Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī
Alexander Wain
Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī is the first identifiable Southeast Asian Islamic scholar to leave
behind a substantial and systematic body of work. Very little, however, is known about his
life; although his nisba suggests he came from Fansur (modern-day Barus, in north Sumatra),
little else is certain. As outlined below, however, he apparently travelled to the Middle East
(notably Makkah and Baghdad) and subscribed to the Wujūdī brand of Sufism – that is, to the
controversial Neo-Platonist brand of mystical philosophy which argues for a unity between
God and His creation.1 Besides this intellectual pre-occupation, however, most other aspects
of Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī’s biography remain unresolved – including when he lived.
Traditionally, scholars have dated Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī’s death to the reign of Aceh’s
Sultan ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Ri‘āyat Shāh (r.1588-1604). This conclusion is based on a number of
considerations. First, Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī appears to have dedicated a poem to this ruler,
suggesting that, at the very least, he survived into this period.2 Second, in 1602 Aceh was
visited by the British envoy, Sir James Lancaster. While there, Lancaster negotiated a treaty
with two Acehnese nobles, one of whom he described as a “wise and temperate” man who
held great favour with the king and knew Arabic fluently. 3 Simply identified as Aceh’s
“chiefe bishope,” it has been suggested that this was al-Fanṣūrī. Certainly, there is no other
known Acehnese religious figure of this stature from this period. 4 Subsequent to 1602,
however, or from the reign of Iskandar Muda (r.1607-1636) onwards, Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī
disappears from the scene; if mentioned from this point on, such as by Iskandar Muda’s
Shaykh al-Islam, Shams al-Dīn al-Sămaṭrānī (d.1630), it is only briefly and as a former
1
See Hamzah Fansuri, The Poems of Hamzah Fansuri, ed. and trans. G. W. J. Drewes and L. F. Brakel,
Bibliotheca Indonesica 26 (Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1986).
2
The relevant poem does not provide a name for the ruler, only calling him Shāh ‘Ālam. This, however, was a
title applied to Sultan ‘Alā al-Dīn Ri‘āyat Shāh, see Syed Muhammad Naguib al-Attas, Rānīrī and the
Wujūdiyyah of 17th Century Acheh, Monographs of the Malaysian Branch Royal Asiatic Society No. III
(Singapore: Malaysian Printers Ltd., 1966), 44.
3
James Lancaster, The Voyages of Sir James Lancaster to Brazil and the East Indies, 1591-1603, ed. William
Foster (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1940), 96. Another Englishman, John Davies, who visited the region
between 1598 and 1603, also refers to the “archbishop” of Aceh; favoured by the king, the people called him a
prophet and he was allowed to wear separate apparel from everyone else, see John Davies, The Voyages and
Works of John Davies, ed. Albert Hastings Markham (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1880), 151.
4
Azymardi Azra, The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia: Networks of Malay-Indonesian and
Middle Eastern ‘Ulama’ in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Honolulu: Asian Studies Association of
Australia, Allen & Unwin and University of Hawai’i Press, 2004), 53.
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presence in the kingdom.5 This strongly suggests that, although still alive in 1602, Ḥamza alFanṣūrī died before Iskandar Muda’s ascent to the throne.
Despite the strength of this argument, however, in 2000 an alternative hypothesis was
suggested. In that year, C. Guillot and L. Kalus published an article detailing a discovery
made in 1930’s Makkah.6 Throughout that decade, the then director of Cairo’s Museum of
Arab Art, Gaston Wiet, had attempted to compile a complete record of Makkah’s early
epigraphy. His ultimate aim was to publish the collected material as a book, entitled Corpus
d’Inscriptions de la Mecque. He died, however, before being able to complete his task and, as
a result, his research never appeared. Nevertheless, in the 1990’s Guillot and Kalus gained
access to his notes, amongst which they discovered a copy of an inscription made by Wiet’s
assistant, Hassan Mohammad el-Hawary. In 1934 el-Hawary had visited Makkah and, in the
city’s Bāb al-Ma‘lā cemetery, copied and photographed a gravestone dated the 9th Rajab
933AH/11th April 1527. Significantly, el-Hawary claimed this gravestone bore the name
Ḥamza bin ‘Abd Allāh al-Fanṣūrī.7 According to the accompanying epitaph, this Ḥamza bin
‘Abd Allāh al-Fanṣūrī was ‘al-Shaykh al-ṣāliḥ [i.e. the devoted Shaykh], a servant of God,
[and] a zāhid [i.e. ascetic]’ who bore the title Sayyidinā. All this clearly identifies him as a
high ranking Sufi. Moreover, the inscription also called Ḥamza bin ‘Abd Allāh al-Fanṣūrī alshaykh al-murābiṭ, which Guillot and Kalus interpreted to mean a ‘combattant de la
frontière,’8 thereby implying that Ḥamza bin ‘Abd Allāh al-Fanṣūrī came from the very edge
of the Islamic world. As a result, and despite their record of the inscription being Wiet’s copy
of el-Hawary’s own copy (the latter’s photograph had disappeared, and no rubbing was ever
made), Guillot and Kalus argued that this grave almost certainly belonged to Southeast Asia’s
Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī, thereby pushing his lifetime back to the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries.
Although Guillot and Kalus have attempted to bolster their argument with a range of
other factors, 9 ultimately they fail to convince. To begin with, Acehnese tradition locates
Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī’s grave at the southernmost tip of Aceh, in Kampung Oboh (in Simpang
Kiri, Rudeng).10 If this is correct, it would refute any possibility that Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī was
5
Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia, 53.
There is also an Indonesian version of their article, Claude Guillot and Ludvik Kalus, ‘Batu Nisan Hamzah
Fansuri,’ Jurnal Terjemahan Alam dan Tamadun Melayu 1 (2009): 27-49.
7
Claude Guillot and Ludvik Kalus, ‘La stèle funéraire de Hamzah Fansuri,’ Archipel 60 (2000): 5-6.
8
Ibid, 6.
9
Ibid, 14.
10
Vladimir I. Braginsky, ‘On the Copy of Hamzah Fansuri's Epitaph Published by C. Guillot & L. Kalus,’
Archipel 62 (2001): 28.
6
2
buried in Makkah. Furthermore, the lesser-known Sumatran scholar, Ḥasan al-Fanṣūrī, names
Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī as his teacher, who taught him dhikr (the Sufi’s ritualised remembrance of
God). Although Ḥasan’s precise dates are unknown, his writings also utilise the work of the
Gujarati Sufi, Muḥammad ibn Faḍlillāh al-Burhānpūrī, as expressed in the al-Tuḥfa almursala ilā rūḥ al-Nabī (1590). 11 Consequently, Ḥasan must post-date the late sixteenth
century. If, therefore, he was Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī’s pupil, it is unlikely that the latter died in
1527; if he did, Ḥasan must have lived into his nineties, only finalising his mystical
philosophy at the very end of his life. Although this is technically possible, it is unlikely: few
lived that long during this period. Rather, it is far more probable that Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī lived
closer to 1590, thereby allowing (the therefore much younger) Ḥasan to be both his pupil and,
a few years later, able to absorb influences from al-Burhānpūrī.
Perhaps most conclusively, however, although Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī does not explicitly
date his writings, he does claims he was writing during the “season of the white man [orang
putih].” Malay writers did not use the term orang putih until after the arrival of the Dutch and
the English in the late sixteenth century. Any earlier than this, and they would refer to
Europeans as either pertugan or peringgi (from the Arabic faranjī, meaning “Franks”).12 As
such, this strongly suggests that Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī was writing at the end of the
sixteenth/beginning of the seventeenth century, just as has traditionally been thought.13
Returning to Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī’s teachings, in essence they can be characterised as a
brand of Wujūdī-orientated Sufism with close links to the Qādirī ṭarīqa. They also draw from
both the Persian and Arabic literate traditions. The precise nature of Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī’s
11
Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia, 41.
Al-Attas, Rānīrī and the Wujūdiyyah, 9.
13
If this means Guillot’s and Kalus’s argument can be dismissed, how is “Ḥamza bin ‘Abd Allāh al-Fanṣūrī” to
be explained? In short, this name could be a misreading. As noted by Braginsky, the article by Guillot and Kalus
analyses this object’s inscription using only a copy of a copy, with no further research (such as someone going
to Makkah to find the grave) to determine whether el-Hawary and/or Wiet copied the inscription correctly,
Braginsky, ‘Hamzah Fansuri's Epitaph,’ 22-24. Indeed, even if little reason exists to suppose Wiet made a
copyist’s error, el-Hawary could easily have done so; he was, after all, working quickly in the midst of a busy
cemetery. Certainly, and as Braginsky also notes, many other nisba could, with the misplacement of a diacritical
mark or reproduction of a wrong letter, be mistaken for “al-Fanṣūrī”. In particular, during this period North
Africa’s premier Sufi centre was Manṣūra. This gives the nisba al-Manṣūrī which, when written in Arabic,
potentially needs just a single misplaced dot to be transformed into al-Fanṣūrī. Indeed, consideration of Manṣūra
in this context is significant because Ḥamza bin ‘Abd Allāh is also described as an al-shaykh al-murābiṭ. As
Guillot and Kalus note, murābiṭ at one time referred to a person who, while being dedicated to the defence of
Islam, lived on the edge of the Islamic world. By the sixteenth century, however, its usage had altered; it now
signified a Sufi saint. Although this would connect with Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī, murābiṭ has always been a primarily
North African term. By contrast, and as noted by C. Majul, it has never been widely used in the Nusantara,
where the term khanqah has traditionally been preferred, Cesar Adib Majul, Muslims in the Philippines (Quezon
City: The University of the Philippines Press, 1999), 82. The application of murābiṭ therefore suggests a North
African context. Consequently, and given the similarity between the nisbas al-Manṣūrī and al-Fanṣūrī, Ḥamza
bin ‘Abd Allāh may well have been from Manṣūra.
12
3
education, however, or the cauldron in which these ideas formed, is unknown. His poems, for
example, only mention a trip to the Middle East, where he visited both Baghdad and Makkah.
According one poem, it was in Baghdad that he became initiated into the Qādirī14 (although
no known Qādirī silsila preserves his name).15 In Makkah, on the other hand, and despite also
actively seeking God there, he did so unsuccessfully.16 Instead, he claims final enlightenment
came while he was visiting Shahr-i Nawi, the Ayuthian capital:
“The Ḥamza who was originally from Fansuri,
Found God [mendapat Wujud] in the land of Shahrnawi.”17
Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī therefore completed his religious training in Southeast Asia, in
what is now Thailand. Certainly, the Portuguese traveller, Fernão Mendes Pinto (d.1583),
who travelled to Ayuthia in 1554, claims many Turks and Indian Muslims resided in Ayuthia
during this period.18 Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī’s claim is therefore plausible; as noted by G. Drewes,
Wujūdī Sufism was very popular amongst Indian Muslims during this period.19
To elaborate more fully on the nature of Wujūdī Sufism, however, this brand of
mysticism is largely derived from the thought of medieval Sufi, Ibn ‘Arabī (d.1240). He
believed that God’s creation was an extension of His own Essence, as something which had
grown out of Him (or emanated from Him) like a seed, in a series of stages. By framing the
issue like this, however, Ibn ‘Arabī and his followers have traditionally been seen as
promoters of a pantheistic worldview – that is, of a worldview in which God and His creation
are one. For many Muslim scholars, this is controversial.20 Nonetheless, and while drawing
upon both Ibn ‘Arabī and other noted Wujūdī thinkers, like the Baghdadī mystic ‘Abd alKarīm al-Jīlī (d.1428) and ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d.1492), Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī fully subscribed
to the Wujūdī philosophy, arguing that creation emerged from the Absolute Reality of God in
a five-stage emanation.21 As a result, however, and beginning with another early Southeast
Asian scholar, Nūr al-Dīn al-Rānīrī (active in Aceh between 1637 and 1644), there have been
14
Fansuri, Poems, poem XVI.
Martin van Bruinessen, ‘Origins and Development of the Sufi Orders (tarekat) in Southeast Asia,’ Studia
Islamika 1, no. 1 (1994): 6.
16
Fansuri, Poems, poem XXI.
17
Ibid, 5.
18
Fernão Mendes Pinto, The Travels of Mendes Pinto, ed. and trans. Rebecca D. Catz (Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press, 1989), 307.
19
Fansuri, Poems, 5.
20
Julian Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism (London: Tauris Parke, 2000), 83.
21
See Fansuri, Poems.
15
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long periods during which Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī’s teachings have been spurned by the majority
of Southeast Asian scholars. Preferring instead to interpret God as transcendent (or
fundamentally different from His creation), these other scholars have largely rejected both
Wujūdī teachings and Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī.
This does not mean, however, that Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī has been regionally
insignificant. On the contrary, despite sometimes falling out of favour, many subsequent
Southeast Asian scholars took their inspiration directly from him. The aforementioned Shams
al-Dīn al-Sămaṭrānī, for example, described Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī as his teacher; despite
modifying his position with al-Burhānpūrī’s work, Shams al-Dīn al-Sămaṭrānī essentially
subscribed to the same brand of Wujūdī-orientated mysticism. 22 More recently, the postcolonial period has seen a re-blossoming of interest in Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī’s work, including its
republication for a modern audience.
More generally, however, it is Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī’s role as initiator of greater scholarly
connectivity between Southeast Asia, India and the Arab world where his significance truly
lies. Prior to this, few Southeast Asian religious texts showed any awareness of the
intellectual trends circulating in these other parts of the Islamic world. Southeast Asia’s
earliest Islamic texts (from historical chronicles like the Hikayat Raja Pasai to early Javanese
religious texts like the Kitab Bonang)23 demonstrated little specific knowledge of the Islamic
doctrines and/or legal questions circulating in those regions. Rather, these earliest texts
evidenced heavy Persian influence (usually mediated through Central Asia). Although this
did not end with Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī, 24 it did begin to change with him; from his lifetime
onwards, Southeast Asian scholars (beginning with al-Rānīrī, ‘Abd al-Ra’ūf al-Singkīlī,
d.1693, and Muḥammad Yūsuf al-Maqassārī, b.1627) began to spend significant amounts of
time studying in the Middle East and/or India, familiarising themselves with the depth of
scholarship present in those regions.25 This trend, which has continued right up to the present,
22
Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia, 42.
See Russell Jones, ed., Hikayat Raja Pasai (Kuala Lumpur: Yayasan Karyawan dan Penerbit Fajar Bakti,
1999) and G. W. J. Drewes, ed. and trans., Kitab Bonang (The Admonitions of Seh Bari), Bibliotheca Indonesica
4 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969).
24
On the contrary, his work shows some considerable signs of Persian influence: not only is his poetry an
impersonation of Persian ghazal poetry, but Persian quotations appear throughout his work. In fact, overall
Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī demonstrates a far profounder knowledge of Persian literature than of Arabic; the vast
majority of his Arabic quotations are Qur‘anic, with some from the ḥadīth, while his Persian quotations come
from a very diverse range of sources, including the Sufis al-Bistāmī (d. 874), Junayd al-Baghdādī (d. 910) and
al-Ḥallāj (d. 922), see al-Attas, Rānīrī and the Wujūdiyyah, 45-6. He even accessed al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm aldīn through its Persian abridgement, Kimiya-i sa’adat, see Fansuri, Poems, 14. In all probability, this tendency
towards Persian literature reflects the continuation of earlier Southeast Asian trends, thereby providing further
evidence that Ḥamza al-Fanṣūrī completed his religious training in Southeast Asia rather than the Middle East.
25
Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia, 57, 71, 87-8.
23
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would later reshape Southeast Asia’s brand of Islam. It would, for example, introduce
Southeast Asia to the ṭarīqa that would later dominated its mystical tradition – in particular,
the Makkan-based Shaṭṭārī and Indian-based Naqshbandī orders. 26 More importantly,
however, it would also help facilitate an exponential rise in Ḥaḍramī influence throughout the
region. Beginning with al-Rānīrī, whose father was probably a Ḥaḍramī from the al-Ḥāmid
branch of the banī Zuhra (itself a branch of the Quraysh),27 Ḥaḍramī Arabs would come to
occupy prominent religious positions throughout Southeast Asia. By the eighteenth century,
they were also marrying into local ruling elites (even becoming Sultans on occasion).28 From
these places of influence, the Hadramis were ultimately able to project their Shāfi‘ī-based
version of Islam right across Southeast Asia. Perhaps largely because of this, the region still
remains overwhelmingly Shāfi‘ī today.29
Further Reading
Alatas, Syed Farid. ‘Hadhramaut and the Hadhrami Diaspora: Problems in Theoretical History.’ In Hadhrami
Traders, Scholars and Statesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1750s-1960s, edited by Ulrike Freitag and William G.
Clarence-Smith, 19-34. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997.
Al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naguib. Rānīrī and the Wujūdiyyah of 17th Century Acheh, Monographs of the
Malaysian Branch Royal Asiatic Society No. III. Singapore: Malaysian Printers Ltd., 1966.
Azra, Azymardi. The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia: Networks of Malay-Indonesian and
Middle Eastern ‘Ulama’ in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Honolulu: Asian Studies Association of
Australia, Allen & Unwin and University of Hawai’i Press, 2004.
Baldick, Julian. Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism. London: Tauris Parke, 2000.
Braginsky, Vladimir I. ‘On the Copy of Hamzah Fansuri’s Epitaph Published by C. Guillot and L. Kalus.’
Archipel 62 (2001): 21-33.
Bruinessen, Martin van. ‘Origins and Development of the Sufi Orders (tarekat) in Southeast Asia.’ Studia
Islamika 1, no. 1 (1994): 1-23.
Davies, John. The Voyages and Works of John Davies. Edited by Albert Hastings Markham. London: The
Hakluyt Society, 1880.
Drewes, G. W. J., ed. and trans. Kitab Bonang (The Admonitions of Seh Bari), Bibliotheca Indonesica 4. The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969.
Engseng Ho. The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean. Berkley, CA: University
of California Press, 2006.
26
Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia, 57; 71; 87-8.
Ibid, 54.
28
Engseng Ho, The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean (Berkley, CA:
University of California Press, 2006), 98, 104.
29
Syed Farid Alatas, ‘Hadhramaut and the Hadhrami Diaspora: Problems in Theoretical History,’ in Hadhrami
Traders, Scholars and Statesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1750s-1960s, ed. Ulrike Freitag and William G.
Clarence-Smith (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 25.
27
6
Fansuri, Hamzah. The Poems of Hamzah Fansuri, Bibliotheca Indonesia 26. Edited and translated by G. W. J.
Drewes and L. F. Brakel. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1986.
Guillot, Claude, and Ludvik Kalus. ‘Batu Nisan Hamzah Fansuri.’ Jurnal Terjemahan Alam dan Tamadun
Melayu 1 (2009): 27-49.
-----------------------------------------. ‘La stèle funéraire de Hamzah Fansuri.’ Archipel 60 (2000): 3-24.
Jones, Russell, ed. Hikayat Raja Pasai. Kuala Lumpur: Yayasan Karyawan dan Penerbit Fajar Bakti, 1999.
Lancaster, James. The Voyages of Sir James Lancaster to Brazil and the East Indies, 1591-1603. Edited by
William Foster. London: The Hakluyt Society, 1940.
Majul, Cesar Adib. Muslims in the Philippines. Quezon City: The University of the Philippines Press, 1999.
Pinto, Fernão Mendes. The Travels of Mendes Pinto. Edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1989.
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