However, in the early 19th century there cannot yet have been many, for a deliberate search for such institutions then failed to locate them. In the Dutch Indies authorities had the first survey of native education in Java made. It was reported that only in the towns of Serang and Ban- ten, «priests» taught some reading and writing; in Serang there were also a few lay teachers. Elsewhere there was no education at all, and literacy was very low The survey appears only to have covered northern Banten, not the southern districts, which were not yet directly administered by Batavia.
It is conceivable that there were a few small pesantrens in southern Banten. However, the earliest kiai of wide fame in southern Banten, who is still vividly remembered, flourished well after the earliest independent kiais of the north.
Kiai Asnawi of Caringin was in the s the most respected and venerated kiai of all Banten. His case shows that government ulama and independent ulama, although clearly and self-consciously different in principle, did not necessarily have different backgrounds. He was born into a family of religious officials; his father Abdul Rahman was the pangulu of Caringin regency, and Asnawi initially succeeded his father in this function.
During a stay in Mecca, Asnawi studied with the famous Bantenese kiai Abdul Karim, was initiated by him in the Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya tarekat and appointed his khalifa.
After his return to Banten, he renounced his official function, established the pesantren at Caringin, and began teaching the tarekat This apparently happened some time after the rebellion, for we do not yet find his name mentioned among Abdul Karim' s deputies in that connection.
At least from the 17th century on, there had always been Bantenese making the pilgrimage to Mecca, some of them perhaps staying on for a few years to pursue studies. Until the 19th century, however, their numbers must have been limited and most of them may have enjoyed official sponsorship, paying for the voyage and the cost of living.
We know this to have been the case for the better known ulama from elsewhere in the Archipelago. By the second half of the 19th century, steam power and the Suez canal brought the pilgrimage within reach of much larger numbers. By the end of the century, as Achmad Djajadiningrat has it, almost every well-to-do family in Banten supported one or two relatives studying in Mecca Upon their return, these men no cases of women are known to me were naturally called upon to teach their relatives' and neighbours' children.
Some, such as Achmad Djajadiningrat's cousin, did this informally only, tutoring one or more children individually; others, such as Kiai Asnawi, established pesantrens. The distinction was probably not a sharp one, pesantrens being extremely modest establishments.
Tarekats and tarekat teachers in Banten. Sartono Kartodirdjo's classical study of the other great rebellion in Banten, that of , has drawn attention to the prominent role that the tarekat «mystical brotherhood» Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya played in Banten society in the second half of the 19th century. Though not itself the initiator of the rebellion, the tarekat provided it with a network of communication and, perhaps, a chain of authority for mass mobilisation.
Like the pesantren, however - and many of the tarekat teachers in the 's also led pesantrens - the tarekat with a more or less organised large popular following was probably a relatively recent phenomenon. I am inclined to date its emergence to the second half of the 18th century at the earliest.
It is true that tarekats are explicitly mentioned in the earliest indigenous sources from Banten, but a tarekat is not the same thing at all times and places. It may be useful to say a few words about tarekats in general before surveying the evidence from Banten. The most important of these are the zikir Ar. These recitations may be combined with breath control and specific bodily postures, and there may in addition be various ascetic practices. A tarekat may also have its specific theory about the mental states these exercises are to produce in the practitioner.
In this way a hierarchically ordered network of teachers may emerge. Each shaikh can show a chain of authorities for the tarekat he teaches, his silsila or spiritual genealogy.
Usually the silsila reaches back from one's own teacher up to the Prophet, with whom all tarekats claim to have originated although there have been modifications along the way.
A Sufi's silsila is his badge of identity and source of legitimation; it provides him with a list of illustrious predecessors and shows how he is related to other Sufis. Many tarekats - at least at some times and places - are what may be called «congregational», in the sense that their followers are expected to take part in communal dhikr meetings often following the sunset or night prayers.
They may even become much like corporate organisations, in which the common ritual serves to cement other links among the members. The ordered network of tarekat teachers, their deputies and deputies of deputies may turn the tarekat into a powerful political organisation, as happened in a few exceptional cases.
In many other cases, however, practising a tarekat is a purely individual affair, and the follower may rarely if ever meet fellow practitioners. In Indo-. Similarly the techniques of usually «congregational» tarekats may be taken up as a private devotional practice or - a frequent trend in Indonesia - as a method of cultivating magical powers.
It has been suggested that it was the development of tasawwuf that made Islam understandable to Indonesians and compatible with their spiritual needs as well as providing possible legitimations of monarchic rule In a number of articles, Anthony Johns has gone a step further and suggested that deliberate efforts by the tarekats played a central role in the process of islamisation.
He imagines the tarekats to be closely associated with trade guilds as in the Ottoman Empire for a few centuries they were , the two travelling together from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia. The trading ships plying the Indian Ocean carried not only numerous individual traders and their wares, he writes, but «we must visualise also clambering on board a number of Sufi shaikhs, either to attend to the spiritual needs of the craft or trade guild they were chaplain to, or to spread their gospel Johns' speculative hypotheses may have some first sight plausibility since many of the early indigenous sources contain references to tarekats.
Even the earliest of these sources, however, date from centuries after the process of Islamisation began. Moreover, there is, to my knowledge, not a shred of evidence for John's implicit assumptions that something like guilds existed in the Southeast Asian harbour states, let alone that tarekat teachers were somehow affiliated with these guilds.
In the case of Banten, the indigenous sources associate the tarekats not with trade and traders but with kings, magical powers and political legitimation. Banten's ruling dynasty and the tarekat. After performing the rites of the pilgrimage they go on to Medina to pay their respects to the Prophet's shrine, and it is here that Maulana Hasanuddin receives an initiation in the Naqshbandiyya tarekat. Roughly translated, the texts say that Hasanuddin was taught the Knowledge of the Sufis, Perfect Knowledge.
The association with Medina rather than Mecca is correct, and gives a cue as to when the Naqshbandiyya became known in Banten. In the 17th century, Medina was a major centre for this brotherhood, its leading shaikhs being successively Ahmad ash-Shinnawi d. We shall encounter the names of these teachers, who taught several other tarekats as well, again in the following pages.
There are no indications that the Naqshbandiyya was present in Medina before ash-Shinnawi. The Sufi technical terms are strung together in the text in a way suggesting that each represents some specific form of spiritual power. The account cannot be taken literally, for these teachers and most of the fellow students lived centuries before our Indonesian saint; nevertheless it contains some surprising information on one of these tarekats, the Kubrawiyya.
The eponymous founder of this tarekat, the Central Asian mystic Naj- muddin Kubra d. The names of the allegated fellow students in fact constitute two distinct lines of affiliation branching out from Kubra and ending in 'Abd al-Latif al-Jami d. Shinnawi, as noted before, taught in Medina.
Jami lived in Central Asia but, as we know from other sources, he made the hajj in , accompanied by a large entourage. On the way to Mecca he stopped in Istanbul, where he initiated none less than the Ottoman sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent, into his tarekat. This fact, noted by the Syrian historian Najmuddin al-Ghazzi, was no doubt well-known in Mecca too, and may have made this particular tarekat even more prestigious and desirable in the eyes of Banten' s court. Sunan Gunung Jati was a contemporary of Jami but there is little use in speculating whether he actually could have visited Mecca at the same time.
Shinnawi was two or three generations younger. The various names juxtaposed in this Bantenese text may in fact reflect a number of consecutive contacts of Bantenese with Kubrawiyya teachers in Mecca or Medina.
The anachronistic association of all with Sunan Gunung Jati reinforces our impression that the primary purpose of the text is the legitimation of the dynasty by recuperating all known mystical traditions for its founder. The first tarekat teacher active in Banten whom we know by name was the famous Makassarese Shaikh Yusuf Yusuf had spent around two decades in Arabia, studying under such teachers as Ibrahim al-Kurani in Medina and Ayyub al-Khalwati in Damacus.
He had received initiation in several tarekats, most notably the Khalwatiyya, Naqshbandiyya, Shattariyya, Qadiriyya and Ba-vAlawiyya and apparently acquired licenses to teach them. Shaikh Yusuf apparently arrived in Banten in the wake of the Makassarese warriors and sailors who left Celebes after their kingdom of Goa was conquered by the combinated forces of the VOC and the rival Bugis kingdom of Bone in , and who temporarily settled in Banten.
We find him first mentioned in , when he is reported to be tutoring the crown prince and co- ruler, Abun Nasr Abdul Qahhar later known as Sultan Haji In the ensuing struggle for power between the crown prince Sultan Haji and his father Sultan Ageng, Shaikh Yusuf remained firmly allied with the latter.
After Sultan Ageng's capture, the shaikh led a small guerilla band of mostly Makassarese followers across West Java until finally he too was captured by the Dutch. From his own writings we know Shaikh Yusuf to have been a tarekat teacher, but there is no evidence of his spreading any tarekat among the Bantenese. His teaching may have remained restricted to court circles - we have noted that he instructed the crown prince in the Islamic sciences - and the Makassarese community.
The Makassarese, from the royal family down, held Shaikh Yusuf in great veneration, and those in Banten became his followers in politics as well as religion. The tarekat that is most closely associated with.
Illustration: The Great Mosque of Banten ca. Yusuf's name, a branch of the Khalwatiyya, only spread among the Makassa- rese and secondarily the Bugis. Yusuf's only khalifas appear to have been fellow Makassarese, which is another reason why this tarekat remained almost uniquely associated with this ethnic group There was apparently no one in Banten, not even at the court, who kept Yusuf's tarekat teachings alive.
Yusuf's one-time student, Sultan Haji, had come to see him as a political opponent. By the middle of the next century we find some of these tarekats, notably the Naqshbandiyya and Shattariyya, being taught in Banten; the teacher, however, then did not trace his silsilas through Yusuf but through later masters in Mecca and in Medina.
He is the author or copyist of a number of Arabic and Javanese books that are still extant, most or all of them originating from the Banten kraton library, that was acquired by the Dutch authorities in His major interest appears to have been in mysticism and metaphysics.
While in Mecca he collected and copied a number of important Arabic mystical texts, among which a rare treatise by Abdur Ra'uf of Singkel He belonged to the branch of the Naqshbandiyya represented by Ahmad al-Qushashi and Ibrahim al-Kurani in Medina; according to the silsila given in the first manuscript, he took this tarekat from a khalifa, perhaps a son, of Ibrahim al-Kurani's son and successor Abu Tahir Muhammad His Shattariyya silsila also passes through al-Qushashi but instead of descending through al-Qushashi's successor al-Kurani it passes through two other obscure shaikhs in Medina to Abdullah's teacher Muhammad b.
The very existence of these manuscripts shows that Shaikh Abdullah, unlike Shaikh Yusuf before him, established a modest network of disciples and khalifas, outside the court and town of Banten where he taught himself. The Great Mosque of Banten, ca. Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. The first popular tarekats, Sammaniyya and Rifa'iyya. The author of the Naqshbandiyya manuscript, a disciple of the said Muhammad Tahir of Bogor, combined this tarekat with the Khalwatiyya - the text in fact deals with both tarekats.
As his teacher of the Khalwatiyya he mentions the Medinan saint Muhammad [b. NAbd al-Karim] as-Samman d. Shaikh Samman's modified version of the Khalwatiyya, usually named Sammaniyya, became popular in various parts of Indonesia, and here and there a saint cult took root, based on the belief in Shaikh Samman's powers of miraculous intervention on behalf of his devotees. In Banten there are traces of both. Shaikh Samman is one of the saints whose protection is invoked by certain - but not all - performers of debus Banten see below.
It may have been from such geographically marginal teachers that a diffused Sammani influence has gradually penetrated the culture of Banten's common people. The tarekat Rifa'iyya, of which clearer traces still are to be found in Ban- ten, is in a similar situation. The invulnerability techniques known as debus Banten. At a few places there still are groups that regularly perform the Rifa'iyya liturgy, with or without debus exercises.
Twice weekly, on Thursday and Sunday nights, part of the village gathers in the mosque for a communal dhikr following the evening prayer. The devotions are led by Mbah Junaed, who does not claim to be a tarekat shaikh, but simply follows in his father's and grandfather's footsteps. He also leads debus exercises called almadad here , in which again much of the village takes place. Before «playing», the participants perform a dhikr and burn incense while Mbah Junaed recites a formula to call up some forty powerful spirits, including those of Ahmad RifaM the founder of the RifaMyya and Shaikh Samman W.
There are a few adaptations; Shaikh Samman's name, for instance, does not occur in the manuscripts but is apparently added because of.
Samman's reputation for benevolent intervention. This list of names gives an indication as to when the RifaMyya began to spread in Banten. At least one manuscript moreover adds the words «may God make his reign last» to the latter's name, showing that the text was originally written during his government.
All extant manuscripts have the names of only these two sultans besides that of the distant founder of the dynasty, Maulana Hasanuddin. They all appear to go back to an archetype produced at or close to the court in the last quarter of the century, that has been repeatedly copied without any serious emendations being made. The fact that there are no updated versions with names of later sultans indicates that the Rifa'iyya spread from court circles and the urban elite to the population at large in Aliyuddin' s time and has since then not received any new impulses under later great teachers.
The close association of this tarekat with debus also suggests how it could have spread from the court to popular circles. It does not require much phantasy to imagine the revered king teaching his soldiers the invocations and other techniques that - by the grace of Ahmad Rifavi and other saints - would make them invulnerable to iron, fire and poison.
The great popularity of the Qadiriyya tarekat or rather, of Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya in Banten dates from the second half of the 19th century, but there is some evidence that there was a cult of Shaikh vAbd al-Qadir Jilani well before that time. Possibly - but the evidence is slight - this too spread to the general populace from the court, and around the same time as the RifaMyya.
The earliest written reference to the Qadiriyya dates from the reign of Sultan Zainal Ashiqin, under whom, as we saw, the RifaMyya probably first appeared in Banten. The royal seal on a document of styles the sultan. It was the only sort of text recited there on such contexts, and it was regarded as sacred, not fit to be sung on profane occasions. The Sundanese version was a relatively recent borrowing from the Priangan districts, but the Javanese one was proper to the region, containing many words of the Banten-Cirebon dialect This text was studied and translated by Drewes and Poerbatjaraka, who judged from the archaic character of the language that it must be rather old.
Drewes even ventured the guess that it could well date from the first half of the 17th century, suggesting that the cult of vAbd al-Qadir might have been introduced at the time of the first official contacts with Mecca This speculation, however, is not supported by any direct evidence.
It is not part of the tarekat liturgy proper but all followers at times take part in it. They take place now in Arabic as well as Sundanese or Javanese, depending on the sponsor At the same time, the practitioners feel entitled to his protection in exchange for the reading, which most of them speak of as a payment, a quid pro quo. The emergence of the Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya in Banten in the second half of the 19th century has been well documented by Sartono Karto- dirdjo and need not detain us much here.
The Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya was a new tarekat, combining elements from various others. It was established by a learned Indonesian, Ahmad Khatib from Sambas in West Borneo, who taught in Mecca in the third quarter of the 19th century.
This was perhaps why the new tarekat spread so rapidly through much of Indonesia and found such a large popular following. The number of students gathering around Ahmad Khatib was probably unprecedented. Bantenese constituted one of the most prominent groups among the Indonesians in Mecca, and the master must have had several Bantenese disciples. One of them, Abdul Karim from Tanara, became his favourite.
Religious Institutions in the Banten Sultanate 1 Abdul Karim returned only briefly to Banten, from to , but during those years he initiated numerous new disciples into the tarekat. In Mecca he remained at the centre of an elaborate and ever-expanding network that had its greatest density in Banten. There were frequent communications between Banten and the Bantenese community in Mecca. Abdul Karim' s deputies in Banten kept recruiting new followers.
For the first time in Ban- ten's history, a tarekat acquired the character of an organisation with a large rural following. Much of that organisation was dismantled by the government following the rebellion of ; some of its leaders were killed, others were sent into exile to the outer islands or fled abroad, ending up in Mecca. During the following decades the network gradually re-established itself, as more Bantenese returned from Mecca. Although Kiai Asnawi himself kept aloof from politics altogether, some of his relatives including his son Emed and son-in-law Ahmad Khatib and deputies became deeply involved.
The kiai' s charismatic appeal and the tarekat network were deliberately used by the organisers of the rebellion. In the wake of this rebellion, Kiai Asnawi himself was removed to Batavia, and the network partly dismantled again.
Some time later, several tarekat teachers emerged who claimed to be Asnawi' s legitimate khalifa, the best-known of them Kiai Abdul Latif bin Ali of Cibeber near Cilegon and Kiai Falak who established a pesantren at Pagentongan in Bogor. According to his son Kodhim, however, Asnawi appointed as his sole successor Ahmad Suhari, also of Cibeber; the others were only badals, deputies of lower rank.
The occult sciences, invulnerability and healing. The popular tarekats have frequently been associated with magical practices and Banten is no exception in this respect. It is perhaps more correct to say that the practitioners of various forms of magic have eagerly adopted techniques and prayers from the tarekats with which they became, however superficially, acquainted.
Banten has a well-established reputation as a haven of the occult sciences, and quite a few Bantenese have cashed in on this reputation, acting as soothsayers and diviners, exorcists and spirit-masters, bone-setters, masseurs and druggists, procurors of wealth, position, supernatural protection and peace of mind.
Many of the magical skills cultivated in Banten are closely associated with the martial arts and the world of the jawara, the strongmen dominating much of rural Banten. Debus, the cultivation of invulnerability to fire and sharp metal objects, is the most conspicuous representative, and debus teachers engage in the whole range of magical practices. Their techniques are an eclec-. The central element in debus, «playing» with pointed iron skewers that are violently thrust against the body, is obviously derived from the tarekat RifaNiyya.
The skewers still have the same shape with a large wooden head to which iron chains are attached as may be seen with Turkish or Egyptian RifaMs. In the Pandeglang region, as seen above, debus is still explicitly associated with the RifaMyya, but in north Banten the association is rather with the Qadiriyya.
There is one striking difference between debus Banten and the Rifas iyya of the Middle East and India: in Banten the skewers, however violently thrust or hammered, do not pierce the skin, whereas elsewhere the miracle consists in their passing through the body without causing any harm The emphasis in Banten as elsewhere in Indonesia where similar techniques exist is on invulnerability, not on indifference to pain, and this is explicitly related to warfare and the martial arts.
An accomplished debus practitioner is also believed to be bullet-proof. Debus techniques were part and parcel of the martial arts arsenal of the jawara, along with other magical or psychological techniques for such purposes as invisibility, hitting an adversary from a distance, having tiger spirits and other fierce powers take possession of one's body sambatan , or invoking jinns and other supernatural support hadiran.
Tarekat-related techniques are only one part of debus and debus teachers are not necessarily, as Vredenbregt thought, also tarekat shaikhs. Some of them lead tarekat-lyye. Even the Islamic formulas used, in order to be effective, have to be «filled» or «bought» by fasting, bathing with water of sacred springs such as the Sumur Tujuh on the slopes of Mt Karang, and various other ascetic exercises. Identical results may, incidentally, be achieved by different means: one may recite a formula that has been «bought» in advance , wear an amulet that has similarly been «filled» , or temporarily «borrow» some of his master's powers that are transferred by means of a jiad, a «blessing formula».
Debus is just one instance of tarekat-related techniques being transposed to a different context of meaning and put to a different set of purposes; one. An invulnerability cult probably has existed in Banten as elsewhere in the Archipelago long before the arrival of the RifaMyya, which gave it its present names, one of the instruments used, and some litanies. Like other magicians, debus players are highly eclectic; any prayer formula learned from a religious teacher may be tried out on its merits and added to the arsenal.
As new techniques continue to be added, some of the older ones are gradually being shed. He now does the reading and the invocations at home, he claims, the evening before a performance.
Carefully prepared holy water is carried along in a plastic bottle. Experience has shown that this also works, and that the spirits still come to protect the players The fame of Banten' s magic has made some of the debus teachers and practitioners also popular as healers, called upon to set broken bones or to massage away physical pain but especially to cure diseases or other complaints believed to be caused by magic or an evil spirit.
Two of them regularly travel even to the outer islands to treat patients, and their healing practice increasingly takes up their time. There is yet another, and more popular, type of expert in Banten dispensing «magical» cures: the kiai hikmah. Hikmah, «wisdom», is originally a term for all sorts of useful knowledge adopted into Islam from older civilisations, such as Greek medicine and philosophy or Babylonian magic.
In Indonesia the term refers primarily to Islamic magic; it is practised by kiais, not by dukuns. The kiai hikmah may also be contrasted, as an ideal type, with the kiai kitab, the teacher of textual Islam, but he is expected to possess some textual learning as well.
In practice, many kiais combine both roles, in differing mixtures. Muhammad Hasan Amin of Cibuntu near Pandeglang d. He was a nephew of Kiai Asnawi of Caringin and himself also a tarekat teacher, initiating numerous visitors into the Qadiriyya.
He led a small, old-fashioned pesantren with only 30 to 40 santris from various parts of Java, who appeared to be mostly interested in Ki Armin's speciality, hikmah, but also studied fiqh. The kiai had, however, little time for his students because of the other services that he performed. Every day a stream of visitors, mostly from West Java, waited for hours to. Government officials and higher military personnel, who also frequently came to Cibuntu, were usually given preferential treatment and were received in private audience.
Instead of making the other visitors jealous, this appeared to reinforce their confidence in the shaikh and their conviction of his influence in high circles. Consultations by government officials confirm to the general public that the kiai is really special; after all, such high people are believed to go for the best in all matters. Numerous stories were and still are told about the kiaVs miraculous powers, his clairvoyance, the rapid careers or sudden riches that befell some of those who had won his favours.
Many of the visitors, however, did not appear to have urgent special reasons for visiting the kiai. They came because such a visit in itself was believed to convey blessings. Ki Armin, it was said, was a perfect saint, who for several years had neither slept nor eaten.
The best way to partake of the kiai' s blessing was to come on a Thursday afternoon and spend the night in Cibuntu. With some luck one might see the kiai privately for a few minutes, but even if not, there was other benefit for the soul to be had. Whereas Ki Armin maintained excellent relations with government officials at all levels and thus was admired for his influence in high quarters, the man who probably is the most renowned kiai hikmah at present has a reputation for maintaining maximal distance from everything that reeks of government.
Ki Dimyati of Dahu in Cadasari north of Pandeglang , though not at all politically minded, was in fact once jailed because of an untactful sermon during the election period. As his admirers tell with relish, the prosecutor, judge and policemen involved in the case all suffered terrible diseases, and although the kiai did not leave the prison during his incarceration he was frequently sighted in his village at the same time.
Generous official sponsorship allowed Ki Armin to build a unique, beautiful mosque in Cibuntu and brought electricity and a metalled road to the village. Ki Dimyati' s pesantren, on the other hand, seems to be deliberately kept in a state of ill-repair to show to all and sundry that he refuses government support.
Just in case the visitor does not immediately notice this, his attention may be drawn to it by a santri, who hastens to tell how many visiting officials offered in vain to have the pesantren rebuilt. Ki Dimyati was educated in various pesantrens in Central Java but never could afford to visit Mecca when I visited him in early , he had plans for that year, though. Among colleagues, he has a reputation for learning in all branches of the religious sciences, and he indeed spends much of his time teaching.
The pesantren is one of the most traditional still existing, in the teaching methods as well as in its physical structure. All santris sleep in one large bamboo house on stilts rumah panggung ; the teaching takes place in an.
No radio, newspapers, or idle talk are allowed here; the santris are to fill their time with worship and the study of their religious texts. The kiai is famous for his teaching of these powerful formulas and the proper way to recite them. Conclusion: the evolution of Islamic institutions in Banten. Some cautious conclusions may be drawn from the preceding discussion. The pesantren and the tarekat, the most conspicuous Islamic institutions in Banten a century ago, were relatively recent phenomena, at least in the particular form they then had.
Their florescence followed the decline of the sultanate and coincided with the disappearance of central control. The central Islamic institution of the sultanate was the office of the qadi, which in Banten had a far greater importance than in the other Javanese kingdoms.
The qadi headed a hierarchy of religious officials reaching out into the hinterland. As long as this office existed, there is no evidence of independent ulama leading pesantrens or teaching tarekats in the periphery.
In the heyday of the sultanate, Islamic education took place at the centre, under the sponsorship of the kraton, and with members of the royal family among its chief beneficiaries.
Such education as there was in the periphery before the mid- 19th century and some there must have been, for there were some literate people in South Banten by the end of the 19th century 96 was probably highly informal. The tarekats too appear to have been primarily an affair of the court, although some of the devotions associated with them may have filtered through to the population at large.
The court, I would suggest, was interested both in the spiritual powers promised by the tarekat and in the legitimation it could lend a sultan who could claim to have reached higher forms of Knowledge. For the same reasons, the court probably had an interest in restricting the numbers who were fully initiated in any tarekat. Conversely, the association of certain tarekats with the court most clearly the RifaMyya in the late 18th century must have raised their value in the view of the wider public.
Disparate elements from tarekats specific formulas, breathing exercises, the debus probably were borrowed or imitated by people not formally authorised i. These elements, sometimes distorted and often given a different meaning, became part of the accumulated store of mystical-magical lore of the healer-cum-martial arts masters. This changed with the decline and ultimate demise of the sultanate.
Independent teachers emerged in the periphery. Snouck Hurgronje made the important observation that zakat began flowing to these independent ulama rather than the Dutch-appointed pangulus, but perhaps the emergence of the independent ulama as a group reflects some earlier shift in economic.
The number of pesantrens rapidly increased in the late 19th century. At the same time, the tarekat Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya gained a mass following in the villages. Educational reform reached Banten's pesantren world in the early 20th century. Nine years later another madrasah, Al Khairiyah, was established in Citangkil Cilegon. Traditional pesantrens are gradually disappearing; the ones still surviving such as Kiai Dimyati's, described above serve other functions than those of the average pesantren a century ago.
The popular tarekat Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya experienced its heyday around the turn of the century and appears to have retained a large following until mid-century. It rapidly lost popularity when metalled roads, electricity, radio and television came to the villages, giving the young generation a range of alternative ways to spend the long evenings.
In the towns, on the other hand, the tarekat has been finding new categories of followers. The breakdown of traditional structures, and an acute sense of moral and economic uncertainty experienced by many, are creating a new demand for spiritual teaching and magical-mystical counsel. Such seemingly traditional institutions as the tarekat and authorities as the kiai hikmah are the functional equivalent of therapy groups and psychiatrists, and their numbers and prominence in all of Java appear to be increasing.
Ambtelijke Adviezen van C. Snouck Hurgronje, 3 vols. II, pp. Concerning the fast in Ramadan, Snouck reported the observation of an Indonesian friend that in Banten everyone fasted, including children below the age at which this becomes a religious obligation.
He commented that the same definitely could not be said of any other district in Java, let alone an entire residency. As for zakat, virtually all farmers in Banten paid it voluntarily whereas elsewhere in Java it had to be enforced by officials. The last sultan, Muhammad Rafi ad-Din, was removed from Banten and exiled to Surabaya in , but Banten had already lost the last remnants of independence in , when it was completely integrated into the Dutch Indies.
The sultanate, however, retained its symbolic meaning for the Bantenese well after the disappearance of the sultan. Snouck Hurgronje, Adviezen II, pp. See H. The authors, spicing the available evidence from Javanese sources with some inevitable speculation, reason that a Muslim harbour-state was established by the later Sunan Gunung Jati at Banten around and that it gradually expanded its territory eastwards and then southwards, finally conquering Pakuan in See G.
Rouf- faer and J. Ijzerman eds. Idem, vol. I, pp. These immigrants were vegetarians and believed in reincarnation, «like all Javanese before their conversion to Islam». They had fled persecution by the ruler of Pasuruan.
The learned editor, Rouffaer, concluded that they were Tenggerese and suggested that there might be a connection with the present Baduy who live much further southeast, however. The edited version differs in minor details from the text used by Djajadiningrat. When Sultan Abul Mafakhir died in , he was succeeded by a grandson, who initially used the modest title of Pangeran Ratu. He despatched another embassy to Mecca, which upon return brought him the title and name of Sultan Abul Fath Abdul Fattah Djajadiningrat, Critische beschouwing, pp.
Djajadiningrat, Critische beschouwing, pp. Drewes and L. Djajadiningrat p. Voorhoeve's Handlist of Arabic manuscripts. Leiden: University Press, , pp. Voorhoeve's brief notice in BKI , p. Rajawali, , pp. Azra, op. The spelling as ceque shows that it came to the Dutch through the medium of Portuguese. Its use by translators or Portuguese merchants in Ban- ten does not, of course, guarantee that the Bantenese themselves used it.
One might be tempted to interpret «Kyahi Ali» as a personal name, and the first occurrences of the term may refer to one and the same person the religious teacher of both Maulana Yusup and Maulana Muhammad.
In a later passage Canto 55 , however, we read of persons who «became ali», in the unmistakable sense of succeeding to the office of qadi. Pakih Ar. The latter, though an existing name, may of course be a corruption of Najmuddin.
All indicate titles and status. Some think there are hierarchical differences between them, but that is not true.
The most famous sheikh of our time is probably the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, simply called Sheikh Zayed, the principal architect, founder and first president of the United Arab Emirates. And the term of honour additionally can be given to any elderly man of wisdom.
An amir has a high degree of nobility in Arabic nations and some Turkish states. Today, "amir" and "amira" mostly mean "prince" and "princess", respectively. They also can be people's first names. It comes from the Aramaic "sultana", which means "power". Dear Ali: I recently converted to Islam and would like to know how to handle the Holy Quran in my household, which includes relatives who are not Muslims.
KC, Russia. Dear KC: Quran means "Recitation", which means it's a book to thoroughly read and not merely to browse through. It holds great respect for a Muslim and it is honourable to memorise it.
Allah's infallible word has chapters arranged from longest to shortest. Anyone who touches the Quran must have clean hands. Keep Qurans out of latrines and off the floor. Use a cloth or a plastic dust cover for the Quran when it is not in use. Muslims will keep the Quran on the highest bookcase shelf and place nothing atop it. If reading the Quran while sitting on the floor, Muslims will place it in a book rest or holder.
If no holder is available, they will hold the Quran above their waist. Prior to reading the Quran, Muslims often will recite: "I seek refuge in God from Satan, the rejected enemy [of mankind]. Dear Ali: In reference to dressing in an appropriate manner, does wearing tights count as covering your knees?
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