Archipel

Islamising Java : The Long Shadow of Sultan Agung

M.C. Ricklefs

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Ricklefs M.C. Islamising Java : The Long Shadow of Sultan Agung. In: Archipel, volume 56, 1998. L'horizon nousantarien.
Mélanges en hommage à Denys Lombard (Volume I) pp. 469-482;

doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/arch.1998.3503

https://www.persee.fr/doc/arch_0044-8613_1998_num_56_1_3503

Fichier pdf généré le 21/04/2018

Merle C. RICKLEFS

Islamising Java :

The Long Shadow of Sultan Agung

There has been a scholarly consensus which depicts Javanese society as

consisting of two cultural categories or "variants", one more Javanist (or
abangan) the other more Islamic (or putihan, santri). This consensus rests
upon a long tradition of Dutch scholarship but is most famously expressed in
the work of Clifford Geertz. 0) Yet contemporary observers are aware of the
rapid pace of Islamisation in Java in recent years and would now find it
difficult to say, as Geertz did forty years ago, that,

It is very hard,
Moslem" .... The
given
otherness,
his tradition
awfulness,
and his
andsocial
majesty
structure,
of God,forthe
a Javanese
intense moralism,
to be a "real
the
rigorous concern with doctrine and the intolerant exclusivism which are so much a part of
Islam are very foreign to the traditional outlook of the Javanese. (2)

Of the Islamised courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta - the very definers

of what the Javanist variant should be - Geertz wrote, " it is possible, if one
ignores the furniture and the electric lights, to imagine one is in a pre-Dutch
Hindu-Buddhist court". (3)

1. Clifford Geertz, The religion of Java (London : The Free Press of Glencoe, Collins-Macmillan Ltd.,
1964). The book was first published in 1960.
2. Ibid., p. 160.
3. Ibid., p. 237.

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470 Merle C. Ricklefs

All scholars have been influenced by this paradigm. And it does not seem
to have been fundamentally unsound when applied to Java from the later
nineteenth century to around the middle of the twentieth. But I was long
intrigued by the absence of any evidence whatsoever suggesting such a
dichotomy in Javanese history in the eighteenth century or earlier. Similarly,
I was unsure what to make of the Javanese tradition which saw Sultan
Agung (r. 1613-46) as a pious Muslim ruler. Evidence which came to light
during research on the reign of Pakubuwana II (r. 1726-49) (4) has now
confirmed (1) that the santri-abangan distinction was historically contingent
rather than primordial, (2) that the kratons of Java were at times themselves
leading agents of Islamisation and (3) that Sultan Agung's reputation as a
reconciler of courtly culture and Islamic piety can be supported with
historical evidence.
It is clear that from the early stages of Islamisation in Java - the first
valid historical evidence is from the fourteenth century (5) - Suftsm has been
a central element. No doubt the ecumenical spirit of Islamic mysticism
facilitated its spread in Java. A degree of amalgamation of Islamic concepts
with older ideas in Java is suggested by the presence in two sixteenth-
century Islamic MSS of pre-Islamic terms for such core concepts as God
(Pangeran), prayer (sëmbahyang), asceticism (tapa), soul (suksma) and
heaven (swarga). (6) By contrast, another MS of uncertain antiquity and
provenance, but certainly from the early stages of Islamic conversion in
some place and at some time in Java, draws clear boundaries of identity
between adherents of Islam and adherents of agama Jawa (Javanese
religion). (7) By the end of the sixteenth century, it therefore seems, there
were some among literate Javanese who could conceive of a reconciliation
of Javanese civilization and Islam, but others who appear to have disputed
this.
By this time, the political centre of gravity was shifting from the north
coast (pasisir) to the interior of Central Java. Javanese traditions say that the
apostle of Islam in the interior of Central Java was Sunan Bayat, whose

4. M.C. Ricklefs, The seen and unseen worlds in Java, 1726-1749 : History, literature and Islam in the
court of Pakubuwana II (Honolulu : Asian Studies Association of Australia in Association with Allen &
Unwin and University of Hawaii Press, 1998).
5. See M.C. Ricklefs, A history of modern Indonesia since c. 1300 (2nd ed. ; Basingstoke & London :
Macmillan, 1993), p. 4 et seqq.
6. G.W.J. Drewes (ed. & transi.), The admonitions of Seh Bari (Bibliotheca Indonesica 4 ; The Hague :
Martinus Nijhoff, 1969) ; idem (ed. & transi.), Een Javaanse primbon uit de zestiende eeuw (Leiden : E.J.
Brill, 1954).
7. Idem (ed. & transi.), An early Javanese code of Muslim ethics (Bibliotheca Indonesica 18 ; The Hague :
Martinus Nijhoff, 1978).

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 Islamising Java : The Long Shadow of Sultan Agung 47 1

grave at Tëmbayat will play a central role in the story below. (g) By the
closing years of the sixteenth century, the dynasty of Mataram was
establishing its hegemony over this area and was challenging other power
centres on the pasisir and in East Java. (9)
When Sultan Agung came to the throne in 1613, he continued his
predecessors' campaigns. These battles culminated in the capitulation of
Surabaya, the most powerful pasisir kingdom, in 1625. Agung then stood as
the greatest warrior king and the most powerful monarch in Java since the
fourteenth century. 00)
The contemporary evidence for Sultan Agung's Islamic piety is thin. In
1622 the Dutch East India Company (VOC) emissary Hendrick de Haan
reported that Agung attended the mosque on Fridays and that his four most
senior lords were obliged to accompany him. 01) Two years later, Jan Vos
wrote that Agung wore a white kuluk, a sort of fez which may have been a
mark of piety in Java, and that he was surrounded by men with long beards.
Given the rarity of beards among Javanese, the historian of the reign, H. J. de
Graaf, concluded that these gentlemen were probably Arabs. 02) The Dutch
ambassador Rijklof van Goens visited Mataram six years after Agung's
death and reported that he had "died as a holy man". (13)
Later Javanese sources about Agung's life also included prominent
features of a pre-Islamic character. Most notably, he is said to have been the
lover of the Goddess of the Southern Ocean, Ratu Kidul. This is a local
divinity of distinctly non-Islamic origin, said to have been a princess whose
status as queen of the spirits is a curse laid upon her by her father when she
refused to marry. (14) The chronicle (babad) account of Agung's encounter

8. See D.A. Rinkes, "De heiligen van Java, IV : Ki Pandan Arang te Tembajat", TBG vol. 53 (191 1), pp.
435-581 ; idem, Nine saints of Java (trans. H.M. Froger; intro. G.W.J. Drewes; ed. Alijah Gordon;
[Kuala Lumpur : Malaysian Sociological Resarch Institute 1996]), pp. 69-122.
9. For a brief account of early Mataram, see Ricklefs, History, pp. 40-3.
10. See ibid., pp. 43-4. For a full study of the reign see H.J. de Graaf, De regering van Sultan Agung,
vorst van Mataram, 1613-1645 [sic] en die van zijn voorganger Panembahan Séda-ing-Krapjak, 1601-
1613 (VKI vol. 23 ; 's-Gravenhage : Martinus Nijhoff, 1958).
11. H. de Haan, journal 24 June - Sept. 1622, in J.K.J. de Jonge & M.L. van Deventer (eds.), De opkomst
van het Nederlandsch gezag in Oost-Indië : Verzameling van onuitgegeven stukken uit net oud-koloniaal
archief (16 vols. ; 's-Gravenhage : Martinus Nijhoff, 1862-1909), vol. IV, pp. 303, 312.
12. De Graaf, Sultan Agung, pp. 100, 103. See the original report in de Jonge & van Deventer, Opkomst,
vol. V, pp. 49-50. It was de Jonge who first suggested that these men may have been Arab religious
advisers.
13. H.J. de Graaf (éd.), De vijf gezantschapsreizen van Rijklof van Goens naar het hof van Mataram,
1648-1654 ('s-Gravenhage : Martinus Nijhoff, 1956).
14. See Ricklefs, Seen and unseen worlds, pp. 8-13.

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472 Merle C. Ricklefs

with Ratu Kidul late in his life is both poignant and revealing of the religious
life ascribed to the king by Javanese chronicles. Two years before his death,
i.e. c. 1644, Agung is said to have two kratons (courts), one being his
physical court at Karta and the other the kraton of Ratu Kidul beneath the
Southern Ocean. He goes to visit her and she tells him that he has only two
years to live. She implores him to abandon his earthly kingdom in order to
join her. She tearfully begs him to use his powers as an incomparable king to
exorcise the curse which made her Goddess of the Southern Ocean for, she
tells him, she is truly of human origin. But Agung refuses to leave Mataram
and refuses to intervene in the will of God. "Alas, my love", he tells her,
"this cannot be, for it is the wish of God the Creator of the World. If you
truly are of human origin, on the Day of Judgement you will come to your
end with me. "(15)
Thus, Sultan Agung is depicted at the same time as the lover of the
distinctly non-Islamic Javanese deity Ratu Kidul, as a monarch with
supernatural powers, and as a pious Muslim who would not seek to interfere
in the will of God. The Goddess's role did not, however, attenuate Sultan
Agung's religious reputation. It is Agung's status as both the greatest of
Mataram's kings - as, indeed, the monarch who set the standard thereafter of
what Javanese kings should be - and a pious follower of Islam which makes
him the quintessential reconciler of Javanese and Islamic identities in royal
traditions.
The crucial episodes in making Islam central to Agung's vision of
kingship seem to have occurred in the 1630s. In that period, Agung's
authority was under threat. In the wake of his conquests of other Javanese
states he had turned his attention to the headquarters of the VOC at Batavia
(Jakarta), which the Europeans had conquered in 1619. Agung's armies
besieged Batavia twice, in 1628 and 1629, and twice failed. In the wake of
these demonstrations that Agung was, after all, neither invincible nor
invariably protected by supernatural forces, rebellions broke out at several
places. The most dangerous uprising appears to have been that of a group of
twenty-seven Central Javanese villages in 1630, led by religious figures and

15. This is based on the oldest available MS version, that in IOL Jav. 36(A), ff. 290r.-293v. This MS is
undated but is evidently from the same hand and contemporaneous with IOL Jav. 36(B), which is dated
Nov. 1738 and is published in M.C. Ricklefs (ed. & transi.), Modern Javanese historical tradition : A
study of an original Kartasura chronicle and related materials (London : School of Oriental and African
Studies, 1978). Similar accounts are in BK ff. 278r.-283v. (Published in I.W. Pantja Sunjata, Ignatius
Supriyanto & J.J. Ras [eds.], Babad Kraton [2 vols. ; Jakarta : Penerbit Djambatan, 1992], vol. I, pp. 311-
18) ; BTJ(BP) vol. X, pp. 26-36.

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 Islamising Java : The Long Shadow of Sultan Agung 473

centred upon the holy site of Tembayat Agung put this rebellion down
forcefully. (16) It appears, however, that physically crushing the rebellion was
not enough.
In the wake of the 1630 rebellion, evidently Agung had to do more to
control, to internalise and to personify Islam and its supernatural powers, so
that it might become a pillar of his reign rather than a threat to it. Thus
occurred the central spiritual episode in Agung's reign, his pilgrimage to the
holy grave of Sunan Bayat.
In 1633 Sultan Agung conducted his pilgrimage to Tëmbayat. This is
reflected in contemporary VOC accounts O7) and is confirmed by a gateway
which Agung had erected there, and which still stands. On that gateway is
inscribed the chronogram wisaa anata wisik ing ratu ("be able to put in
order the secret instruction of the king"), giving the Javanese year 1555
(which began in about March 1633). On the opposite side of the gateway are
inscribed the words and numerals 7555 masa 4, confirming the year 1555
and adding the fourth quasi-solar month (mangsa, masa), equivalent at that
time to about October-November. So this gateway seems to have been
constructed to commemorate the royal visit c. October-November 1633. <18)
According to Javanese legends, the spirit of Sunan Bayat met with Sultan
Agung at the grave. The spirit said to Agung,
O Sultan, receive
the grace of God who created the world.
Immediately His Highness
was taught secret mystical science,
being a king with a heart of outstanding courage
and far-reaching in his thought.
After he had mastered all of this,
immediately he was able to employ
the secret essence
of the hidden mystical science. (")

In the same year, Sultan Agung changed the Javanese calendar. He

abandoned the luni-solar Saka year, of Indian origin, for an Islamic lunar
year. Before this time, Javanese Muslims must have used the Islamic
calendar for fixing religious events, but remarkably the court seems still to
have used the Indian Saka era. Agung turned £ 1555 (AD 1633-4) into a

16. De Graaf, Sultan Agung, pp. 144-63, 193-204. See also Ricklefs, Modern Javanese historical
tradition, pp. 36-7.
17. De Graaf, Sultan Agung, p. 201.
18. Ricklefs, Seen and unseen worlds, pp. 37-9.
19. Rinkes/'Heiligen IV", pp. 492-3, 541 ; English ed. p. 109.

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474 Merle C. Ricklefs

hybrid year, beginning as a Saka year in about March 1633, but changing to
an Islamic lunar year before ending in June 1634. Rather than adopting the
Arabic Anno Hijrae enumeration of years from the Prophet's flight from
Mecca to Medina in AD 622, however, Agung's new calendrical system
continued the numerical sequence of the Saka calendar, creating the unique
Anno Javanico. (2°)
The year AJ 1555 (AD 1633-4) also evidently saw a crucial reconciliation
with the defeated princely house of Surabaya, which was related to the line
of one of the most senior of Java's semi-legendary apostles of Islam, Sunan
Ngampel-Dënta. The senior surviving prince of Surabaya, Pangeran Pëkik,
was brought to Mataram and married to a sister of Sultan Agung and his own
daughter was given in marriage to Agung's son the Crown prince. The most
reliable chronicle account of this period dates these events in AJ 1555 (AD
1633-4). (21)
Newly studied literary sources indicate that further important acts took
place in connection with Agung's pilgrimage to Tëmbayat in 1633. This
evidence is somewhat problematic, for it consists of works the oldest
surviving versions of which were written in the eighteenth century. Their
links to the events of Agung's reign are nevertheless strong and of great
significance.
In September 1729 (in the Javanese year AJ 1654, as the centennial year
of Agung's pilgrimage approached), Ratu Pakubuwana (d. 1732), the pious
grandmother of the then-king Pakubuwana II (r. 1726-49), ordered her
scribes to write out a text called Carita Sultan hkandar. This is a highly
elaborated Javanese version of the story of Alexander the great, based upon
the traditions concerning Dhu'l-Qarnayn in the Qur'ân (18:82-98). The 1729
version is presented as a work of supernatural potency. (22>
For the discussion here, the most significant aspect of the 1729 hkandar
MS is its account of how it originally came into being a century before :
[This story] originated in the Malay language
but it has been translated into Javanese.
Indeed, the one who first composed it
was a student of religion beloved of a learned master.
Indeed it was the Pangeran [Pëkik] who ordered it
in Surabaya then.

20. De Graaf, Sultan Agung, p. 204 ; Ricklefs, Modern Javanese historical tradition, pp. 232-3.
21. Ricklefs, Tradition, pp. 38-9. De Graaf, Sultan Agung, pp. 209-12, using less reliable sources, dates
these events somewhat differently.
22. Ricklefs, Seen and unseen worlds, pp. 40-6.

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 Islamising Java : The Long Shadow of Sultan Agung 475

In the time of Sultan [Agung]

of Mataram was when it began to be handed down.

Then the one who was writing it died.

A draft was prepared on palm leaves,
one-half was already drafted.
Then it was ordered that this should be passed down
in Javanese writing.
The one who was ordered to hand it down
by the Pangeran of Surabaya
indeed was a preacher from Giri.
After it was written,
about ten nights later,
it was taken to Mataram.
It was fitting for it to be a possession of the king
because if was new (for there to be a version)
from Java. (23)

On the basis of this passage, it is reasonable to suppose that the newly

minted Javanese version was taken to Mataram from Surabaya by Pëkik in
1633. A century thereafter, the work was rewritten as a part of an Islamising
campaign within the kraton at the behest of Ratu Pakubuwana ; one may
suspect that the 1633 version, too, fitted within an Islamising context.
A second work of Islamic inspiration, one of the most popular of all in
Java, was apparently also done while Agung was at Tëmbayat, at least in the
longer courtly version of the work. This is Sërat Yusuf, based on the Quranic
story of Joseph in Egypt (Qur'ân 12), which in the Javanese version
becomes a lengthy tale of beauty and piety. In more recent times, ritual
recitations of Yusuf have been used in villages upon rites of passage, in
fulfilment of vows and in annual village cleansing ceremonies, confirming
that Yusuf 'has retained sacral power down to contemporary times. (24)
In 1981 the Indonesian Department of Education and Culture published a
transcription and Indonesian translation of a Yusuf text which claims to
derive from the time and place of Agung's pilgrimage to Tëmbayat.
Unfortunately, efforts in recent years to relocate the original MS upon which
the 1981 edition was based have failed and the published version is marred
by errors. But the closing lines of this Yusuf version are clear enough :

23. Ibid., pp. 46-7.

24. For a detailed study of this work, see Bernard Arps, Tembang in two traditions : Performance and
interpretation of Javanese literature (London : School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, 1992).

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476 Merle C. Ricklefs

When this work was written

it was (in the month) Jumadilawal,
upon a Saturday.
In Karang town was it completed,
when the units [of the year-numeral] were five,
and the tens were five then.
Regard the chronogram :
" The weapon of evil rolled over
the earth" [AJ 1555] then. (25)

This date fell within the month of November 1633, corresponding to the
period commemorated on Agung's gateway at Tëmbayat, and Karang is the
name of a village adjacent to Tëmbayat. (26) So Yusuf seems to have been
produced in a courtly version in connection with the royal pilgrimage of
1633.
The same is true of a third work, Kitab Usulbiyah. At the end of the
published transcription of the Yusuf of 1633, discussed immediately above,
one finds a canto which is not the final part of Yusuf at all but rather the
opening of Usulbiyah. The original (no longer traceable) manuscript of 1633
upon which the transcription rests must therefore have included Usulbiyah as
well, although what survived in that manuscript was only a fragment which
breaks off after twenty-three stanzas.
The Usulbiyah fragment found at the end of the 1633 text makes clear
that this is a work of great piety, merit and power :
Be it know by all, indeed,
who read or who write [this book],
may they be far removed from evil doings.
And moreover its blessing power (sawab)
is as if one were to go on the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca),
the same as giving food
to a wretched person,
the same as a person reciting the Qur'Sn.
Its blessing power is the same as a person fighting Holy War :
his body will not be destroyed
and he will be admitted to Heaven exalted,
all of his sins forgiven
and his body made exalted.
To all who read this,
with the ritual ablution water

25. Titiek Pudjiastuti (transcr.) & Hardjana H.P. (transi.), Kitab Yusuf (Jakarta : Departemen Pendidikan
dan Kebudayaan, Proyek Penerbitan Buku Sastra Indonesia dan Daerah, 1981), p. 534. Javanese text (as
corrected by me) in Ricklefs, Seen and unseen worlds, p. 57.
26. Karang (meaning coral, rock ; yard, compound) is a common toponym in Java, often found in such
combinations as Karanganyar, Karangasëm, etc. Given the date in November 1633 and the location of a
Karang near Tëmbayat, however, it seems to me reasonable to believe that this is the Karang which is
meant.

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 Islamising Java : The Long Shadow of Sultan Agung All

will be disclosed
the secret mystical science,
all of their sins abolished
and by the Immaterial (God) given great blessedness,
forgiven by the Immaterial.^)

Thus this work claimed that reading or writing it would fulfil two of
Islam's five pillars, the pilgrimage to Mecca and the giving of alms, and was
equivalent to fighting Holy War, with its attendant admission to paradise for
fallen warriors.
The story of Usulbiyah is known only from two eighteenth-century MSS,
one done in the court of Kartasura in 1729 and the other in Sunan Kuning's
rebel headquarters in 1743. Although these versions depict famous figures
from Islamic history, with a central theme being an encounter between the
Prophet Muhammad and Jesus, the tale is less clearly related to Quranic
prototypes than is the case with Iskandar and Yusuf. Usulbiyah is clearly
presented as a work bearing supernatural power. (28>
These three works - Iskandar, Yusuf and Usulbiyah - thus seem to
confirm the significance of Sultan Agung's pilgrimage to Tëmbayat in 1633.
This was evidently associated with the introduction into court literary culture
of these three major works of Islamic inspiration. As was noted above, it was
also the time of the creation of an inscribed gateway there, of the
introduction of the new Anno Javanico calendar, of the reconciliation with
the Surabaya line with its saintly links and, according to legend, of the
Sultan's instruction in secret mystical knowledge by the spirit of Sunan
Bayat.
The self-consciously Islamic character of Sultan Agung's reign, at least
after the 1633 Tëmbayat pilgrimage, is conveyed also in another work which
may, indeed, represent his personal political philosophy. This text, Suluk
Garwa Kancana (the song of the house of gold), is again known only in an
eighteenth-century version sponsored by Ratu Pakubuwana, like the other
works already described above. Before the verse text begins, a prose
sentence says, "This is Suluk Garwa Kancana, which is from Susunan
Ratu". This title was apparently used by Sultan Agung himself in 1636-7,
after Agung's armies under the command of Pangeran Pëkik defeated the

27. Text in Pudjiastuti & Hardjana, Kitab Yusuf, p. 535. It has been necessary to make some corrections to
the manifestly faulty transcription in this edition. The final line remains problematic.
28. The MSS are summarised and extracts published in Ricklefs, Seen and unseen worlds, pp. 62-91, 293-
304.

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478 Merle C. Ricklefs

spiritual lord of Giri. The title Sultan, conventionally used to describe him
throughout his reign, was not in fact adopted until 1641. Thus Suluk Garwa
Kancana which depicts the ideal Javanese king as a model Sûfï warrior,
should perhaps be ascribed to Sultan Agung himself. (29)
Suluk Garwa Kancana opens with a metaphor of the spirit as monarch
and the five senses as royal officials who urge the king to be involved in this
world. But the king must reject this advice. He must rely upon a " fortress of
clear vision", "destroy the (enemy) citadel and let the five senses be swept
away. " He should " destroy the passion of sexual love, and let pleasures be
destroyed". This pious, ascetic king is admonished thus :
Let that which serves as your citadel be
constant struggle ;
that which serves as your weapon (arrow)
the exalted contemplation (of God) ;
as your vehicle : steadfast trust in God.
Take care and battle firmly.
Let the scriptures {sastrd) serve as your subjects.
Let piety serve as your bow,
let dhikr (the repetition of divine formulae) serve as your quiver,
and the Qur'ân as your arrows.
Draw your bow on the field of battle.
Truly heroic are you, Your Highness.
Let your heart not be uncertain,
accompanied by a fortress of clear vision,
penetrated by faith.
Let the firm fortress be exorcised,
untouched by the five senses
which are destroyed by faith exalted
deflected from attachment to this world.
Let there be destroyed
desire and sensual pleasures,
may comforts be defeated.
Then the enemy will disappear entirely.
All the heroes of battle :
all their magical powers will be blunted
and unable to be put into effect.
Uncertain will be the hearts of villains
because (you) take care in troubles.
None can imagine your proficiency.
Therefore you are given a position
by the Most Holy God,

29. A fuller discussion of the text, including the meaning of the title and the ascription to Sultan Agung,
and a full Javanese text and English translation, are found in Ricklefs, Seen and unseen worlds, pp. 1 12-
25. The title Susunan Ratu was also used, at least on some occasions, by Amangkurat I, II and III (r.
1646-77, 1677-1703, 1703-8), but none of these can be thought of as likely authors or patrons of a pious
Islamic doctrine of kingship such as that found here. Furthermore, the fact that the other principal works
in Ratu Pakubuwana's collection of MSS evidently derive from versions done in the time of Sultan
Agung inclines one to the view that the same is likely to be true of Suluk Garwa Kancana.

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 Islamising Java : The Long Shadow of Sultan Agung 479

because of your outstanding heroism on the field of battle.

Yea, you are shown (divine) grace,
are given the ultimate position
and are installed as king,
given a new raiment.
When you are consecrated as king,
don your royal garb :
let Khak (Reality) serve as your crown,
with tarekat (the mystical way) as its crest,
Struggle constantly,
sarengat (the law) serving as your lower garment.
This is the end of Garwa Kancana.

If it is correct to accept this as a statement of Sultan Agung 's political

philosophy - possibly even representing the instruction which he is said to
have received from the spirit of Sunan Bayat in 1633 - then it is a uniquely
valuable demonstration of the reconciliation of Javanese martial traditions of
kingship with Islamic traditions of mystic piety. Here is established an
equation between the warrior king and the Sûfï mystic engaged in the jihâd
al-akbar, the "greater holy war" against one's own carnal appetites. This
model of an ascetic warrior monarch, with weapons of faith deriving entirely
from Islamic traditions and with holy law as his nether garment, captures
eloquently the role Agung evidently sought to play in reconciling Javanese
and Islamic identities. It is consistent with the domestication within Javanese
court culture of the other works of literature described above. These were
works inspired by Islamic sources and at least in the case of Iskandar,
apparently developed from a Malay story and brought to Mataram in 1633.
That year seems to have played a crucial role : the year of the pilgrimage to
Tëmbayat.
It should be noted that, in promoting the Islamisation of Javanese life,
especially the life of the kraton, Sultan Agung was acting consistently with
developments elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago. His neighbour in the
West of Java, the long-ruling king of Bantën named Pangeran Ratu or Abdul
Kadir (r. 1596-1651), read difficult Sûfï works and corresponded with
Islamic thinkers as far away as Arabia. In 1638, he became the first king in
Java known definitely to have adopted the title Sultan, becoming Sultan
Abulmafakhir Mahmud Abdulkadir after receiving some form of
authorisation from the Grand Sharif of Mecca. (3°)

30. Martin van Bruinessen, "Shari'a court, tarekat and pesantren : Religious institutions in the Banten
Sultanate", Archipel 50 (1995), p. 176; Azyumardi Azra, The transmission of Islamic reformism to
Indonesia : Networks of Middle Eastern and Malay-Indonesian 'ulamâ' in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries (PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1992), pp. 365, 463 n. 39; Batavia to H. XVII, 22 Dec. 1638,
in Jonge & van Deventer, Opkomst, vol. V, p. 236.

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480 Merle C. Ricklefs

The most famous contemporary Islamising court was that of Aceh under
Sultan Iskandar Muda, whose reign is studied in the late Denys Lombard's
seminal work Le Sultanat d'Atjéh au temps d' Iskandar Muda, 1607-1636. (31)
At this time Aceh witnessed an efflorescence of Islamic mystical literature,
associated particularly with the well-known Sumatran authors Hamzah
Pansuri (d. c. 1590), Syamsuddin of Pasai (d. 1630), Abdurrauf of Singkil (c.
1615-93) and the Gujerati Nuruddin ar-Raniri. The last lived in Aceh from
1637 to 1644 under the patronage of Iskandar Muda's successor Sultan
Iskandar Thani (r. 1636-41). The works of these authors spread widely
throughout the archipelago. (32)
The two great contemporary kings of Aceh and Mataram, Sultan Iskandar
Muda and Sultan Agung, never met but they must surely have known of
each other, may have corresponded (although no evidence of this survives),
and perhaps measured their greatness against what they knew of one another.
It was possible for information to flow quickly across the Indonesian
archipelago at this time, not least because of the role played by travelling
men of religion.
Agung 's synthesis of Javanese and Islamic ideas was symbolised by his
finally taking the title Sultan in 1641. As was noted above, his compatriot in
Bantën assumed this title on the authority of the Sharif of Mecca in 1638.
Shortly thereafter, Agung sent an emissary to Mecca who returned in 1641
with authorisation for him, too, to assume the Sultan title. He thus became
Sultan Abdul Muhammad Maulana Matarani, (33) the first monarch of his line
to use such a title, and the last to do so for over a century. The 1738 MS
Babad ing Sangkala records this event and also notes that in the same year
Agung made a second visit to Tëmbayat, suggesting again the centrality of
that place in the Islamisation of Agung's court and realm. (34>
Before Sultan Agung's time, it seems that some Javanese could conceive
of a synthesis of Javanese and Islamic identities but others rejected this. The
patronage, piety and supernatural authority of Sultan Agung must have
moved the centre of cultural gravity mightily in the direction of synthesis.
But a hierarchical society in which a king could have great influence was

31. Paris, École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1967.

32. There is much scholarly literature on these matters. For some basic references, see Ricklefs, History,
p. 313.
33. De Graaf, Sultan Agung, pp. 264-8.
34. Ricklefs, Modern Javanese historical tradition, pp. 40-3 (I: 41-2). Some problems surround the dating
of Agung's investiture as Sultan ; see ibid., p. 172.

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 Islamising Java : The Long Shadow of Sultan Agung 48 1

also one in which the departure of such a king could mean an alteration in
the cultural dynamics. After Agung's death in 1646, it became clear that
there were cultural and political forces in Java which could still frustrate the
synthesis which he had promoted. Indeed, in the decades of conflict which
followed down to the 1720s, conspicuous Islamic piety or motivation was
less likely to be found on the side of the kraton than on that of the forces
who opposed the Mataram dynasty and its VOC allies. (35)
With the acession of Pakubuwana II to the Javanese throne in 1726, a
second pulse of royal Islamisation commenced. (36) The sixteen-year old
monarch's pious grandmother Ratu Pakubuwana appears to have been one of
the central Islamising leaders. In the end, the king was even prepared to go
to war against the kafirs of the VOC in 1741, a decision which led to
disaster. For the purpose of the present paper, Ratu Pakubuwana's role a
century after Sultan Agung was crucial in that she was responsible for new
versions being written of Iskandar, Yusuf, Usulbiyah, Suluk Garwa Kancana
and other minor works not discussed here. It is only the survival of these
versions which has made it possible to shed new and greater light upon the
role of Sultan Agung, and especially of his 1633 pilgrimage to Tëmbayat, in
the Islamisation of Javanese court culture. No doubt many courtiers in the
eighteenth century would have been aware that when Ratu Pakubuwana
mobilised her own spiritual authority and the supernatural powers of these
Islamic books to perfect the reign of her grandson, she was also standing in
the mighty shadow of Sultan Agung. There was no room at Tëmbayat in
1633, and none at Kartasura a century later, for the idea that Javanese and
Islamic identities could be usefully distinguished.

Abbreviations
AD Anno Domini, the Christian era
AJ Anno Javanico, the Javanese era
BK Babad Kraton. British Library Add. MS 12320. Written in Yogyakarta in
AJ 1703-4 [AD 1777-81] by R.Tg. Jayengrat. Reference to the published
edn are to the transliteration in I.W. Pantja Sunjata, Ignatius Supriyanto &
J.J. Ras (eds). Babad Kraton. 2 vols. Jakarta : Penerbit Djambatan, 1992.

35. See M.C. Ricklefs, War, culture and economy in Java, 1677-1726 : Asian and European imperialism
in the early Kartasura period (Sydney : Asian Studies Association of Australian in association with Allen
& Unwin, 1993).
36. The reign (1726-49) is studied in Ricklefs, Seen and unseen worlds.

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482 Merle C. Ricklefs

BTJ(BP) Bale Pustaka. Babad Tanah Jawi. 31 vols. Batawi Sentrum : Bale
Pustaka, 1939-41 (the Surakarta Major Babad)
c. circa
d. died
IOL India Office Library, London
MS, MSS manuscript, manuscripts
VBG Verhandelingen van het (Koninklijk) Bataviaasch Genootschap van
Kunsten en Wetenschappen
VKI Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Institut voor Taal-, Land- en
Volkenkunde
VOC Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, the Dutch East India Company

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