The Earliest Hajj of Southeast Asian Muslims An Evidence from the 12th-century Arabic Account "Kitāb Ṭabā’i al-Ḥayawān" (The Book of Animal Nature) of Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir al-Marwazī

Abstract

  Performing Hajj is one of the highest desires of every Muslims around the world. Pilgrims who made journey to the holy city of Makkah will have to face a difficult journey especially for Muslims from distant regions especially Southeast Asia as they had to face difficulty in their journey across the vast Indian Ocean. However, there is a remarkable record in Kitāb Ṭabā’i al-Ḥayawān (The Book of Nature of Animals) authored by Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir al-Marwazī, a 12^th-century Persian Muslim physician, who describes various nations living on the marginal countries and remote islands. He quoted that there was a group of “People from the East” who had recently converted to Islam came to perform the Hajj in 434 A.H. (1043 A.D.). The description of the geography and characteristics of the indigenous people in this record corresponds to the context of Southeast Asian archipelago in particular, the Northern region of Sumatra. This is possibly one of the earliest records of the Hajj pilgrimage by Southeast Asian Muslims appear in an Arabic document. Therefore, the objective of this research is to transliterate the passage from the original Arabic manuscript and translate it into Thai with the analyzing of linguistic, history and archeology approaches. The results indicate that the group of Muslim pilgrims came from the region known as “Lamuri” and “Fansur” in Northern Sumatra, where both were significant ports and has been contact with Arab-Persian Muslim merchants since the 8^th century A.D. and also reflecting the importance role of maritime trade plays in the process of Islamization in the Southeast Asia which has been recorded in Arabic documents preceded by European documents and Classical Malay literature that only began to mention the presence of an Islamic kingdom on Sumatra in the late 13^th century A.D.