Everything about The Spread Of Islam In Indonesia 1200 To 1600 totally explained
Islam is thought to have first been adopted among various peoples of what is now
Indonesia sometime during the
eleventh century, although
Muslims had visited the archipelago early in the Muslim era. By the end of the
16th century, Islam, through assimilation, had supplanted Hinduism and Buddhism as the dominant religion of
Java and
Sumatra. At this time, only
Bali retained a Hindu majority and the outer islands remained largely animist but would adopt Islam and
Christianity in
seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.
The spread of Islam was driven by increasing trade links outside of the archipelago; in general, traders and the royalty of major kingdoms were the first to adopt the new religion. Dominant kingdoms included
Mataram in
Central Java, and the sultanates of
Ternate and
Tidore in the
Maluku Islands to the east. By the end of the thirteenth century, Islam had been established in North Sumatra; by the fourteenth in northeast Malaya, Brunei, the southern Philippines and among some courtiers of East Java; and the fifteenth in Malacca and other areas of the Malay Peninsula. Although it's known that the spread of Islam began in the west of the archipelago, the fragmentary evidence doesn't suggest a rolling wave of conversion through adjacent areas; rather, it suggests the process was complicated and slow.
Despite being one of the most significant developments in Indonesian history, historical evidence is fragmentary and generally uninformative such that understandings of the coming of Islam to Indonesia are limited; there's considerable debate amongst scholars about what conclusions can be drawn about the conversion of Indonesian peoples. The primary evidence, at least of the earlier stages of the process, are gravestones and a few travellers accounts, but these can only show that indigenous Muslims were in a certain place at a certain time. This evidence can't explain more complicated matters such as how lifestyles were affected by the new religion or how deeply it affected societies. It can't be assumed, for example, that because a ruler was known to be a Muslim, that that the process of Islamisation of that area was complete; rather the process was, and remains to this day, a continuous process in Indonesia.
Early history
Historical evidence is fragmentary and generally uninformative such that understandings of the coming of Islam to Indonesia are limited; there's considerable debate amongst scholars about what conclusions can be drawn about the conversion of Indonesian peoples. The primary evidence, at least of the earlier stages of the process, are gravestones and a few travellers accounts, but these can only show that indigenous Muslims were in a certain place at a certain time. Both Indonesia's colonial and republican governments have favoured Hindu and Buddhist sites in Java in their allocation of resources for excavation and preservation, with less emphasis on the early history of Islam in Indonesia. Funds, both public and private, are spent on the construction of new mosques, rather than the exploration of old ones.
Even before Islam was established amongst Indonesian communities, Muslim traders had been present for several centuries. Ricklefs (1991) identifies two overlapping processes by which the Islamisation of Indonesia occurred: Indonesians either came into contact with Islam and converted, and/or foreign Muslim Asians (Arabs, Indians, Chinese, etc.) settled in Indonesia and mixed with local communities. Islam is thought to have been present in South East Asia from early in the Islamic era. From the time of the third caliph of Islam, '
Uthman' (644-656) Muslim emissaries and merchants were arriving in China who must have passed Indonesia sea routes through Indonesia from the Islamic world. It would have been through this contact that Arabic emissaries between 904 and the mid-twelfth century are thought to have become involved in the
Sumatran trading state of
Srivijaya.
The presence of foreign Muslims in Indonesia does not, however, demonstrate a significant level of local conversion or the establishment of local Islamic states. and the first evidence of a Muslim dynasty is the gravestone, dated AH 696 (AD 1297), of
Sultan Malik al Saleh, the first Muslim ruler of
Samudra, with further gravestones indicating continued Islamic rule. The presence of the
Shafi’i school of thought, which was to later dominate Indonesia was reported by
Ibn Battutah, a
Moroccan traveller, in 1346. In his travel log, Ibn Battutah wrote that the ruler of Samudera Pasai was a
muslim, who performs his religious duties in his utmost zeal. The
madh'hab he used was
Imam Shafi'i with the similar customs he'd seen in India. This suggests that some of the Javanese elite adopted Islam at a time when the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit was at the height of its glory.
Ricklefs (1991) argues that these east Javan gravestones, sited and dated at the non-coastal Majapahit, cast doubt on the long held view that Islam in Java originated on the coast and represented political and religious opposition to the kingdom. As a kingdom with far-reaching political and trading contacts, Majapahit would have almost certainly been in contact with Muslim traders, however there's conjecture over the likelihood of its sophisticated courtiers being attracted to a religion of merchants. Rather, it mystical Sufi-influence Islamic teachers, possibly claiming supernatural powers, who are thought to be a more probable agent of religious conversion of Javanese court elites who had long been familiar with aspects of Hindu and Buddhist mysticism.
When the peoples of the north coast of Java adopted Islam is unclear. Chinese Muslim,
Ma Huan and envoy of
Chinese Emperor Yongle, Since the east Javan gravestones were those of Javanese Muslims fifty years before, Ma Huan’s report indicates that Islam may have indeed been adopted by Javanese courtiers before the coastal Javanese.
An early Muslim gravestone date AH 822 (AD 1419) has been found at
Gresik an East Javanese port and marks the burial of
Maulana Malik Ibrahim . As it appears, however, that he was non-Javanese foreigner, the gravestone doesn't provide evidence of coastal Javanese conversion. Malik Ibrahim was, however, according to Javanese tradition one of the first nine apostles of Islam in Java (the
Wali Sanga) although no documentary evidence exists for this tradition. In the late
fifteenth century, the powerful
Majapahit Empire in Java was at its decline. After had been defeated in several battles, the last
Hindu kingdom in Java fell under the rising power of Islamised state
Sultanate of Demak in 1520.
Western Java
Pires'
Suma Oriental reports that
Sundanese-speaking
West Java wasn't Muslim in his day. A Muslim conquest of the area occurred later in the sixteenth century. In the early sixteenth century the Central and East Java (home of the
Javanese) were still claimed by the Hindu-Buddhist king living in the interior of East Java at
Daha (
Kediri). The north coast was, however, Muslim as far as Surabaya and were often at war with the interior. Of these coastal Muslim lords, some were Javanese who had adopted Islam, and others were not originally Javanese but Muslim traders settling along established trading routes including Chinese,
Indians,
Arabs and
Malays. According to Piers, these settlers and their descendants so admired Javanese Hindu-Buddhist culture that they emulate its style and were thus themselves becoming Javanese.
Other areas
There is no evidence of the adoption of Islam by Indonesians before the sixteenth century in areas outside of Java, Sumatra, the sultanates of
Ternate and
Tidore in
Maluku, and Brunei and the Malay Peninsula.
Indonesian and Malay legends
Although time frames for the establishment of Islam in Indonesian regions can be broadly determined, the historical primary sources can't answer many specific questions, and considerable controversy surrounds the topic. Such sources don't explain why significant conversions of Indonesians to Islam didn't begin until after several centuries of foreign Muslims visiting and living in Indonesia, nor do they adequately explain the origin and development of Indonesia's idiosyncratic strains of Islam, or how Islam came to be the dominant religion in Indonesia.
To fill these gaps, many scholars turn to Malay and Indonesian legends surrounding Indonesian conversion to Islam. Ricklefs argues that although they're not reliable historical accounts of actual events, they're valuable in illuminating some of the events is through their shared insights into the nature of learning and magical powers, foreign origins and trade connections of the early teachers, and the conversion process that moved from the elite downwards. These also provide insight into how later generations of Indonesians view Islamisation. These sources include:
- Hikayat Raja-raja Pasai ("The Story of the kings of Pasai") - an Old Malay text that tells how Islam came to "Samudra" (Pasai, northern Sumatra) where the first Indonesian Islamic state was founded.
- Sejarah Melayu ("Malay History") - an Old Malay text, which like Hikayat Raja-raja Pasai tells the story of the conversion of Samudra, but also tells of the conversion of the King of Malacca.
- Babad Tanah Jawi ("History of the land of Java") - a generic name for a large number of manuscripts, in which the first Javanese conversions are attributed to the Wali Sanga ("nine saints").
- Sejarah Banten ("History of Banten") - A Javanese text containing stories of conversion.
Of the texts mentioned here, the Malay texts describe the conversion process as a significant watershed, signified by formal and tangible signs of conversion such as circumcision, the Confession of Faith, and the adoption of an Arabic name. On the other hand, while magical events still play a prominent role in the Javanese accounts of Islamisation, such turning points of conversion as in the Malay texts are otherwise not as evident. This suggests a more adsorptive process for the Javanese, that's consistent with the significantly larger syncretic element in contemporary Javanese Islam in comparison to the relatively orthodox Islam of Sumatra and Malaysia.
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