aligning the sunna and the jamāʿa

472 Pages·2015·11.14 MB·English

ALIGNING THE SUNNA AND THE JAMĀʿA:
RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY AND ISLAMIC SOCIAL
FORMATION IN CONTEMPORARY CENTRAL JAVA,
INDONESIA
by
Ismail Fajrie Alatas
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Anthropology and History)
in the University of Michigan
2016
Doctoral Committee:
Professor Webb Keane, Chair
Assistant Professor Hussein Anwar Fancy
Professor Nancy K. Florida
Professor Engseng Ho, Duke University
Professor Alexander D. Knysh
DEDICATION
This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, who actively discouraged me from socializing with
my fellow Indonesian Ḥaḍramīs whilst I was growing up, thereby sparking my subsequent
interest to learn more about them.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This dissertation is the result of my interaction with people, ideas and places in the Ḥaḍramawt
valley of Yemen and Indonesia over the past decade. I am indebted to several people and
institutions without whose help and guidance this work would not have been completed. In the
Ḥaḍramawt I have been assisted by friends and teachers who helped me to find textual materials
and answered my unending questions, in particular, Zayd bin Yaḥyā, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Bilfaqīḥ,
Muḥammad al-Junayd, Ḥusayn al-Hādi, Manṣab ʿAlī al-Ḥabashī, and Manṣab ʿAbdallāh al-
ʿAṭṭās. In Pekalongan, many have made my fieldwork not only possible, but also enjoyable.
Special thanks are due to Habib Luthfi bin Yahya and Habib Abdullah Bagir — both of whom
have generously allowed me to interact with them on a regular basis for two years — and their
immediate and extended families, who generously extended their hospitality to me. I shall
forever recognize them as my teachers. Others have provided valuable assistance and
information, as well as the comfort of their friendship, particularly Ahmad Tsauri, Abdurahman
Malik, Abdul Kadir al-Jufri, Syukron Ma’mun, Sunaryo Ahmad, Abdurahman Shahab, Ahmad
Assagaf, Ahmad al-Habsyi, Tahir bin Yahya, Mahdi Alatas, Dr. Hamdani Mu’in, Kyai Masroni,
Kyai Zakaria, Uripah Bawon, Anto, Okky, and Hasan Ramadi. In Jakarta, I benefitted from
friends and colleagues who were always excited to discuss some ideas from my fieldwork with
me: Richard Oh, Tony Rudyansyah, Tommy F. Awuy, Haidar Bagir, Chaider Bamuallim, Faisal
Kamandobat, Salim Barakwan, and Sarah Monica. I am also grateful to Abdurahman Basurrah of
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the Rabithah Alawiyyah for checking some genealogical records in the voluminous Bā ʿAlawī
genealogical tomes (Buku Induk Silsilah).
Friends, colleagues, and teachers have read and commented on various iterations of the
chapters that make up this dissertation and I have benefited from discussions with them: Stuart
Strange, Saul Allen, Daniel Birchok, Geoff Hughes, Ali Hussein, Charley Sullivan, Saquib
Usman, Emma Nolan-Thomas, Abdul Karim al-Amiri, Eric Rupley, Martin Slama, Jim
Hoesterey, Michael Feener, Anne Blackburn, Paul Johnson, James Meador, Tomoko
Masuzawa, Merle Ricklefs, Michael Bonner, Fahad Bishara, Johan Matthews, Dadi Darmadi,
Aryo Danusiri, Azyumardi Azra, Mun’im Sirriy, Jajang Jahroni, Nico Kaptein, Beth Berkowitz,
Kristina Wirtz, and Michael Lempert. My fieldwork was made possible by the financial
support provided by the International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) from the Social
Science Research Council (SSRC) and the Rackham International Research Awards (RIRA)
from the Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan. The writing of this dissertation
was supported by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.
It goes without saying that I am heavily indebted to and greatly benefited from the help,
guidance, advice, critiques, and encouragement of Webb Keane, to whom fell the unenviable
burden of supervising my work, as well as Nancy Florida, Alexander Knysh, Engseng Ho, and
Hussein Fancy. They personify scholarly excellence and as such have been great inspirations
for me. To them, I offer my perpetual gratitude, respect, and appreciation. Finally I owe a debt
of gratitude to my wife Christina Zafeiridou, who continues to maintain her faith in this project
through good times and bad. She has read each page of this dissertation more than once,
providing me with scathing critiques and valuable suggestions. She remains my best friend.
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Although this dissertation was completed with the help of these wonderful individuals, I myself
am responsible for all of its shortcomings. Wallāhu aʿlam.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
List of Figures x
List of Appendices xii
List of Abbreviations xiii
Glossary xv
Notes on Transliteration and Dates xxi
Introduction 1
Chapter I Saints and Sultans 33
The Murshid and the Ṭarīqa 36
The Saint and the Ḥawṭa 40
The Sultan and the Kraton 55
Conclusion 72
Chapter II Instructing Shaykhs 75

The Complete Call 79
The Axial Saint of Guidance 92
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In the Land below the Winds 96
Crossroads and Religious Marketplace 103
The Pekalongan Affair 112
Conclusion 115
Chapter III Shimmering Intersections 118
Sainthood, Stone Wall, Japanese Shōji Screen 122
Prophetic Inheritors 125

Union and Intersection 130
To Act or to be Acted Upon 139
Embracement 149

Conclusion 158
Chapter IV The Manṣabate of Pekalongan 161
Reviving the Sunna 168

A Ḥaḍramī Jamāʿa 171

Manṣabs without Ḥawṭas 180
The Manṣabate of Pekalongan 183

The Jamʿiyya and a Divided Jamāʿa 200
The Manṣabate at a Crossroads 205

Conclusion 209
Entr’acte 212
Chapter V Divergent Mobility, Adoptive Genealogy 221
From Nyoyontaan to Benda Kerep 225
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Divergent Mobility 230
Genealogical Adoption 240
Return to Nyoyontaan 252

Old Genealogy, New Mobility 258
Conclusion 262
Chapter VI Ordering a Jamāʿa 264
Kliwonan 268
Ṭarīqa Shādhilīya-ʿAlawiyya 281
In the House of a Murshid 287
Heaven in Expensive 295
Ṣalawāt is my ṭarīqa, Ṣalawāt is my murshid 298
Conclusion 303
Chapter VII Santris, Soldiers, and the State 307
The Military Murshid 314
Expansion to the Hinterlands 322
Articulatory Practices in the Country and the City 329
The City 330

The Regency 344
Conclusion 353
Chapter VIII Composing Genealogy 356
Discursive/Textual Composition of Genealogy 362
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Genealogical Talk 365
Genealogical Aperture 369

An Old Genealogy for a New Ritual 376
Spatial Composition of Genealogy 381

Old Tombs, New Genealogies 387
Ritual Composition of Genealogy 395

Rātib al-Kubrā (The Great Litany) 398
Return to the Kraton 402
Conclusion 404
Conclusion 406
Appendices 413

Bibliography 427

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figures
2.1 A page from a manuscript of Ghayat al-qaṣd wa al-murād 94
2.2. The front page of a manuscript of al-Minḥat al-ʿazīz al-karīm 95
3.1 The union of two sets 131
3.2 The intersection of two sets 132
4.1 The Mausoleum of Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAṭṭās 162
4.2 The Interior of the Mausoleum 163
4.3 A 1434/2013 calendar of Bā ʿAlawī ḥawls 166
4.4 A 1434/2013 calendar of Bā ʿAlawī ḥawls 167
4.5 Ḥaḍramī style minarets 177
4.6 Geographical distribution of condolence letters for ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAṭṭās 179
4.7 Distribution of condolence letters based on lineage 179
4.8 ʿAlī and his son Aḥmad, the first and second manṣab of Pekalongan 184
4.9 Abdullah Bagir, the third and current manṣab of Pekalongan 185
4.10 The current manṣab of Pekalongan leading the recitation of the mawlid 187
4.11 The exterior of Masjid al-Rawḍa 189
4.12 The interior of Masjid al-Rawḍa 190
4.13 The current manṣab of Pekalongan leading the Bukhārī recitation 198
E.1 The gate to the mausoleum complex of Mbah Priok, Jakarta 213
E.2 A reproduction of the ١٠٣٠ Seal 214
E.3 The signboard of the al-Hawi orphanage in Jakarta bearing the ١٠٣٠ seal 215
E.4 Commodified forms of the ١٠٣٠ seal 216
E.5 A seal bearing the names of the Prophet, Fāṭima and the twelve Imams 218
E.6 The Bin Yaḥyā intercessory seal 219
5.1 al-Tarqīb al-uṣūl li tashīl al-wuṣūl 247
5.2 al-Miftāḥ al-maqāṣid li ahl al-tawḥīd 248
5.3 The chamber of ritual seclusion in Kedungparuk, Central Java 250
6.1 Kanzus Shalawat, Pekalongan 269
6.2 Kliwonan at the Kanzus Shalawat 270
6.3 Kliwonan at the Kanzus Shalawat 271
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