document: - the mid-16th
century; the second half of the 19th Century, and the turn of the 20th century. This lecture will
trace the uses that have been made of past connections by successive generations of writers, as a
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background to the unprecedentedly clear record provided by contemporary researchers, notably
those linked with the British Academy Ottoman-SE Asia project. Although the relationship
bulked much larger in the Southeast Asian than the Turkish imaginary, it is Ottoman records that
have proved indispensable in documenting the connection. It appears to have been on Acehnese
initiative that the records of the 16th Century Ottoman-Aceh relationship were recovered from the
archives in the 1840s to provide the basis for an appeal for protection. Between 1868 and 1874
the documentation became ever more clear as partisans of the idea of Ottoman suzerainty over
Aceh used the 16th century to buttress their case.
As long as resistance to Dutch rule remained active in places such as Aceh, Jambi, and
Banten, in the period 1874-1905, enthusiasm for an Ottoman ‘alternative imperium’ remained
high below the winds. By the time the Ottoman jihad against European rule was declared in
1915, however, the memory of these inter-state historical links had been replaced by millennial
longings with little practical application. Scholarly interest, on the hand, began with some
nationalist Turkish historians of the early 20th century, who put the 16th century connection into
the literature in Turkish. For historians writing in European languages, however, this appears to
have been inaccessible or uninteresting until Voorhoeve mentioned the connection in the 1950s,
and Charles Boxer and I wrote more extensively about it, coincidentally, for a 1968 conference.
US-based Ottoman historians and other international scholars have taken the connection further
since the 1980s. Since the generous Turkish reaction to the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami
in 2004, interest on the Turkish side has been unprecedented and highly fruitful to scholarship,
but it seems fair to say that this has not yet been responded to by a corresponding interest among
Indonesian or Malaysian historians.
Jorge Santos Alves, Instituto de Estudos Orientais/Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e
Cultura, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon; [email protected]
*From Istanbul with love: Jewish Networks, Espionage, Counter-Espionage and AcehOttoman Relations (1550s to 1570s)
The political and diplomatic contacts established over the course of the 1560s are one of the most
important chronological and symbolic landmarks of relations between the sultanate of Aceh and
the Ottoman Empire. After the pioneering studies by Safvet Bey (1909) and Abraham Galanté
(1915), various authors have written about this process, including Şah (1967), Boxer (1969),
Reid (1969) and Özbaran (1969). More recently, new analytical perspectives have been added by
studies such as those by Casale (2005, 2010), Braginsky (2006), Göksoy (2007) and Lambourn
(2011). However, it is also important to include other studies in the debate, such as those by
Tavim (2003), Valentim (2007) and Sola (2009), along with new documentation from European
archives (the Torre do Tombo Portuguese national archives in Lisbon, the Archivio Segreto
Vaticano, in Rome, and Archivo General de Simancas, in Spain). They all reveal new
protagonists, new facts and political, diplomatic and economic articulations on a scale that
encompassed the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, with important ramifications for
Southeast Asia.
This paper focuses, above all, on the activities of the espionage and counter-espionage
networks, based in Istanbul, but scattered across various Mediterranean ports. These networks
were headed by eminent figures from the Jewish and Portuguese New Christian financial and
commercial circles, who were close to both Sultan Suleyman as well as his successor Selim II.
The intelligence produced by this network, namely during the 1560s, is focused on the spice
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routes between Southeast Asia (namely Aceh), through the Maldives (and possibly the
Laccadives), and the Red Sea.
Isaac Donoso-Jiménez, Philippine Normal University; [email protected]
*The Ottoman Presence in South-east Asia during the sixteenth century according to
Portuguese and Spanish Sources.
The eventual conquest of Egypt by the Ottomans in 1517 and their activities in the Indian Ocean
as protectors of Muslims domains was confronted by the Portuguese usurpation of the Islamic
thalassocracy. Ottomans initiated a decisive campaign as the abode of the Caliphate to defend
Islamic States, as far as South-East Asia. However, the Ottoman-Iberian rivalry to control the
seas will end in 1571 after the battle of Lepanto. The consequences of the Ottoman defeat seem
to be dramatic in the Indian Ocean. Portugal seized the Ocean meantime Spain started the
landing in the Philippine Archipelago, the Maluku islands and even Brunei. The Ottoman Empire
withdrew its direct actions in the region, but not its diplomacy and Islamic involvement. The
present research aims to gather a preliminary data about the Ottoman presence in South-East
Asia during the 16th century as appears in the Portuguese and Spanish sources, in order to
analyze the Ottoman-Iberian challenge to control the region in the era of the discoveries.
Elizabeth Lambourn, De Montfort University, Leicester; [email protected]
*Khutba for Cannon: Remaking Khutba Networks in the Ottoman Indian Ocean
This paper re-examines a famous document from the Ottoman archives, an archival copy of a
letter purportedly sent by ‘Ala’ al-Din Ri’ayat Shah of Aceh to the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman in
973/1565 and known unprepossessingly as T.S.M.A. E.8009. While already well researched and
interpreted, most recently by Giancarlo Casale, in this paper I propose to reinterpret this
document within the context of the recently identified phenomenon of Indian Ocean khutba or
sermon networks. In an earlier paper published in 20081 I was able to demonstrate the existence
of a previously unrecognised category of network operating in the Indian Ocean that linked
Sunni Muslim communities living as autonomous faith minorities within non-Muslim polities to
Islamic polities. Tentatively termed khutba or du’a networks, these networks focused on a
component of the sermon (khutba) given at Friday prayers and on the occasion of ‘id prayers
known as al-du’a li-l-sultan or da’wat al-sultan, traditionally a prayer in the name of the
reigning ruler that served as a public sign of the local community’s wider allegiance. This first
article gathered literary, documentary, epistolatory and epigraphic evidence for this practice from
eastern China to coastal India and Sri Lanka from the 9th century onwards, showing how the du’a
li-l-sultan was used to communicate a range of power hierarchies and relationships between
autonomous Muslim communities living in these areas, the Caliphate and the rulers of different
Islamic polities.
This paper proposes that we read T.S.M.A. E.8009 as a document of hybrid authorship,
one that certainly contains the personal observations of the Ottoman envoy Lutfi who carried the
letter back to the Ottoman court, but one that is, for the main part, a formal diplomatic letter
E. Lambourn, “India from Aden: Khutba and Muslim Urban Networks in Late Thirteenth-Century
India.” In Kenneth Hall ed., Secondary Cities and Urban Networking in the Indian Ocean Realm, c. 10001800. Lexington Books: 55-97.
1
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requesting the use of the name of the Ottoman Caliph Sultan Suleyman in the khutba of the
Acehnese court. While Aceh was an independent Sultanate rather than an autonomously
administered Muslim community, this paper proposes that this request was made in full
awareness of earlier Indian Ocean khutba networks and indeed built upon these precedents. From
this new angle, some of the report style content of the text need not be interpreted only as the
addition of a fascinated external (read Turkish) observer, but might be seen as part of the
substantiating argument offered by the Acehnese ruler, helping to build regional precedents for
Aceh’s request, even if these precedents clearly mixed khutba requests from Islamic polities with
those of autonomous Muslim communities. The paper concludes with an examination of this
Acehnese request within the context of 16th century engagements with the idea of the Caliphate
and the caliphal title in a post-Abbasid world.
Giancarlo Casale, University of Minnesota; [email protected]
The Ottoman-Southeast Asian Axis and the Military Revolution: The Technology of Oceanic
Warfare in the 16th Century
To date, most research on the development of oceanic warfare in the sixteenth-century Indian
Ocean has focused on the introduction of tall-sided, cannon-mounted sailing ships by the
Portuguese--and the ability (or lack thereof) of indigenous polities to adopt this technology once
exposed to it. In other words, within this historiography it is taken as axiomatic that Europeanstyle tall-sided sailing ships were militarily superior to both indigenous sail-powered merchant
vessels (dhows) and traditional oar-powered war-ships (galleys).
This paper will seek to challenge this scholarly consensus, through a discussion of the shipbuilding techniques employed by Ottoman corsairs engaged in the defense of the "Aceh Trade"
of the second half of the 16th century. Contrary to expectations, an examination of surviving
Portuguese and Ottoman archival records from the period demonstrate that the Ottomans in fact
introduced European-style tall-sided sailing ships during their first decades of expansion in the
Indian Ocean, but then gradually abandoned them in favor of small, fast and lightly armed oarpowered galleys. These traditional galley-style vessels eventually proved effective enough in
encounters with the Portuguese that, by century’s end, the Portuguese themselves began to give
up their own reliance on sailing ships in favor of oar-powered vessels similar to those used by
the Ottomans.
Oman Fathurahman, UIN Hidayatullah, Jakarta; [email protected]
Nine manuscript copies of Ithaf al-dhaki in the Suleymaniye Library: from Aceh to Haramayn
to Istanbul
This article will examine nine manuscript copies of Ithāf al-dhakī collected by the Sulaemaniye
Library in Istanbul. The full title of the text is Ithāf al-dhakī bi-sharh al-tuhfah al-mursalah ilá
al-nabī sallallāhu ‘alayhi wa-sallama (The bestowal dedicated to one of discriminating
intelligence in explanation of the gift addressed to the spirit of the Prophet Saw). It is one of only
a few Arabic sources addressed to the Jāwī Muslim community in the seventeenth century,
written by Ibrāhīm ibn Hasan al-Kūrānī al-Shahrazūrī al-Shahrānī al-Kurdī al-Madanī al-Shāfi‘ī
(1616-1690 CE) in response to a request from an Acehnese scholar, ‘Abd al-Ra’uf ibn ‘Alī alJāwī al-Fansūrī (1615-1693 CE).
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Of the 31 copies of Ithāf al-dhakī manuscripts around the globe, nine of them are
preserved in several collections of the Suleymaniye Library, i.e: Atif Effendi collection (no.
2789), Ayasofya collection (no. 2169), Carullah collection (no. 2102), Esad Effendi collection
(no. 1491), Fazil Ahmad Pasa collection (no. 820), Haci Mahmud Effendi collection (no. 2385),
Hamidiye collection (no. 1440), Laleli collection (no. 3765), and Resid Efendi collection (no.
996). It will be interesting to find out how and why this work, written by a Haramayn scholar in
the context of Aceh, circulated and became so popular in Istanbul.
Andrew Peacock, University of St Andrews, UK; [email protected]
“Divine gifts” for Java: the seventeenth century Ottoman ‘alim Muhammad b. ‘Alan of Mecca
and the sultanate of Banten
Although the ties between Aceh and the Ottoman empire are better known, the sultanate of
Banten in north west Java also had significant links with the Ottoman empire through its close
connection to the Hijaz. It was from the sharifs of Mecca that the sultans sought legitimacy for
their rule, even on occasion making the pilgrimage in person. Such visits, attested by the
Javanese Sajarah Banten, go unnoted in the chronicles of Mecca let alone those of the Ottoman
empire. Yet the reality of these links is attested by the works of the 17th century Meccan Shafii
scholar Muhammad b. ‘Alan, who at the behest of the Bantenese sultan composed several works,
of which the most prominent is an adaptation of (pseudo-) Ghazali’s mirror for princes, the
Nasihat al-Muluk, entitled al-Mawahib al-Rabbaniyya (“the Divine Gifts”). In this essay I
examine the enthusiasm of the court of Banten for Ghazali, represented by a number of other
works by both Ibn ‘Alan and Ghazali, which continued to be copied at court at least into the
eighteenth century, often accompanied by interlinear Javanese translations. I suggest that the
evidence of these texts suggests some elements of Malay advice literature often considered
Persian may in fact have been transmitted through the Ottoman empire. Indeed, the evidence of
Banten manuscripts suggests that this intellectual exchange with the Ottoman empire may also
have had an impact rather beyond the circles of Naqshbandi Sufi exchange where it is so well
attested, at least in Banten, influencing theology and law-school too.
Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells, University of Cambridge; [email protected]
Hadhrami purveyors of Ottoman influence in Southeast Asia
The importance of Yemen as the strategic outpost for sixteenth-century Ottoman influence in the
Indian Ocean was played out by Hadhrami diasporic networks in Southeast Asia during the
subsequent centuries leading to the modern era. Hadhrami talent, cultural traits and, above all,
their pre-eminent religious status privileged their reinforcement of the well-entrenched Malay
political myth of Iskandar Zulkarnain of Rum (Turkey) in the context of the Ottoman caliph’s
role as protector of the Muslim world. Hadhrami rulers, adventurers and men-of-influence
positioned themselves as mediators between Jawi Muslims and the Ottoman world, articulating
the quest of the former for entry within the circle of Ottoman sovereignty to stem the European
challenge. Not discouraged by the futility of this protracted project, Hadhrami leadership in
Southeast Asia responded positively to the Ottoman transition by the second-half of the
nineteenth century towards reform, modernization and accommodation to the new demands of
European politics and diplomacy. Hadhramis contributed substantially towards reimaging
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Ottoman influence in Southeast Asia in terms of upgrading concepts of status and citizenship as
well as promoting social reform through education, journalism and print.
Fiona Kerlogue, Horniman Museum; [email protected]
Traces of Ottoman influence in Southeast Asian material culture
Among the earliest written evidence of links through material culture between the Ottoman
empire and the Muslim peoples of Southeast Asia are refences to cannon and other artillery sent
to Aceh by Turkish rulers in the 16th century (Reid 2005). The most famous of these, according
to Reid, was ‘Lada Sa-cupak’, a cannon which ‘bears the Turkish star-motif along the barrel’.
Master gunsmiths were also sent to Aceh, which continued to produce its own cannons. By 1629,
according to Beaulieu, Sultan Iskandar Muda’s armoury, contained over 2,000 cannon. The year
after the Dutch invaded Aceh in 1873, the ‘Turkish and Portuguese guns which had guarded the
Aceh citadel for centuries, [were] shipped in triumph to Holland.’ This included the famous
cannon Lada Sa-cupak.
As well as being important as weapons, and as items of exchange to cement alliances
between rulers in the Malay world, cannon have a further ritual importance. They frequently
appear as key elements in myths of origin and other stories in Sumatra, and continue to be
regarded as having supernatural power. In Brunei and in the eastern islands, miniature cannon
are used as exchange items. Motifs taken from objects regarded as having supernatural power are
for this reason often borrowed and reinterpreted in local items in Southeast Asia as is clear in, for
example, the use of tughra motifs in Sumatran batik (see Kerlogue 2001) . The aim of this
preliminary study was to see whether motifs found on the cannon imported from the Ottoman
empire or made in Aceh following these models are to be found in locally-made items.
The study includes such cannon now located in the UK as are accessible and relevant to
the study, such as the small collection at the Royal Artillery Museum in Woolwich, which
includes several examples from Brunei, and an Ottoman example at Fort Nelson in Portsmouth.
The chief focus, however, is the collection at Bronbeek Museum in Arnhem, consisting of
cannon captured in Aceh by the Dutch in the 19th century and returned to the Netherlands. The
focus of this study is on design and decorative elements. I will compare decorative elements
found on these caqnnon with those on Turkish cannon in the collections at the military museum
in Istanbul, as appear in a catalogue of the 1920s (Moukhtar 1922).
In the paper I willI present details of design and decoration on cannon known to be of
Ottoman manufacture and compare these with those of cannon of Southeast Asian manufacture,
with due consideration given to the contrasting form and decoration of Chinese and Portuguese
cannon. Design elements found will be compared with ornament on other Southeast Asian
material in British collections and on similar material found in published sources. Illustrations of
Ottoman cannons in published catalogues (see for example Arslanboga 2009) will serve as
further comparison.
Mohd Zahamri Nizar, Academy of Malay Studies, University of Malaya,
[email protected]
The iconography of Zulfikar in the art of war: links between the Ottoman Caliphate and
Malay sultanates in the Straits of Malacca
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This research explores the use of the Zulfikar motif in visual art, especially in the numerous
examples of artefacts such as flags of war, weapons, batik and manuscript illustrations in the
Malay world. A formalistic analysis is used to present a discussion of the artistic aspect of the
artefacts, while a comparative analysis examines the relationship between the use of the Zulfikar
motif in Turkey and the Malay world. The styles of the Zulfikar motifs will be compared with
numerous examples of swords and other type of indigenous weapons. The research also reviews
the complexities of historical relation between the Ottoman Caliphate and the archipelago,
especially in the context of anti-colonial wars fought by the sultanates in the Straits of Malacca
such as Aceh, Johor-Riau, Selangor and Siak from the 17th to the early 20th century, and
connections to the use of the Zulfikar motif. In addition, a preliminary attempt will be made to
analyse the use of Zulfikar in the context of Islamic literature in the Malay world. Finally, this
study will attempt to reveal some of the important concepts underlying the use of Zulfikar
iconography in particular historical contexts.
Annabel Teh Gallop, British Library, London; [email protected]
Ottoman influences on Islamic seals from Southeast Asia
Seals from the Malay world of Southeast Asia indubitably form a subset of the larger family of
Islamic seals, characterised by the central presence on an inscription in Arabic script and the
absence of any figural decoration. Nonetheless, in all aspects – content, form and context of use
– Malay seals display numerous distinctive local features, which have proved to be highly
resilient despite centuries of contact with other Islamic sigillographic traditions. However, a
study of Malay seals over three centuries (ca. 1600-1900) does reveal some evidence of Ottoman
influence, albeit in three clearly delineated spheres.
The earliest but most striking example is the case of what is in fact the earliest known
Islamic seal from Southeast Asia, that of Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah of Aceh, which displays
two features characteristic of Ottoman seals of the 16th century: a distinctive decorative knot
motif, and the use of both intaglio and relief carving for inscriptions on the same seal
(A.T.Gallop, ‘Ottoman influences in the seal of Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah of Aceh (r.15891604)’, Indonesia and the Malay World, July 2004, 32 (93):176-190). However, apart from one
other almost contemporaneous seal from Pahang, these particular features are not found in any
other Southeast Asian seals from subsequent periods.
Unlike in many parts of the Islamic world where seals were used at all social levels,
Malay seals were traditionally restricted to the court hierarchy. The only notable exception is
that some religious scholars had personal seals, and a handful of examples are known, mostly
dating from the 19th century. On the basis of their calligraphic and iconographic form, it appears
that most of such seals may have been made up during (extended) sojourns in the Hijaz, which
for the whole of period under consideration was under Ottoman control, and therefore such seals
display marked Ottoman features. Particularly characteristic are inscriptions commencing
‘abduhu, ‘His [i.e. God’s] servant’, followed by the personal name of the seal owner, where
‘abduhu is always written in a decorative calligraphic flourish encircling the name.
Outside Southeast Asia, Islamic seals were generally stamped in black ink, and by the
19th century the preferred shape was oval or circular. In contract, Malay seals were larger, were
always stamped in lampblack, and - particularly in Sumatra and the Malay peninsula - were
often round petalled shapes inspired by the lotus blossom, an inheritance from the pre-Islamic
Hindu-Buddhist period. Such seals can be seen on a number of petitions to Istanbul sent from
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Malay kingdoms such as Aceh, Jambi, Riau, Kedah and Brunei in the 19th century. However,
two late petitions from Aceh are quite different in character, both bearing a large number of
small oval seals stamped in black ink. It is possible that this change in sigillographic profile was
an attempt on the part of the Acehnese to adopt a style of Islamic seal which better approximated
to Ottoman norms for their communications with the Sublime Porte.
Ali Akbar, Bayt al-Qur’an
[email protected]
dan
Museum
Istiqlal,
Departemen
Agama
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The influence of Turkish Qur’ans in Indonesia through the ages
This paper will discuss the influence of Turkish Qur’ans on the Qur’an in Indonesia, from the
manuscript era and through the period of early printing up to the present day. At various times,
Turkish influence can be detected in certain specific aspects of Indonesian Qur’ans, including the
illumination, calligraphy and graphic layout of the text. In recent years this influence has
become much stronger, particularly since the ratification of the Indonesian Standard Qur’an in
1984, as one of the three approved versions is based on the Qur’an printed at the Matba‘ah
Bahriyah in Turkey. This edition of the Qur’an has long been used in Indonesia by Qur’anic
reciters who learn the text by heart (hafiz) in various pesantren (madrasahs). During recent
research in Istanbul, a copy of the Qur’an printed at the Matba‘ah Bahriyah in the early 20th
century was located in the Beyazit Devlet Kutuphanesi.
İsmail Hakkı Kadı, Medeniyet University, Istanbul; [email protected]
Southeast Asian Origins of Ottoman Panislamism
The Panislamist policies which the Ottoman Empire adopted during the reign of Abdülhamid II
(1871-1909) and onwards have been a rather popular topic for the scholars studying late Ottoman
history as well as those studying the political developments in the wider Islamic world during the
late ninetieth and early twentieth centuries. The available literature focuses on the Ottoman
aspect of the phenomenon and neglects the role of Southeast Asians’ (rulers and people) demand
for Ottoman Empire’s intervention against the European colonial presence and expansion in the
region. In this paper I will argue that evidence for this demand predates any Ottoman initiative to
develop a Panislamist policy to extend its influence over the Muslims in Southeast Asia. For this
purpose I will focus on the rhetoric employed in the documents which reflect the Southeast
Asian perception of the position and role of the Ottoman Sultan and the Caliph. These documents
include letters, testimonies etc. which made their ways to the Ottoman chancery during the
diplomatic contacts that predate the rule of Abdülhamid II such as: the letter of the Ruler of
Kedah requesting Ottoman Aid (1824-25); documents relating to the Acehnese Embassy to
Istanbul (1849-52); documents relating to Ali b. Ja‘far’s (Emir of Riau) request to become an
Ottoman subject (1857); documents related to the request of a Dutchman called Hymans for
appointment as Ottoman Consul in Semarang (1865); the petition of the Sultan of Jambi to the
Ottoman Sultan (1858); the petitions of the ruler of Aceh for Ottoman protection (1869). It is
apparent that the initiatives, to which these documents are related, predate Ottoman Panislamist
policies while the rhetoric employed in these documents contain all elements of Panislamist
policies.
When it is established that, chronologically, Panislamist sentiments in South East Asia
predate any Ottoman policies in that direction the question arises of whether these sentiments
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and initiatives might have had any impact on the formation of Ottoman Panislamist policies. The
paper will then discuss this aspect of the issue. Special attention will be paid to the role of the
Hadramis who might have functioned as a conveyor of these Southeast Asian sentiments to the
Ottoman court through their familial ties with the Sayyids who lived in Hijaz and Istanbul. In
short this paper will focus on Southeast Asian demand for Ottoman Panislamist policies as a
factor which might have instigated the formation of these policies by the end of the nineteenth
century.
İsmail Hakkı Göksoy, Isparta University, Turkey; [email protected]
Acehnese Attempts for Ottoman Turkish Protection in the Late Nineteenth Century
Aceh applied several times to Turkey to get diplomatic support and protection during her
struggle against the Dutch in the second half of the nineteenth century, and sent diplomatic
missions to Istanbul for that purpose. Some of these Acehnese attempts have been studied by
scholars in the light of Ottoman archival sources. In particular, the sending of official Acehnese
envoys to Istanbul and help requests of Acehnese authorities from Ottoman Empire through
diplomatic correspondence and other means to secure protection before the beginning of the
Dutch-Aceh military conflict in 1873 have been explored widely in some studies. Although the
continuation of the Acehnese demands to get Turkey’s support and protection in later years is
widely known, the study of these appeals on the basis of archival sources, in particular during the
years of Aceh war with the Dutch, and Turkish responses to them, generally remained
superficial. As the Turkish archival source materials on Aceh concerning with this period have
not been explored and evaluated in detail, the main purpose of this paper is to examine these
Acehnese attempts to gain Turkey’s protection and Ottoman Turkish responses during the course
of the establishment of Dutch colonial rule in Aceh.
In this respect, firstly the coming of previous Acehnese envoys to Turkey and official
diplomatic correspondences will be reviewed in brief. Then, the help requests of Acehnese
authorities from Turkey during their struggle against the Dutch aggression will be explored in
detail. The contents of the letters sent by the Acehnese sultan Dawud Shah to Ottoman Sultan
Abdulhamid II and by some leading Acehnese individuals to Ottoman caliph in the years of
1880’s and 1890’s will be evaluated. In addition to these, the most important case in this regard
is the coming of Sherif Ali b. Ismail to İstanbul in 1891 as an Acehnese envoy and his initiatives
to bring Aceh under Ottoman sovereignty. In particular, his journey to Istanbul, his meetings
with the Sultan’s secretary, his delivery of Acehnese petition to the War Ministry and his
questioning by the Ministry of Police in Istanbul and the deliberations of the Turkish cabinet on
his petition will be examined.
Acehnese leaders used other means and opportunities to bring their cause into the notice
of the Ottoman caliph as well. For instance, when the Turkish imperial warship “Ertugrul”
landed at the Singapore harbour on its way to Japan in 1890, the Acehnese authorities prepared a
diplomatic envoy to make contact with the ship’s commander and to seek his meditation to
present the Aceh case to the attention of the Ottoman caliph. Acehnese and other Indonesian
Muslim circles demanded that this Turkish war ship should visit their harbours. While Ottoman
diplomatic officials did not see any obstacle for the ship’s possible visit to Jakarta harbour in
Java, a visit to Aceh harbour was however avoided.
In the context of the Ottoman-Aceh connections, the concerns of Turkish authorities with
Aceh during the years in question are also important. How much interest did the Ottoman
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Turkish consul generals in Batavia show in this long standing conflict and how closely did they
follow developments there ? These questions can be answered by examining the contents of the
reports sent by the Turkish consul generals from Batavia to the Sublime Port in İstanbul, which
mainly focused on the political status of Aceh and her connections with other countries.
Moreover, the consular reports including information on the Acehnese military activities led by
Teuku Omar are also important items to evaluate Turkish concerns with developments in Aceh.
William G. Clarence-Smith, SOAS, University of London, [email protected]
Ottomans in the Philippines during the crisis of World War I
With the entry of the Ottoman empire into the war on Germany's side in November 1914, the
label 'Turk' became problematic for the Ottoman community in the Philippines. Sayyid Wajih alJilani, 'mufti of the Philippines', attempted to keep the United States neutral for a time.
Moreover, even after war had been declared on Germany in April 1917, President
Wilson resisted all domestic and foreign requests that he should do likewise with the Ottoman
empire. Nevertheless, Ottoman subjects became 'allies of enemy aliens', and were subject to
travel restrictions and petty administrative harassment. The community reacted by stressing a
'Syrian' identity, while demonstrating hatred for 'the Turk', and exhibiting patriotic American
fervour. No Ottoman in the Philippines appears to have been deported, interned, or expropriated,
but vexatious controls persisted to 1919, souring later relations with the colonial state.
Kawashima Midori, Sophia University, Tokyo; [email protected]
Dispatch of an Islamic missionary from the Ottoman Empire to Southern Philippines in 1914
In January 1914, a representative of Sheik ul-Islam of the Ottoman Empire, namely Wedjih ElKilani Zeid, arrived at Zamboanga on the Mindanao island. The visit resulted from a petition of a
group of Islamic leaders who assembled at the Taluksangkay mosque near Zamboanga, led by
Hadji Abdulgani Nuño, a Samal-Balangigi Muslim.
This paper discusses the background of the visit, especially the role of the American
district governor of Zamboanga, namely Major John Finley, and that of the U.S. War
Department, and the aftermath of the visit, based on the documents I collected in US and the
Philippines, including the letters of Hadji Nuño. Contrary to the principle of the separation of
church and state which the Americans upheld in governing the Philippines, some American
officials attempted to bring in the “progressive” teaching of Islam from Constantinople and other
parts of the Middle East in order to turn the “backward” Moros into “law-abiding” citizens. It
also discusses the budding Islamic reformist movement which started in Taluksangay in the late
19th century.
Chiara Formichi, City University of Hong Kong; [email protected]
Ideologies in Context: the transfer of ‘Kemalism’ from Turkey to Indonesia
Whenever we think of the connections between Turkey and Indonesia the mind quickly goes to
Acehnese requests for help to the Ottoman Caliph or the ‘wave’ of pan-Islamism which followed
Mustafa Kemal’s abolition of Caliphate. However, digging in archives and libraries in Jakarta,
Leiden, and The Hague, a much broader picture has begun to take shape, as the threads
connecting these two countries go beyond Islam.
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In the late 1800s stories of the wars between ‘Turkey’ and Greece were translated into
Indonesian, later were the images of the heroic victories of the Ottomans over the Italians to be
printed, and in 1950 Bandung was conquered by West Javanese rebels led by Captain ‘Turk’
Westering. But it is, I think, beyond any doubts that it was Kemal’s reformism which received
the most attention. Modernist magazines praised Turkey for the advancement of women in
society, Sukarno claimed that ‘Kemalism’ was meant to return Islam to its original state of ‘fire’
from the ‘ashes’ that the Ottomans had left, Islamists were calling Kemalism ‘the religion of
Satan’, and Economists saw the key of this country’s success in education, urbanization and
industrialization.
In this presentation I wish to give an overview of how ‘Turkey’ was portrayed in
Indonesia between the 1870s and the 1950s, and then focus on the transformation of the
understanding of ‘Kemalism’ from it’s meaning in Turkish nationalist circles to its multifaceted
representations in Indonesia.
Carool Kersten, King’s College London; [email protected]
Religion and Public life in the Republics of Indonesia and Turkey: Parallels, Commonalities
and Contrasts
This presentation extends the findings of historical research into the links between the Ottoman
Empire/Turkish Republic and Southeast Asia over the last three centuries into contemporary
times. In doing so, it seeks to not only to graft the new manifestations of religiosity in Indonesia
and Turkey onto the output of the Islam, Trade and Politics across the Indian Ocean Project, but
also contextualize the place of Islam in the public life of two countries on opposite sides of the
Muslim world into a global perspective.
Whereas the past provides evidence of direct contacts between the Ottoman Empire and
maritime Southeast Asia in the form of a sixteenth-century Ottoman-Acehnese naval pact and the
extension of the late nineteenth-century Panislamist posturing by Sultan Abdulhamit into the
Dutch East Indies, more diffuse parallels can be detected throughout the twentieth century. The
centrality of the long durée Ottoman heritage of tasawwuf in Nurcu circles is mirrored by a likeminded outlook among traditionalist Indonesian Muslims united in the Nahdlatul Ulama and
now finding a continuation in the spiritual interests of educated middle-class Muslims in the
metropoles of Istanbul and Jakarta and provincial urban centres.
This applies also to the shared contrasts of short-lived and ill-fated attempts to
accommodate political Islam within restrictive constitutional systems subject to military
interventions, and the alternative focus by Muslim activists on emancipation through education.
On the back of the combined effects of demographic and economic developments, manifested in
the commodification of Islam, these developments provided the seedbeds for the increased
salience of Islam at the end of the twentieth century, leading to the formulation of a
‘reactualisasi agenda’ in Indonesia and a remarkably similar Turkish-Islamic Synthesis (19831993).
The critical juncture of 1997-2002, witnessing an anti-Islamist ‘post-modern’ Velvet coup
in Turkey and a tumultuous post-1998 Reformasi Era in Indonesia heralded by the doomed
presidency of former NU chairman Abdurrahman Wahid, led to a reinvention of Muslim politics.
Its exponents in both Ankara and Jakarta evince a similar outlook as they try balancing political
pragmatism, social conservatism, and manifestations of cultural Islam in their attempts to
translate the underlying geographical, economic, demographic, and cultural factors into
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ambitious domestic and international policy agendas, whilst grappling with internal ethnic and
religious pluralism and the external pressures of globalization.
As part of ongoing research the paper can only report tentative findings. Presenting an
inventory of interesting parallels, it wants to avoid making any definitive suggestions that would
result in a reductionist interpretation of these commonalities and contrasts. Conclusions will be
limited to proposing a set of contributing factors for the phenomena encountered in Turkey and
Indonesia in the final decades of the twentieth century and the first ten years of the new
millennium. This is also reflected in the agenda-setting pretension of the research. Drawing on
postcolonial studies and the new global perspectives provided by alternative area studies
approaches, it anticipates that the combination of relating the findings of this project to concepts
such as ‘traveling theory’ and the ‘circulation of ideas’, with the trans-regional ambit of the ‘new
thalassology’ explored in Indian Ocean studies or the paradigm of the ‘Two Mediterraneans’ can
help furnish an explanation for the similar patterns identified in two countries with cultural and
political histories as different as the largest Muslim nation state in the world (located on the
crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Ocean zones) and the most populous Muslim country in the
Eastern M editerranean (strategically positioned between Europe, the Caucasus and the Middle
East, and with cultural links stretching into Central Asia).
The lessons to be learned from this scholarly exercise also have a potential value that
reaches beyond historiography or the study of religion. The relevance of Turkey’s experience
with ten years of AKP governance for the ‘Arab Spring’ is currently contested between its
proponents and its detractors. who draw their counter arguments from the ‘Turkish
Exceptionalism’ thesis. Providing an additional example offering a very different cultural and
political-historical narrative could enliven that debate and offer a more informed projection for
future developments.

Vladimir Braginsky, SOAS, cannot attend the workshop but will contribute a paper for the
conference volume on “References to Turkey in Malay literary sources”
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